The autopsy on the New York Yankees‘ 2024 season could be described as “dead on arrival.”
For all their winning and monumental performances from the likes of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto throughout the year, they were often not a fundamentally sound team from the start — too many fielding and baserunning mistakes that many thought would wreck their season.
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During Wednesday‘s World Series Game 5, the Yankees‘ defense did just that, choking away a 5-0 lead and eventually watching the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate the World Series at their stadium as 7-6 winners. While Yankees legend Alex Rodriguez couldn’t believe what he saw, he told FOX viewers that these were the 2024 Yankees and put some blame on manager Aaron Boone and general manager Brian Cashman.
“This is one of the greatest meltdowns that I‘ve ever seen in 40 years,” Rodriguez said on the post-game show next to Hall of Famer Derek Jeter and David Ortiz.
“This is who they‘ve been all year. They‘ve been very inconsistent, and that‘s why, from a manager and a front office point of view, when you see problems, you have to nip them in the bud. They‘ve been sloppy all year. They were sloppy against Kansas City, sloppy against Cleveland, but you can’t get away with it when you have a much superior team in the LA Dodgers. Very unfortunate.”
Those repeated bad habits, which were often excused by Boone publicly, presented concerns for the playoffs — which the Yankees largely overcame until facing the Dodgers in the World Series. In the fateful fifth inning, the Yankees led 5-0. Ten batters later, the Dodgers and Yankees were tied at 5-5, all the Dodgers runs unearned.
In that frame, New York committed two errors (and three for the game, which came later on a catcher’s interference) and ace Gerrit Cole failed to cover first base on a ground ball to Anthony Rizzo, which would have limited the damage to nothing. The collapse started when center fielder Aaron Judge didn’t grab a Tommy Edman fly ball in center on the second batter of the game (for his first error of the season) and continued on the next play when shortstop Anthony Volpe botched a throw to third base.
“I don‘t know if I’ve ever quite seen an inning like this, especially in the World Series or postseason game,” Jeter said. “Look, the Yankees made some mistakes. You can’t make mistakes against a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers. That particular inning, you gave them six outs.”
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