With a full moon shining bright above Yankee Stadium, werewolves that dropped in from Canada were preying on the Yankees one last time.
A circle of salt wouldn’t have done any good.
The Blue Jays were just too powerful.
The 2025 Yankees are dead and gone, and as much as anything, this failed season will be remembered for their north of the border rivals regularly beating them in the season, then again in a lopsided Division Series that ended with a 5-2 Game 4 loss on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees’ rise-from-the-dead win in Game 3 was historic and thrilling, but the rest of this best of five wasn’t even competitive and now their championship drought it up to 16 seasons, the last nine with Aaron Judge.
They didn’t see this coming.
At all.
“I feel like everybody in here believed that we had such a great team and we were the team to beat,” second baseman Jazz Chisholm said.
The Yankees finished 10 wins short.
Before and after games this season, there was a lot of talk about the ultimate goal. While the Yankees were off to a good start, during their two months of struggles and when they raced to the finish line of a 94-win season hot, players continuously talked about getting back to the World Series and winning this time.
Heading into spring training, they thought bringing in Max Fried, Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt trumped losing Juan Soto to the Mets. They continued believing that in March when Gerrit Cole was headed for Tommy John surgery.
By the end of July. the Yankees felt even better about their roster when trade-deadline moves brought defense and power for third base, speed, versatility and right-handed bats for the bench and plus two big arms for the bullpen, a closer and setup man.
“I definitely felt like we were a complete team up and down the lineup, just a great offensive team,” Judge said. “Guys that can put the ball in play, hit it out of the park, just tough at-bats one through nine. The starting rotation we had going into it, those first three especially, it’s a lethal combo we had up there.
“So I liked our chances. I liked our chances all year. It was a special group.”
The Yankees were disappointed that they lost out on repeating as AL East champs, but they tied for the most in the league.
“We all thought we were the team to win the World Series,” Chisholm said.
In the playoffs, the Yankees were home for a Wild Card Series against the Red Sox that started with a loss, but they won two elimination games to move on and get another shot at Toronto.
The Blue Jays’ eight wins in 13 regular-season meetings, including six of seven at Rogers Center, no longer meant a thing, the Yankees declared.
They were wrong.
One more Yankees win and they would had won AL East instead of finishing tied and losing out on a tiebreaker. That was a big deal because the Jays got a first-round bye, which enabled them to set up their pitching. They also had home-field advantage for the ALDS, which played up even more than it did in the regular season.
The Blue Jays won Game 1 last Saturday 10-1, then Game 2 on Sunday 13-7.
Judge’s dramatic game-tying, three-run homer off the foul pole and Chisholm’s go-ahead blast help turn an early 6-1 deficit in Game 3 into a 9-6 win that saved the season, but only by 24 hours.
“Obviously, it’s not the way that we envisioned it or the way we wanted it,” said Yankees left-hander Max Fried, a 19-game winner in the season and then Game 2 Division Series goat.
What went wrong?
If the Yankees were as good as they thought they were, why did they lose?
A bunch of players were asked that question while they took turns going through exit interviews with media past the midnight witching hour.
Let’s start with the captain, who was asked what this Yankees team was missing.
“It’s tough to say right now,” Judge answered. “We had our ups and downs. Tough couple weeks, tough couple months, good months. It just felt like we were just starting to get going here at the end and have a nice little postseason run, but it didn’t go our way.
“I think it comes down to a lot of games. I could go through the whole month of April and games we lost that we shouldn’t have lost. Every game matters. It’s not just games against the Blue Jays.
“We’ve got to put away teams. When you’ve got them on the ropes, you’ve got to put them away, and we weren’t able to do that as a team and those are the ones that are going to keep me up at night a little bit in the offseason.”
All-Star left-hander Carlos Rodon had a much different take. He thinks losing ace Gerrit Cole to a season-ending Tommy John surgery during spring training ended up haunting the team in the postseason.
“Gerrit was a massive loss,” Rodon said. “It was fresh early on in the beginning of year, then Max and I and the rest of the arms picked it up and we were fortunate to have a good enough year to suffice. And obviously the offense carried us as well and backed us up.
“But when we got to this point in the year, Gerrit’s loss gets overlooked because it happened early on. But if you plug in Gerrit into one of those games, you’re not losing 10-1. You’re probably winning 2-0.”
Mistakes played a part in the Yankees’ demise, too. They committed 11 errors in their seven regular-season games in Toronto and a big one in their season-ending loss to the Blue Jays.
With the Blue Jays batting in the seventh with a runner on first base and one out in a 2-1 game, Andrés Giménez hit a hard grounder to second base. This should have been a routine inning-ending double play, but it bounced off Chisholm’s glove and into the outfield for an error.
Two batters later, Nathan Lukes lined a two-out hit and two insurance runs were in.
At times, especially during the Yankees’ bad patches, there were stretches where they were picked off bases, forgot outs or ran themselves out of innings. Stuff like this turned their 5-0, fifth-inning lead in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series into a tie game and the Dodgers ending up with a clinching win.
Now it happened again with another season on the line.
“I think once again it comes down to the little things, making the little plays, coming up with the big hit,” Judge said. “If you don’t do that, give teams extra outs, they’re going to capitalize on it.
“What a season for the Blue Jays doing their thing, winning the division, winning the DS. But for us, we’ve got to clean a couple things up and we’ll be right back here.”
Maybe, but they know they blew this shot to win and it won’t be the same team in 2026. Two of Yankees’ top run producers could be free agent losses, Trent Grisham and Bellinger.
“It’s not fun for the season to be over and not fun when you think you’ve got a team that can win the whole thing and come up short,” said first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, who also is headed for free agency.
What was missing from this Yankees’ team?
What was lacking to get them over the top … get them more wins over the Blue Jays?
“That’s the thing,” Bellinger said. “I didn’t feel like anything was missing. We got beat in a five-game series. They played well, played really well, and continued to put pressure on us.
“That’s the thing, I don’t feel like it was missing anything.”
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