1. After a 68-hour break from being on the brink of elimination, on Sunday afternoon, the Yankees returned to where they spent last Wednesday and Thursday: a loss away from their season ending.
So much for winning this series in four games with a starting pitching edge in Games 2 through 5. The only way for the Yankees to survive the ALDS and the Blue Jays and advance to the ALCS for the third time in four years is to win three straight games against a team they are 5-10 against this season.
2. Game 2 was over quickly. The Blue Jays led 2-0 in the second, 5-0 in the third and 11-0 in the fourth. The final six innings of the game were a formality and the seven runs the Yankees scored in the sixth and seventh innings were as meaningful as Luke Weaver finishing the season with six straight scoreless appearances against the Twins, Orioles and White Sox. The Yankees scored seven runs against the back end of the Blue Jays bullpen. It doesn’t mean the Yankees finally woke up in the series. It doesn’t set them up to explode in Game 3. It means nothing and won’t serve as some kind of momentous connection to Game 3 on Tuesday. Momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher and the Yankees don’t hit postseason starting pitching unless the opposition’s defense helps them out.
3. Trey Yesavage did to the Yankees what Cam Schlittler did to the Red Sox. In fact, Yesavage’s start was more impressive than Schlittler’s. Schlittler faced an anemic, banged-up, two-hitter lineup, while Yesavage faced the Yankees at full strength. Schlittler had 12 strikeouts over eight innings. Yesavage had 11 strikeouts in 5 1/3 no-hit innings. The Blue Jays pulled him in the sixth because the game was out of hand and there was nothing to gain by having him continue to waste pitches in a blowout or he likely would have struck out 15-plus.
It was Yesavage’s fourth major-league start and in his other three starts (two against the Rays and one against the Royals) he had traffic against him throughout each of them. But not against the Yankees on a postseason stage. Not against a group of left-handers who swung at his splitter like they were blindfolded, the same way they swung and missed at Kevin Gausman’s splitter the day before. It was a putrid performance from the offense.
4. Max Fried matched the offense’s putridness. The starting pitcher with the 5.10 career postseason ERA the Yankees gave $218 million to pooped his pants on the Rogers Centre mound, allowing seven earned runs and 10 baserunners in three innings. He couldn’t retire Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Ernie Clement or even the only left-handed bat in the lineup in Daulton Varsho. When Fried was mercifully pulled from the game after the third inning, Will Warren did his best Fried impression by allowing six earned runs of his own over 4 2/3 innings, including four home runs.
5. The Blue Jays went into this series without Bo Bichette, Chris Bassitt and Jose Berrios and hold a 2-0 lead and have outscored the Yankees 23-8 and 11-1 while both teams were still managing, playing and operating as they would in a normal game setting. All of the Yankees’ offensive stats over the final 3 2/3 innings of Game 2 can be disregarded.
The trio of Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton failed to do anything meaningful again. Well, unless, you consider Judge misplaying a double into a triple in the second inning or the three of them padding their stats in the late innings when the game was already over to be meaningful. While Guerrero Jr. and company were teeing off on Fried and Warren, the Yankees’ Big 3 continued to swing and miss and hit singles.
The Red Sox’ few great players lived up to expectations in the three-game series (Garrett Crochet, Trevor Story, Alex Bregman and Aroldis Chapman) and through two games the Blue Jays’ best players have done the same. Through five postseason games, the only Yankees to live up to expectation were Fried in his start against the Red Sox (which has since been negated by his start in the ALDS) and Cam Schlittler. No Yankees bat has been consistent and I don’t want to hear that Judge is hitting .444 with a 1.024. Could there be a more empty .444 batting average and 1.024 OPS in the postseason?
6. The narrative the Yankees are running out of time to win with Judge is now circulating as the Yankees are a loss away from watching their season end and it’s sickening. The Yankees haven’t won in the postseason in Judge’s career because of Judge! He has driven in two runs in the playoffs: the first was an incorrectly-scored base hit and RBI that Jarren Duran dropped and the second was a single on Sunday with the Yankees trailing by 11 runs in the seventh inning. How about Judge does what Story did in the Wild Card Series, or what Guerrero Jr. has done in the ALDS? How about he does something, anything at the plate to drive in a run that doesn’t fall out of a fielder’s glove or isn’t when the score is a double-digit difference.
7. The Aaron Boone era has been a collection of postseason disasters.
2018: Lose both home games in the ALDS, including the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 4.
2019: Lose four of the last five games in the ALCS and get walked off on by Jose Altuve.
2020: The Deivi Garcia/J.A. Happ debacle.
2021: Embarrassed at Fenway Park in the wild-card game.
2022: Swept by the Astros after Boone uses video of the 2024 ALCS as a motivation tactic.
2023: Missed postseason.
2024: Nestor Cortes vs. Freddie Freeman and the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series.
2025: 23 runs allowed in first two games of the ALDS.
Every postseason elimination has come with humiliation for the Boone Yankees and while the results of the first two games of this series aren’t on him at all, they still happened during his tenure. His Yankees lost 10-1 after he called out Buck Martinez for calling out his Yankees when he didn’t need to. His Yankees allowed 13 runs and were no-hit until the Blue Jays had enough bullying the Yankees after he said he expects his team to show up and play well in Game 2. How about he keeps his mouth shut before Game 3, but that wouldn’t be very Boone Yankees-like if he did.
8. The Boone Yankees have set preposterous franchise records, ranging from the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS) to allowing double-digit runs in back-to-back postseason games for the first time in franchise history. After seven failed attempts to win a championship as Yankees manager, Boone is now a loss away from an eighth. With each passing year, Boone’s record for most seasons managing the Yankees before winning a championship grows closer to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak in terms of how likely it is to ever be broken.
9. The Yankees will return home for Tuesday’s Game 3 and will play for their season for the third time in their last five games. The Yankees at home against the Blue Jays are a much different team than the Yankees in Toronto against the Blue Jays. The Yankees won four of six at home against the Blue Jays this season, while they have lost eight of nine in Toronto. I expect the Yankees to send this series back to Toronto solely because they are home and have the starting pitching advantage in Games 3 and 4.
10. If the Yankees’ season ends in this series, you will hear about how great a year they had winning 94 games and tied for the best record in baseball. You won’t hear about how they went 9-17 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays and blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays and how if they had won the division, then Games 1 and 2 of this series would have been at Yankee Stadium. You will hear from Boone about how sweet it will be once they finally win it all and you will hear Brian Cashman refer to the postseason as a crapshoot, a phrase the organization didn’t use when they used to win. It wasn’t until the Yankees stopped winning that the playoffs became the result of randomness with no skill or ability needed to succeed. It’s hard to believe anyone could believe postseason success is tied to chance or luck when the reason the Yankees are eliminated every year is the same. I guess the organization has just been unlucky for the last 15 years (going on 16) and in 23 of the last 24 years (going on 25) and the Boone Yankees have just been unlucky the entire time.
Maybe the Boone Yankees will get lucky and erase an 0-2 ALDS deficit like the Joe Torre and Joe Girardi Yankees did. Maybe their highest-paid players will act and play like it for the remainder of this series. If not, the Yankees can run it back next year with the same manager and roster and issues and see if the same manager and roster and issues can finally get lucky and win it all.
Last modified: Oct 7, 2025
