While obviously not the outcome that we all hoped, the Yankees still provided us with some unforgettable playoff moments — chiefly, Cam Schlittler’s winner-take-all start against the Red Sox and Aaron Judge’s monumental effort to lead the comeback in Game 3 of the ALDS. Unfortunately, there were many more moments that doomed the Yankees these playoffs. There were plenty to choose as the most damning, but we managed to whittle it down to ten. Before our year-in-review coverage gets rolling in earnest,
let’s take one final look back at what was an at times exciting but ultimately disappointing playoff run.
10. AL Wild Card Series Game 1, ninth inning
In the first game of their abbreviated postseason odyssey, the Yankees ran into the buzzsaw that is the likely AL Cy Young runner-up: Garrett Crochet. He tossed 7.2 innings of one-run ball striking out eleven, but in the bottom of the ninth inning the game was still within reach, 3-1. The Yankees loaded the bases with no outs off Aroldis Chapman thanks to three straight singles by Paul Goldschmidt, Aaron Judge, and Cody Bellinger but they failed to score a single run, Giancarlo Stanton and Trent Grisham striking out around a Jazz Chisholm Jr. fly out. New York would go on to win the series, but you wonder about the knock-on effect of playing an extra game before their ALDS matchup with the Blue Jays. Sure, we wouldn’t have gotten Cam Schlittler’s historic performance in Game 3, but who knows what an extra day of rest could have meant.
9. Carlos Rodón’s clunker, ALDS Game 3
Carlos Rodón turned in his best regular season in pinstripes, but things went south in his second playoff start, surrendering six runs in 2.1 innings in his ALDS Game 3 start. This was a game the Yankees wound up winning, but again you wonder about the butterfly effect of his early departure. The Yankees had to lean on Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Devin Williams, and David Bednar for the final 6.2 innings of the contest, and that high-leverage stress would show up in their effectiveness a day later.
8. Bats mowed down by Kevin Gausman
The Yankees rode into the ALDS riding the wave of their victory over the Red Sox to advance, but that was quickly dowsed by Kevin Gausman. New York chose an uber-aggressive approach against early fastballs in the zone hoping to avoid Gausman’s splitter, and it led to the Toronto starter making quick work of their lineup. He needed just one pitch to retire five different batters and was at just 50 pitches entering the sixth. There aren’t many chances to score when you whole lineup rolls over for the first two-thirds of a contest.
7. ALDS Game 1, sixth inning
The Yankees finally got to Gausman in that sixth inning, loading the bases with no one out in a double, a single, and a walk. In what turned out to be his only real ugly moment of the postseason though, Aaron Judge lost an eight-pitch battle with Gausman, chasing on a strike three out of the zone. Cody Bellinger walked to bring one run in, but Ben Rice then popped up.
At that point, Jays skipped John Schneider went to flame-throwing reliever Louis Varland, and he struck out Stanton on a 101-mph fastball in the heart of the zone to strand the bases loaded and keep the lead intact. The Yankees should have done so much more with this opportunity to at least tie it, if not take the lead. But this swung the momentum fully into Toronto’s favor, as we will see with our next moment of doom.
6. Luke Weaver’s seventh-inning meltdown
Luke Weaver was so good for much of his Yankees tenure, but his time in pinstripes ended in ignominy. After Stanton struck out in the previous frame in Game 1, Weaver opened the seventh with a walk and two singles before departing without having recorded an out. All three of those men would score, triggering the full meltdown as the Yankees went on to lose, 10-1.
5. Max Fried humiliated in Game 2
The Yankees may have dropped the first game of the series, but they had to feel good about their chances with ace Max Fried on the mound for Game 2. Instead, he had one of the worst starts of his career, giving up seven runs on eight hits in three innings. It started with an Ernie Clement two-run home run — a guy in the Blue Jays lineup that you just can’t let beat you, and culminated with Fried allowing the first two hitters to reach in the fourth. It didn’t help that the opposition pitcher was making mincemeat of his lineup nor that the reliever who replaced him was somehow even worse — both of which we will cover shortly — but you simply cannot have this kind of embarrassment by your ace in the playoffs.
4. Will Warren gives up four home runs
Warren was the long man Aaron Boone chose to soak up innings after Fried, and that was the worst choice the Yankees skipper could have made. While it is true that the bullpen was worked enough that Warren needed to pitch a few innings at some point in the ballgame, he shouldn’t have been the choice for a mid-inning jam. He gave up a grand slam to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a two-run bomb to Daulton Varsho two batters later as the Blue Jays scored six in the fourth. He would ultimately allow seven runs in 4.2 innings including four home runs to make it so that the Yankees’ eventual comeback attempt had no chance of erasing the deficit.
3. Utter domination by Trey Yesavage
While this pitching collapse was taking place across the diamond, Blue Jays rookie Trey Yesavage had a start for the ages, tossing 5.1 no-hit innings striking out eleven while walking just one. The Yankees tend to struggle against rookie pitchers in recent years but this was straight up capitulation by the whole lineup. They swung as if every pitch was a fastball down the middle, allowing Yesavage to rack up an astonishing 11 whiffs on the splitter and five whiffs on the slider to put themselves in an 0-2 hole with the series heading to the Bronx.
2. Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s error leads to two runs
Jazz Chisholm Jr. batted .182 with a 72 wRC+ in the postseason, but it was his glove that had the biggest negative impact on the team’s fortunes. In the seventh inning of Game 4 with the Yankees trailing by just a run, Jazz booted a tailor-made double play ball that would have ended the inning and given Cam Schlittler seven frames of strong work. Instead, Devin Williams entered with a pair on and allowed both to score on a single, and Camilo Doval would give up another run an inning later with the pair perhaps less sharp following their exertions the night before.
1. Wasted opportunities in Game 4
Having the team’s two workhorses get slaughtered certainly presented a strong case as the most damning moment of the Yankees’ postseason, but at the end of the day it was the failure of the best offense in baseball to show up to work for the vast majority of the series. Nowhere was this more stark than in Game 4 facing a designed bullpen day by the Blue Jays — a day that should have presented the Bombers’ best chance to score. Instead, they wasted multiple scoring opportunities. Notably in the seventh, Paul Goldschmidt walked and Amed Rosario singled to put a two on, but Trent Grisham—a man who had a horrible postseason—popped out to strand the pair.
Then in the eighth, a Giancarlo Stanton single and walks by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Ben Rice loaded the bases, but Austin Wells flew out on the first pitch to leave all three ducks on the pond.
They ended the game 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position and stranded ten men — in Games 1 and 4 combined when they mustered just three runs total, they went 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position and stranded 17, which simply is not a recipe for success in the ALDS nor indeed to make a deep postseason run.
