I was ready for exactly what unfolded on Tuesday. I expected the Yankees’ offense to disappear the way it always does in big games, especially in October, and I was prepared for Gerrit Cole to continue to pitch the way he has since injuring his hamstring on Sept. 7. I wrote I had a bad feeling about the wild-card game, and that feeling came to fruition as the Yankees’ 2021 season ended after a single “postseason” game.

The 2021 Yankees spent six months and 162 games foreshadowing how a one-game playoff would play out, and the nine-inning debacle perfectly portrayed the season. Cole sucked the way he had sucked since his Sept. 7 start against the Blue Jays. The offense that scored less runs than the Indians and Angels this season and that scored six total runs over the final three games of the season with a postseason berth on the line showed up. Aaron Boone mismanaged his bench and let Cole, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga all go longer than they should have, which has become a staple of his managerial style. Phil Nevin inexplicably sent Aaron Judge home on a play in which Judge wasn’t even in the camera’s view with the ball already waiting for him at the plate. Ultimately (to use Boone’s second-favorite word after “obviously”), the Yankees lost a game that ended four batters into the bottom of the first inning.

I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m not even annoyed or frustrated. I’m accepting of the Yankees’ disappointing ending because it was a disappointing season, and it was made possible by the Yankees’ belief they could bring back the same manager and essentially the same roster which hadn’t been good enough the last few seasons and think it would magically be good enough this season.

The Yankees built 40 percent of their Opening Day rotation on arms that hadn’t pitched in two years due to injury. Another 20 percent of the rotation was made up by an arm that had been suspended since the second half of 2019. They went into the season with two reliable and healthy starters in Cole and Jordan Montgomery, praying Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia would emerge, if needed. Schmidt was injured on the sixth day of spring and Aaron Boone said he would miss “three to four weeks.” He began a rehab assignment more than five months later. After Garcia showed promise in the majors in 2020, he walked 68 in 90 2/3 innings at Triple-A and got torched in his two starts with the Yankees in 2021, taking more than just a step back in his progression in what is a serious issue for the organization’s player development. By the 13th game of the season, the preseason favorite to win the American League was using Nick Nelson as an opener in an important game against the Rays, a game in which Nelson allowed four earned runs in 1 2/3 innings.

I call an April 16 game against the Rays an “important game” because every game is important. Every single game. The Yankees didn’t lose the ability to play the wild-card game at home in the final weekend of the season when they couldn’t win a home series against a Rays team with nothing to play for, the same way they didn’t lose the division when they lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. The Yankees blew the first wild card and they blew the division over the entire season beginning on Opening Day when Nelson was used in the 10th inning in Game 1 on April 1.

This season was miserable. Despite winning 92 games, you could count the enjoyable moments of the season on one hand, as the majority of those 92 wins were painful, nail-biting affairs until the final out. The Yankees started the season 5-10, were 41-41 on July 4 and lost 12 of 15 after their 13-game winning streak. They went 25-24 against the Orioles, Tigers, Indians, Phillies, Angels and Mets, and lost three of six to the Orioles in September.

Starting 1-5 against the Rays, 0-7 against the Red Sox and getting swept by the Tigers was a sign of things to come and also a cry for help. That help came when after vehemently denying that being all-right handed would hinder the Yankees’ chances at success, Brian Cashman pivoted at the trade deadline and acquired two left-handed bats in Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo. Rizzo hit an OK .249/.340/.428, while Gallo was a disastrous .160/.303/.404. To bolster an injured rotation and worn down staff, Cashman acquired Andrew Heaney, who allowed 29 earned runs in 35 2/3 innings and was designated for assignment on the day of the wild-card game. To fill the void left by trades of the always-uninspiring Luis Cessa and the flat-out awful Justin Wilson, Cashman brought in Joely Rodriguez in the Gallo deal and traded for Clay Holmes from Pittsburgh. Rodriguez was solid and Holmes became arguably the team’s best reliever alongside Jonathan Loaisiga.

Aaron Boone spent his fourth season lying, exaggerating and mismanaging the team to countless losses, showing no signs of improvement as a manager who was hired without coaching or managerial experience at any level. His sole job as manager is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed, and after using one hand to count the enjoyable moments of the season, you can use the other to count the amount of times Boone did just that. (You’ll likely have some fingers left over.)

The lying began on the first day of spring training when Boone said Gary Sanchez would catch Cole in 2021 after separating the two in 2020. Sanchez caught Cole on Opening Day, once out of necessity when he pinch hit for Kyle Higashioka and once when Higashioka was on the COVID list. The same day Boone said Sanchez would catch Cole, he also said Clint Frazier would be the team’s starting left fielder. In the third game of the season, Brett Gardner was starting in left field. To compound his lies about Sanchez and Frazier on that February day, Boone told the media Giancarlo Stanton would play the outfield. He said the same thing in March, April, May and June. Finally on the second-to-last day of July, Stanton played the outfield.

The exaggerating came after nearly every game. You can use those remaining fingers to count the amount of times Boone didn’t mention his starting pitcher having “great stuff” despite the team losing 71 of their 163 games. Boone spent six months telling fans the Yankees “would be fine” or that they would “turn the corner” or “start rolling.” They weren’t fine, never turned the corner and didn’t roll anywhere other than to another early offseason. Between Boone’s endless uses of “obviously” and his daily tipping of his hat to the opposing starter (even when it was Michael Wacha, Matt Harvey, Jordan Lyles, Bruce Zimmerman or any one of a number of fringe major leaguers) came unbelievable defenses of his nonsensical decisions and his players’ underperformance.

The most memorable example of this came when Boone idiotically declared Hicks the team’s No. 3 hitter in spring training, and after Hicks went 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the first series of the season (in which the Yankees lost two of three), Boone was questioned about moving Hicks out of the coveted spot. He answered by saying, “Hicks will be fine.” Eight games later, Hicks was batting sixth, and four games after that, he was hitting seventh before eventually being lost for the season after playing in only 32 games. (Hicks has now played in 493 of a possible 870 regular-season games as a Yankee or 57 percent over six years.)

The 2017 Yankees came within one game of the World Series and replaced Starlin Castro, Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury with reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton and budding (at the time, but no longer) star Gleyber Torres. In four years Boone took that roster and won one division title, lost in the ALDS twice, the ALCS once and now the wild-card game as well. Boone has overseen two postseason exits to the Red Sox and was the manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in Yankees history. The Yankees as a team have gone backward with Boone at the helm and the core of players he inherited have all regressed during his tenure.

Tuesday’s loss wasn’t on Boone, even as he started Higashioka with the season literally on the line, didn’t pinch hit for the weak-hitting Higashioka until the eighth inning when the remainder of the game was a formality and used Rougned Odor before Sanchez. But the Yankees playing in that game and that game being played in Boston? Boone had a lot to do with that. As did his starter in Cole.

There was a time when I would have argued Gerrit Cole being the best pitcher in baseball. I won’t make that argument again anytime soon.

Cole’s performance was an embarrassment. “Sick to my stomach,” he said after the game, after making Yankees fans sick to their stomach over his final five September starts, in which he left early against the Blue Jays, needed 108 pitches to get through five innings against the Orioles, allowed seven earned runs and 12 baserunners in 5 2/3 innings against the Indians, got bailed out by the offense in Boston and allowed the most extra-base hits in a single game in his career in Toronto. Cole allowed 19 earned runs in his last 26 1/3 innings of the regular season with hitters batting .311/.364/.566 against him. Why anyone thought he would just turn it on like a light switch on Tuesday against a team he didn’t pitch well against when healthy on a mound he has never pitched well on in his career is beyond me.

And I use “when healthy” because Cole clearly isn’t healthy. Following the hamstring injury on Sept. 7, he was basically the right-handed version of Heaney for the rest of the season culminating with him throwing batting practice at Fenway Park in the wild-card game. But as Derek Jeter used to say, if you’re out on the field playing (or in Cole’s case pitching) then there’s no excuses. Cole deemed himself healthy enough to pitch and to take the ball in an elimination game and now he must own the humiliating effort.

Maybe a 12th straight championship-less season is for the best. Maybe the Yankees needed this finish to their season to make real organizational changes because that’s what they need: organizational change. Had the Yankees won on Tuesday and then inevitably got trounced by the Rays in the ALDS, the front office would easily give Boone a new contract, let Boone talk about how “slim the margin is between the Yankees and the team that wins the World Series” and chalk up another first-round exit to the “randomness of the postseason” as Cashman likes to do.

Immediately after the wild-card loss, while still wearing his Yankees uniform for possibly the last time, Brett Gardner said, “There’s a lot of uncertain, uncharted waters with this team heading into the offseason … Hopefully we’ll have a chance to run it back.” Run it back? Again? That’s the last thing this organization needs to be doing with this roster. They had their chance to run it back in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, and with each season they have grown progressively worse.

Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2018, saying, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” and yet, the Yankees just went through the same exercise in 2021 as they did the previous three seasons, and to no surprise the result was the same: an early postseason exit. Ownership and the front office can’t possibly think about bringing back the same manager and the same roster. Not after finishing third in the AL East and fifth in the AL in a season in which they were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series.

Following Tuesday’s season-ending loss, Boone oddly talked about how “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees. It was a confusing comment normally reserved to compare emerging teams to a recent champion, not a team that hasn’t won a championship in what will be 13 years next October and hasn’t even played for one in that amount of time.

There’s no gap to be closed on the Yankees. They’re the ones who need to close the gap. As long as Boone is manager and this roster remains intact, the gap will only grow wider.

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When the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2004 ALCS I was a just-turned 18-year-old college student living in Beacon Hill in Boston. Six weeks after move-in day, it was parents weekend during Game 3 of the ALCS when the Yankees put together a 22-hit performance, including 13 for extra bases in their 19-8 win to take a 3-0 lead in the series. The next morning I laughed to my dad about how the Yankees were going to sweep the Red Sox. His response? “Why would you say that?”

That night the Yankees lost to the Red Sox after Kevin Millar walked, Dave Roberts stole, Bill Mueller singled and David Ortiz went deep in the 12th. But it didn’t faze me. Sure, my dad’s “Why would you say that?” kept coming to my mind, but the Red Sox weren’t going to come back. The Yankees had to win one of the next three games of the series with two of them being at Yankee Stadium. I didn’t even think the series would get back to the Stadium, so I decided to do the most sensible thing I could think of: use essentially all of my first-semester spending money on tickets to Game 5.

My dad thought I was an idiot for blowing a summer’s worth of work for the possibility of the Yankees clinching the pennant in Boston. I wanted to see the Yankees spraying champagne on the Fenway Park field even if the friendly confines of Fenway weren’t so friendly back then and I might no longer be here if the Yankees had actually won the game. It turns out parents actually do know best. I blew a substantial amount of money to watch what was then the longest postseason game in baseball history only to have my heart ripped out and stomped out Michael Strahan-style right near the Pesky Pole where I watched Ortiz’s walk-off single fall into center field. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I still see Bernie Williams charging in on the ball, hoping Johnny Damon would stumble and fall while rounding third to head home. The money that could have been better used on Natural Light, 5-5-5 Domino’s orders or Captain Morgan’s disappeared thanks to Joe Torre’s usage of Tom Gordon and the short wall in right field, which prevented Ruben Sierra from scoring the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning.

Fourteen years later, I found myself back in Fenway Park for the 2018 ALDS. I had seen many Yankees-Red Sox games between at Fenway between Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS and Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, and nearly all of them ended in an unspeakable loss for the Yankees. From Gary Sheffield fighting fans to Chase Wright allowing back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs to Kevin Youkilis’ walk-off home run off Damaso Marte, which might still be in orbit, to Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte to countless other awful defeats. Every time I walk in there I glance over to the right-field pole and get a little queasy envisioning my 18-year-old self watching the worst collapse in postseason history take place at my expense.

The Yankees lost Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS, but went on to win Game 2 thanks to Gary Sanchez. After Game 2, I walked back to the hotel with my then-fiancée and now-wife and our two friends looking for a place to have celebratory drinks with an Amtrak ride back home in just a few hours awaiting us. I didn’t care about barely getting any sleep or not sleeping at all. The high of knowing the Yankees had taken home-field advantage from the Red Sox in the series was enough to keep me going and keep me awake.

Two nights later that high had become an unimaginable low. Luis Severino didn’t know what time Game 3 started, warmed up late and got rocked. Aaron Boone sat back and watched Severino get barreled for three innings and let him hang around long enough to put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole and load the bases with no one out in the third. Boone relieved Severino with Lance Lynn, who wasn’t the best strikeout options, not even close, wasn’t a reliever and was nowhere near the pitcher he is now. Lynn allowed a bases-clearing double and the Yankees were on their way to the franchise’s worst home postseason loss in team history.

The following night, I was back at Yankee Stadium, hoping to be going back to Boston for a Game 5. But when Boone let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ entire order a second time just so he could face the No. 9 hitter in Jackie Bradley, there would be no going back to Boston. In the single oddest managerial move of all time, Boone put the game just out of reach for his team in the eventual one-run loss and the Yankees’ season ended, while the Red Sox went on to beat the Astros and Dodgers to win the World Series.

The Red Sox haven’t played a postseason game since winning the 2018 World Series. The Yankees have played 16 with nothing to show for it other than two more years added on to their latest championship drought. On Tuesday, they will meet again with the winner going to Tampa and the loser going home.

The Yankees have everything to lose as a team in a supposed championship window, who was the preseason favorite to win the American League and now playing in the wild-card game yet again. The Red Sox? They were supposed to only beat out the Orioles in the AL East, weren’t considered close to competing for a postseason spot, and here they are, owning the same record as the preseason-favorite Yankees and hosting the wild-card game after beating the Yankees in 10 of their 19 games.

I’m not ready for Yankees baseball to end. Even in a season that nearly put me in the hospital several times, made me question being a sports fan all together and whether I should continue to watch baseball, I don’t want it to end. But I have a bad feeling about Tuesday night. A very bad feeling. The kind of feeling only the Red Sox could make me feel, and the kind of feeling their fans used to feel before the 2004 ALCS.

Tuesday night will be about the offense. Outside of Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez’s dual disaster in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, going back to the team’s last championship in 2009, when the Yankees’ season ends, it’s because of the offense. One run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS. Four runs in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. Three runs in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. Shut out in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. Shut out in the 2015 wild-card game. One run in Game 4 of the 2012 ALCS. Two runs in Game 5 of the 2011 ALDS. One run in Game 6 of the 2010 ALCS. When the season ends, it’s because of a lack of offense, never because of their pitching.

I think Gerrit Cole will be good on Tuesday. Not great, but good. He’s never been great against these Red Sox and has never been good at Fenway Park. I don’t think he will go out and lay the kind of eggs he was laying throughout September, but I don’t think we’re going to see complete-game shutout Cole from the Saturday before the All-Star break. Partially because of his lingering hamstring issue and partially because this team has seen him too much.

The roster, game and situation is nearly fool-proof from Boone. It would take his worst performance ever to not be able to piece together 27 outs. If your name isn’t Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Jonathan Loaisiga, Clay Holmes or Aroldis Chapman, you shouldn’t see the mound on Tuesday. Maybe Wandy Peralta for Rafael Devers. Everyone else should be stapled to the dugout or bullpen bench.

That brings us to Nathan Eovaldi. The starting pitcher on my All-Animosity Team. Eovaldi was a horrible Yankee as a guy who can hit triple digits, but can’t strike anyone out. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him as a 24-year-old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if he faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in their history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the Astros in the 2018 playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series, even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero.”) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion, continues to beat the Yankees’ poorly-designed, all-right-handed lineup and I’ll never get over it. If he pitches a gem on Tuesday, especially after the Yankees chased him in just 2 2/3 innings just 11 days ago, I will truly never get over it. If the Yankees lose on Tuesday because of an inability to hit Eovaldi of all pitchers, I won’t be able to get over it.

The Yankees weren’t supposed to be here. Here being in the wild-card game. And now it being in Boston isn’t a scenario I envisioned as recently as five days ago. But they are here and the only way to avoid being embarrassed by their rival who has taken the clear upper hand in the rivalry ever since I laughed to my dad on October 17 now 17 years ago is to win. Win one game.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every game during the season.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!