I’m trying out a new format for our managerial report cards this postseason. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the wild card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series was so short. This year, I’m skipping the first round, and grading only the managers who survived until at least the best-of-five series. Today, we’ll start with the two managers who lost in the American League Divisional Series, Aaron Boone and A.J. Hinch.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Cam Schlittler and Michael Busch were also great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Blake Snell is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

I’m always looking for new analytical wrinkles in critiquing managerial decisions. I’m increasingly viewing pitching as a tradeoff between protecting your best relievers from overexposure and minimizing your starters’ weakest matchups, which means that I’m grading managers on multiple axes in every game. I think that almost no pitching decision is a no-brainer these days; there are just too many competing priorities to make anything totally obvious. That means I’m going to be less certain in my evaluation of pitching than of hitting, but I’ll try to make my confidence level clear in each case. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — About 45 minutes after the “best team” that Aaron Boone has ever managed was eliminated from the playoffs, several of its members sat in the clubhouse drinking a few small beers. The mood was wistful, the somber finality of it all floating through the very same air that less than a week earlier had reeked of celebratory champagne.

They had just lost the American League Division Series to the Blue Jays in four games, and for the most part, it wasn’t all that close. Despite an all-time great postseason performance from Aaron Judge following yet another all-time great regular season from him, New York was thoroughly outplayed by Toronto. Boasting the most annoying opposing lineup in baseball, the Jays peppered pitchers with their all-fields approach and their refusal to swing and miss. Theirs was a Boomer’s more-than-platonic ideal of an offense – they had the lowest strikeout rate (17.8%) and the highest batting average (.265) in the majors this season — but it wasn’t a true throwback. The Blue Jays weren’t dependent on the long ball, but they were more than capable of hitting home runs, as we all saw during the ALDS. As a team, Toronto slashed .338/.373/.601 for a 168 wRC+ across the four games. Yankees pitchers struck out 23.7% of the hitters they faced during the regular season but just 14.9% of the Blue Jays who batted in the series.

“They beat us this series,” Boone said. “Simple as that.”

Yet even as the Yankees accepted their fate, that they had played their last baseball game of the season, they were still trying to understand how it all went wrong. Hadn’t they addressed their shortcomings from a year ago, when they lost to the Dodgers in the World Series? They lengthened their lineup, improved their baserunning, and enhanced their rotation during the offseason, and then ahead of the trade deadline, they made more moves designed to shore up their defense and bolster their bullpen. Some of those deals didn’t pan out, but many of them did. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of different types of players get sent to the Arizona Fall League by their parent clubs: prospects who have lost time due to injury, org arms there to soak up enough innings for the league to function, guys eligible for the Rule 5 Draft whose teams aren’t yet sold on putting them on the 40-man roster, and, quite often, the most talented and exciting players in minor league baseball. It’s a rich and robust tapestry.

Now that the league’s action has commenced, one use of the AFL is to provide a sort of decontextualized look at some of the players whose strong performance in 2025 was already cause for some re-evaluation. Here’s one player from each AFL roster who arrived with some helium, prompting us to ask if they’ve changed their scouting report, or are just progressively improving into the player we expected.

Glendale Desert Dogs
Sam Antonacci, 2B, White Sox
2025 FV: Honorable Mention

Not only did the White Sox trade for Chase Meidroth months after giving Antonacci a slightly over-slot bonus in the fifth round of the 2024 draft, their Double-A Birmingham affiliate won the Southern League while slotting Antonacci in as the third straight feisty little bat-to-ball maven at the top of their lineup behind Rikuu Nishida and William Bergolla. At six feet, he’s a bit taller, but similar to Meidroth, below-average thump and a dearth of the athleticism necessary to drive a shortstop projection cooled early scouting reads for Antonacci, and he was an honorable mention for us on the White Sox list in April. Despite only playing his junior season there after two years of Division II ball, Antonacci is so Coastal Carolina-pilled that 35 hit by pitches form a substantial part of the .433 OBP he held over his first full pro season. (That he has yet to be plunked in his first three AFL games has to be, one would imagine, a source of deep personal disappointment.) Read the rest of this entry »

You may think you’ve already heard enough about Aaron Judge’s heroics during this postseason, especially considering that he wasn’t able to keep his team from getting knocked out barely a week into October. Heroes usually do a more thorough job when saving the day. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about Judge’s 2025 playoff excellence. But I’d argue that you haven’t heard enough, because there’s a bit of context I’d like you to consider. That context? The entirety of postseason history.

Over the course of the American League Divisional Series against the Blue Jays, Judge batted .600. If you factor in his .354 batting average against the Red Sox in the Wild Card round, he batted an even .500 over 31 plate appearances this postseason. Now let’s head over to our handy-dandy postseason leaderboard. If you set a minimum of 30 PAs, you’ll find that Judge just ran the third-highest batting average ever over a single postseason; his .581 on-base percentage is the second highest. His 253 wRC+ is the 14th highest in postseason history (just behind the 255 mark that teammate Giancarlo Stanton put up in 2020). By that standard, Judge just produced one of the greatest postseason performances ever.

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NEW YORK — Ernie Clement simply wore out Yankees pitchers during the Division Series. After collecting three hits in Game 2 — including a two-run homer off Max Fried that opened the scoring — in a Blue Jays win, then four more hits in their Game 3 defeat, the 29-year-old infielder sparked rallies in Game 4 with a pair of singles that led to the go-ahead run in the fifth inning and then two more runs in the seventh, helping Toronto break the game open. Backed by opener Louis Varland and seven other relievers who combined to hold the Yankees to six hits and two runs, the Blue Jays bounced their AL East rivals with a 5-2 victory in Game 4.

While Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.529/.550/1.059) and Daulton Varsho (.438/.471/1.000) were the Blue Jays’ heaviest hitters in the series, combining for five homers and 13 RBI, Clement — who spent time at all four infield positions this year and started games at both second and third base in this series — hit .643/.625/.929 himself while scoring and driving in five runs apiece. Though he showed a wide platoon split during the regular season, producing a 146 wRC+ (.326/.351/.549) against lefties and 75 wRC+ (.254/.295/.327) against righties, both of his Game 4 singles were off fireballing righty Cam Schlittler, who was very good if not nearly as dominant as he had been against the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series finale.

“I think Ernie Clement has made everyone aware of how good he is,” said manager John Schneider after the game. “It’s been like that the whole year for the bottom part of our lineup. You try to navigate it to where guys can put the ball in play, guys can get on base for guys at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — The ovation that Devin Williams received from the crowd of 47,399 at Yankee Stadium as he departed in the eighth inning on Tuesday night after recording five crucial outs — his longest outing in more than two years — did not go unnoticed. “It’s nice to feel appreciated sometimes. It was definitely a lot better than what I’ve heard for much of the year,” said the 31-year-old righty in the wake of the Yankees’ dramatic 9-6 comeback victory over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. Acquired from Milwaukee last December, the two-time All-Star was supposed to serve as the closer of the defending AL champions, but early struggles bumped him out of that role, and he was booed vociferously. Over the past month, he’s tried to salvage his season, and with the Yankees in danger of being swept by their division rivals, he was one of five relievers who held the Blue Jays scoreless over the final 6 2/3 innings while the Bronx Bombers bashed out eight unanswered runs, six of them against Toronto’s bullpen.

When starter Carlos Rodón left Game 3 with one out in the third inning, the Yankees trailed 6-1 and appeared perilously close to being eliminated. They quickly clawed their way back against a wobbly Shane Bieber, however, chasing the Blue Jays’ starter with two outs in the third with the score 6-3. From there, a unit that was torched for 14 runs in 10 1/3 innings in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto won the battle of the bullpens. While Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Williams, and David Bednar quieted an offense that had been humming on all cylinders, four straight Blue Jays relievers allowed runs, with Louis Varland serving up both Aaron Judge’s game-tying three-run homer in the fourth inning and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot in the fifth. Now, while the Yankees will call upon Wild Card Series hero Cam Schlittler to start Thursday’s Game 4, the Blue Jays — gulp — counter with a bullpen game started by Varland, a development that could help send this series back to Toronto.

“That’s just what’s on the table,” said Williams of the bullpen’s collective mindset given the situation when Rodón departed. “We really don’t have any other option but to put up zeros and give our guys a chance to take the lead.” Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Aaron Judge didn’t deserve the rumblings. After he struck out with the bases loaded on Saturday in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Blue Jays, Yankee fans started to grumble that maybe he just didn’t have it in the postseason. It’s true that he’d struggled in 2020 and 2022, but Judge had excelled in the playoffs earlier in his career, and he came into Game 3 of the ALDS on Tuesday night with a career postseason wRC+ of 116. He hit three home runs during the Yankees’ World Series run just last year, including a game-tying shot in Game 3 of the ALCS.

On Tuesday night, with a performance that would be eye-opening if it had come from just about any other player in baseball, Judge pushed his batting average in the 2025 postseason to an even .500. He went 3-for-4 with an intentional walk and a couple of great plays in right field, and for the rumblers and grumblers with short memories, he launched a mammoth, game-tying, season-saving, signature home run, pulling the Yankees back from the abyss and into Game 4 with a 9-6 victory over the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees got absolutely thrashed by the Blue Jays during the first two games of the Division Series, losing Saturday’s opener 10-1 and then again on Sunday, 13-7. To be fair, the first game was tight right up to the seventh-inning stretch, after which the Blue Jays expanded their 2-1 lead with four runs apiece in the seventh and eighth innings, but by the same token, Game 2 wasn’t even as close as that six-run margin suggests. The Yankees not only trailed 12-0 through five innings, but also were no-hit by Trey Yesavage through 5 1/3 innings before breaking through against reliever Justin Bruihl in the sixth. Now, for the second time in less than a week, they’ll turn to Carlos Rodón to face an AL East rival with their season on the line.

The 32-year-old Rodón started Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, one night after Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman stifled the Yankees in the opener. Rodón held the Red Sox to three runs in six-plus innings, getting by with more than a little help from his friends. He retired the first six batters he faced before running into trouble in the third inning. Jarren Duran, the lone lefty in the lineup, singled, then Ceddanne Rafaela worked a walk, with Rodón exacerbating the situation with a throwing error on switch-hitter Nick Sogard’s sacrifice bunt. Though he recovered to strike out lefty-masher Rob Refsnyder, both runners scored on a sharp single by Trevor Story. Rodón escaped further damage when he induced Alex Bregman to ground into a double play that began with an acrobatic spin move by second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.

After a clean top of the fifth, Rodón was briefly staked to a 3-2 lead thanks to Aaron Judge’s RBI single, but it proved short-lived. Rodón fell behind Story 2-0 to lead off the fifth, then threw him a meatball, a 95.2-mph four-seamer that ended up in the middle of the strike zone and was hammered 381 feet to left field for a game-tying home run. A four-pitch walk to Bregman put him on the ropes, but he recovered by retiring Romy Gonzalez on a popout, then getting Carlos Narváez to ground into an around-the-horn double play. With his pitch count at a reasonable 82, manager Aaron Boone sent Rodón back out to start the seventh, but he walked Nate Eaton on four pitches, threw a wild pitch that sent him to second, then grazed Duran with a 3-0 pitch. Reliever Fernando Cruz managed to clean up the mess without further damage, aided by a stellar diving stop by Chisholm on a Masataka Yoshida infield single that, had it not been stopped, probably would have plated both Duran and Eaton. The Yankees scored what proved to be the decisive run in the eighth, when Chisholm worked a walk against Garrett Whitlock, then raced home on a long single into the right field corner by Austin Wells. Read the rest of this entry »

The pitching matchup favored the Yankees. With all due respect to one of baseball’s best young arms, Toronto’s Trey Yesavage came into the contest having thrown just 14 big league innings. Conversely, New York starter Max Fried is a three-time All-Star who finished the season 19-5 with a 2.86 ERA. While Yesavage has a bright future — he’s currently the Blue Jays’ top prospect — his mound opponent seemed a better bet to perform under the pressure-packed lights of the postseason.

That didn’t happen. Yesavage, who began the year in Low-A and didn’t make his major league debut until September 15, not only kept the Yankees off the scoreboard, but he did so in spectacular fashion. As for Fried — ditto his teammates who followed him on the bump — it was a veritable horror show. He got rocked. When all was said and done, Toronto had bombarded the Bronx Bombers to the tune of a 13-7 rout that wasn’t as close as the final score suggested. The win gave the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Division Series.

That Canada’s team launched four home runs and took a 12-0 lead before the Yankees recorded their first hit — a sixth-inning single after Yesavage had left to a huge ovation — isn’t exactly a footnote to what transpired at Rogers Centre. It was an impressive onslaught. Even so, what the 22-year-old right-hander with the power arsenal did was the story of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

At this time last year, the Blue Jays faced some serious uncertainty. They’d just finished last in the AL East, and they had only one more season guaranteed with both Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette on their roster. The future became even murkier during the winter, when the Yankees and Red Sox were both beefing up, the Orioles were still expected to be good, and the Rays were, well, the Rays. Both Guerrero and Bichette became the subject of trade rumors; really, there were questions about whether or not Toronto would just blow it all up.

Oh, how things have changed. In early April, the Jays extended Vladito through the end of the next decade, and then they caught fire. And now, one year after coming in last, they finished tied with the Yankees for the best record in the American League and took the division because they won the season series between the two teams. For that reason, Toronto hosted Game 1 of the Division Series against the New York on Saturday, and after the Jays bludgeoned the Yankees, 10-1, maybe it’s the boys from the Bronx who should be feeling a bit of self doubt.

As a franchise, the Yankees have played 441 postseason games; this loss ranks as one of their worst playoff humiliations ever:

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