The World Series loss made everything look wrong with the Aaron Judge-era Yankees

The Yankees played two different games on Wednesday night. Where they hit homers and Gerrit Cole dominates and you can convince yourself they're a team that should win a World Series.

And one in which they babble and bumble and you can convince yourself the whole group met in the parking lot before the game.

It should be placed in a time capsule to describe the 2024 team.

In the end, the Yankees couldn't make their way out of superior competition. They had control of both the first game of this World Series and the last game of the 2024 season. They both lost. Two of the most inexcusable, painful defeats in their history. They haven't cleaned up all of their poor fundamentals and execution that plagued them all year. So their season doesn't end with a 28th championship, but sadness over what could and should have been.

The Dodgers beat the Yankees 7–6 to win their eighth World Series and celebrate on the field at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees lost because stars Cole and Aaron Judge were both GOA-Ts and goats in this clincher. Because they had a fifth inning that boggles the mind for ineptitude — if you've watched the Yankees all year. And because when the Dodgers hit back, the Yankees couldn't counter enough.

Sound familiar?

It should.

This is the story of the Judges era. When the AL Central is on the way, the Yankees are world-beaters. When tough competition gets in the way, the Yankees don't win the World Series.

The Yankees are 31-9 (.775) against the AL Central this year (.including the postseason) and 71-65 (.522) against everyone else. They have played seven rounds against the AL Central in the playoffs since Judge's first full season in 2017, including two to win the AL pennant this year, and advanced to seven rounds. They played eight rounds against everyone else and won one, a one-game wild card in 2018 vs. the A's, who spiritually (if not geographically) belong in the AL Central.

They won one World Series game this year — Game 4, when the Dodgers didn't throw one of their main pitchers: the AL Central of tactics.

The reality is the Yankees should have won two more games, but they lost Game 1 in Los Angeles with much worse defense. You'll never guess what happened in Game 5.

They led 5-0 through the first three innings and Cole didn't allow a hit in the first four. Judge hit a two-run homer three batters into the game and Jazz Chisholm went back-to-back. Alex Verdugo delivered an RBI single in the second and Giancarlo Stanton led off the third with his Yankee record seventh homer this postseason. Judge made a stunning catch when he hit the left-center field wall in the fourth — and because it was Judge, it felt great for the Yankees — as he goes, as the team often goes.

And it seemed that he had finally reached the 120th World Series with his bat and gloves. That turns up the volume at Yankee Stadium and opens the door for the Yankees to become the first team in 25 to go down three in the World Series and even force a Game 6 and force a best-of-seven in Los Angeles. For a possible baseball miracle.

But the game changed when Judge threw a one-on, no-out fly ball to Tommy Edman in the fifth — as Judge goes, so go the Yankees. Anthony Volpe then spiked a throw to third that Chisholm couldn't corral and the bases were loaded. And still Cole had a chance to wiggle out. He struck out both Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. And then Mookie Bates hit a squiggly grounder to first.

Nothing is done like starting pitchers fielding practice from day one in spring training to the end — constantly going through the routine. Rizzo should have charged when going on a play like this. He didn't. Cole shouldn't have just broken the bag and stopped, actually run for cover in the first place. So Bates reached easily and scored a run. A door opened.

Freeman, the Series MVP, hit a two-run single and a two-run double off Yankee Killer Teoscar Hernandez. It was windy outside the Yankees and the stadium. The Yankees would actually take a 6-5 lead into the sixth, but it was an inning in which they had three walks and no hits. They drew eight walks from the second through the eighth innings, and that was the only run. They went 1-10 overall with runners in scoring position.

Luke Weaver was on the mound for a two-out sacrifice fly in the eighth that put the Dodgers ahead — aided, of course, by catcher's interference against another Yankee mistake, Austin Wells.

The Dodgers were knocked out after their starter Jack Flaherty recorded just four outs, releasing all game trying to cover it up with their pitching. And the Yanks couldn't accept the gifts—not when they were adamant about giving more.

So a World Series they could have and should have won, ended in five games instead. The Yankees never cleaned up their game — and went into a winter of regret because of it.