Yankees’ missing postseason official with loss to Diamondbacks
What has been apparent for over a month is now official: The Yankees will be watching the playoffs from home.
For the first time since 2016, the postseason will happen without the Yankees, who were finally eliminated from AL wild-card contention Sunday when they fell to the Diamondbacks, 7-1, in The Bronx.
A season that began with World Series aspirations will now end next Sunday and go no further. Instead of chasing the franchise’s 28th title, the Yankees (78-77) will enter a critical offseason in which Hal Steinbenner has promised they will take a hard look at all aspects of their operation.
“When you don’t show up and you don’t produce and you get kicked out like this in the regular season, that’s a big failure right there,” Aaron Judge said. “We got a lot of work to do, a lot of internal talks, a lot of stuff we gotta get figured out and get right for next year.”
While Judge added that there is “a lot of stuff going on around here that needs to be fixed,” he declined to elaborate when asked for specifics, preferring to keep that “in-house.” But he said he planned on being involved in the talks to help turn things around this offseason.
“I got some ideas,” Judge said. “But it’s gonna take all of us. It’s going to be talking with everyone in the organization, all the way down through the minor league stuff, all the way up to the top. There’s a lot of stuff we gotta work on and improve, but there’s a lot of bright spots that we’ve seen with these young guys coming up. This is the time to build on that and start building that next foundation.”
With the Yankees’ long playoff odds now shot, the only hint of intrigue over the final week of the season will be whether they can avoid their first losing record since 1992.
“The reality of [competing for a championship] not being in play sucks,” manager Aaron Boone said.
“It’s pretty disappointing,” added Carlos Rodon, who gave up five runs [three earned] across 6 ¹/₃ innings Sunday. “We view ourselves as a championship club and this year we underperformed massively. It just has not been good.”
It was a fittingly miserable Sunday afternoon in The Bronx, with rain and wind picking up throughout the game in front of a sparse crowd.
In an all-too-familiar trend, the Yankees offense was hardly heard from, mustering just six hits — a handful of them wind-aided — as they narrowly avoided being shut out by scratching across a run in the ninth inning.
Though the Yankees have played better baseball in September to keep themselves mathematically alive for a playoff spot until Sunday, their road to elimination began well before that.
They were a season-high 11 games above .500 at 36-25 on June 4, the day after Judge tore a ligament in his big right toe at Dodger Stadium and a week after Anthony Rizzo was involved in a collision at first base that derailed his season.
Since that high-water mark, the Yankees have gone 42-52, with a nine-game losing streak in August serving as the beginning of the end of their season.
“What could go wrong has kind of gone wrong,” said DJ LeMahieu, who did not start hitting like himself until the second half of the season. “We just haven’t put it all together collectively at the same time. It’s been a frustrating year. … I think the most frustrating part of this year is we know we’re good enough to be where we want to be, we just haven’t done it.”
While Boone pointed to early injuries in the rotation — including Rodon, Luis Severino and Frankie Montas — when asked where things went wrong, the Yankees were largely done in by a brutal offense.
Figuring out how to revive it may hold the key to the Yankees returning to the playoffs in 2024.
“Every year I’ve been in New York, we’re in the postseason,” Judge said. “It’s going to be a little different this offseason, but it’s just going to give us more time to work and get ready for the next one.”
