Be honest, Yankee fans: Are you mad?
Angry at Aaron Boone for falling short once again? Well, the man lost his ace in March, managed the team to a tie for a division title and kept them alive in an American League Division Series in which their starters couldn’t get past the third inning.
Irate that Aaron Judge still isn’t the Truest Yankee because he doesn’t yet have a World Series ring? Well, the man simply hit one of the greatest home runs in recent playoff history to save their season, had 13 hits in 26 postseason at-bats and produced one of the finest offensive seasons ever.
Incensed that GM For Life Brian Cashman simply isn’t doing enough, or that owner Hal Steinbrenner isn’t willing to do what it takes to get the Yankees over the top? Well, the latter laid out $750 million for Juan Soto only to see him skip across town, and the former pivoted brilliantly to reallocate resources and put a championship-caliber club on the field.
Sure, this isn’t the old days, where no expense was spared, sustainability was a word reserved for losers and The Boss demanded a level of success that rarely was met.
No, this is 2025, and while the pinstripes can evoke nostalgia and newest Yankee Stadium’s roars can still intimidate an opponent, a different reality has settled in.
The Yankees are simply one of a half-dozen or so teams committed to winning every year, yet no more powerful to bend the capricious postseason odds in their favor.
It’s somewhat appropriate that the Yankees are going home after losing this American League Division Series, 3-1, to the Toronto Blue Jays while the Seattle Mariners are still alive, at least pending their decisive Game 5 in the other ALDS.
The Mariners’ GM, Jerry Dipoto, caused a great deal of concern and disgust within the game when, after the club fell shy of a playoff berth in 2023, he said any franchise’s aim should be to win “54% of the time.” The implication: Win 87.5 games every single year, and you’ll make the playoffs more often than not, and perhaps one of these autumns every ball will bounce the right way, every deep fly ball won’t die at the track and you’ll win the last game of the season.
Dipoto was ripped mercilessly, an avatar of the game’s modern urge to drain all the passion out of the sport and create a frictionless, sterile pastime.
He apologized profusely, but it’s kind of funny to look back a few years later: The Mariners have won between 85 and 90 games every year since 2021 and, this year, have a fairly legitimate World Series shot.
The Yankees would never admit to such cold calculations, but the same concept applies, just in a slightly higher tax bracket. Just call them The 58 Percenters: They won 94 games in 2024 and 94 games in 2025, a .580 winning percentage that earned them one division title, a tie for another and a World Series appearance.
That the Blue Jays claimed the division title on a tiebreaker forced the Yankees, for the first time, into the wild card series. In the most generous interpretation, that means they had a 1 in 12 shot of winning it all.
Is this a failure worth kvetching over?
It is unfortunate for them that they haven’t been able to construct a true “death star” like the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose unparalleled draft-and-develop apparatus and deep pockets have produced 13 straight playoff berths, two World Series titles and four NL pennants.
Not only has that kept the Dodgers an October constant (the Yankees have missed the playoffs four times since their World Series title in 2009), it also makes them incredibly attractive to outsiders.
They’re favorites to repeat as World Series champions because of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and perhaps even Rōki Sasaki, a trio whose Dodger destination seemed a fait accompli.
A generation ago, that would’ve been the Yankees’ domain. But Hal Steinbrenner and fam never seemed inclined to throw money around, in a relative sense, like the Boss did, or even like the restless Steve Cohen across town.
So, they’ll have to make do with $320-ish million rosters, a perpetual hole or two that must get patched each winter and the hope that there’s enough dry powder in the farm system to reup at the trade deadline.
The process begins anew. Cody Bellinger is probably a goner, perhaps finally earning the nine-figure payday he long seemed due. Same with Paul Goldschmidt and Devin Williams, worthy contributors in their single year in pinstripes.
There are growing rumblings of a so-called Judge window, that the big fella turns 34 in April and 6-foot-7 bodies are a little more challenging to maintain relative to the average dude.
That’s kind of silly. Judge has many good years ahead of him and has been a virtually constant October presence. This is no Mike Trout situation, a generational great stuck in baseball purgatory more than a decade, until his body no longer does the things that made the masses thirst for a championship on his behalf.
Judge should get his ring at some point, perhaps next year. Gerrit Cole should be back sometime in the first half, and Luis Gil healthy from the jump, while retaining or replacing Bellinger (uh, Kyle Tucker?) remains the biggest lift on the lineup side.
The greater concern may be cleaning up the fundamentals on a club prone to lapses – such as Jazz Chisholm’s costly error in their Game 4 elimination – although shortstop Anthony Volpe made great strides on both sides of the ball to that end late in the season.
And if Judge never wins it all? There have been worse indignities in this game. Judge will probably pass 400 home runs in 2026 while Giancarlo Stanton closes in on 500. The Yankees remain a highly entertaining team in a business built on, well, entertainment.
But it’s also a competitive business, with the most demanding fans in the industry. Just keep in mind: The Dodgers needed 11 consecutive playoff runs to win their first full-season title in this run.
The Yankees are going on eight fruitless playoff runs in nine years. They should be impervious to such modern trappings as “playoff odds” or “win curves,” but come October, they’re no different than the Phillies or Dodgers or Mets or, now, the Blue Jays.
Sure, it’s disappointing for a Yankee fan. It’s just not worth getting mad about.