Despite fielding one of their most balanced rosters in the Aaron Judge era, the New York Yankees’ promising 2025 campaign came to an exactly one week ago, when the Toronto Blue Jays trounced them in a four-game
ALDS that honestly would’ve been a sweep if not for Judge’s Game 3 heroics. Leading the charge for Toronto was franchise face Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who went 9-for-17 against Yankee pitching including three homers and nine RBI.
When Guerrero joined Red Sox legend David Ortiz on the FOX postgame show during the Blue Jays’ clubhouse celebration, the two Yankee tormentors of past and present joined forces to mock the team’s failure with a chorus that Ortiz loves to bring up (if not only to tweak Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, also at the postgame desk):
Following this victory lap, the Blue Jays began the ALCS and hosted a beleaguered Mariners group which required five games (plus 15 innings in the do-or-die finale) to squeak past the Tigers and reach Rogers Centre. It brings me no pleasure to report that Toronto found a way to drop both of the first two games of the series at home. A leadoff homer from George Springer to get the crowd going in Game 1 was followed by precisely one Jays hit the rest of the way, as struggling 2025 starter Bryce Miller stymied them, on three days’ rest no less. The next day was close early but turned into a lopsided 10-3 bludgeoning, the kind which the Jays had unleashed on the Yankees in the previous round. Guerrero’s personal tear ended abruptly: he went 0-for-7 with one walk across those two losses.
Guerrero’s enmity for the Yankees is evident not just in the monster numbers he put up against them in the ALDS (and his celebration with Ortiz) but in the monster numbers he has always put up against them. Vladdy’s career OPS against New York is .918, an echelon above his career mark of .861. Blame what George Steinbrenner did to his father two decades ago or blame simple competitive fire; the dominant numbers simply are what they are. But while the ALCS is far from over, this two-game anecdote would indicate that the Toronto first baseman—and perhaps his teammates around him—could not bring that same fire into this matchup with Seattle.
What I’m arguing here is pretty rickety and dependent on vibes, which will make it rather difficult to defend. But I think if you watched that ALDS as an impartial observer and saw the degree to which Toronto was absolutely locked in against the Yankees, how fully prepared they were to exploit the slightest mistake and turn it into a bushelful of hits and runs, you would come away thinking the Jays did not merely want to defeat the Yankees, but to crush their spirits.
They sought not just victory, but humiliation for the other side. And thankfully for Toronto, the Yankees’ status as the de facto gatekeepers of baseball glory makes them very easy targets for that concentrated level of animosity.
Could the Yankees find a way to weaponize that power for themselves? It’s a fair question. Throughout this chapter of their history, the Bombers have found themselves overpowered by various rivals who always seem to be playing with an extra edge against them. Whether it was the Astros’ continuous ownership of them across three different ALCS confrontations, or the World Series gentleman’s sweep from the Dodgers last season, manager Aaron Boone’s squads haven’t seemed capable of matching their energy. In fact, they’ve cracked under the pressure several times, with poorly located pitches, gaffes in the field or on the bases, and a plethora of noncompetitive at-bats from a lineup which routinely tormented pitchers throughout the regular season. I think it’s worth pointing out how often the Yankees’ quiet self-assurance entering these playoff clashes has habitually melted into indecision, panic, and emphatic defeat. Maybe the Bombers need to show some snarl, too!
There’s an interesting blueprint for this I want to touch on, which comes from one of the other professional sports leagues. The NHL’s Florida Panthers took home their franchise’s first Stanley Cup in 2024, and then successfully defended it this June. These Panthers are a notoriously physical squad who have made plenty of enemies with their smash-mouth style, but they can win in a variety of ways—speed, finesse, or physical will. When they won their first Cup, they entered the following season with a target placed squarely on their backs. All they did in reply was put together another championship run which was every bit as dominant, with one of the greatest scoring performances in NHL playoff history. They were the embodiment of a team which is “tough to play against,” a commonly-heard phrase which you rarely hear said about the Yankees these days.
Baseball is obviously a very different sport from hockey, in which direct physical contact is an integral part of the game. But the mentality required to defend a title when the whole league is coming for your crown is one that the Yankees will require, irrespective of their lack of recent titles to defend. New York hasn’t won a championship in 16 seasons, but the desire from the rest of baseball to shove them into a locker clearly has not subsided across that stretch of time. The Dodgers, Astros, Red Sox, and Rays have all delighted in eliminating the Yankees in various playoff showdowns this decade.
I want to be clear about what I’m not arguing here. It would be absurd and facile to argue that the Yankees are “soft,” as if any group of elite athletes who have to keep their bodies and minds in top shape over the course of a 162-game season can be fairly characterized as such. There are nigh-countless reports from impartial sources who visit the clubhouse and detail just how much these guys want to finally win a championship of their own (especially Judge, who is careening toward a Don Mattingly-esque fate no matter his excellence). It is a truly nagging feeling to taste October so many times without ever getting to end it with a parade down the Canyon of Heroes, just as the likes of Jeter, Reggie Jackson, and Mickey Mantle all did before them. Every time these players walk into that ballpark, they are greeted with pictures, mementos, and numerous other reminders of the amazing World Series heroics achieved by the Yankees teams that long preceded them … and they know they just don’t yet have anything to match them.
In the postseason however, the Yankees’ usual way of going about their business hasn’t translated into consistent success. If they could instead leverage their status as baseball’s archvillain into that extra competitive zeal which their rivals have displayed against them, maybe—just maybe—we could see them finally snatch the initiative against their bitterest rivals in those longer series.
When Guerrero hit a grand slam off Will Warren to break Game 2 wide open, one of FOX’s TV cameras captured his bat flip and the exhilaration of the Toronto crowd, then quickly zoomed in on departed starter Max Fried’s reaction from the Yankee dugout. Fried was staring blankly into the middle distance, struggling as we all were to metabolize what was happening.
It was the perfect visual distillation of the series, and it felt like another one of those clips which would distinctly live on our collective memories. For me, it instantly brought to mind the grimace plastered on Aroldis Chapman’s face after he allowed the pennant-clinching home run to Jose Altuve in 2019, and Nestor Cortes shaking his head in disgust after Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the World Series last year.
If for no other reason than to prevent more of these indelible portraits of failure and humiliation, it may behoove the Yankees to bottle up the power of hatred, which their adversaries have used so effectively against them.
