1. The Yankees blew a 6-0 lead. They blew a 9-4 lead. They blew a 12-10 lead with one out and no one on in the ninth inning and the bottom of the Marlins’ order due up. The Yankees lost a game in which they scored at least 12 runs and had at least 15 hits for the first time in 85 years (stat from Katie Sharp), falling to the Marlins 13-12.
In the Aaron Boone era, the Yankees have made sure to let any good feeling fans have about the team be short-lived. In 2018, the Yankees did their job to begin the ALDS by splitting the first two games at Fenway Park and then returned home to a raucous Stadium crowd only to suffer the most lopsided home postseason defeat in the franchise’s history. In 2019, they won Game 1 of the ALCS on the road against the Astros only to blow Game 2 and lose Games 3 and 4. They momentarily saved their season by coming back in the top of the ninth in Game 6 only to be walked off in the bottom of the ninth. In 2020, they won the first game of the ALDS and then lost three of the next four, including a Game 5 defeat in which they couldn’t hold on or add to an early lead. In 2022, they survived elimination in Games 3, 4 and 5 in the ALDS only to be humiliated in the ALCS. They re-signed Aaron Judge after 2022 and promised to add more, and that more only ended up regrettably being Carlos Rodon. In 2024, they reached the World Series and looked to be on their way to forcing a Game 6 before producing the single-worst inning in the history of the World Series. They traded for Juan Soto and then lost him to free agency after one season.
2. The 2025 Yankees have given fans little to feel good about over the last two months. The team had an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays at the end of May and now trail the Blue Jays by 4 1/2 games with the head-to-head tiebreaker included. The team had a 12-game lead over the Red Sox in the loss column and now they have a one-game lead in the loss column and are tied in wins. But a depressing June and July was supposed to be forgotten with a big August and September. The Yankees finally released DJ LeMahieu last month and did the same to Marcus Stroman on Friday. They had added an actual third baseman to play third base, revamped their bullpen and created a functional bench for the first time in years. Before the first pitch on Friday against the Marlins, I felt the best I had about the Yankees since they took a 3-2 lead over the Dodgers in the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series. Again, every good feeling in the Boone era is short-lived.
The bullpen was responsible for a lot of the losses over the last two months, but that was supposed to be resolved on deadline day with the addition of Jake Bird, David Bednar and Camilo Doval. You couldn’t find a Yankees fan on Thursday at 6 p.m. who wasn’t ecstatic about the Yankees adding three high-leverage relievers to replace the crap they had been trotting out for most of the summer. But like every bit of happiness the Yankees have produced since the start of 2018, it was immediately destroyed.
3. Before the deadline day duds ruined Friday’s game, Boone put the wheels in motion. Rodon was awful, needing 107 pitches to pitch 4 2/3 innings. But for as bad as Rodon was, Boone’s decision to let him keep pitching in the fifth inning when he clearly had nothing was worse. The Yankees led 6-0 when Rodon took the mound in the bottom of the fifth and he promptly allowed four runs with a little help from the mess that is Jonathan Loaisiga. Loaisiga hit a batter to load the bases and then allowed a two-run single to ding Rodon’s ERA.
Brent Headrick managed to throw a scoreless sixth to hold the Yankees’ 6-4 lead and the Yankees added three runs in the seventh to take a 9-4 lead. A five-run lead with nine outs to go with the newly-stacked bullpen? That’s about as close to a guaranteed win as you get in this sport. The deadline day acquisitions made sure to remind everyone there’s no such thing as a guarantee in this sport.
4. Bird was the first deadline day reliever to come into the game. The sweeper version of Tommy Kahnle and his changeup, Bird decided he was only going to throw sweepers and when it was evident he had no command of the pitch and had to come in the zone with a fastball, the Marlins rocked him.
Bird went sweeper, sweeper, sweeper, sinker to Agustin Ramirez and Ramirez drilled the fastball off the right-field wall. Bird did then got the recently-called-up rookie to go down swinging after four straight sweepers. Otto Lopez singled when Bird threw him three straight sweepers and Liam Hicks walked when Bird threw sweepers and a curveball out of the zone.
At that point, Bird had thrown 15 sweepers in 19 pitches and it had led to the bases being loaded. Up came Kyle Stowers — the only star in the Marlins’ lineup — and Bird remained in the game. It was obvious Bird didn’t have it, but that wasn’t going to stop Boone from trying to let him find it against the majors’ sixth-highest OPS (.949) in Stowers. Bird went away from the sweeper, thinking Stowers would be sitting on it and missed the zone with a first-pitch curve. Thinking that Stowers would now certainly be sitting on the sweeper after not throwing it on the first pitch, Bird went with a sinker and Stowers hit a grand slam off of it. Bird didn’t find “it” on the mound like Boone thought he would. The grand slam pulled the Marlins to within one run at 9-8 and then Boone decided to pull Bird after he had jumpstarted the Marlins’ comeback.
5. The next of the deadline day duds to enter the game was Bednar. The former Pirates closer quickly found out he wasn’t in Pittsburgh anymore. For the first time in his career he was pitching in a game that mattered in August and he handled it about as well as someone who had spent five years with the Pirates would. Michael Kay warned fans the Marlins broadcast team had told him about Bednar’s struggles in the Marlins’ park and three pitches into his Yankees debut, Bednar allowed a game-tying home run to Javier Sanoja. Yes, the powerful Sanoja who hit 20 home runs with a .719 OPS in 415 games in the minors and who entered Friday with one home run and a .634 OPS in 93 games in the majors homered off Bednar after homering off Rodon earlier. Tie game.
Bednar wasn’t done. He then gave up a double to Jakob Marsee in his major-league debut for the first hit of Marsee’s career. Xavier Edwards then reached on an infield single that “the fucking elite” Anthony Volpe couldn’t handle because he can’t handle anything with the smallest amount of difficulty involved and once Volpe couldn’t end the inning, you just knew the Marlins would take the lead before the inning was over. They did so on the very next pitch as Ramirez — traded last year for Jazz Chisholm — ripped an 111-mph line-drive single to left. Bednar allowed one earned run in his last 23 1/3 innings with the Pirates and then allowed two in his first five batters with the Yankees (stat from Katie Sharp). 10-9 Marlins.
Volpe made up for his inability to play shortstop in the majors by hitting a game-tying home run to lead off the eighth. Volpe flipped his bat and then made some odd gesture either to his bench or the crowd as to quiet them down before going on the slowest recorded home run jog of his career. How about we get to league average as a hitter before we act like that? Tie game again.
The game was still tied at 10 in the ninth when the Yankees built a two-out rally against the tough Anthony Bender. Ben Rice hit a pinch-hit single to right, Jose Caballero stole second after pinch running for Rice and Ryan McMahon battled back from 1-2 against Bender to single in Rice and give the Yankees an 11-10 lead. Volpe followed with a double to drive in McMahon and the Yankees had a 12-10 lead. Kay screamed on YES, “FOUR-HIT NIGHT FOR ANTHONY VOLPE,” as if Volpe had just eclipsed Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak because the odds of Volpe having a four-hit game were just about as impossible as someone breaking the Yankee Clipper’s record.
Because no big moment during the Boone era goes without retaliation, anyone who thought the two ninth-inning runs would be enough to put away the Marlins must be new around here. Bird sucked and Bednar sucked just as bad, so Boone figured the final deadline acquisition in the bullpen in Camilo Doval couldn’t possibly be as bad.
6. Bird had been given a five-run lead as a soft landing spot to get his feet wet as a Yankee and couldn’t handle it. Bednar was given a one-run lead to protect against the bottom of the Marlins’ lineup and couldn’t do so. Doval was being asked to protect a two-run lead with the 7-8-9 hitters due up. Get three outs before the bottom of the Marlins’ lineup could score two runs and the Yankees would have themselves a fourth straight win and would be one game closer to the Blue Jays.
It seems unfathomable anyone hits Doval with his 100-mph cutter, but when he inexplicably doesn’t use that pitch it’s easy to see how he gets hit. Doval got the first out of the ninth on four pitches and then the immortal Sanoja singled on a line-drive right right after Doval went sinker, slider, slider against him without showing the Marlins’ 8-hitter the cutter. Doval then threw seven pitches to Marsee (again making his major-league debut) and only one was a cutter — clocked at 99.5 mph — and Marsee walked. The Marlins had the tying run on base and the winning run at the plate with the lineup turning over. Maybe now Doval would go to his best pitch? No, he wouldn’t.
Doval went slider then sinker to Xavier Edwards and Edwards singled to right. The base hit was going to score one run, but it ended up scoring two as Caballero let the ball roll under his glove. Caballero is a middle infielder by trade, but he has played 33 games in his career in the outfield, so it wasn’t his first time out there. But there’s nothing that Boone loves more than playing players out of position if he can. Cody Bellinger had to move to first after Paul Goldschmidt and Rice were removed from the game, so Caballero had to play right field because he was the only option left for Boone. Wait … what’s that? The Yankees recently traded for Austin Slater who has played 1,049 2/3 innings in right field in his career and he was available off the bench. Oh …
“I feel sad,” Caballero said, “because it’s definitely a game that we could have won.”
Yes, I would say a 6-0 lead over the Marlins constitutes as a game that could have been won. I would say a 9-4 lead over the Marlins constitutes as a game that could have been won. I would say a 12-10 lead with one out and no one on in the ninth and the 8-9 hitters due up constitutes as a game that could have been won.
7. No one could have envisioned all four deadline day acquisitions would play a major role in the Yankees suffering a loss not experienced by the franchise in more than eight decades in their very first game with the team. But my biggest worry when the Yankees made all the moves they made at the deadline was that they gave Boone so many pieces to play with that he wouldn’t know how to use them. It took one game for that fear to be realized. Boone needs eight everyday players at all eight positions, five clear starting pitchers, a pure seventh-inning pitcher, eighth-inning pitcher and closer. He needs a 12-piece puzzle with giant pieces and pictures of safari animals on them. He was supplied with a 1,000-piece puzzle of the Manhattan skyline at night.
The Yankees treated the winter and first two-thirds of the seasons as if they didn’t matter. They didn’t have a real third baseman play third base until July 26. They didn’t improve their bullpen until July 31. Brian Cashman spent $300 million on a roster that needed to add seven players to before the deadline. More than a quarter of the Yankees’ roster is different than it was a week ago because the original roster was so poorly constructed.
8. It’s not Boone’s fault Rodon sucked again, Bird couldn’t throw his sweeper for a strike, Bednar pooped his pants in the biggest game of his career, Doval was a disaster and Caballero played the ball in right like the drunkest guy on a beer league team stuck in right field where he couldn’t possibly impact the game. But it’s Boone fault that Rodon was allowed to pitch as long as he did. It’s Boone’s fault he didn’t get Bird out of the game when he clearly didn’t have it. It’s Boone’s fault Caballero was playing right field with Slater on the bench.
With Edwards on third representing the winning run, Ramirez came to the plate with one out. It would be nearly impossible to throw out the speedy Edwards if Ramirez put the ball in play on the ground and because Doval had no swing-and-miss stuff in his debut, the sensible decision would be to intentionally walk Ramirez. That would create the possibility of a double play, so that a ground ball wouldn’t necessarily end the game with Edwards on third.
I’m not sure if the thought to walk Ramirez ever entered Boone’s mind. I’m not sure he’s capable of reading the situation and thinking of such an option because he didn’t. Instead, he had Doval pitch to Ramirez, Ramirez put the ball in play on the ground and the Marlins won 13-12.
“It’s now how you draw it up,” Boone said.
Actually, if you know anything about the Boone era, it’s exactly how things get drawn up. The endless list of lowlights and miserable franchise records set during his tenure as Yankees manger is depressing.
9. “We fought,” Volpe said. “Overall, I’m proud of the fight everyone showed.”
What the fuck are you talking about? The Marlins should be proud of their fight, not the Yankees. 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 Doval got the first out of the ninth. Bird, Bednar and Doval combined to allow nine runs on nine hits in just 2 1/3 innings. I bet Ian Hamilton and Yerry De los Santos are together still floating up against a ceiling from laughter like Uncle Albert and Bert in Mary Poppins.
10. The Blue Jays lost again, so the Yankees missed an opportunity to trim the loss column deficit in the division to two. The Red Sox and Mariners both won, so the Yankees’ lead on the first wild-card spot was cut into.
WC1: Yankees (4.5 games back of Blue Jays because of tie-breaker)
WC2: Red Sox (0.5 games back of Yankees)
WC2: Mariners (1.5 games back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (4.5 games back of Yankees because of tie-breaker)
Friday’s loss was the kind of loss that keeps you up and makes you question why you like the Yankees. It’s also the kind of loss that makes you get up and write nearly 3,000 words about it. I don’t want to write about a game like that again. Not this season. Not ever.
Last modified: Aug 2, 2025
