In the end, the Yankees were dubious, inexorable losers

The topic is stupidity. Men hack at cork and cowhide with twigs. Who sniffs a little less often? Whose missteps will not lead them into further snares?

Everyone comes across the diamond at some point. Even deities of all time are dispatched more frequently. The winner is the loser who thwarts enough failures. This is baseball, Suzyn. A monument built in fear. A perfect joke.

A team goes home happy. Many others lose. Few lose this way at this point with this lineup.

The New York Yankees fell apart. The pressure is never particularly nice in October. No ring fittings if you can't hold yourself steady. No matter what opponent. No matter what moment. No matter what the odds are. The 2024 Bombers could scale many heights, but never proved quite capable of fulfilling that part of the bargain.

Remove static electricity. Forget the names and the myth and the long-held anger they inspire. Reduce them, beyond artificiality and beyond expectations. Their mistakes were right there on their pinstripes. You could see them all summer long.

One insane baserunning decision after another. An improved but top-heavy lineup that's too prone to extended slumps and too challenged by top-notch pitching. They scored the third-most runs per game in all of baseball and left the most runners on base. They had Aaron Judge at his absolute peak and Juan Soto at his “generational level” – the two best hitters in the AL by almost every measure; Fittingly, they had Alex Verdugo and Anthony Volpe, two of the worst eight of all qualified batters. Their bullpen lacked true swing-and-miss arms, and recent inadequacy was bubbling to the surface for a team that for years had drifted toward market exploitation at the expense of overall balance. No lead was ever safe, no out routine, no run safe. In a year of unmatched regular-season parity, the Yankees were the rare team with the talent and personnel to secure a No. 1 spot. 1 seed while managing to leave runs on the board every two nights.

Even the changing of the seasons did not change these patterns. It might even have masked them. In the ALDS against the 86-76 Kansas City Royals, New York held KC to a total of 12 runs in four games, but only managed to score more than four runs once. The shortness of their ALCS matchup against the Cleveland Guardians belied a similar trend: close games against an inferior opponent, often extending into the late innings. The Yankees were sloppy even in winning. (See: their Game 3 loss to Cleveland, when they managed to botch a historic comeback in the most brutal way possible.) Judge, their offensive lynchpin, slumped in most of both series as the team struggled struggled to get men into scoring position and continued to make defensive blunders at the most inopportune times. They passed the tests given to them, yes, and lost a total of two games in the Fall Classic. But when you look at the details of each individual excursion, the result hardly looks like bravura.

Now move the topic to absurdity. Repeating the same debacles over and over again and expecting different results. What is the evidence for Einstein's loop? Is it a vow that they would eventually pull up their pants when they left Chavez Gorge? Is it dutiful to watch as they continually fail to conceal these crudely stitched dockers at all times, in all possible places and at stake?

How about using a starter with an elbow bumper who hasn't pitched in five weeks to end a two-man game? Or have your closer eliminated from the game before the rally even began because the converted starter had already thrown a total of 19 throws? Is it like treating a series of high-impact defensive tests like lazy February afternoons in Florida or Arizona, even after six months of criticism over such tendencies?

It might be absurd that there would have been 43 men left on base in the biggest five-game stretch since the Great Recession; 9 of 45 at the plate with runners in scoring position? Did you make twice as many errors as your opponent in the series and had groundout double plays? Fail two competitions with a win probability of at least 89 percent? No, that's something different. Something profound. Something bad. Something like Judge, who, after the best regular season of any right-handed hitter with no errors, keeps faltering on the biggest stage.

We analyze collective failure. No one in pinstripes could avoid getting their hands dirty. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who was reported to be expected “back in the lineup” in 2025 just hours after the loss, continued his pattern of late-game errors and carelessness on the practice field. Yankees GM and Executive VP Brian Cashman may have raised his Q rating following the offseason Soto trade, but in one critic's eyes, the fingerprints of the Yankees' modern braintrust are all over this loss. It is unclear how loud the criticism of coaching and squad building, top-to-bottom ideology and strategic adjustment will be in the coming weeks – keyword (checks notes) Noted Yankees freedom fighter Ralph Nader recently described management as “relentless losers” – but the dream-turned-debacle happened primarily on the field.

The Steinbrenner family wouldn't be particularly unhappy with the conclusion that if the roster's fundamentals were cleaned up, Soto was re-signed, a slugger was added and internal development was secured, they could have another chance to right the wrongs of this series. After a 12-year gap between pennants, the Yankees were swept from the World Series in 1976, but won back-to-back titles over the Dodgers in 1977 and 1978. But modern baseball is far crazier than its Golden Era predecessor. Today, windows close as quickly as they open. There is a better positioned behemoth who has just taken his lunch money while Sinatra sings in the background. One can hardly argue against that. The harsh truth is that the good in sports is as fleeting as the bad. Sign theft or not, it took the bombers 15 years to get back to that altitude. Unless they're prepared to outperform the rest of the league financially or don't have the skills to improve their roster in other ways, there's no reason to believe they'll be back any time soon.

The only thing that was solid was this chance. Under pressure, they couldn't help but show who they were: a team unable to escape the weight of their own potential. A team capable of stealing a road opener and throwing it away within minutes; building a 5-0 lead in a home elimination game and burning it thanks to three Little League errors in less than 15 minutes. The kind of team that gives away the greatest burst of postseason power since Babe Ruth took charge because their 32-year-old captain can't catch a routine fly ball. A team that missed the crowning effort of the best team of its era in the World Series because it failed to cover first base after a dribbled grounder. A team designed to pounce on a group of four Hall of Famers who have endured a billion-dollar offseason, only to be defeated at the slightest sign of resistance, at every important moment, and every time to give up the game.

Awesome, insane, incredible, flawed and foolish. Your 2024 New York Yankees: a team talented enough to get there, but damn sure not serious enough to win it.