I knew where Game 4 was headed the moment George Springer ripped that ball into the gap and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed with another loud swing. It was another chilly October night in the Bronx, another packed house, and another series where a team that looked like a juggernaut all summer suddenly felt ordinary. Toronto closed out the Yankees 5-2 at Yankee Stadium to take the ALDS in four games and move on to the ALCS.
From a distance, I can talk myself into the positives. The Yankees won 94 games again, tied Toronto for the best record in the American League, and only finished second because the Blue Jays owned the season series 8-5. They survived a three game Wild Card fight with Boston just to get here.
Up close, though, this ALDS felt less like a bad week and more like a clear diagnostic report. The Jays did not just win. They exposed exactly where the Yankees are vulnerable right now, from lineup construction to pitching depth to the way this team tries to score in October.
I came out of this series frustrated but not surprised. I have seen this pattern before.
A Brutal Matchup of Strength vs Weakness
Before I even get to individual games, the matchup itself tells a story.
Toronto and the Yankees both finished 94-68. The difference was that the Jays beat the Yankees eight times in thirteen tries during the regular season, which gave them the AL East title, the top seed, and the bye. The Yankees, with the same record, had to burn through the Wild Card just to earn a trip to Toronto.
On paper, the Yankees were the more star-studded club. Aaron Judge was coming off another MVP caliber season. The lineup led the league in slugging. The rotation featured Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, and a wave of hard throwers behind them.
The Blue Jays, though, brought a different kind of strength. Their lineup was deep, contact oriented, and very comfortable grinding at bats in two strike counts. They were not shy about hunting mistakes, but they did not need to live on them. Their defense was cleaner. Their pitching staff was not as top heavy, but it was better balanced, especially once games rolled into the middle innings.
In other words, Toronto looked built for the version of baseball that actually shows up in October. The Yankees looked built for a six month slugging contest. This series was what happens when those two philosophies collide.
Games 1 and 2: Toronto Blows the Doors Off the Pitching Plan
The official box scores for Games 1 and 2 might as well be crime scenes for the Yankees pitching staff.
Game 1 was a 10-1 drubbing at Rogers Centre. Game 2 was somehow even uglier on the mound, a 13-7 loss where the final score actually made it look closer than it was. In the first 18 innings of the series, the Blue Jays put up 23 runs.
The specifics matter here.
Luis Gil started Game 1 and never really looked in control. The Jays stacked quality at bats, punished mistakes, and forced the Yankees to lean on the bullpen far earlier than they wanted. In a five game series, that kind of early drain on the pitching staff is brutal.
Game 2 was the real gut punch. Max Fried, signed to be the co-ace with Gerrit Cole on the shelf, got ambushed. Toronto strung together hits, created traffic, and then Guerrero Jr. detonated the game with the first postseason grand slam in Blue Jays history. By the time the sixth inning rolled around, the scoreline looked like a football game, not a playoff baseball game.
From my perspective, these two games exposed three big pitching issues:
- Rotation depth behind the top names was not ready for this level of contact heavy lineup. When Fried does not have it and Gil gets out of sync, there is no third arm I absolutely trust to stop the bleeding on the road.
- The middle relief group was overexposed early. Once long relief and lower leverage arms had to soak innings in blowouts, they were either burned or less than fresh when tighter spots came later in the series.
- The staff as a whole was built more to miss bats than to manage contact. Against Toronto’s approach, that is a dangerous bet. When the Yankees did not get strikeouts, they gave up a lot of loud contact in hitter friendly counts.
I can live with one bad start in a Division Series. Two games in a row where the opponent scores double digits is something else entirely.
Game 3: The Comeback That Highlighted the Offensive Problem
Game 3 at Yankee Stadium will probably live in Yankees highlight reels for years. It was also the clearest illustration of the offense’s identity in October, for better and for worse.
Down 6-1 to start the middle innings, the Yankees finally woke up. Aaron Judge launched a three run homer to drag the team back into it. Later, Jazz Chisholm Jr. added a solo shot. The lineup poured on eight unanswered runs and won 9-6 to avoid the sweep and force a Game 4.
As a fan in that moment, I loved every second of it. That is why I watch.
As someone trying to be honest about this team, I had another thought at the same time: this was exactly how the Yankees want to win, and it is also exactly why they keep falling short in October.
In this series, the Yankees scored 1, 7, 9, and 2 runs. Most of their scoring came in big bursts powered by home runs and extra base hits. When they strung together innings, it was almost always because someone left a pitch in the wrong quadrant and the Yankees punished it.
What I did not see enough of against Toronto was the other way to score:
- Shortening up with two strikes and shooting something through the right side.
- Sacrifice flies after leadoff doubles.
- Productive outs that turn a walk and a single into an actual run.
The Yankees can do those things in flashes, but those are not habits. The Jays, on the other hand, showed a lineup that could hurt you with slug, but could also work counts, spoil tough pitches, and build innings without needing a three run homer every time.
When the power shows up, this offense looks unstoppable. When the power is muted even a little, the at bats can get big and empty very fast. This ALDS was another example of that pattern.
Game 4: Eight Blue Jays Pitchers vs a Very Familiar Script
Game 4 might have been the most frustrating night of the series for me, because it felt so avoidable.
Toronto used eight different pitchers in the clincher. They mixed and matched, played the platoon game, and never let any Yankee hitter get comfortable. It was not a dominant performance in the traditional sense, but it was incredibly effective. The Yankees finished with two runs on six hits and spent the final innings chasing a comeback that never really felt close.
On the other side, the Yankees leaned on a smaller circle of trusted arms and tried to stretch them. That is understandable in an elimination game, but it also exposed how little faith the staff seems to have in their fifth, sixth, and seventh options.
Here is what that told me about the pitching infrastructure:
- The Yankees are still too top heavy in the bullpen. When one or two key guys do not have their best stuff, there is not a deep pool of medium trust arms to cover the gap.
- The Blue Jays were more comfortable embracing chaos. They were willing to go batter to batter and treat the game like a puzzle. The Yankees tried to ride their preferred script. In a modern postseason where every inning is its own mini game, that rigidity hurts.
It is not that the Yankees bullpen is bad. It is that the gap between the top and the rest is too big, especially against a lineup that is willing to take walks and extend innings.
Defense and Fundamentals: Margins That Matter in October
If you look at the raw scores, this series was defined by Toronto’s bats and the Yankees pitching staff getting torched. I think that is true. I also think the softer stuff, defense, baserunning, little decisions, tilted the margins in ways that never show up in a simple box score.
Toronto looked more secure defensively. They converted the routine plays. They limited extra bases. They did not give the Yankees many free outs or extra pitches.
The Yankees, by contrast, felt tense. Balls that needed crisp reads turned into in between hops. Throws that had to be on the money sometimes sailed or tailed. There were not a bunch of circus level disasters, but there were enough small leaks to matter in games where the Yankees were trying to crawl back from big deficits.
Fundamentals show up in other ways too. The Blue Jays were quicker to take the extra base, more aggressive when a fielder had to turn his back, and better at those little first to third decisions that make a pitcher work from the stretch one more time. The Yankees often played it safer, which is understandable if you do not fully trust your own ability to prevent runs on the other side.
In a tight October baseball game, that stuff is often the difference between scoring three runs and scoring five. In this series, the Yankees could not afford to leak any more runs, and they did anyway.
What This ALDS Told Me About the 2025 Yankees
Stepping back, here is what I think this series really told us about where the Yankees are as a franchise.
- The offense is still too binary. When the ball is flying, the team looks like a monster. When the power is even slightly suppressed, there is not enough of a contact and situational backbone to create runs in other ways. Toronto exploited that by refusing to give in and by owning the zone better in big spots.
- The pitching staff needs more than star power. Relying on Fried, Rodón, and a couple of late inning relievers works from April through September. Against a lineup like the Blue Jays, you need more arms you trust to get tough hitters out in medium leverage spots. This series showed exactly how quickly things can unravel when your front line guys stumble.
- Depth and flexibility beat top heavy talent in October. The Jays did not have the single best player in the series. Judge still looked like Judge. What they did have was a cleaner roster fit for this environment: enough power, more contact, better overall defense, and a pitching plan that embraced matchup baseball.
- Regular season dominance is not the problem anymore. Both teams won 94 games. The Yankees beat the Red Sox to get out of the Wild Card. The issue is not making the tournament. It is the way this roster translates once you are facing the best teams in the league for a week straight.
The Lessons for 2026 and Beyond
If the Yankees front office treats this series as a random four game blip, I think they will waste another year of Aaron Judge’s prime. If they treat it as a clear message about what wins in October in 2025, there is a path forward.
Here is what I think has to change:
- Add more contact and athleticism to the lineup, even at the cost of some slug. One or two bats who put the ball in play, run well, and catch everything they touch would give this offense a different gear when the ball is not flying.
- Invest in true middle tier pitching depth. Not just back of the rotation bodies, but legit multi inning relievers and swing men that you trust to get Blue Jays caliber hitters out when an early plan blows up.
- Treat defense as a primary skill, not a bonus. The Blue Jays showed how valuable it is when your defenders do not give away any extra outs. The Yankees need to value that as much as they value exit velocity.
- Build a bullpen and game plan that can win a matchup series. That means more arms with different looks, and a willingness to deploy them creatively instead of hoping the traditional pecking order survives every storm.
This ALDS loss did not happen in a vacuum. It is part of a long pattern of October exits where the Yankees look like a slightly worse version of their regular season selves and run into an opponent that is better built for this environment. Toronto just happened to be the latest team to underline that reality in bright blue ink.
