NEW YORK — Aaron Judge stood on the top step of the Yankees dugout. He hunched over the navy blue railing with his arms crossed, his hoodie pulled up over his fitted cap, and he watched the Tampa Bay Rays celebrate on his home field.

He stood in silence and stared, deep in thought. Judge, who was absent from the postseason roster with a strained right calf, was one of the last two players to leave the dugout after the Yankees were swept in the ALDS by their division rival to end their season. After Judge, Yankees rookie shortstop George Lombard Jr. was the final player to leave the dugout. 

What was going through the Yankee captain’s mind as he watched Tampa Bay rejoice?

“I was just hating every single moment of it,” Judge told me after the Yankees’ 4-3 season-ending loss to the Rays on Wednesday. “Thinking about the whole year. Thinking about missed opportunities in the season, in that series. Things we could’ve improved on, things I could’ve improved on. Just hating every single moment of it so I don’t forget.”

What’s the point of remembering?

(Photo by Caleb Bowlin/Getty Images)

This was the third consecutive year the Yankees saw the better team win and advance. It was also the third straight year the Yankees made countless, avoidable mistakes that always — always — came back to haunt them.

In the 2024 World Series against the Dodgers, the Yankees imploded in Game 5 and made costly errors on the field. Entering that Fall Classic, the Dodgers were the better team. The Yankees had a chance to defeat them, but it would have taken clean, fundamental baseball to win it all. When it mattered most, they couldn’t do it. They crumbled. 

Sound familiar?

In last year’s ALDS Game 4 against the division-rival Blue Jays, the Yankees made yet another brutal error when second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. bobbled a sharp ground ball and allowed two unearned runs to score. It broke the game open for Toronto, and the Yankees’ season was over. The Blue Jays celebrated at Yankee Stadium. Judge and other teammates watched so that they wouldn’t forget.

Does that ring a bell?

In this year’s ALDS Game 2 against the division-rival Rays, the Yankees committed four errors at Tropicana Field and had no one to blame but themselves for losing a must-win game while their ace, Cam Schlittler, was on the mound. After their season ended on Wednesday at the hands of yet another division rival who represented the better team all year, the Yankees repeated the same line they said last year. They made too many mistakes. They need to be better.

What can the Yankees do to change the outcome?

“That’s a great f-cking question,” Schlittler told me in front of his locker on Wednesday. “We can go here in circles. Last year it was, we gotta clean some shit up. We come in this year and do the same thing. We fell short against a division rival who won our division. It just becomes a cycle the last two postseasons.”

Typically, back-to-back-back Octobers that were decided, in part, by a team stepping on its own foot require real, sweeping changes in order to be fixed. But these run-it-back Yankees are the picture of continuity. For those hoping there’s a change of guard at manager, where Aaron Boone has held the position since 2017, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman challenged that idea before the Yankees’ loss on Wednesday.

“I think Boone’s a really good manager,” Cashman told me in the Yankee Stadium tunnel while his players took batting practice. “We’re here for a reason. There are a lot of reasons behind that, and certainly he’s part of that.”

(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

Next year is the final year of Boone’s contract. With a potential lockout looming after MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement expires on Dec. 1, it’s unlikely the Yankees will make such a drastic switch at manager. It’s more probable that they’ll focus on the problems they can immediately address, like their lack of offense and repeated errors, rather than monumental changes. 

Across three ALDS games against the Rays, the Yankees recorded just 12 total hits, batted .130, scored only five runs, and struck out 31 times. It marked the fewest hits in franchise history in any postseason series of three or more games, and the second fewest by any team in MLB postseason history, behind only the 2010 Reds, who recorded 11 hits.

No matter how dominant the Yankees pitching staff was, that kind of feeble offensive performance from the lineup without Judge was never going to get it done. What do they need to do to get over the hump?

“There’s a standard to winning a championship,” Judge said in response to that very question. “It’s black and white. There’s no gray area. Every day you show up to work, every little thing you do, are you working towards a championship, or are you not? So I think that’s the biggest thing, everybody in the room understanding, you gotta bring it every single day, especially here in New York. There’s no days off. It comes down to the little things. It’s preparing every single day like you’re preparing for a championship game.”

It didn’t lessen the sting of the season ending, but the Yankees did go down fighting on Wednesday.

(Photo by Michael Urakami/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Yankees infielder Anthony Volpe, who had a roller coaster of a season that included getting demoted to the minor leagues, came about a foot away from saving the Yankees season. His 357-foot fly ball to deep left field touched a fan’s wrist before it bounced into the seats. It was initially called a home run, which would have tied the game at 4-4 in the sixth inning, but after replay review, it was deemed spectator interference. Volpe’s game-tying home run was changed to an RBI double. The Yankees still trailed the Rays, 4-3.

Before and after Volpe’s big swing, the crowd at Yankee Stadium chanted his name. They love a redemption arc around here, and Volpe ending the year on a high note, after all the brutal hate he received for his poor performance earlier in the year, was just that. But Volpe hadn’t processed that part of his season yet. All he could think about was grieving the Yankees season.

“This is my fourth season,” Volpe said. “It’s been four too many times having this taste in your mouth. At this point, I don’t even think motivated is the right word. It’s just pissed off. It just feels like, enough’s enough.”

Every Yankee player that faced the music and stood in front of the cameras well after midnight following their season-ending loss emphasized how much it hurts to lose. Left-hander Max Fried, who coughed up four earned runs on seven hits in 5 ⅔ innings pitched on Wednesday, had a vacant look on his face as he recapped the Yankees’ lost season. Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham, Carlos Rodon and Schlittler were all still in their game-day uniforms more than an hour after the final out. 

Just like last year, and the year before it, the Yankees seemed stunned that the season ended this way.

(Photo by Caleb Bowlin/Getty Images)

New York believed it had built a championship-caliber club. The Yankees faced adversity all year, with Judge and Giancarlo Stanton missing almost the entire season with injuries. Other key players spent time on the injured list throughout the season. Despite it all, the Yankees were able to remain above water and even come close to catching the Rays for the division title in the final weeks of September. 

This year’s Yankees team had the talent to beat anyone, and they were battle-tested, too. Overcoming tons of adversity and having that resilience is usually what championship teams are made of. But committing innumerable mistakes and getting cold at the wrong time tells the same story of falling short over and over and over again.

“They capitalize on mistakes,” Lombard said of what the Rays did better than the Yankees. “We do too, but unfortunately, in this series, we made more mistakes than them. Nothing we can do to change that now.”

Boone’s voice wavered as he began his final press conference of the year. He walked into the conference room with his head down and his arms in his pockets. It was clear he had been emotional during his message to the clubhouse after the team’s season was over. He didn’t hold back.

“It’s a broken clubhouse,” Boone said after the loss. “It’s what you go through as a team, as a family over the last eight, nine months getting ready for this, and it’s the worst. It’s the worst.”

As usual, these Yankees have nobody to blame but themselves. 



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