Yankees defense was so humiliating Aaron Boone couldn't bear to watch

Aaron Boone has made more than his share of mistakes over his time managing the New York Yankees, but even his loudest haters can't blame him for getting ejected late in his team's loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night. With the way the Yankees were playing (or, more accurately, declining to play) defense at Rogers Centre, we wouldn't have wanted to watch the rest of the action either.

Whatever word you could use to describe New York's defensive effort on Wednesday — embarrassing, pathetic, shocking — would feel like an understatement. It was the worst display in recent baseball history, at the very least, and somehow it just kept on getting worse.

The nightmare began in the bottom of the fourth, when Oswald Peraza added to his many lowlights in this series by failing to field an Addison Barger grounder cleanly and then trying to throw to first rather than taking the easier out at second. One batter later, Ernie Clement followed with another base hit to give Toronto its first lead of the game.

But that was child's play compared to what was coming. First, catcher JC Escarra failed to block a Max Fried curveball, allowing Davis Schneider to advance to third and George Springer to second. Then, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s tapper up the third-base line became a disaster when Fried decided to try to get Schneider at home rather than taking the out at first. Just like that, it was 4-2 Jays.

Aaron Judge hit a two-run homer in the top of the sixth, tying the game up once again. But really, that just gave New York's defense more chances to humiliate itself. With one out in the bottom half, Cody Bellinger lost a fly ball in the lights and turned a sure out into a triple.

Myles Straw followed with a go-ahead double, and then he eventually came around to score on ... you guessed it, another error, this time courtesy of Ben Rice.

That's three errors in two innings, plus the Bellinger gaffe in right field, all of which turned what could have been a late-game lead into an ugly loss. Oh, and Jasson Dominguez added another error in the seventh, booting a Guerrero line drive in left and allowing him to advance to second (he'd eventually score on a Bo Bichette home run).

The Yankees talked a big game about learning all the right lessons from their humbling World Series loss last fall, a loss that could have been far different if the team had been able to stop shooting itself in the foot both on the bases and in the field. And yet, after a whole offseason of being chirped by both the Los Angeles Dodgers and baseball fans around the country, they've decided to get even worse in 2025.

So no, you can't blame Boone for letting his frustration get the better of him on Wednesday and getting tossed. But you absolutely can blame him for the state of this time, physically and emotionally.

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Aaron Boone has lost control of the Yankees, whether New York sees it or not

Errors and losses are going to happen over the course of a long MLB season. And there's still plenty of time for the Yankees to turn it around; they remain in the first AL Wild Card spot, after all.

But good luck telling anyone who watched this game that this team is capable of much of anything. New York hasn't been able to stop making mistakes in recent weeks, and even more distressingly, they seem to respond to those mistakes — and to big spots generally — by shrinking into themselves. The errors on Wednesday were bad, but what was really alarming was the way that the Yankees just kept on compounding things, the way they looked visibly defeated on the field.

Throughout his time in New York, Boone has prioritized keeping an even keel. He's loath to light up his players publicly or get too high or too low over the course of a long season. That's fine in so far as it goes, especially in a market like New York. But after a while, an even keel just begins to feel like white noise. The Yankees need a fire lit under them, and that's never been Boone's game. If he doesn't figure something out soon, it'll be someone else's problem.