The Yankees failed again. There has to be accountability. That won’t happen

For the 15th consecutive year, the Yankees’ season ended in failure. I don’t care that they won the AL East. I don’t care that they had the best record in the AL. I don’t care that they made it to the World Series. As George Steinbrenner said: Any season without a championship is a failure. And we have now had 15 failures in a row.

And I don’t want to hear how “spoiled” Yankee fans are and how we should appreciate the season we had and how a team “can’t win every year.” This is not VCU making a Final Four. It’s the damn New York Yankees. And I don’t expect victory everyone Year. But I just want to win one Year. The Yankees are officially in a championship drought, and there’s no way around it. So I don’t want to hear how we’re supposed to be happy that we’re still making the playoffs and so on. WE WANT TO SEE THE YANKEES WIN A WORLD SERIES. That doesn’t make us spoiled or bad fans. No player on this team has won as much for the Yankees, so let’s not act like we owe them our undying love and support. You have to earn it. They don’t have that. It’s that simple.

And maybe that pill would be easier to swallow if the Yankees hadn’t ruined this World Series with that embarrassing collapse last night, but here we are. This team has been fundamentally flawed all season, and has been for years, and fittingly, it came back to bite them and end their season. The defense is terrible. The base run is terrible. The mental errors abound. I understand that these are professionals who should know better themselves, but when the problems are so systematic and have persisted for so long, you just have to point the finger at the manager and coaching staff. Poor fundamentals have been a staple of teams throughout the seven seasons Aaron Boone has been coach. At a certain point it’s no longer a coincidence and you have to look at the lowest common denominator.

Aaron Boone has established a losing culture of excuses and zero accountability in the Yankees clubhouse. Even after last night, he tried to make excuses and say that they were actually a better defensive team than people would think.

That’s just not the way to answer questions after your defense literally cost you a World Series. And I don’t want to hear how close he is with his players and how much they all love him and what kind of family they are, blah blah blah. I don’t give a shit. You can still have a group chat with him if he gets fired. He shouldn’t be your friend. He should be your manager. But there seems to be this sick, almost cult-like atmosphere in the Yankees’ locker room, where they feel like they’re above criticism and only care about what a tight-knit group they are. Congratulations guys. I’m glad you made a lot of friends this season. I hope you maintain these relationships for the rest of your life, and I know there is more to life than just the game of baseball. But we don’t hang banners that say “2024 – Had a really tight locker room.” Fans are still allowed to get on you and be upset that we haven’t seen a World Series since 2009. An almost sick part of me feels like I’m in the Yankees’ locker room to This year was close, so they never held each other accountable and kept slapping each other on the butt instead of lighting each other a fire. And it all starts with Aaron Boone.

Boone should be out as Yankees manager, but he won’t. Aaron Judge will fight for him again and Hal and Cashman will listen to him. But I’m not sure why we have to consider everything Aaron Judge says as the word of God. He failed again in the playoffs and that flaw will officially stick with him for the rest of his career. He’s the best regular season hitter I’ve ever seen and the main reason they made the playoffs, but making the playoffs is not an accomplishment and he was an albatross for the team in October. Over the last two days, it seemed like he had finally made it to the plate, but it was too little, too late, and the inexplicably dropped fly ball in the fifth that started the Dodgers’ rally will become a lasting memory be. He hit .184 this postseason and now has a lifetime postseason average of .205 in 58 games. It’s a long history of playoff failures. Like A-Rod, all it takes is one hot playoff run to blow everyone into oblivion and make him a Yankee legend forever. But until that happens, all of his regular-season successes will seem hollow. It’s unfortunate but it’s true and deep down I’m sure he knows it too.

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But I am in no way blaming Aaron Judge or any particular player for that World Series loss. It was an organizational failure. I actually think this was one of Brian Cashman’s better GM years overall, but it still wasn’t enough. And that is the root of the problem. The Yankees continue to put together teams that are just good enough. Just good enough to make the playoffs. Just good enough to perhaps turn heads in the randomness of the playoffs. Just good enough to maybe make a World Series and hope everything goes well. But they came up against a team that doesn’t believe they’re just good enough. They faced an absolutely powerful Dodgers team that played just like the Yankees used to. I just give 110% of my best effort to put together the best roster in baseball every single season. A team that is so good that if you make mistakes against them it will cost you dearly. And the Yankees just don’t do that anymore.

They got Soto, which was obviously great, but the roster still had glaring holes and imbalances that were never fully addressed. It was good enough to win the AL East. It was good enough to be the best record in a weak AL. It was good enough to beat the AL Central Titans in the playoffs, but it wasn’t good enough to win a World Series. And deep down, we as fans knew that all season long. We saw the long stretches of terrible baseball they played and could see all the flaws that plagued them. And it is precisely these defects that cost them in the end. Poor defense. Bad base run. Poor fundamentals. The inability to achieve the big success when it matters most. You just can’t beat the Dodgers if you’re too busy beating yourself.

It would be great if the Yankees went out and had a “Fuck You” offseason where they said, “Enough is enough.” Get rid of Boone. Re-sign Soto. Sign or trade for another slugger, another frontline starter and several bullpen pieces. But I just don’t believe that all or even most of it is happening. And the AL will only be better next year. And the Dodgers will be healthier, too. It is no longer good enough to just be good enough.

There has to be accountability. But that won’t happen.