Schadenfreude 369 (A Continuing Series)

What Lies At The Heart Of The Yankees' Season-Threatening Lost Weekend In Toronto
Zach Braziller, Post

Somewhat lost amid the [ALWC series win] was the underwhelming offensive performance in that three-game series. The Yankees moved on in spite of their lineup's shortcomings.

It hasn't gotten better in the ALDS, a major reason the Yankees will face elimination in Game 3 in The Bronx trailing, 2-0. 

Look, the pitching has been abysmal. Max Fried laid a complete egg on Sunday, hammered for seven earned runs in three-plus innings.

On Saturday, the bullpen led by Luke Weaver turned a close game into a rout after Luis Gil was ineffective in 2.2 shaky innings. You're not winning games by allowing 23 runs in two games . . .

But this series really began to turn on Saturday, when, in the sixth inning and the Yankees down 2-0, Aaron Judge struck out with the bases loaded and nobody out, and the Yankees managed just one run.

They were non-competitive against rookie Trey Yesavage a day later, striking out 11 times in 5.1 innings without managing a hit against the righty. . . .

The Blue Jays haven't made mistakes to give the Yankees chances to rally.

They have hammered their pitching and shut down the Bronx Bombers, who have gone deep just once in the two lopsided games. It has given Toronto a stranglehold in this series, needing just one more victory to advance to the ALCS. 

Yankees Confident Coming Home Will Change Their Fortune: 'Handle Business'
Greg Joyce, Post

The Yankees need coming home to matter, or else they are actually going home. 

After leaving the building that has doubled as their personal hell this season at a 2-0 deficit in the best-of-five ALDS, the Yankees returned home Monday for an off-day, trying to shake off a pair of embarrassing blowouts to extend their season past Tuesday's Game 3. . . .

"It's going to be different," Will Warren said . . . "We're a good team." . . . 

The Yankees insist they have been preparing for this moment all season.

But doing it against the Blue Jays will be a different kind of challenge, coming off being handled by a combined score of 23-8 in Games 1 and 2 . . . 

Carlos Rodón will be tasked with trying to hold a pesky Blue Jays lineup off the board . . .

"We're human. You feel things," manager Aaron Boone said Monday. "It sucks when you lose."

Fan Comments

Eyeman
"Pesky" lineup ? They got bludgeoned 23-8, that's not "pesky".

Scott Zimmer
Delusional! Nothing about this team gives any confidence they can win 1 game much less 3. Not one player has done anything to give them a chance

The Yankees Are Doomed If Aaron Judge Keeps 'Passing The Baton'
Joel Sherman, Post

. . . the odds are not exactly stacked in their favor.

There have been 90 best-of-five series in MLB history in which a team has gone up 2-0. And only 10 times has the trailing team rebounded to advance. On the past 18 occasions that a club has built a 2-0 advantage, it has won the series 17 times, including 11 in a sweep. . . .

It feels impossible to believe these Yankees can construct a three-game winning streak and reach the ALCS unless Judge transforms from a singles-hitting Luis Arraez to All Rise. . . . [S]even of his [eight] hits are singles. There are no homers and just two RBIs — one a present when Red Sox left fielder Jarren Darren botched a fly ball and the other was a single in Game 2 . . . that brought the Yankees to within 13-2.

When asked how he was feeling at the plate after Game 2, Judge said, ". . . Trying not to do too much. Help the team. . . . just kind of passing the baton."

That is a wonderful vanilla sound bite. But I am sure that was not, say, what Judge and his representatives led with when they convinced Hal Steinbrenner to award him $360 million — you know, he is just one of the boys passing a baton. . . .

There is a Baseball Reference metric called Win Probability Added that attempts to determine which plate appearances most influenced a victory.

Judge's No. 1 in 63 postseason games is a two-run game-tying homer he hit off Emmanuel Clase in last year's ALCS Game 3 — a game the Yankees lost to the Guardians.

No. 2 is an eighth-inning double off Ken Giles in 2017 ALCS Game 4 that tied the score.

No. 3 is a two-run homer off Triston McKenzie in the third inning of 2022 division series Game 3, which the Yankees also would lose.

No. 4: A fourth-inning two-run homer off Justin Verlander in an ALCS Game 2 against the Astros that the Yankees also would lose. 

No. 5: A first-inning two-run homer off Jack Flaherty in last year's World Series Game 5 — a game in which he dropped a fifth-inning fly ball that would open the door to the comeback that would seal a title for the Dodgers.

You are getting the picture right: Lots of early innings, lots of losses. . . .

What seems impossible is the Yankees assembling a season-saving three-game winning streak without Judge finally putting an indelible signature on October.

This Is Aaron Judge's Time To Rise, But He'll Need Help To Save The Yankees' Season
Peter Botte, Post

The Yankees have been here before, including Aaron Judge.

No. 99 was a rookie in 2017, when the Yanks dropped the first two games of the AL Division Series in Cleveland . . .

Judge . . . finish[ed] his first career playoff series with an anemic batting average of .050 (1-for-20) with no home runs and 16 strikeouts, his first of several poor postseason showings for the Yankees over the past decade.

Down 0-2 again while headed back to The Bronx for Game 3 on Tuesday night — after getting thumped in Toronto by a 23-8 aggregate — the Yankees need a lot to change in order to push this five-game set back to Canada. . . .

The longer the starters last, obviously the fewer outs will be required to be amassed by a shaky bullpen . . .

The pinstriped offense also needs to build on the garbage-time runs it produced against the Jays' bullpen . . .

And they absolutely need Judge, more than ever, to carry them back into this series, especially with runners in scoring position.

Yes, the 2025 playoffs have seen [Judge] hit at a sturdy .444 clip (8-for-18) through five games against the Red Sox and the Blue Jays.

But those numbers also have taken on an empty-calories type of feel with no homers and only two RBIs.

Why Yankees Hitting Coach Won't 'Panic' With Power Outage Threatening Their Season
Dan Martin, Post

The Yankees enter Game 3 of the ALDS against the Blue Jays with just one homer and 21 strikeouts in the first two games. . . .

But strikeouts aren't the only aspect of the offense that's ailing the Yankees . . .

[I]t would be one thing if the Yankees were going down swinging with some home runs mixed in, but Cody Bellinger's shot late in Game 2 is the Yankees' lone homer through the first 18 innings. . . .

Of the wild-card teams still playing, only the Tigers went into Tuesday with fewer homers than the Yankees' three over five postseason games.

And they struck out 13 times in Game 1 of the wild-card series, mostly due to Boston's Garrett Crochet, and then 15 more times in Game 2 of the ALDS, with rookie Trey Yesavage doing most of the damage.

Anthony Volpe tops the team with 10 strikeouts, while Trent Grisham . . . is next with eight. And Ben Rice has whiffed seven times in just 15 at-bats.

Coupled with the fact that Aaron Judge has gotten on base, but provided very little power, and Giancarlo Stanton has mostly struggled so far this October, and the Yankees lineup is a mess.

They did most of their damage in their highest-scoring game of the playoffs against the mediocre part of the Blue Jays' bullpen when Game 2 was well out of reach.

 

Trent Grisham Has Gone From Clutch To Nonexistent In Major Yankees Concern
Andrew Crane, Post

The issue hasn't been isolated just to Trent Grisham.

But with the Yankees lineup mostly sputtering throughout their ALDS series and even the wild-card series, their clutch hitter from the regular season has been anything but that. 

Grisham will enter a win-or-stay-home Game 3 hitting 3-for-20 in the 2025 playoffs with eight strikeouts.

He also is hitting .165 with 36 strikeouts a .577 OPS through 24 career postseason games.

But Boone defended his center fielder Monday — calling it the "nature of the playoffs" . . .

"I trust Trent Grisham and his at-bat quality," Boone said. . . .

Boone referenced Grisham's wild-card series with the Padres against the Mets in 2022 as a glimpse of how he can perform on this stage.

Grisham hit .500 that series and ended up with three homers that postseason, but once the NLCS arrived, he didn't collect a hit — and has gone 3-for-39 (.077) with 17 strikeouts in 10 postseason games since that Phillies series began. . . .

Grisham — nicknamed "Big Sleep" by the Yankees — . . . struck out four times in Game 1 of the wild-card series and three times in Game 2 of the ALDS . . .

"He's going to not get overwhelmed by a situation," Boone said.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Is A Yankees Problem With No Apparent Answer
Andrew Crane, Post

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. still doesn't know why.

He's faced questions about it before, about why his numbers at Yankee Stadium — 16 homers, 30 RBIs, a 1.002 OPS in 48 games — are so strong, and the $500 million Blue Jays superstar can't explain it outside of feeling good.

But Guerrero's tormenting of the Yankees has stretched beyond The Bronx.

He collected a .302 average with a .918 OPS across 102 regular-season games against them and added another chapter during Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS — going 6-for-10, providing a solo homer in the opener and then delivering a dagger of a grand slam Sunday. . . .

[W]ith the Yankees already crumbling Sunday, Guerrero blasted a Will Warren pitch 415 feet. There was the bat flip. There was the Rogers Centre crowd erupting around him. There was the foghorn going off and little hints of poetry and irony and cinema all colliding together in one iconic playoff moment. . . .

[T]he Yankees have been left raving about Guerrero. . . . Someone who can beat out infield hits, provide pressure on the bases and — more generally — "really cemented himself as kind of the face and leader of that organization."

Someone who — for the 2025 postseason, for the 2025 regular season, for all of his career — the Yankees haven't discovered any answers for.