Schadenfreude 277 (A Continuing Series)

Yankees Try To Make Sense Of Another Season That Ends With Crushing Postseason Loss

Kristie Ackert, Daily News:

Luke Voit sat in a room somewhere in Petco Park, hunched over, elbows on his knees, his dejection obvious on his face. Outside, the Rays were on the field . .  [dancing] to the Yankees signature song: Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York." . . .

It could not make Voit or the Yankees feel any worse.

"There's always a loser . . .," Voit said. . . .

For the fourth straight year, the Yankees season ended in disappointment. After spending a record $324 million on Gerrit Cole, and coming in with World Series expectations, the Yankees could not get out of the ALDS for the second time in four years. . . .

[Aaron Judge:] "To come up short, the past couple years have been tough." . . .

The Yankees season ended with Aroldis Chapman giving up the game-winning home run for the second straight year. Last year it was Jose Altuve, who knew a slider was coming, and crushed it. Friday night, it was Mike Brosseau who hammered the Yankee closer's fastball.

"I feel terrible," Chapman said . . . "I particularly do not want to lose." . . .

Aaron Bone snapped when asked if this season was a failure. . . . "I hate that question every year . . ."

Joel Sherman, Post:

In the aftermath of another postseason elimination, manager Aaron Boone all but scoffed at the notion it [the Game 2 pitching gaffe] was the trigger toward losing to the Rays in the series, calling it "kind of ridiculous."

But what is said about history and not learning from it? . . .

Boone accentuated that the Yankees were trying to negate the platoon advantages the Rays can create with their abundance of lefty and righty hitters and willingness to inject them into games at any time to gain a favorable matchup. Got it.

Except, if this is so vital, why have the Yankees stopped seeking it in their own roster construction? They have become heavily right-handed, declaring . . . their righty bats do well against righty pitching. Except which righty pitching? High-end righty playoff pitching (think, not the Orioles) and the Yankees' susceptibility to it has been central to their postseason ouster the past four years. . . .

You can argue that the staff would have been fine [but for injuries] . . . [P]lease don't do that. The Rays put 11 pitchers on the injured list this year and lost six for good. This for a team that above all else focused its energy on run prevention. Yet with a payroll roughly one quarter of the Yankees' payroll, they still amassed a better overall staff — not to mention that diverse lineup. . . .

The Yankees are going to have to decide how long to run with this core. They can create a narrative that they were bounced by cheaters in 2017 (Astros) and Red Sox (2018), and actually outscored the Astros in the 2019 ALCS and the Rays in a now concluded 2020 ALDS. They are that close, so why change course?

Except those four teams were better. The Yankees have not been the best team in the AL in this recent run. . . .

Mike Vaccaro, Post:

It was more than a baseball season that perished late Friday night when Gio Urshela's line drive was snuffed inside the glove of Tampa Bay third baseman Joey Wendle. No, this time it felt like a little more than that.

We have trod these grounds before, but it bears repeating: We are in the worst championship drought in New York City since we started winning them. That was 1923. The Yankees won it that year. Four years later, in a glorious 1927, the Yankees, Giants won titles, followed by the Rangers and Yankees, again, a year later. . . .

That means that as of midnight Sunday, the tragic number is 3,171.

That's the number of days since Giants 21, Patriots 17, on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. It isn't just the longest drought in New York's history, it is by far the longest drought in New York sports history. . . .

The Yankees beat the Giants, 1-0, in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series . . . And finally, on Jan. 12, 1969, the Jets stunned the Colts in Super Bowl III, 16-7. Thus ended a parched desert stretch in New York City that had lasted all of 2,280 days. That was the very worst of it for years. Close to 6 ½ years of nothing. Who could put up with that? . . .

It has now been almost nine full years. It has been those 3,171 days. And if that's not bad enough, look at it this way:

The Yankees' season ending on Friday guarantees that when dawn breaks on Jan. 27, 2021, that drought will still be in effect — even if the hand of God inspires the Jets and the Giants to rise up and start to win football games by some inexplicable miracle, there will be no champions crowned, once MLB and the NBA are done this month, until February.

And Jan. 27, 2021, will mark 3,280 days since a New York team won a championship.

In other words: A thousand days longer than any New York sports drought has ever lasted before. . . .

Will another thousand days pass on top of that before this finally ends? . . .

The baseball season died Friday night. The tragic number lives on. And keeps growing. And growing. . . .