Another fall of discontent has arrived.
The Yankees have gotten there in many different ways over the past 16 years, but the all-too-familiar end result came crashing down with a thud on Wednesday night in The Bronx.
A thrilling comeback in Game 3 of the ALDS the night before had offered a temporary reprieve, when Aaron Judge delivered in the clutch, but it only delayed the crushing disappointment that came with Game 4.
The offense that led the majors in scoring during the regular season went silent at the worst time, the Yankees mustering just six hits against a parade of relievers in a 5-2 loss to the Blue Jays in front of a restless sellout crowd of 47,823.
A year after going to the World Series, the Yankees are going home after the ALDS, with the Blue Jays winning the series 3-1 and moving on to chase their own October dreams.
“We all thought we were the team to win the World Series, but baseball is baseball,” said Jazz Chisholm Jr., who committed a costly error in the seventh inning that turned a 2-1 deficit into 4-1. “We all know baseball can take a turn in any way, anytime. Baseball owes you nothing. Baseball favors nobody. So for us, we just got to keep rolling with the punches.”
At the beginning of the postseason, Aaron Boone said that he felt as good about this team as any he had managed in his eight years at the helm. And yet, after a 94-win regular season in which they lost the AL East on a tiebreaker to the Blue Jays, these Yankees ended the same as each of the past 15 iterations: coming up short.
“I liked our chances all year,” Judge said. “It was a special group. It just sucks for the guys that it might be their last time wearing pinstripes, not getting a chance to have a long run with them and end in a championship. Especially to the fans all year that have been showing up, supporting us in these postseason games … just disappointed we let all those guys down.”
A night after Judge brought them back from the dead, the Yankees spent Wednesday searching for the big hit — or any hits, really.
But aside from a solo home run from Ryan McMahon in the third inning, and an RBI single from Judge in the ninth, they could not crack the Blue Jays bullpen game featuring eight relievers.
“It’s brutal,” Anthony Volpe said of another sudden ending to a season. “Kind of in shock.”
The Yankees stranded eight runners over the final four innings, only adding to the pain as they watched the game and their season slip through their fingers in slow motion.
“The ending’s the worst, right?” Boone said. “Especially when you know you have a really good group and a group of guys that really came together so well at the right time, the final couple months. This was a team. It’s a team that played for one another, did a lot of really good things, and we got beat here.”
The pesky Blue Jays lineup gave the Yankees pitching staff one more night of frustration in a series full of it. It had beat up on the Yankees starters in the first three games, as Luis Gil, Max Fried and Carlos Rodón combined to last just eight innings while giving up 15 runs.
Cam Schlittler, whose emergence since making his debut in July offered a spark for the present and hope for the future, did what none of Gil, Fried or Rodón could do by recording an out in the fourth inning. And while he did not stop there, the Blue Jays pounced early against him, just as they had in each of the first three games of the series, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. leading the way.
“They hit the crap out of the ball,” catcher Austin Wells said. “They didn’t miss and they took advantage of every free base we gave them.”
And so begins another offseason of searching for answers. The group of free agents is set to include Cody Bellinger (who is expected to opt out of his contract after a strong season), Trent Grisham, Devin Williams, Luke Weaver and Paul Goldschmidt, among others.
The Yankees lost Juan Soto last offseason and made a pivot — bringing in Bellinger, Fried, Williams and Goldschmidt — that they thought might lead to a different result this October. But they still came up empty in the end.
“That’s the thing, it didn’t feel like anything was missing,” Bellinger said. “Just got beat in a five-game series.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
