The lasting October image for another Brian Cashman/Aaron Boone Yankee team was Aaron Judge stranded on the bases as Cody Bellinger became the Blue Jays’ 10th strikeout victim in Game 4. Judge is one of the great Yankees of all time and the best hitter of his time. But this was another October about to end the way all the others have for him, with him stranded short of the Canyon of Heroes, about to watch another team celebrate on the field at Yankee Stadium that he honors so mightily.
That is the real rite of fall now at the Stadium, where winning the Series once was. Just not since 2009. It makes this the second longest championship drought in the team’s history, the grand history that began with Babe Ruth, the Judge of his time in baseball. But then this has become a time when Yankee fans are told they should feel truly blessed because their team has had three decades of winning seasons. Maybe they should start raising banners above Monument Park for those.
“I want to go back out there right now,” a somber Judge said Wednesday night after his team had only managed six hits against eight Blue Jays relievers, an “opener” night for them that closed out another lost October for the Yankees.
We always hear, after the Yankees have all been stopped short of the Canyon of Heroes how random postseason baseball is. How much of a crapshoot it is. Even the classy Boone wasn’t buying that as a defense Wednesday night.
“That’s the beauty of it,” he said.
But even he can’t be surprised at how this ended, because these endings, these celebrations for the other team, have become as inevitable as the tide for the Yankees. We just don’t know in what round of the playoffs they’ll occur. It was Bill Parcells, famously, who said you are what your record says you are in sports. So here is the October record for the Brian/Boone Yankees:
They have now played 12 postseason series over the eight seasons since Cashman got rid of Joe Girardi after the Yankees lost Games 6 and 7 to the Astros in the American League Championship Series of 2017. Their record in those series is 6-6. Their won-loss record in those games is 25-27. They have played two one-game Wild Card series, and split those.
They have absolutely put together an historic streak of winning seasons, and no one suggested that’s nothing. But not once in the Brian/Boone era have they been the best team in series that finished them. In three of the past four seasons — they missed the playoffs in 2023 when they nearly did throw in a losing season — they have played 13 games in series that ended their season: Once against the Astros in the ALCS, once against the Dodgers in the World Series, now in a division series against the Jays. Their record in those series is 2-11. “Crapshoot” is, by definition, is a risky and uncertain matter. The October numbers for these Yankees say otherwise, and you know how much they love their numbers.
Have they gotten back up in October after getting knocked down in the Brian/Boone era? They have. They at least fought their way out of a sweep against the Dodgers last year. They came back from losing the first game of their Wild Card series against the Red Sox just last week. And the whole world saw them come back from 1-6 down in Game 3 on Tuesday night, Judge carrying them again with a home run off the foul pole that made you feel as if you were watching Robert Redford — as Roy Hobbs — hit one off the light tower in “The Natural.”
But once again the Yankees were about to lose another playoff series as a lower seed, even if they were a lower seed just barely to the Jays, both of them ending with 94 regular-season wins. Other than the postseason of 2020 — the October games played on neutral fields during the pandemic — they have never won series like that in the Brian/Boone era. And in those three season-ending series over the past four years, the Yankees have never won a single road game. Their record in those is 0-6.
And so they have now watched the Blue Jays celebrate on their field the way the Dodgers did a year ago, and the Astros did in 2022, and the Red Sox back in 2018. If the kid, Cam Schlittler, didn’t pitch the game of his young life against the Red Sox last week, who knows, the Sox might have done it to the Yankees again.
When it was all on the line against the Jays, they were once again a baseball team called Judge, as All Rise rose once again. He hit .600 against the Blue Jays, had nine hits, six RBI, scored five runs, produced that unforgettable Game 3 home run to tie things at 6-all. Everybody else hit around .200. Even in the bottom of the season Wednesday, Judge plated one last run as he refused to make the last out.
The only time Judge let them down in this division series was when he struck out with bases loaded, nobody out in Game 1, when that was still a game. After that the Yankees were lucky the roof at Rogers Centre was closed, because it would have come crashing down on them in the late innings that day. The bottom line here is that the Blue Jays were better against the Yankees same as they were in the regular season; the way other teams with winning records were (the Yankees were 31-36 against them this year). Did the Yankees fight? They did. But who they were against the Blue Jays this week is who they inevitably are at this time of year. Another Yankee team with a really good record wasn’t good enough. They remain the champions of that.
