Every fear of the Yankees having to play in the best-of-3, Wild Card Series against the Red Sox came to fruition in their Game 1 loss on Tuesday night. The worst-case scenario for the Yankees this postseason was not winning the division and drawing the Red Sox and the result for the series opener was predictable. The way the game played out was predictable. Every weakness the Yankees possess made an appearance in Game 1 and now they will play for their season in Game 2.
Let’s go through what I wrote about Game 1 leading up to it (italicized) and what transpired in Game 1.
If the Yankees had to play the Red Sox in a best-of-5, my confidence would be much greater than it is now. If they had to play them in a best-of-7, my confidence would be through the roof. But in a three-game series? I don’t know if there is any measurable confidence in this situation. That’s not because the Yankees are an inferior team. Quite the opposite. When they’re not beating themselves, the Yankees are a much better team than the Red Sox, especially with Rafael Devers in San Francisco and Roman Anthony on the injured list. The difference is the Red Sox have Garrett Crochet and the Yankees don’t.
I was right to have little confidence in the Yankees winning Game 1, but as I sat in my seat at Yankee Stadium prior to first pitch, I let myself think they could win, and when the Yankees led off the game with two hits against Crochet and Anthony Volpe hit a solo home run off him in the second, the thought grew. Maybe Crochet wouldn’t be his regular-season self in his first postseason start. Maybe he would endure the kind of postseason struggles other dominant lefties had to start their postseason careers like his counterpart on Tuesday in Fried.
Unfortunately, Crochet didn’t become pre-Yankees Fried or Clayton Kershaw. The Yankees couldn’t get to Crochet with two on and no outs and the heart of their order due up in the first and the Volpe home run wasn’t a sign of things to come, it was a wake-up call for Crochet. After the Volpe home run, the Yankees didn’t have a baserunner until Volpe singled in the eighth.
There are two ways to beat Crochet: multi-run home runs or working the count. The first is extremely hard to count on, but Crochet can be prone to the long ball. Run into a three-run home and you can win Game 1. Try to string together walks and singles and you will be playing for your season on Wednesday. Because planning for or counting on home runs isn’t wise, the Yankees’ best course of action is to tire Crochet, get his pitch count up and hope he’s out after six innings. Crochet had a 3.55 ERA in September, which was his highest ERA for a month this season and after leading the league in innings and strikeouts, there has to be some level of fatigue involved.
The Yankees couldn’t get baserunners against Crochet after the first inning and a solo home run was never going to be enough to win the game. Working the count didn’t go well either because you have to be able to make contact and foul off pitches to do that and the Yankees racked up 11 strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings against Crochet. Crochet retired 17 straight Yankees from the Volpe home run in the second until the Volpe single in the eighth. His pitches by inning: 13, 16, 20, 14, 18, 13, 6, 17. The sixth and seventh innings were the missed opportunities to get to Crochet or get him out of the game, and six Yankees were retired on 19 pitches. Crochet was every bit as good as I feared he could be. The Yankees went 0-5 in games started by Crochet in 2025.
I expect Fried to pitch well because he has to pitch well. If he doesn’t then nothing else matters. The career 5.10 postseason ERA version of Fried can’t show up. He needs to go out and set the tone and have a clean first inning and give the top of the order a chance to put the pressure on the Red Sox. This type of game is why the Yankees signed Fried and because of that he should be expected to go out there and either best or match Crochet.
Fried did his job. He got through the first inning unscathed and gave the Yankees a chance to take an early lead just like I asked, but Cody Bellinger struck out and Giancarlo Stanton hit into an inning-ending double play.
The decision to pull Fried was obviously the wrong one, not just in hindsight, but in real time as well. Fried looked like he may be tiring at the end of the sixth, but he got an inning-ending double play, returned to the mound in the seventh and got the first out there as well. Ceddane Rafaela and Nick Sogard were due up. Rafaela owns a career .685 OPS. Nick Sogard has a career .656 OPS. The fact Sogard was starting in a postseason game was preposterous. The fact that Boone was scared to let his high-priced ace face him was even more so.
Boone couldn’t wait to get his hands on the game. He couldn’t wait to hop out of the dugout and do his strut to the mound and call on his shitty bullpen, and the first shitty reliever he called on was Luke Weaver. Weaver got ahead of Rafaela 0-2 and then nine pitches later walked him. He couldn’t retire Sogard and pinch hitter Masataka Yoshida drove in two runs on the first pitch he saw. Weaver faced three batters, retired none, erased the Yankees’ lead and put them in a one-run deficit in a matter of minutes after Fried had worked so hard over 6 1/3 innings to keep the Red Sox off the board.
The Yankees lineup producing in the postseason is what keeps me up at night. No matter what happens during the regular season, the entirety of the Yankees’ season each year hinges on whether or not the bats will be there in October.
Aaron Judge continued his postseason run of being a singles hitter; Paul Goldschmidt proved he has no power left in his bat to hit for extra bases (one extra-base hit since August 26); Cody Bellinger continued his career of being a bad postseason hitter (.817 career regular-season OPS and .658 career postseason OPS); Amed Rosario’s sole purpose for being on the team is to hit left-handed pitching and he went 0-for-3 with three groundouts to the left side; Trent Grisham may as well have batted without a bat, going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts; Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and Jose Caballero went 0-for-3 with one strikeout. Chisholm was the only bench player to get an at-bat and he hit a lazy fly ball against Chapman that Goldschmidt couldn’t score on because Boone forgot to pinch run Jasson Dominguez for Goldschmidt.
Stanton had a bad game. He had the most important at-bat of the game and struck out. Stanton strikes out a lot. He always has. But he has been the one Yankee to consistently show up in every postseason in this era, so I can’t be upset he didn’t come through in Game 1.
Then there’s the managerial mismatch between Boone and Alex Cora. Boone is 1-4 in the postseason against Cora and after being worried about Crochet pitching against the 2025 Yankees like 2009 Cliff Lee and the Yankees’ offense performing their annual postseason disappearing act, I’m most worried about Boone and what he’s capable of in the postseason.
Make that 1-5. Crochet pitched just like Lee, the offense didn’t show up and Boone did what he has done for eight years and seven postseasons: failed to put his players in the best possible position to succeed.
From the minute Boone filled out the lineup card until the very last out of the game, he blew every decision he had to make. Starting Grisham was foolish. Leaving Rice on the bench was idiotic. Pulling Fried against the bottom of the order was moronic. Inserting Jazz Chisholm into the game for defense instead of potential pinch-hit opportunity was shortsighted. Never letting Rice take a swing in the game was insane.
Every move Boone made, Cora was sitting there waiting to counter it. Boone pulled Fried, so Cora went to his bench against Weaver and Fernando Cruz. Boone didn’t start Rice, so Cora made sure he never got into the game by only using lefties. Boone put Chisholm into the game, so Cora made sure Chisholm didn’t get an at-bat against a righty. Cora knew if he tried to bridge Crochet to Aroldis Chapman with Garrett Whitlock that Rice would immediately hit, so he never allowed it. He was going to use Crochet for as long as he could and then go to Chapman and let those two decide the game. He wasn’t going to let Rice or Chisholm or any Yankees lefty bat decide the game against a righty.
I don’t know how many championships the Yankees would have since 2018 if Boone hade been the Red Sox’ manager and Cora the Yankees’ but I know it’s more than zero. Boone’s in-game management is always poor whether it’s late April or early August, and in the postseason when every decision is heightened, everyone can see just how bad he is at his job.
I like to say the Yankees need to outhit their own manager to win games to prevent him from having an impact on close games. That’s not possible in the playoffs where games are low scoring and close. Every decision Boone makes from the moment he starts to fill out his lineup card until the final out of each postseason game is crucial, and he has been incapable of handling the pressure that comes with making many consecutive correct decisions, which is what it takes to win in October.
The Yankees can’t slug their way to wins in the postseason because there are no bad teams or bad pitchers in the postseason. And because they can’t slug their way to wins, they can’t outhit their manager or their bullpen. And because they can’t outhit their manager or their bullpen, managerial decisions and relief appearances become that much more important, and the Yankees failed to provide offense, make correct personnel decisions or get outs once Fried left the game.
For six months and 162 games the Yankees told us all that they are a team that beats up on bad teams, can’t beat good teams or hit great starting pitching, can’t properly strategize and can’t get outs from the bullpen and Yankees fans somehow thought the 48 hours from the end of the regular season to the start of the postseason would change their identity. Fans bought into their 11-2 finish to the regular season despite the Twins, Orioles and White Sox not being part of the postseason. Maybe now after 163 games everyone will believe the Yankees when they show they are nothing more than bullies who beat up on bad pitching on bad teams and nothing more.
It took one postseason game for the Yankees to be put on the brink of elimination. Maybe this season will serve as a lesson to the organization that all 162 games matter, as had they won one more game from March through September they would be waiting to find out who their opponent is on Saturday instead of potentially being three days into their offseason on Saturday.
Following the game, Boone was reminded that the team that has lost Game 1 in the Wild Card Series has never won the series. He got a big smirk on his face and with a sarcastic tone responded, “We’re going to show up tomorrow and I expect us to do pretty well,” as if this team or any team under him has ever proven to do anything other than lie down in a postseason series against a non-AL Central team.
Carlos Rodon gets the ball in Game 2 and will pitch to save the season. If he can’t save it, at least Max Fried will be well rested for Opening Day.
Last modified: Oct 1, 2025
