The 2025 New York Yankees died as they lived: making bone-headed mistakes and coming up small, especially at the plate, at the worst possible times. Just 24 hours after a rousing, season-saving win over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 3 of the ALDS, New York came out and laid an egg in Game 4, hardly mustering any offense at all and wasting an admirable start from Cam Schlittler in a 5-2 loss that sends them to yet another early offseason.
And of course, it wouldn't be a Yankees loss without another infuriating display from manager Aaron Boone. We're getting close to a decade now of Boone at the helm in the Bronx, and it all just feels depressingly familiar. He has more strengths than his most dedicated haters give him credit for, but at a certain point, you are what the results say you are. New York continues to see diminishing returns under his watch, and Wednesday night offered a reminder of why it's time to finally move on — in more ways than one.
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Crucial Aaron Boone mistakes cost the Yankees their season in Game 4
Let's make one thing clear from the jump: Boone is not the primary reason the Yankees lost in Game 4, and he's not the primary reason they lost this series. New York's pitching, from the bullpen to Max Fried, was a nightmare in Toronto in ways that no manager was going to be able to cover for. And on Wednesday, it was the lineup's turn: The best offense in baseball by a substantial margin during the regular season suddenly couldn't put together two competitive at-bats in a row, with Trent Grisham and Cody Bellinger and really everybody not named Aaron Judge visibly pressing at the plate. There's only so much strategy can do when you've mustered five baserunners through the first six innings of an elimination game.
Still, Boone hardly covered himself in glory either. He got way, way too greedy with Schlittler, who pitched well once again but who should have been gone long before the game got away from New York in the top of the seventh inning. Down just 2-1, Boone tried to get another frame out of his starter, as though this were a series finale in August rather than the potential end of his season. The result? A base hit from Ernie Clement and a hot shot off the bat of Andres Gimenez that Jazz Chisholm couldn't corral. By the time Boone finally pulled Schlittler, Devin Williams had to try and wriggle out of runners on the corners with just one out, and Nathan Lukes' two-run single but the game essentially out of reach.
Of course, he had his fingerprints all over this wretched offensive display as well. Starting Paul Goldschmidt at first base rather than Ben Rice was understandable enough given the presence of so many lefties in Toronto's bullpen, but he didn't manage to get Rice a meaningful at-bat, only calling on him in the bottom of the eighth after the Yankees were already down 5-1. He also gave the struggling Anthony Volpe an impossibly long leash, failing to pinch hit for him with a man on first in the bottom of the seventh despite the fact that his shortstop finished the ALDS 1-for-15 with 11 Ks.
This is the same old song, really. Boone's faith in his players is admirable, and certainly helps keep morale and effort high over the course of a long and arduous regular season. When it's time to maneuver with some urgency, though, he often fails to deliver, and he showed a real lack of creativity when his team needed it most.
Somehow, though, the mistakes Boone made on the field weren't the most galling part. It was what he said afterwards that will have Yankees fans tearing their hair out, and make clear just how badly change his needed in the dugout.
Aaron Boone's response to another October exit was damning
Say this for Boone: He is a relentless optimist. It doesn't matter how bad things are going, how much a player is struggling or how many mind-numbing mistakes his team is making to turn wins into losses. He's going to show up to speak with the media as though he has the best, most badass team in baseball, one that just needs to stop worrying so much and play.
That has its merits. No, really, I don't mean to make light of it: So much of an MLB manager's job is managing personalities and relationships over the course of a 162-game season, and Boone has proven that he knows how to do that in a way that will keep his team together and motivated. But there comes a time when that simply isn't enough, and Boone's crazy if he thinks he can keep singing the same old song after yet another early October exit.
Aaron Boone: “I’m confident we will break through. I have been every year. It’s hard to win the World Series. I’ve been chasing it my whole life.”
— Bryan Hoch ⚾️ (@BryanHoch) October 9, 2025
Somehow, the dissonance doesn't seem to occur to him: If you're confident every year, and yet every year you fail in more or less the exact same way, shouldn't that be cause for some sort of self-reflection? At this point, it feels clear that Boone just isn't the right person to get something new out of this Yankees core, and the sooner the team itself realizes that the better.