Season Over: Blue Jays Finish off Yankees in ALDS

By Sal Maiorana

October 15, 2025

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Sal Maiorana shares his thoughts on the Yankees. Here is an edited version of Sal's latest article.

For Sal's complete analysis on the New York Yankees, you can subscribe to Sal Maiorana's free Pinstripe People Newsletter at https://salmaiorana.beehiiv.com/subscribe.

This was Sal's article from last week following the Yankees' loss.

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“The ending’s the worst, right?” Aaron Boone said. “This was a team that played for one another. It’s a beat up room in there. We got beat here. They beat us this series, simple as that. Doesn’t make it any easier; they took it to us this series, simple as that. It’s hard to win the World Series. I’ve been chasing it all my life.”

Boone has said all year that he believed this was the best of the eight Yankees teams he has managed - many of us would say mis-managed, right? In many ways that was probably true because this roster was a little better, top to bottom, than several of the teams they’ve trotted out.

It was definitely better than the 2024 team that made it to Game 5 of the World Series. But once again it was a team that was not good enough because like so many past iterations in the Boone era, there were just too many days and nights where the Yankees did not play crisp, winning baseball, and in the end that always costs you. The little things matter so much in baseball, and year after year, it’s the little things that always tank the Yankees.

And all those little things piled up and became big things from late May through late August when they played such poor baseball and allowed the Blue Jays - a team I can honestly say I hate more than even the Red Sox - to soar past them in the AL East.

The Yankees wasted a 7.5-game lead and by Aug. 23 they were 6.5 back thanks to those three-plus months where they blew so many games and while they finished strong and nearly came all the way back to steal the division, they ran out of time.

It was ludicrous that the Yankees scored the most runs in MLB, hit the most homers, had the highest slugging percentage and OPS, and had a team starting rotation ERA that was nearly a run better than the Blue Jays, yet they did not finish ahead of Toronto.

Yes, they ended up with the same record at 94-68, but the season series went to the Blue Jays so that tiebreaker meant the Blue Jays won the division and had the first-round bye, plus homefield advantage in the Divisional Series and obviously, that made a huge difference given that the Yankees finished 1-8 at the Rogers Centre.

Props for rallying to beat the Red Sox in the Wildcard Series, but it was galling that the Yankees were no match for the Blue Jays who outscored New York 34-19 in the four games, and it was even more galling that Vladimir Guerrero and George Springer - the two faces of evil - celebrated at Yankee Stadium with “New York, New York” playing in the clubhouse during their champagne party.

“Just a hard year,” Boone said. “There were just some tough moments, but also like in a lot of ways very rewarding to go through some of the moments we went through in the middle of the season especially. To see this kind of team come together in a really special way, and I feel like we got so much better in the final couple months of the season.”

It stinks when a season ends, because we all love baseball so much and now there are no more Yankees games to watch. I could be snarky and say that’s good because now all of our blood pressures will return to normal, but that’s not true. It is worse that it's over more than three weeks earlier than 2024 when they gave us a wild ride all the way to the World Series.

But I can’t say that I’m surprised because even with a better roster than any other that Boone has had, this team wasn’t winning a championship, and it didn’t, and none other than Alex Rodriguez laid out why.

“Honestly, from the entire organization, (Boone) is the guy I would circle that is the least to be blamed,” Rodriguez said on the FOX postgame show. “He’s got a lot of talent, but for me, personally, one of the worst constructions of a roster I’ve ever seen. You have three left-handed catchers, you have five DHs, you have a first baseman in and out. It’s just a very difficult hand for Boone. And honestly, they were exposed against a much better Jays team.”