r/baseball • u/WayAcrossTheWorld • 6d ago

Players Only [highlight] Junior Caminero- “Let the Yankees fans talk now. Let them watch the whole thing. Talk Now. What ya gonna say? Daaaaa Yankees lose”

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u/Semantia Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

I hate the Yankees as much as anyone, but at a certain point isn't it acceptable to just say "that's the playoffs".

It's just a crap shoot. Over a full season it's clear they are, and have been a good team. The exact same thing could have happened to the Rays and I wouldn't have been surprised.

Maybe I'm just coping from the Jays last year, but making it to the Division Series is still impressive. Only one team can win it all.

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u/SirFerguson New York Yankees 6d ago

if we had played our best, sure. but the top down decision making and sloppy play, especially after last year’s world series embarrassment (a series I didn’t have a lot of confidence going into even at our best but still) have become a problem. I don’t mind getting outplayed by a good Rays team - it’s basically a semi annual tradition at this point because that franchise builds winners. But to be swept after a shutout and a 5 error game… it’s the team.

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u/mikebrownhurtsme New York Yankees 6d ago

We consistently flame out offensively in the playoffs while getting embarrassed baserunning and fielding

Just make us play baseball. We can’t do it

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u/Kdot32 Houston Astros 6d ago

The same shit has plagued this franchise since 2017 and has popped up in every postseason since

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u/Semantia Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

That's definitely a fair take. I guess I just feel like you can take literally any team and find a three game stretch where they play like shit and when it falls during the playoffs it just means more.

I still think the Yankees are an impressive team. 

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u/Electrical-Sense-156 6d ago

This team is not set up to succeed in the playoffs. It’s like the bizzaro moneyball A’s with the same outcome

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u/Fit-Television-888 New York Yankees 6d ago

The opposite of moneyball, we're going to spend a lot and do all the little things wrong. How much money can the Yankees spend and still lose in the divisional round?

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u/tallyho88 New York Yankees 6d ago

I’m convinced that the problem with the Yankees is they don’t have a Moneyball team, but they still try to use statistics to inform their game plan like they do. Instead of letting the good baseball players do what got them to this level, they constantly try to tweak everything to the point where it becomes a failure.

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u/Ready2Rapture 6d ago

I’ve been calling it all year it’s heartbreaking watching Judge crush new regular season records to get to the playoffs and get bounced from missing groundballs and over throwing to bags.

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u/davewashere Montreal Expos 6d ago

Tbf, Aaron Judge's lack of availability was a big part of the problem this year. During the 2nd half of the season "The Yankees have no hits through 3/4/5/6 innings" became a recurring theme.

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u/Ready2Rapture 6d ago

Stanton too who’s been the only post season bat for us. His health is gone man. Dunno why I’m being downvoted for all this

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u/davewashere Montreal Expos 6d ago

It's been 8 years since he made it through a full season. For all his home run prowess, his 59 home run season in 2017 is the only 40 home run season of his career thanks to his many stints on the IL. The Yankees have a problem in that they have too many players who probably should only DH. That includes Judge, who is actually a decent outfielder when healthy but so many of his injuries have come in the field that it's not really worth it to put him out there.

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u/heardThereWasFood Atlanta Braves 6d ago

It’s not heartbreaking it’s actually fucking awesome

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u/Ready2Rapture 6d ago

Still better than being a Braces fan tbh

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u/heardThereWasFood Atlanta Braves 6d ago

I stopped being a braces fan in 10th grade my brotha

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u/Ready2Rapture 6d ago

Lmao I deserved that won’t edit it

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u/Outside-College-2797 New York Yankees 6d ago

Exactly

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u/LP99 St. Louis Cardinals 6d ago

You’re not wrong, but this Yankees team specifically got swept, never led at any point, committed five errors in Game 2, and every bat other than Ben Rice was underwhelming or hurt.

The Yankees have too much talent and money to go out like that with a shoulder shrug.

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u/grubas New York Yankees 6d ago

They showed fight for about 7 innings in game 3 down 0-2.  Then after the overturn they crumpled and started swinging for the fences aka Heroball.

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u/Clueless_Otter 6d ago

Do they really have "too much talent", though? Their starting pitching, sure. But of position players, they have a grand total of 3 guys with over 2 WAR. You can argue Lombard and Volpe would have gotten at least 2 WAR if they played a full season, and obviously Judge if he played more games, but that's kinda it. I don't really think the Yankees have that much talent outside of the starting pitchers, especially if we don't count Judge who played less than half the season and not at all in the playoffs.

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u/voujon85 New York Yankees 5d ago

game 1 was a pitchers duel, game 2 was game 2 and they had chances like Belli loaded bases and blew it, game 3 both teams played well, no fan interference who knows maybe it goes out maybe it's caught maybes it's a double. Game was decided by 3 inches, and that's baseball

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u/SomthingClever1286 Los Angeles Dodgers 6d ago

The fact that the 24 World Series collapse didn’t trigger a massive shake up in the coaching and management is shocking.

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u/xzElmozx Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

Forreal. Once that Dodgers scouting report went public the org should have cleaned house then and there

“We’ve assembled an amazing baseball team with only one weakness!”

“Nice what’s their one weakness?”

“Playing baseball”

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u/Jacko-Jack New York Yankees 6d ago

To us too

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u/gnitsuj New York Yankees 6d ago

Was it though? I feel like there was absolutely nothing shocking about it honestly

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u/spazz720 New York Yankees 6d ago

Too many people take this shit way too serious. The Rays were the top team in the league for a reason…people acting like the Yanks were favored or something.

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u/osound New York Yankees 6d ago

The Yankees under Boone literally don’t win playoff series against higher seeded teams, so yeah, this shit was obvious.

You would figure being unable to overachieve in any capacity during the playoffs over a 9 year period would prompt a change though.

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u/spazz720 New York Yankees 6d ago

Getting to the World Series bought him some time. Frankly, making it this far this season with all the injuries was a bit of a surprise tbh.

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u/DataLore19 Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

Nobody wants to hear it but the real challenge is getting into the playoffs. The World Series winner is just the hottest/luckiest team that gets in.

You could easily make the argument the Jays outplayed the Dodgers last year but it's only 7 games and we got unlucky enough and Yamamoto was hot enough to tip the scales.

The playoffs is just a fun tournament for the best teams in the league and doesn't necessarily determine who the best team is. You already had 162 game sample size to determine that.

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u/merriweather_pp 6d ago

The World Series winner is the team that doesn't blow games 6 and 7 at home

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u/Separate_Battle_3581 6d ago

Wrong. Some of us DO want to here it. Ive been saying the same for years: MLBs 162-game slog is the most brutal sample size and best indicator of a team's excellence in all of sports. Im that lone crazy man in the wilderness saying winning the pennant race is a greater accomplishment than getting hot in October and winning a chip. 

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u/kafkabomb Los Angeles Dodgers 6d ago

I disagree. Determining the best requires both pushing through the regular season and the postseason. You need to be able to figure out how to be sufficiently good enough through the regular season attrition, which requires consistency and long term management of health, opportunities, trades, repetition, and strategy. You also need to be able to figure out the postseason requirements of hitting vs strong pitching, inning-by-inning tactics, and high leverage clutch delivery.

When both of these parts of the baseball season exists, I don't know how you can say the best is determined by only one part of it. Doubly so when discussions about the Dodgers sacrificing regular season wins to let their aces and injured players recover in time for September has been a major talking point over the past 2-3 years. If the Dodgers rushed back their players to win 5-6 more regular season games and be 1st place regular season wins, but then lose in the playoffs, would you still be saying they were the best team? No.

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u/DataLore19 Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

Part of what you're describing involves having the luxury of money to buy the depth necessary to rest players and still have quality players to take their spots so you can still win 90+ games without them. You never know what injuries will occur or what slumps players will go through so giving away wins is not generally a strategy that most teams have the luxury of employing.

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u/kafkabomb Los Angeles Dodgers 6d ago

You're just proving my point. Would you say the Brewers were the best team last year or the Dodgers (or perhaps another team)?

The top regular season teams this year are both small market teams. Quit using payroll as an excuse. Well run teams have strong aspects beyond just money.

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u/DataLore19 Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

Well you're the one who's saying it's a mix of both regular season and playoffs, so you tell me?

How do you decide the best team or MLB champions in 2021 when the Braves won 88 games and the world series and the Giants won 107 games and lost in the division series?

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u/kafkabomb Los Angeles Dodgers 6d ago

The Braves were the best. What are you talking about? They won the World Series by being good enough in the regular season to make it to the playoffs and then winning the tournament.

You're saying the best team in baseball was the Giants because they had the best record.

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u/DataLore19 Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

You're saying it's a mix of both. But your actually just saying the WS winner is the best and not just the WS winner.

Regular season just good enough plus getting hot/lucky enough to win 13 game before losing too many over a month or so. That doesn't make you definitively "the best team in baseball". It makes you the winner of the tournament.

Compared to winning the most games over 162. Ever heard of small sample sizes?

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u/kafkabomb Los Angeles Dodgers 6d ago

I'm saying you have to make the playoffs by being one of the top 6 teams out of 15 in your League. The goal isn't to have the best record, it's to be one of the top 6. And then you have to win the postseason tournament. Achieving both makes you the best team in the MLB for the year.

Are you still trying to triple down and say the Brewers, Phillies, Jays, and Yankees were all better teams than the Dodgers last year because they had better regular season records? Do you not realize that the purpose of the regular season is to make the playoffs, not be the team with the best record, therefore the requirements to achieve that is a very different set compared to what it takes to win in the playoffs? If you do triple down on that, then I think you have a very misguided understanding of strategic and long term thinking, and there's really nothing more I can say to you.

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u/Manawah New York Yankees 6d ago

Watching the Yankees all year it really wasn’t clear to me that they were good despite the W/L record. They had so many games with 0 or 1 runs scored. The roster varied nightly, as did the batting order and who played what position. Boone sets the lineup like I set my fantasy lineup on the toilet every morning; he tinkers like it’s his job. This never looked like a real contender because there’s no cohesion. Not sure which other teams could say they have the same issue but it’s the same story every year at this point. We succeed because of our payroll despite all the massive issues that inevitably cause us to lose after the WC round every year

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u/DrunkensteinsMonster New York Yankees 6d ago

There’s a lot of variance in baseball its true but if you look at the peripherals it’s not great even there, they didn’t play well. If they were hitting the shit out of the ball and hitting into bad luck or couldn’t break through with RISP then you kind of have to live with that. The only game that was sort of like that was game 3. Other than that they had a team OBP of .192 and hit 2 home runs. Statcast looks pretty bad too. Obviously defensive woes.

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u/generalosabenkenobi New York Yankees 6d ago

That's baseball, Suzyn

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u/sandalsnopants Tampa Bay Rays 6d ago

Getting to the playoffs, playing competitive games, and losing is one thing. But losing like this is holy shit embarrassing and has nothing to do with it being a quick series in the playoffs.

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u/PostMatureBaby Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

I'm one of the rare Jays fans who's "second team" is the Yankees believe it or not. Chisox is third and the rest of the AL I hate 😂

I guess being a Toronto sports fan has trained me to just be used to disappointment but definitely rough to go out like that

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u/Emergency-Chicken-24 6d ago

Damn that's a lot of team to root for

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u/PostMatureBaby Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

NL is Brewers, Reds lol

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u/Fantasykyle99 Minnesota Twins 6d ago

That’s crazy, I’ve tried to pick an NL team to cheer for over the years but I can never get myself to actually care at all about a 2nd team haha.

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u/imirritatedaf Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

Pull yourself together

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u/peachesgp Boston Red Sox 6d ago

Over the course of the season it's clear that they were a flawed team that would give it away if you could just put the ball in play. The Rays did.

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u/JohnMadden42069 MiLB Pride • MLB Pride 6d ago

I think the Yankees getting washed by the Rays and nobody being really surprised transcends "well, thems the playoffs"

You can say that about the Padres, those were all close games with drama abound. Ball didn't bounce their way.

Im not sure if it was all of them but the Yankees batting well under the mendoza line with one dude hitting two bombs is not playoff crapshoot stuff, that's a team on the side of a milk carton.

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u/italianroyalty New York Yankees 6d ago

You’ve definitely got a point, but it really depends on how you lose. If they gave it their all, left their hearts and souls on the field, the loss would still hurt. But it would be a loss with dignity. But how we lost in the WS, to you guys, and now to the Rays…idk man you tell me. Did we look serious out there? Did our guys look like they remembered how to play? One team can win it all, but ideally we’d all go home feeling like we did our best. I haven’t felt that way in a long time

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u/wokenupbybacon New York Yankees 6d ago

This time, despite all the 'same thing every year' narratives, yeah. This one is just playoffs (and lacking their best hitter). They played another good team and couldn't convert the close games to wins. Two of the games were 1-0 and 4-3, clearly they were in them.

There were clear improvements in how the Yankee pitching approached a contact-heavy team in these Rays compared to how they handled Toronto last year. 2025 was genuinely frustrating to watch, they would pitch Toronto players away while shifting to the pull side, basically daring them to slap the ball the other way. As if Toronto couldn't or wouldn't just take that.

They've thankfully stopped doing that, and in two of the games, the defense was more than prepared to handle a team trying to just put the ball in play and see what happens. The game 3 infield singles were all played well by the Yankees, there was just no play to be made. That's baseball. But they prevented the Rays from lining gapper after gapper like the Blue Jays did. Game 1, all the Rays could muster for a run was a solo shot.

As for game 2, I just don't know. Even for the Yankees, 4 errors in a game is absurd. They had 2 across all 4 games in last year's ALDS. They've been a lot better with it this year than the last two years, even if it's not quite where it should be, but then it just happened again. I don't know how to feel about that, it wasn't good enough but it was also improvement.

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u/srv340mike New York Mets 6d ago

The thing is I think the Yankees have been constructed in a way that's genuinely not effective in playoffs, despite them being a regular season machine.

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u/KRATS8 Chicago Cubs 6d ago

The more baseball I watch, the more I view it like this. There’s so much variance involved in baseball and in the playoffs games are so tight. The smallest of things could be changed and flip a series on its head. Sometimes I really think it’s as simple as your team just didn’t get it done that day.

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u/DrummingUpNumbers Toronto Blue Jays 6d ago

I hate the "playoff crapshoot" trope so much.

I know there is obviously luck, but you can clearly see the teams that can handle the pressure and those that don't.

For Christ sake, from quick math/search the Yankees are 19-20 since 2020 in the playoffs. This team has underperformed as soon as the moment gets big. That's 40 postseason games with a sub .500 record.

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u/voujon85 New York Yankees 5d ago

it's true and statistically the rays are absurdly lucky this year (by far the luckiest team statistically), similar to Jays last year, and that's part of baseball. Yankees had that in 09 we won a zillion 1 run games.

But ultimately other than game 2 this was a super close series.

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u/empire161 Boston Red Sox 6d ago

That mentality is exactly the Yankees problem. They want to throw a bunch of good-to-really-good players on the roster, cruise to 89-93 wins, then cross their fingers and hope whoever they play in the Wild Card/ALDS rounds will shoot themselves in the foot worse than they do.

And after every year where they get knocked out and basically show they're not capable of playing at the same level as the rest of the playoff field, they just refuse to acknowledge there's any problem. The players are never held accountable by Boone, Boone will never be held accountable by ownership, and ownership will never be held accountable by the fans because the fans because they can't tolerate being bad enough for long enough for the team to have a rebuild.