It’s never a bad idea when a performer plays their greatest hits, right? Normally, no, but when those hits are straight stinkers, they’re just saying they don’t care about you as fans. The 2025 Yankees
went out exactly as you’d expect them to have gone. A very weird, wild, and frustrating season comes to an end at the hand of their north of the border rivals, exactly how you probably expected it to end. With a lifeless offensive showing and nothing else to really talk about or focus on.
That’s really the reality of it all. Sure, there were some decisions that could be nitpicked, like letting Anthony Volpe take at-bats at all, but it just comes down to non-competitive at-bats and just a truly offensive showing by the offense. It’s not even something Aaron Boone did wrong with the lineup, again maybe a few choices here and there that could’ve been different, but if you’re focused on those one or two lineup changes you’re missing the bigger point. And it’s the same story I feel like we tell every year.
The ones that needed to show up, did not. Aaron Judge, by all measures, had a very good postseason. And it’s not his fault if he’s on base and no one can bring him in, but he barely did any real damage these entire playoffs except for Game Three where he delayed the Yankees’ postmortem by one night. Trent Grisham, Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. though combined to go 1-for-15 with three walks. Of the four times that group reached base last night, Stanton was on three times.
What’s weird is that this team outhomered and outscored every other team in the league this season, yet offensive ineptitude was a recurring theme during the Annual June Swoon that seemingly lasted three months. So it’s not really shocking that they went out like this, but it’s also very shocking because they’re supposed to be better than this. And yet, anyone who’s watched this team for any period of time longer than the Wild Card Series probably isn’t shocked about what happened here.
No matter what you thought might have happened with this team, it still stings to see this. Even if you expected it, even if you’re used to it, the postseason always brings a little bit of hope. There’s that feeling that anything can happen, just need the right people to have off-days and the right people to have on-days, and that’s all that’s separating you from that feeling of pure bliss. And when that gets snatched away from you by reality, there’s really just nothing to do. You can grieve for a bit, you can sit with it, you can simply not think about what could have been for a little while. Before you know it, we’ll all be fools pining for baseball and excited to see pitchers and catchers report.
For right now, it’s probably too early to think about where this team goes from here, especially when you seemingly ingest that same “copium” on an annual basis. Yes, another prime season of Aaron Judge is down the drain but he doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Yes, Gerrit Cole was on the shelf for the whole year and next year he’ll be back and ready to take his rightful place atop the rotation. Yes, the bullpen will probably not be as bad next year because Brian Cashman almost never has a bad bullpen, so it’s fair to assume this was a one-year anomaly.
All those things and the other clear issues with this team will probably figure themselves out next year and even if they don’t, the Yankees will probably be fighting for the division title or at least find themselves in the postseason again. And that’s where the hope seems to die. We’ll all jump back in that saddle again and get ready for this team to hurt us again. It’s easy to feel like this team, in this era, will just never get over the hump. I certainly feel that way, and they have given me no reason or faith to believe that they won’t prove me right either.
They can, surely. But they also could’ve won at least two championships in the last decade, but that flat and empty feeling seems to be the only thing we, as fans, get to hold on to every year. It may be hard to find the positives, but maybe we can all do some good by searching for them in this weird, frustrating, awful, fun, good year. If nothing else, we can all probably agree that at least the Yankees took out the Red Sox and no one can deny that was a good feeling. The rest of it, we have time to get to.
