Thoughts as the Yankees get routed in Game 2 of the 2025 ALDS
Added 2025-10-05 22:02:05 +0000 UTC
As I write this, George Springer hit a home run to give the Blue Jays a 12-0 lead as the Yankees continue to get humiliated in October/Toronto. Perhaps getting pushed to the limit in the Wild Card Series by a Red Sox team that gave away its best hitter and gave at-bats to Nate Eaton and Nick Sogard on purpose was a bad sign? Maybe the Yankees will get a hit sometime after I hit publish (they did just before I hit publish).
Barring a miraculous comeback this team doesn’t have in them, the Yankees are one loss away from elimination (again) after losing to the Blue Jays (again) in Toronto (again) in Game 2 of the ALDS Sunday. The Yankees will be 5-10 against the Blue Jays in 2025 and 1-8 at Rogers Centre. As of the 12-2 score, they’ve been outscored 74-37 in those nine games in Toronto. Doubled up.
Max Fried was just awful in Game 2. Gave up Ernie Clement’s first homer in two months. Allowed Daulton Varsho to match his regular season extra-base hit total against lefties (two). Walked Myles Straw when he was trying to bunt. Just a terrible, small time performance. Fried is going to have to sit on that all winter. Maybe he’ll get a chance to redeem himself in Game 5, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Bringing Will Warren into a jam to face the top of the lineup is classic Aaron Boone being a moron. Warren’s not familiar with that situation at all. A good, championship caliber manager would use a real reliever to escape the jam, then let Warren start a clean inning. But what difference does it make? The bullpen stinks anyway, and it’s not like Warren pitched well when he got clean innings.
Since Ben Rice’s two-run home run in the first inning of Game 2 against the Red Sox, the Yankees have scored in five of 30* offensive innings, and in two of those five innings they needed defensive misplays that led directly to runs. The Yankees have been out-homered 8-2 in four postseason games plus a few innings. At least they haven’t made any comically bad mistakes defensively (yet!).
* Through the sixth inning of Game 2.
The Yankees are a soft team that no one is scared to play against. Getting embarrassed – not losing, getting embarrassed – in the postseason is an annual occurrence, and you know what sucks? There’s no reason to think they will do anything other than shuffle a few players in the offseason. Hal Steinbrenner’s only concern right now is winning Game 3 so they get the extra gate revenue from Game 4.
Cody Bellinger just hit a home run to make it 12-2, so the Yankees are now being out-homered 8-3 this postseason, as if it makes a difference. I’ll be back with more sometime before Game 3. For now, I’m going to go about the rest of the Sunday and maybe watch some football. What a stinker of a game/team.
(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. I will get to them as I can during the postseason. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for when it returns.)
Comments
Maybe call Judge and Stanton soft - they're the only constants in this era. I don't buy that either but it's a fun narrative. You'd have to believe they're specifically seeking out position players and pitchers who are soft so they can be good enough to make the playoffs every year but one (2023) and then no matter how different the rosters are, to not win in the postseason. It doesn't matter if they make the CS (only 4 teams make that round), like they have 3 times under Boone, or the WS (only 2 make it), like they did last year, they lose because they're soft and the manager is soft. Maybe, just maybe, it's insanely hard to win it all, and for the portion of the fanbase alive for the dynasty years, most were poisoned by it. I can agree that Judge has unfortunately far too often not risen to the moment and doesn't seem built for the postseason given how many chances he's had, but will never go for these morality play takes on the entire team and organization. They were the only team to come back since 2022 when down 0-1 in the WC but still soft because they had two terrible games in Toronto. They signed Max Fried because they knew he'd be soft and shrink in the moment today. It doesn't make it suck less to then to just say you got beat and leave it at that, but I guess it's more cathartic to indict the entire organization.
Richard Castro
2025-10-06 01:04:07 +0000 UTCI picked a bad game to go to. At no point was there anything to route for.
Christopher Mendillo
2025-10-06 00:47:03 +0000 UTC
