Lindsey Adler, The Athletic:
Twenty minutes after the Yankees' season ended in a walk-off home run on a hanging slider in Game 6 of the ALCS ... [the clubhouse was silent] other than for the sound of hands clapping broad backs as players hugged one another with bleary eyes ...
Didi Gregorius [is] entering free agency. Luke Voit was left off the ALCS roster. ... Gary Sánchez couldn't outrun the questions about his defense and offensive woes that have defined the beginning of his could-be illustrious career. [Of course, he couldn't outrun the questions. He's lazy as fuck.] ...
"It's a failure," Aaron Judge said after the 6-4 loss in Houston. ... "[T]the season's a failure.”
Judge was solemn with grief ... The team's biggest star takes the success of the team ... as his personal responsibility ... [I]n the immediate aftermath of a sudden and devastating loss, the responsibility clearly weighed heavily on him.
He blamed himself for not getting more timely hits ... Ultimately, that was the difference between the Yankees and the Astros in the six-game ALCS. ...
"Missed opportunities" will be the phrase that haunts the Yankees throughout the offseason ... The devastation of the ultimate loss will be made more painful by what immediately proceeded it ... [a game-tying home run] ...
[W]ith two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Chapman fell behind to José Altuve and threw him the wrong pitch at the wrong time. ... A production crew rolled a makeshift presentation stage onto the field as the Yankees headed quickly for the clubhouse.
"I couldn't believe it," Chapman said of watching Altuve drive his pitch 400 feet away. "I couldn't believe he hit the ball. ... I just couldn't believe it."
The Astros had once again ended the Yankees' hopes of reaching the World Series ...
Marc Carig, The Athletic:
For the second time in three years, with the American League pennant hanging in the balance, the Yankees lost to the Astros ... a defeat that came swiftly and cruelly. ... In the end ... the Astros partied on their home field, the Yankees faced their reckoning. ...
Masahiro Tanaka stared off into space ... CC Sabathia wiped away tears ... Giancarlo Stanton ... [was] apparently too hobbled to appear even to stave off elimination. ...
When October comes and the stakes are at their highest, every flaw is magnified, especially against an opponent that offers no quarter. For the Yankees, that difference came down to pitching. The Yankees' two victories in the series came when their starters pitched six innings. ...
Zack Britton, Tommy Kahnle and Adam Ottavino each appeared five times in the series. Chad Green made four appearances. ... Without more length from the starters, the Yankees' blueprint proved unsustainable.
Fissures in the bullpen began to emerge early in the postseason when Ottavino struggled in high-leverage spots. But he wasn't the only one. ...
But even if the Yankees had won, what were their chances in Game 7? Again, the difference between the two teams was stark. It would have been Gerrit Cole, the postseason phenom, against Severino and a bullpen filled with burned-out arms. ...
Lindsey Adler, The Athletic:
An enduring memory of the Yankees' ill-fated ALCS campaign will be one they would most like to forget: In their biggest games of [the season] ... three of their biggest sluggers were nowhere to be found. For Gary Sánchez and Edwin Encarnación, this was true in the abstract. Their at-bats were largely uncompetitive and left a hole in the middle of the lineup that gave the Astros pitchers free outs and a way to circumvent a productive top of the Yankees order.
In the case of Giancarlo Stanton ... his absence was reality, not just rhetoric. He lost nearly his entire regular season to injuries to his bicep, shoulder and a PCL sprain in his right knee. He played in only two ALCS games after injuring his right quadricep in his first at-bat in Game 1. ...
As players collected themselves and their belongings after their Game 6 loss in Houston, Stanton ... found his way toward the parts of the room where the media can't venture ... where he remained as his teammates offered up on-camera autopsies of a series gone awry. ... Stanton decided he had nothing else to say.
Yankees fans likely won't get a candid explanation for how the team managed Stanton throughout a perplexing ALCS series. ... He was said to be available off the bench in Games 2-4 [but never batted], then appeared at DH in Game 5 [2 strikeouts in 3 at-bats] before disappearing from the lineup again before the decisive Game 6. ...
This was not the way the Yankees drew it up when they acquired Stanton ahead of the 2018 season and Encarnación before the 2019 trade deadline. And yet, they may have seen an even more disappointing scene from Sánchez, the homegrown catcher whose prolonged slumps are now becoming the stuff of legend.
With teary eyes and another postseason collapse to reflect on for the long winter ahead, Sánchez had ... costly defensive lapses behind the plate. Sánchez's postseason stats now sit at .176/.225/.382 over the course of 27 games spread across three Octobers. In nine games this postseason, he struck out 16 times in 31 at-bats. ... Boone found himself doing this song and dance [defending Sánchez and refusing to even consider benching him] last postseason as well, and throughout much of the regular season ...
The Yankees' at-bats with runners on base were often pitiful and deflating, leaving 42 runners on during the six-game series. ...
[T]here is no way to explain the Yankees' postseason departure without looking at the at-bats given away by three of their most dangerous hitters. The breakthrough hits the Yankees needed for most of the week were left there on the table, and Stanton, Sánchez and Encarnación were too far away to grab them.
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