Another year of Aaron Judge's career has passed without a World Series title. The New York Yankees lost to the AL East rival Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday (TB 4, NY 3), and were swept in the best-of-five ALDS. Judge was stuck being a spectator during the playoffs after a lingering September calf injury kept him off the roster for the entire postseason.
New York's World Series title drought is up to 17 seasons, tied for the longest in franchise history (1979-95). Seventeen seasons is nothing for many teams. For the Yankees, it's an eternity.
The World Series drought puts enough pressure on the organization. The fact that Judge, the franchise's greatest player since Derek Jeter, is entering his mid-30s only ups that pressure. The Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Milwaukee Brewers are the only teams in baseball to win at least 93 games in each of the last three seasons.
That counts for only so much, though. Turn on the YES Network or walk into Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees are quick to remind you they're the 27-time champs. This franchise is defined by titles and this is now 17 seasons without one.
Every offseason is important and this one is especially important for a Yankees team that has several core players getting up there in age (Judge, Gerrit Cole, etc.), and will have to square their top-three payroll ($336 million in 2026, per FanGraphs) with whatever changes the upcoming collective bargaining agreement brings to the game's economic landscape. Here now are three questions facing the Yankees following their latest postseason elimination. The Yankees have reached the postseason in eight of Aaron Boone's nine seasons as manager and, in those eight postseasons, they went 7-0 in series against teams with a worse regular-season record and 1-8 against teams with the same or a better regular-season record.
That one series win was over Cleveland in the 2020 Wild Card Series, during the pandemic season. Boone's Yankees have bullied lesser teams and been unable to beat equal or better competition. This is not solely a Boone problem -- the manager can't swing the bat or throw the ball for his players -- but it does reflect poorly on him, especially because it spans multiple generations of players across those nine years.
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