1. I’m at the point of not caring about the 2025 Yankees. I’m thinking of selling all of my remaining season tickets for the year and finding something else to do every night for the rest of the way. It’s what I said I would do if Juan Soto left last winter in free agency. I said I would move on from the Yankees and baseball and start to learn a language or an instrument with all of the free time I would have from late March through the end of September (and possibly October). Had I done it, I would be well on my way to being fluent in Italian and potentially auditioning for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead, I can’t speak Italian and am no closer to mastering a woodwind. Instead of becoming more cultured and learning something other than the dismal OPS+ of the Yankees’ putrid catcher and shortstop, I have wasted about 300 hours and roughly two weeks of my life watching this team win eight more games than it has lost.
2. I found myself lying awake on Friday night staring at the ceiling after the worst conceivable loss not only of the season, but maybe ever. No, it wasn’t losing Game 7 of the 2001 World Series or Game 5 of the 2024 World Series in terms of importance, but in terms of mathematics and probability, it was as bad as it gets. The Yankees had a 96 percent chance to win when they led 6-0. It was 97 percent when they led 9-4. It was 95 percent when they retired the first batter of the ninth. Each time the Marlins erased the deficit with odds of 3 percent, 4 percent and 5 percent.
If you thought the Yankees would bounce back on Saturday afternoon, you’re a fucking idiot. Rather than show some pride and fight, the Yankees rolled over and got two-hit and were shut out. Then on Sunday, in desperate need of salvaging the final game of the series, the Yankees lost miserably again. It was the first time in history the Marlins swept a series against the Yankees. Add another franchise lowlight to the Aaron Boone era.
3. It’s hard to believe Boone’s era is still growing. The disgust of him by the fanbase has never been greater. I have adamantly been calling for his removal for five years, so I’m not new to the game, but this is the first time nearly every Yankees fan is on board. (And for those who aren’t, what are you doing with yourselves?) Sadly, the idea of Boone not being the manager at any point this season or next season is a waste of everyone’s time.
But Boone’s tone is changing. His postgame answers are changing because he has no answers because the corner he promises to turn is once again turning out to be a mirage. Boone comically referred to the Yankees as “the best team in the league” after the Yankees were swept by the Blue Jays in a four-game series a month ago. On Sunday, after losing to the Marlins for a third straight day, Boone said, “I think we have the makings of a very good club.” So the Yankees went from being undoubtedly “the best team in the league” in Boone’s eyes on July 4 (despite losing 14 of 20 at the time) to “having the makings of a very good club” on August 4.
4. It’s clear Boone’s voice is unheard in the clubhouse or with his own coaches. Once a series an egregious mistakes occurs — a mistake no one who regularly watches baseball has ever seen before — and Boone says, “Can’t happen,” in evaluating the mistake only for another mistake to occur, equal to or greater than the last. Austin Wells forgetting how many outs there were against the Rays seemed unbelievable, and then Jazz Chisholm went and got doubled up on a dome-high, infield pop-up in Miami, and suddenly Wells’ baserunning gaffe doesn’t seem so bad.
5. It’s bad enough Chisholm is a cocky, arrogant player who talks and acts as if his career OPS is 200 points higher than it actually is (.766), but his refusal to be accountable for his out on Saturday only to say he’d do the same thing again was preposterous. Then again, why would Chisholm think he did anything wrong, considering no Yankee is ever made to believe they did something wrong. Instead of pulling Chisholm from the game or flipping out on him in the dugout for all to see, Boone chose to talk to Chisholm in the hallway to the dugout and out of sight from cameras. He then let Chisholm remain in the game and decided to rip first-base coach Travis Chapman in the dugout for all to see. Yes, let’s blame the first-base coach for Chisholm! Not only did Chisholm’s moronic decision go unpunished, Boone defended him in his postgame saying he was trying to make a play before eventually saying, “Can’t happen,” yet again.
When the Yankees played the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball on June 8, Chisholm participated in an in-game interview with ESPN. When asked about Boone, Chisholm said, “We’re really good friends.” He didn’t say Boone is a “really good manager” or that “he’s great to play for.” No, the first thing that came to his mind was how good of friends they are. A manager has to have the ability to call out his players when they deserve to be called out. A friend? A “really good friend” isn’t about to call out their friend even if they deserve to be.
Chisholm is the same person who called the Royals’ ALDS Game 2 win over the Yankees “lucky” last year. Chisholm went 2-for-15 in that series. Then he went 3-for-19 in the ALCS and 5-for-21 in the World Series. Who is he to call anyone “lucky” when he went 10-for-55 with 14 strikeouts in the playoffs. He’s the same person who said, “I feel like we got a great team and I feel like we’re going to make the World Series again,” after the Yankees salvaged the third game of the series in Cincinnati in June. The Yankees are 14-18 since that win. “Great team” indeed, Jazz.
6. Chisholm’s postgame embarrassment was nothing new for this team in being unable to recognize the difference between smart and dumb baseball. At the end of June, after another disastrous defensive game from Anthony Volpe, he answered questions about a poor play and decision he made and said, “The error today, I’m going to go for that play every single time.” It’s good to know that every single time a ball is hit in the hole with a runner already sliding into third base Volpe is going to try to throw an already-safe runner out with his below league-average arm. Remember that quote the next time that same play happens because it’s going to happen again. Volpe told everyone he’s going to make the wrong choice the next time it happens because he said he’s going to make the wrong choice “every single time” that play occurs.
7. Aaron Judge constantly talks about how the team will get them tomorrow until they run out of tomorrows. Volpe has cited how much time is left in the season an inordinate amount of times over the last month. Volpe and Carlos Rodon have both used Boone’s “right in front of us” mantra. I didn’t think the losing culture and comfortability with losing Boone has created in his eight years as manager could infect someone like Cody Bellinger, who has played in more playoff games than anyone on the Yankees and has been to three World Series (winning one), but it has gotten to Bellinger too.
“I still really do have full confidence in this group of guys,” Bellinger said on Sunday. “I think we have a lot of talented baseball players in here. Ultimately, we’ve just got to play better.”
Not you too, Bellinger. I mean, fuck, that quote reads like it was scripted for Bellinger by Boone. Bellinger talked about how confident he is in the team, threw in the word “ultimately” and then said they have to play better. It took a little more than four months for Boone to erase any memory of Bellinger as a Dodger and make him just another Yankee loser, spewing happy-go-lucky, bullshit.
8. Ben Rice said, “I think a little sense of urgency would be good for us,” and appeared to be the first Yankee to speak honestly about the state of the team. But then Rice clarified his remark by saying the team isn’t lacking urgency. Did Boone make eye contact with Rice through the media scrum and give Rice a look that caused him to backtrack on his his initial statement?
Rice also said he’s not concerned about the team’s free fall in the division and now the wild-card race. Wells said the same last week. They both sounded an awful lot like this quote:
“No concern at all. One game at a time. We keep playing this brand of baseball it’s going to be just fine. Like I said, all you can do is put yourself in a position to win and that’s what we did, which feels really good moving forward.“
Harrison Bader said that exactly two years ago. The Yankees were 4 1/2 games out of the playoffs at the time and Bader wasn’t concerned. Why should he have been? In his one-and-a-half seasons with the Yankees (when he wasn’t on the injured list), he was exposed to a team that nearly blew a 15 1/2-game division lead in August and September and then sat in the clubhouse down 3-0 in the ALCS while his manager showed the team video from the 2004 ALCS as motivation with David Ortiz on FaceTime on Boone’s phone. Then the next season (when he wasn’t on the injured list), the Yankees produced the franchise’s worst season in 30 years, and throughout it, Boone told everyone how confident he was in his team and about the imaginary corner they would soon turn. The Yankees missed the playoffs.
9. The Yankees aren’t 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot right now like they were then. Not yet, at least. They are 4 1/2 games out in the division from the Blue Jays — a team they led by eight games at the end of May. They are no longer in the first wild-card spot either as they are now 1 1/2 games behind the Red Sox — a team they led by 12 games in the loss column at the end of May. The Yankees have a 1/2-game lead on the Mariners for the second wild card and a 2 1/2-game lead over the Rangers for a playoff spot altogether.
10. The Yankees will play those Rangers over the next three days. Get swept like they just did in Miami and the Yankees will not hold a playoff spot, a feat that was a near statistical impossibility just a few weeks ago. If there’s anything I have learned about the Boone Yankees over the last eight years it’s that they love setting negative franchise records. Falling out of the playoff picture in a season in which they were 17 games over .500 through 67 games would be their greatest act of all. And to think, I could have been working on my Italian or practicing the oboe instead of writing this.
Last modified: Aug 4, 2025
