Yankees front office's job: Produce pieces for first crown since 2009

Maybe the Yankees can take some small consolation from the fact that they had three more postseason wins than the team that spent $765 million to steal Juan Soto away from the Bronx.

Call that a Subway Series victory for Hal Steinbrenner. The Yankees’ principal owner avoided being on the hook for Soto’s onerous 15-year contract and still got five more sellout crowds at the Stadium — nearly a quarter-million beer-drinking, hot dog-eating customers — before the Yankees ultimately fell to the Blue Jays, 5-2, in Wednesday night’s Game 4 of their Division Series.

This is a business, after all. And in the final analysis, general manager Brian Cashman did a good job with his post-Soto pivot, as Max Fried ($218M) and Cody Bellinger ($20M net cost for ’25) were instrumental in getting the Yankees to 94 wins, tied with the Blue Jays for the most in the American League.

The December swap for Devin Williams? That didn’t go quite as planned, though his likely one-and-done Bronx stay did spur the Yankees to lift their nearly-50-year ban on beards.

Also, Cashman had a successful trade deadline, with David Bednar, Jose Caballero, Ryan McMahon and Amed Rosario becoming useful upgrades (by the time Camilo Doval woke up, it was too little, too late).

In other words, it’s difficult to blame the Yankees’ early October exit on the roster construction. Cashman identified problems during the season and came up with some decent fixes. They also found rotation coverage for the extended losses of Gerrit Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt — no easy feat, especially losing $324 million ace Cole to Tommy John surgery.

But for the 16th straight season, the Yankees’ October trip took a detour to the Canyon of Zeros (h/t to Newsday colleague Erik Boland for that gem), and so we’re left to wonder why they’re always the ones who can’t find a way to finish the job at this time of year.

“I think, once again, it comes down to the little things,” Aaron Judge said. “You give teams extra outs, they’re going to capitalize on it. What a season for the Blue Jays — doing their thing, winning the division, winning the Division Series. But for us, we’ve got to clean a couple things up and we’ll be right back here.”

This October didn’t come to a screeching car-crash halt like last year, when three fifth-inning mistakes tanked a 5-0 lead and essentially gifted the Dodgers the Game 5 World Series clincher. The Yankees’ porous defense was a storyline all winter, but the three Game 5 culprits were all core members of the team: Cole, Judge and Anthony Volpe.

Cole spent this season on the injured list and Judge did almost everything he could to carry the Yankees in the postseason, putting together a .500/.581/.692 slash line (13-for-26) with two doubles, seven RBIs and one of the most memorable homers we’ll ever witness. As for Volpe, the third-year shortstop’s defense cleared up overnight after an early September cortisone shot for his left shoulder. But his bat disappeared in the Division Series, as he went 0-for-11 with nine strikeouts in the last three games.

The Yankees didn’t lose the series because of Volpe, but his issues were symbolic of the key differences between the two AL East rivals. The Blue Jays led the majors in contact rate (78.5%) and had the lowest K-rate (17.8%) during the regular season. Yet again, in Game 4, a Yankees opponent showed the value of merely putting the ball in play when Andres Gimenez smacked a tailor-made double-play grounder to Jazz Chisholm Jr. that should have ended the seventh inning. Instead, the ball kicked off the heel of Chisholm’s glove for an error that set up Nathan Lukes’ two-out, two-run single, giving the Jays a more comfortable 5-1 edge.

Chisholm had a fantastic regular season, and after Judge’s dramatic pole-scraping homer tied ALDS Game 3, he launched the go-ahead blast into the second deck in rightfield. But it’s the costly defensive lapse that will stick to him going forward — or at least until Chisholm can flip the conversation. He’ll be a free agent after next season, and it seems as if the Yankees will ride out ‘26 with him at second base, as there isn’t a ready-made alternative on the horizon.

“I wouldn’t say we underachieved,” Chisholm said. “We all thought we were the team to win the World Series, but baseball is baseball.”

That’s become a tired epitaph for all of these unfulfilled Yankees seasons. Steinbrenner invested a franchise-record $320 million in this roster, the third-highest payroll in the majors, but still couldn’t buy a championship.

The Dodgers outspent everyone last year and then increased the payroll to $400 million to defend their title this season. They just knocked off the Phillies, who were fourth-highest ($313M) on the payroll list. The Blue Jays are fifth ($283M) and the Cubs, who lost to the Brewers in a winner-take-all NLDS Game 5 on Saturday night, are 10th ($227M).

But it’s not just about the money. The Dodgers scored their only two runs in the Game 4 clincher on a bases-loaded walk and a panicked throwing error by Phillies reliever Orion Kerkering. In the Yankees’ case, their two top starters, Fried and Carlos Rodon, had a combined 21.94 ERA and 3.19 WHIP in the Division Series, allowing 14 hits, four walks and 13 earned runs in 5 1⁄3 innings. Fried is a Cy Young Award candidate and Rodon was an 18-game winner during the regular season.

“To be able to make it to the end, you need everything to go right,” said Fried, who won a World Series with Atlanta in 2021. “And frankly, we didn’t pitch all that well in this series. It’s frustrating. We needed to be able to come through. We had the talent. We had the personnel to do it. We just fell short.”

The Yankees don’t have the Soto question hanging over their heads as they did last winter, so that should allow for more clear-headed analysis in upgrading the roster this time around. Bringing back Bellinger should be a priority. He certainly was productive in pinstripes (29 homers, 98 RBIs, .813 OPS), seemed to enjoy his stay in the Bronx and stated a willingness to return after the Game 4 loss, which ended with him striking out.

Bellinger helped the Dodgers end a long title drought at the conclusion of the COVID-shortened 2020 season — they hadn’t won since 1988 — so he was asked if there is some flaw with the Yankees that kept them from finishing the job.

“That’s the thing — I didn’t feel like anything was missing,” Bellinger said. “Just got beat in a five-game series. They played really well and continued to put pressure on us.”

On the eve of the Wild Card Series, which featured a showdown with the Red Sox and his dugout nemesis, Alex Cora, manager Aaron Boone said this was the best he’s ever felt about the Yankees’ chances during his eight-year tenure as manager. They had wrapped up the regular season on an eight-game winning streak that capped a 32-12 run that allowed them to catch the Blue Jays, the offense was humming and the roster was remarkably healthy for this time of year.

Ultimately, none of that mattered, and Boone’s faith evidently was misplaced.

“You pour so much into this long journey to have a chance to chase a dream and win a championship,” he said. “And when it ends this way, it’s terrible. It hurts. But I know for me personally, for a lot of those guys, it also continues to ignite your fire to get back, play in these meaningful games and have a chance at glory.”

Getting back is never the Yankees’ problem. They’ve made the playoffs in 26 of the past 31 seasons, an astonishing stretch of prosperity, but haven’t found a way to be the last team standing in October since 2009.

“You play to win,” Judge said. “And when you don’t win, it’s not a good year.”

That makes it 16 not-so-good years in a row for the Yankees, who again were a championship-caliber team in every respect aside from actually winning one.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.