1. It’s no longer right in front of them. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny when it comes to winning the AL East this season and potentially avoiding having to play in the best-of-3, wild-card series. After Wednesday’s 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays, the Yankees now need outside help to overcome the four-game deficit in the division with 64 games left to play and only three of those games are against the Blue Jays.
2. The Yankees had their best three starting pitchers lined up for the last three days in Toronto and they still lost the series. They had every position player aside from Oswaldo Cabrera healthy and available and they still lost the series. The Yankees did what these Yankees have always done during the Aaron Boone era and that is lose in the biggest of games in the most remarkable of ways.
With a chance to win the division in 2018 still on the table in early August, the Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series. They were swept after blowing a three-run lead in the ninth in the series finale. In the postseason, they split the first two games of the ALDS on the road against the Red Sox and then suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 3 and were eliminated in Game 4.
The 2019 Yankees hit .214/.289/.383 in the ALCS and lost four of the final five games of the series. They were eliminated in Game 6 after they erased a two-run deficit in the top of the ninth inning only to get walked off on in the bottom of the inning.
The 2020 Yankees lost three of the last four games in the ALDS, and in the decisive Game 5, scored just one run and gave up the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth.
The 2021 Yankees were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series, and instead, they finished third in their own division and fifth in the AL and were eliminated in the one-game playoff.
The 2022 Yankees were swept in the ALCS after their manager used the darkest moment in the organization’s history as motivation to come back in the series, all while FaceTiming the man responsible for the darkest moment in the organization’s history.
The 2023 Yankees missed the playoffs entirely despite 40 percent of the league getting in.
The 2024 Yankees were embarrassed in a five-game World Series loss, which included blowing a five-run fifth-inning lead at home in Game 5. The champions spent the entire offseason publicly bashing and laughing at the Yankees’ sloppy, undisciplined brand of baseball. And the Yankees did nothing to change it.
3. The Yankees committed four official errors in their loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday and that doesn’t even account for J.C. Escarra mishandling a ball in the dirt allowing a runner to advance to second, Escarra being unable to block a breaking ball in front of him to allow runners on first and second to move up to second and third and Cody Bellinger throwing his arms up to indicate he wasn’t going to catch a routine fly ball that led to a one-out “triple” with the game tied at 4 in the sixth inning.
4. “I think we have a very good defensive club,” Boone said with a straight face. “I think it’s here and I think it’s in this building we haven’t played well.”
This isn’t just about the Yankees’ play in Toronto, which has been unacceptable. It’s been their play everywhere. It’s been their play during Boone’s entire tenure. It continues to be their play because there is no accountability for poor play and no consequences for it either.
5. Not only was the defense a mess, yet again, but Max Fried wasn’t good, yet again. Has Fried been great as a Yankee? Yes. Has Fried been mediocre to bad for more than a month now? Also, yes.
Fried has one quality start in more than a month. He blew a lead and the Yankees lost to the last-place Orioles on June 20. On June 25, he shut out the Reds for seven innings to salvage the last game of that series. He pitched poorly in Toronto on July 1, struggled against the Mets in just five innings on July 6, left the game against the Cubs after three innings on July 12 and then pitched poorly in Toronto again on Wednesday.
My biggest fear with Fried has always been how he will perform in the postseason and in big games, since he has been atrocious in October in his career. In 20 games and 12 starts in the playoffs, he has a 5.10 ERA and 1.493 WHIP which is a far cry from his 3.02 career ERA and 1.148 career WHIP. I pray the version of Fried we have seen of late in big regular-season games isn’t the one that is going to show up in the postseason.
Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and Will Warren can’t be trusted and Cam Schlittler has two career starts to his name. The Yankees aren’t going anywhere if Fried pitches in August, September and October the way he has pitched in July. With all of their pitching issues, the Yankees are only going to go as far as Fried takes them.
6. The same goes for Aaron Judge. In the biggest series of the season, Judge went 1-for-10 with two walks and four strikeouts. That one was the game-tying, two-run home run in the sixth inning on Wednesday that momentarily made me think the Yankees may actually win the series and season finale in Toronto. Instead, it was nothing more than a short-lived moment that was immediately destroyed in the bottom of the inning.
It seems like every time Judge hits a big home run, the Yankees end up losing. There was the home run on Wednesday. There was the ninth-inning home run off Garrett Crochet at Fenway Park earlier this season. There was his first World Series home run in Game 5 last year. There was his home run off Emmanuel Clase in the ALCS last year. There was his solo home run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS and his two-run home run off Justin Verlander in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. If Judge hits a big home run in a big game, the Yankees seem to lose.
7. If Fried is going to be a run-of-the-mill starter and if Judge is going to be merely great and not otherworldly, the Yankees’ chances at the division aren’t just over, their chances at reaching the postseason at all are going to be increasingly difficult. I’ll worry about how the duo performs in October once the Yankees get there. For now, they need to make sure they get there.
8. For a team that once led the Blue Jays by eight games and had a 12-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox, the Yankees now hold just a two-game lead on a postseason berth. If the Blue Jays play .500 baseball for the rest of the season (30-30), they will finish at 90-72. The Yankees would need to go 35-25 to tie them. So if the Blue Jays — a team that is 18 games over .500 becomes a .500 team for the rest of the season — the Yankees will have to go at least 10 games over .500 in 60 games to pass them. The Yankees are 10 games over .500 through 102 games.
9. It’s very likely the Yankees will end up as a wild-card team and end up in the vaunted best-of-3. It’s something I hoped they would avoid. It’s something that seemed impossible not to avoid at the beginning of June. But I lived through the one-game playoffs of 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021. I hoped the Yankees would never end up in that one-game playoff when it was implemented in 2012 and they ended up in it more times than any other team in baseball.
10. If the Yankees continue to play the way they have for the last six weeks, I won’t have to worry about the best-of-3, wild-card series because they won’t even be in that and will miss out on the postseason for the second time in three years despite the format allowing 40 percent of the league in. But if the Yankees are going to get in and they play like they did against the Dodgers in the World Series or like they did in Toronto the last three nights then I don’t want them in anyway. Save all Yankees fans from the humiliation. Because a postseason berth guarantees no organizational changes. A missed postseason likely means no changes as well (as we saw in 2023), but it leaves the door open for them. It’s disappointing missing the postseason is even an option again.
Last modified: Jul 24, 2025
