Three Takes About the Yankees Before the Playoffs Start

By E.J. Fagan

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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With the playoffs about to start, I’m not going to be able to write full posts about the 2025 regular season any time soon, so let’s do some lightning reflections.

It matters that Judge wins MVP

Aaron Judge probably will win MVP. He’s got a full win advantage over Cal Raleigh’s amazing season. Like Bobby Witt Jr and Shohei Ohtani before him, Raleigh has the unfortunate luck to post a historic season at the same time that an all time great. Albert Pujols was in a similar position in the early 2000s. Raleigh is a lot of fun, so I hope that he hits 60 again next year.

Baseball is actively writing Aaron Judge’s place in history. His Yankee legacy will be determined by whether or not he finally seals the deal, but his baseball legacy is all about how great we all decide he was. Judge is currently 114th overall in career bWAR. That’s solidly within the Hall of Fame, but he’s still a distance away from a lot of ordinary Hall of Famers.

Even if he keeps up his current Ruth/Bonds pace for the next few years, it’s conceivable that he finishes around the George Brett/Adrian Beltre/Chipper Jones 80-something bWAR tier. Those guys were amazing, but never put up numbers like 2022-2025 Judge.

I think that Judge deserves to be in the same conversation as guys like Ted Williams and Barry Bonds, and winning more MVP awards than anyone Bonds (and Ohtani?) will matter in the conversation decades from now.

Here’s a crazy way to frame Judge’s 2025 season: he was hitting .342/.449/.711 on July 25th, when he injured his arm. He played hurt for a little over a month and posted an .888 OPS, which would have been third best in the AL over a full season. After returning to right field on September 5th, he hit .400/.559/.892. The GOAT is locked in just in time for the playoffs.

Aaron Boone Isn’t Off the Hook

There is no doubt in my mind that the Yankees are the best team in baseball right now.

Except for maybe the Padres, every other top team has stumbled in August and September. The Yankees got their stumble out of the way over the summer and have shown no signs of letting up.

Yet, they are about to play a meaningful Game 162 while praying that the Blue Jays lose. They are probably heading for a three game wild cards series against the Red Sox. I think that the Yankees are still the favorite overall in the series, but even the best teams are vulnerable in a three game series. All they needed to do was win one more game to avoid a giant roll of the dice in the first round.

If they make a deep playoff run, I think that all of Aaron Boone’s managerial sins will be forgiven. If they get bounced early, then we will point to all of the boneheaded decisions he made during the 2025 season and ask if a better manager would have won just one more game.

Off the top of my head, the big ticket mistakes: relying on a clearly not right Devin Williams too much in the early season, playing an injured Anthony Volpe for way too long, playing Jazz Chisholm at 3rd base rather than admitting that DJ LeMahieu was toast, playing Paul Goldschmidt against right-handed pitching deep into the season.

Managers aren’t going to be perfect, but that’s a big list of own goals.

Is Schlittler Good or Average and Lucky?

Schlittler finishes with a 2.96 ERA but 3.74 FIP and this Statcast page:

He’s obviously sporting an elite fastball and really good strikeout stuff, but Schlittler also gets hit a little harder than you might expect. I worry about him a bit against playoff competition. A 3.99 xERA and 3.74 FIP isn’t bad per se, but his lack of runs lulls you into a false sense is security. Like Rodon last year, Schlittler gets hit hard.

The Farm System Had a Mixed Year

There’s no time to do a full recap of the Yankee farm system, so I’ll wait until offseason prospect lists get going. But here’s the highlights:

• The Yankees traded a ton of their mid-range hitters at the trade deadline, but at first glance none seem like a huge loss. No one is lighting the world on fire for their new club.

• George Lombard Jr. and Spencer Jones are the only two upper minors hitting prospects of note, and I’m very curious about how offseason scouting reports treat both. Lombard’s numbers were pretty awful in Double-A without much upwards progression, but he was also the youngest hitter in his league. Jones was horrible after he returned probably too quickly from a back injury when it looked like Judge might be badly hurt.

• The success stories of the 2025 season are undoubtedly Yankee starting pitching prospects. Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz and Carlos LaGrange emerged as top-tier pitching prospects. ERC especially had a pretty flawless breakout season, while LaGrange alternated between “best stuff in the minors” and “serious control issues.” They’ll definitely crack Top 100 lists this offseason (maybe top 50). I’ll be curious to see if anyone slips the next tier of Ben Hess or Kyle Carr onto their list. None of these guys are going to crack the 2025 rotation out of Spring Training, but I bet at least one of them does what Schlittler did in 2025 as a call up.

• Other than that, it’s real barren. 2024 second rounder Bryan Cunningham was great at first, but got injured and never returned to starting. 2025 first round pick Dax Kilby had a solid debut in a tiny sample. Everyone else with a high ceiling was either traded or is still playing in complex leagues. There are few depth guys hanging around like Brandon Beck, TJ Rumfield and JC Escarra. But the farm system is super-duper top heavy right now.

Wrapping up the 2025 Regular Season

I’ve had a ton of fun watching this team, mid-season frustrations and all. It’s easily the most fun Yankees roster to watch since the 2009-2012 crew. And unlike pretty much any Boone-era team, I’m confident heading into the playoffs.

Thank you for reading and listening this season! Get ready for lots of rapid fire posts and podcasts in October.