1. The Yankees will play the Red Sox in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Tuesday, Sept. 29 at Yankee Stadium. That was made certain on Wednesday when the Yankees lost the series finale to the Twins. Now five games back in the loss column of the Rays, the Yankees would need to sweep the Diamondbacks this weekend in Arizona and have the Rays lose three of four to the A’s and Red Sox over the next four days to be where I thought they needed to be going into next week’s four-game series: two games back. But I don’t know what’s less likely: the Yankees sweeping a team with something to play for when they couldn’t even beat the Twins on Wednesday or the Rays losing three of four when all they have done is win, win and win some more to hold off the Yankees.
2. The Yankees are going to fall short of winning the division for the second straight season and for the sixth time in nine seasons under Aaron Boone. At a time when most of the league is actively not trying (there are five teams in the AL with a positive run differential) and when it’s never been easier to reach the playoffs with 40 percent of the league getting in (it’s possible one or more AL playoff teams finish under .500), the Yankees have done nothing to separate themselves from the rest of the AL. Instead, they will need to win a best-of-3 series (against the one team they needed to avoid) to reach the real postseason.
We are living last season all over again. The Yankees got off to a fast start, built up a lead in the division, squandered that lead after taking the summer months of the season off and then tried to make it all back in the final weeks of the season. Like last season, their end-of-the-season cramming strategy will fall short. While the Blue Jays allowed the division to go down to the final day with spotty play in September, the Rays have kept their foot on the gas. When the Yankees got the deficit down to 1 1/2 games in the final week of July, the Rays went 12-2 to push it back up to 6 1/2. When the Yankees cut it back down to three games in the last week of August, the Rays answered by going 7-2 to increase it again. And when the Yankees got it back down to three last Thursday, the Rays began the five-game winning streak they’re currently on. The Yankees have gone 34-20 since July 19, but the Rays have gone 36-17. The Yankees have gone 20-9 since August 16, but the Rays have gone 18-11. The Yankees have gone 10-4 in September, but the Rays have also gone 10-4. Each time the door has appeared to be open for the Yankees to overtake the Rays, the Rays immediately closed it.
3. The Rays’ payroll is going to be around $114 million for the season, or the rough equivalent of what the Yankees are paying Carlos Rodon (will finish with a half-season of starts), Trent Grisham (.703 OPS and two injured-list stays), Giancarlo Stanton (24 games played), Ryan McMahon (28 percent worse than league average), DJ LeMahieu (was released on July 10 last season) and Jazz Chisholm (.715 OPS). The Rays’ highest-paid player (Nick Martinez) will earn $13 million in 2026, which is $3 million less than McMahon and $2 million less than LeMahieu.
4. So now the Yankees will try to survive a three-game series against the Red Sox for a second straight season. Except this time the Red Sox won’t be starting Brayan Bello in a postseason series or a rookie taking a major-league mound in a winner-take-all game with just a handful of starts to his name. This time they will have Roman Anthony in the lineup and they will have Sonny Gray (2.76 ERA this season and 3.23 career postseason ERA), Payton Tolle (one earned run and four hits allowed in 13 innings against the Yankees) and Ranger Suarez (who owns one of the best postseason starter ERAs of all time). And if the Yankees do survive the Wild Card Series, they will travel to Tampa (to play at a venue they never win in) to play the Rays (a team they are 3-6 against this season) on just one or two days rest with their rotation out of order, while the Rays will have had a week off. It’s the same awful setup the Yankees had last October, a setup they deserved then and deserve now for taking the summers off as if they are educators.
5. If the Yankees had won the division and were able to host the first two games of a best-of-5 against a Rays or Red Sox team with its rotations out of order, I would have loved their chances of reaching the World Series. Because whichever of the three AL East teams survives the AL East-only bracket is going to the World Series. The Astros, Rangers, Guardians and White Sox are all jokes. But needing to best the Red Sox again and then needing to get past a well-rested Rays team with everything set up to favor them is a lot to ask. It’s doable, it’s just not favorable, which is what happens when you’re a wild-card berth.
It doesn’t matter that the Yankees have the best run differential and best team on paper. The postseason isn’t played in a vacuum, and the Yankees’ path to the World Series is now set up like the least desirable mirror maze imaginable. Beat the Red Sox and then beat the Rays with everything stacked to the Rays’ advantage (because they earned it) from rest to rotation to venue to home-field advantage? Again, it’s a lot to ask.
6. It will be a near-impossible ask if Aaron Judge is out again with a different injury. Judge left Wednesday’s game after striking out in two at-bats and coming as close to hitting a fastball as any fan picked at random would. Judge is 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and one walk since returning and looks more like Aaron Hicks before being designated for assignment than Aaron Judge. It says a lot about the Yankees’ roster construction that everyone employed by the Yankees and every fan of the Yankees knows the team’s postseason chances rest on the health of a guy who missed more than half of the season and who looks like he’s blindfolded at the plate right now.
7. The division-losing loss came in the form of a road extra-inning loss, in which the Yankees led in the 10th and 11th innings, had the bases loaded with no outs and didn’t score a run in the 12th inning and then didn’t score the automatic runner against in the 13th. How can you not be romantic about baseball? The worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020 blowing their last chance at a bye by losing such a game was like a fairy-tale story with a horrible, yet predictable ending.
8. It’s hard to win a division when you can’t beat Zebby Matthews and the Twins. The Yankees’ offense performed like a team that is content with being the first wild card. The offense was pathetic against Matthews — the kind of starter that has shut them down too many times this season, and the kind of starter they won’t see in October. There won’t be a Zebby Matthews in the postseason. There will be Gray, Tolle, Suarez and Drew Rasmussen and Shane McClanahan and so on. The Yankees’ offense is too inconsistent to make any Yankees fan feel good about October or to make any Yankees fan believe this October will be different than all of the other Octobers under this manager.
With or without a healthy, otherworldly Judge, the Yankees’ lineup has too many holes. George Lombard Jr. should be a rookie worried about playing great defense and batting ninth as he learns how to hit at this level. He shouldn’t be batting sixth for a team that thinks it can win a championship. Instead of being hidden at the bottom of the lineup under the notion that anything he gives you offensively is a bonus, Lombard Jr. is being forced into a middle-of-the-order role. He has a middle-of-the-order role because the options behind him like McMahon, Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe are all inferior to a 21-year-old with 34 career games and a .627 OPS.
McMahon isn’t a major-league player. How could he be with a .621 OPS and 72 OPS+ and an arm that can’t reach first base in the air. He does nothing well, and yet, he’s under contract for $16 million in 2027. The “Let’s See If He Can Find It” strategy didn’t work for Josh Donaldson (a former MVP who finished his career with a 129 OPS+) in 2022 or 2023, and it shouldn’t be an option for McMahon in 2027. McMahon shouldn’t be playing now, let alone next season. He shouldn’t even receive a postseason roster spot. He’s an awful baseball player with poor body language. His offensive effort on Wednesday was despicable.
9. Heliot Ramos against right-handed pitching is a disgrace and Luis Garcia against left-handed pitching is an equal disgrace. If Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger and Judge (when he’s himself) don’t put the Yankees on the board, the Yankees don’t get on the board with any consistency. Sure, Garcia (against righties) and Spencer Jones have their moments, but nothing that can be counted on. It’s hard to win when there is no expectation that nearly two-thirds of the lineup will do anything other than strike out, pop up or ground out. And that’s against the entire league and back-end starters barely in the league. What will happen when the field is cut down to only the best in 12 days and the No. 4 and No. 5 starters and middle relievers don’t see the mound? I think we know what will happen since we have seen it happen in every postseason in the Boone era.
10. It’s off to Arizona for the last road series of the season where the Yankees will try to sweep the Diamondbacks and simultaneously pray the Athletics and Red Sox can win three of four against the Rays to keep their 5.6 percent chance to win the division alive. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny. It’s no longer right in front of them, though since the end of June it likely never was. Ten games remain before a best-of-3 series I desperately wanted them to avoid. There’s no avoiding it now: Yankees-Red Sox in a couple of Tuesdays in the Bronx.
Last modified: Sep 17, 2026
