Why do the Yankees continue to look lost in the postseason?

The most talked about narrative with the Yankees in the postseason is their performance against non AL Central teams, but it’s become an overdrawn and often overplayed discussion.

What isn’t talked about enough is how the team performs when they’re playing a team with a higher seed in the postseason, a situation that’s almost always resulted in defeat.

Since 2017, Cleveland is the only team they’ve defeated in the postseason who held a higher seed in the postseason format than they did.

This occured in the 2017 ALDS and the 2020 Wild Card Round, but other than that, they’ve been completely outplayed when matched in talent by their opponent.

It’s a trend that will likely continue when this week comes to an end, as the Blue Jays have put the Yankees in an 0-2 hole immediately, but why does it keep plaguing the Bronx Bombers?

READ MORE: Yankees’ regular season hero has turned into a complete liability

The Offense’s Disappearing Act in the Postseason

The Yankees as an offense have been terrible in the postseason, and that’s even adjusting for how poor the run environment tends to be in these kinds of games.

Higher velocity and slimmed down pitching staffs mean that teams are throwing their best pitchers only, and those pitchers tend to be throwing harder than they did in the regular season.

It’s easy to sit on our couch and scream at hitters to lay off of pitches when we’re not seeing a 98 MPH fastball with ride followed by a splitter that drops off the table that looks like a fastball out of hand.

This doesn’t excuse what is an alarming drop-off that occurs when the postseason comes around, as it effectively eliminates a team strength and makes it a liability.

One thing to note is that there is a massive discrepancy in wOBA and xwOBA, but that’s heavily skewed by their 2024 postseason where the offense produced a strong .740 OPS in the postseason with horrific luck.

In 2021, 2022, and 2025, they’ve just been awful in the postseason in both process and results.

Their most notable dropper in the postseason is Aaron Judge over that timespan, who has a .706 OPS since 2021 with a -0.7% Championship Win Probability Added.

He isn’t the only reason they don’t win in October, that’s an irresponsible statement to make in a team sport, but he has negatively impacted their chances of winning when they expect him to be their best player in these spots.

You can’t prove that a player is pressing without being in their head, but the 6% increase in Chase% for Aaron Judge since 2021 in the postseason makes me wonder if he’s abandoning his approach in these big games.

If Judge doesn’t command the zone, he doesn’t stand a chance of making serious impact in a series, and we saw him press big-time against Kevin Gausman when he took an uncharactersitically bad swing on 3-2 to strike out.

I tried to look for pitches that far off the plate or further both vertically and horizontally, and in the regular season Aaron Judge has swing at just 3.7% of those pitches.

In the postseason? Aaron Judge’s Chase% on those pitches nearly double to 6.1%, it’s an anomaly to see Judge swing at those pitches, and yet they occur at a significantly higher rate at this time of year.

I do believe the higher velocity and better quality of pitching plays a role in this, but I also believe there’s grounds to think that Judge isn’t as patient, calm, and dilligent in his approach in big moments.

His numbers with Runners in Scoring Position in his career are incredible in the postseason, he owns a .996 OPS and a .435 xwOBA in these spots.

Change that to the postseason, and Judge has a .642 OPS with a .322 xwOBA, there’s bad luck here, but there’s also a massive decrease in production.

The reason this is on Judge is because he goes from superstar to a league-average player in the playoffs, but the reason it isn’t all on him is because a lot of his running mates haven’t been much better.

Jazz Chisholm owns a .247 OBP and .282 SLG% in the postseason, Austin Wells a .214 OBP and .250 SLG%, and hitters such as Brett Gardner and Gary Sanchez saw their offense fall off this time of year as well.

Yesterday, Max Fried and Will Warren gave Aaron Judge zero chance to win them the game, his only at-bat as the tying or go-ahead run in Game 2 was in the first inning when he worked a walk.

Giancarlo Stanton has been a playoff hero for the Yankees, but his struggles in the 2018 ALDS could have cost them a chance at winning the World Series.

Baseball is such a team sport that Aaron Judge was awful in the ALDS and ALCS last year and the team would go on to lose in the World Series, dropping three games where they had the tying run at the plate in the final inning.

Is There a Fundamental Issue With the Yankees?

Fans will constantly ask why the team’s offense approach is atrocious, wondering if coaches and player development prepare players for these spots.

Conversations with people who would know discuss how a lot of the public perception is misguided, the Yankees do value quality at-bats and the ability to move runners over.

Hitters are not taught to take their A-Swing in every spot, while the Yankees want their hitters to generate damage contact, being able to command the zone plays a huge role in that.

The Dodgers, Astros, and Red Sox have built their offensive identities on almost identical offensive principals as the Yankees have, but there’s a difference between gameplan and execution.

Execution is a variable in this; not a constant. Pitchers don’t choose to miss their target, and hitters don’t choose to swing at a splitter in the dirt.

It’s easy to discuss a gameplan around grinding out at-bats, laying off the splitter, and hunting the fastball, but putting it into action is impossible when pitchers tunnel well, command the zone, and force hitters to panic early in the game.

Is it possible that the Yankees haven’t been able to find hitters who keep their heartbeat still during the game?

Maybe, but results can only give you so much information in the short spurts of postseason play we’ll see throughout the years.

Did Giancarlo Stanton magically learn how to handle pressure after 2018 and forget how to do it in 2022 and 2024? Is Trent Grisham suddenly incapable of having a high leverage at-bat after being their clutchest hitter this year?

These are the aspects of baseball that are impossible to quantify; what is just small sample size noise and what’s a legitimate issue that the Yankees need to address?

I think at the end of the day, the Yankees might have been a few pitchers short and the Blue Jays are just all over whatever the team throws at them.

Maybe Cam Schlittler will help with that in the coming years, or maybe this team will just keep getting knocked out in the postseason.

All I know is that there isn’t a stone they haven’t turned in that pursuit. They’ve brought in all types of people and players, and they’ve ended up in mostly the same place.

The one guy who genuinely changed the feeling was Juan Soto, who has since left for a Mets team that missed the postseason.

Nothing really makes sense or stays consistent when we discuss narratives, and maybe this team climbs out of the 0-2 hole for us to re-write the narrative at the end of the week.

Baseball is a dumb sport. The postseason is incredibly unpredictable. That’s what makes it more magical than basketball or football to me, but it also might be why Aaron Judge is one of the greatest players to never win a World Series.

As a fan I get how that can be so frustrating to hear. It’s both frustrating and agonizing to know that there isn’t one button to push, one trade to make, or one player to sign that guarantees a championship.

This organization has built the reputation of being able to do it because of the 1990s, but that narrative ignored the insane amount of luck that comes with that, luck that they haven’t been able to capture since 2009.