Ya'll have some explaining to do. I mean, how many times are Yankees fans supposed to watch the same ending before the people running this organization admit the script needs to change?
Another October is over. Another opportunity is gone. Tampa Bay swept the Yankees out of the ALDS, extending a championship drought that now stretches across 17 seasons. And the questions reach well beyond one lineup, one pitching change or one injured superstar. They reach the people responsible for deciding what Yankees baseball is supposed to look like.
Hal Steinbrenner. Brian Cashman. Randy Levine. Aaron Boone. Different responsibilities. Different levels of authority. The same obligation to answer for the product.
Yankees fans deserve a team that looks prepared when the season is on the line. They deserve players who understand situations, coaches who correct recurring mistakes and executives who can recognize when their own approach needs to change. That is a reasonable expectation for any organization. For the Yankees, it should be the starting point.
And now some of the people who wore the uniform are asking the same questions.
The criticism is coming from inside the Yankees family
Anthony Rizzo spent four seasons in the Bronx. After this year’s elimination, he offered a blunt assessment on Ross and Rizzo Unfiltered:
“Like we just keep doing the same every year and we don’t win. That’s insanity.”
Rizzo acknowledged the talent in the lineup while questioning why the results against strong competition keep falling short. That distinction matters. A roster can look impressive and still expose serious weaknesses in how an organization assembles, prepares and deploys it.
CC Sabathia went straight at the culture.
“No disrespect, but they don’t know what that standard is.”
During an October discussion with Dellin Betances and Chris Young, Sabathia described the influence of veterans and former Yankees who once made the organization’s expectations tangible. He questioned whether that standard was still being maintained. The conversation also addressed preparation and Boone’s tendency to defend his players.
Those are serious concerns from someone whose credibility in that clubhouse was earned through performance, toughness and leadership.
Alex Rodriguez, meanwhile, called for an organizational rethink on FOX:
“There has to be a philosophy change.”
Importantly, Rodriguez explicitly stopped short of demanding firings. His criticism concerned the Yankees’ baseball judgment, defensive priorities and uncertainty across several positions entering an elimination game. You can disagree with his preferred solution. You cannot reasonably dismiss that diagnosis as a fan yelling from the cheap seats.
Then came Joe Girardi.
“There are things that happen and you wonder, ‘Is someone saying anything?’”
Girardi pointed to Austin Wells’ baserunning mistake and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s costly throw during the postseason. He also defended Boone’s work under difficult circumstances. His comments were a warning about accountability and repeated fundamental failures, rather than a straightforward demand to replace the manager.
That nuance strengthens the larger argument. These men do not need to agree about Boone’s future to recognize that something in the organization needs attention.
The mistakes have become too familiar
Go back to the fifth inning of Game 5 of the 2024 World Series.
Aaron Judge dropped a fly ball. Anthony Volpe made a throwing error. Gerrit Cole failed to cover first on a grounder to Anthony Rizzo. A five-run lead disappeared in an inning that became an unforgettable exhibit of baseball breaking down at its most basic level.
Now move forward to Game 2 against Tampa Bay in 2026: four Yankees errors, with defensive mistakes and catcher’s interference helping turn the game against them.
Every player makes mistakes. Great players make mistakes in enormous moments.
But recurring failures demand more than reassurance. They demand an examination of preparation, positioning, instruction and consequences. When similar problems survive from one postseason to another, the organization has to explain what it changed and why those changes failed.
Fans should be able to see the correction.
Jake Bauers deserves an honest examination
Watching Jake Bauers become the 2026 NLCS MVP for Milwaukee should make the Yankees uncomfortable. The former Yankee helped drive the Brewers past the Dodgers and into the World Series.
But there is an important fact here: New York did work with him.
Reporting in 2023 documented swing and approach adjustments during Bauers’ time in the Yankees’ system, including changes to his bat path. The organization identified something worth developing and invested instruction in it.
The Yankees subsequently traded him to Milwaukee for prospects Jace Avina and Brian Sánchez. His later success does not automatically prove that trade was indefensible when it happened. Player development is uneven, and no team gets every decision right.
Here is the question Cashman should have to answer: How well does the organization recognize which improvements will last, and how effectively does it carry promising developmental work into sustained major league production?
Bauers’ success makes that question worth asking. Claiming the Yankees never helped him would let the front office dismiss the criticism with an easy factual correction.
The stronger argument demands an explanation of what they saw, why they moved on and what they learned.
Players have questioned the instruction before. The concerns predate this October. In 2023, former Yankees minor leaguer Ben Ruta offered a devastating assessment:
“There is no baseball being taught there anymore.”
Ruta criticized a developmental emphasis he believed rewarded selected measurable outcomes while neglecting broader baseball instruction. His account represents one former player’s experience, rather than a complete audit of the farm system. Still, it raised a question the Yankees should welcome being tested: Are their players learning how to win games, or mainly how to improve the measurements the organization values?
Sonny Gray also publicly questioned the fit between his abilities and the Yankees’ instruction. In 2019, he criticized their emphasis on a slider he described as “a s----y spinning pitch.” Contemporary analysis challenged parts of his recollection using pitch-tracking data, so his explanation should not be treated as the final word on his struggles. But it remains a documented example of a player saying the prescribed approach did not suit him.
Good coaching requires adapting instruction to the person receiving it. An organization should be confident enough in its methods to recognize when those methods need adjustment.
Boone’s responsibility cannot disappear behind his popularity. The Yankees hired Boone without previous coaching or managerial experience. That was their choice, and they own it.
Years later, however, his original résumé is a weaker argument than the work fans can now judge for themselves.
Does his team execute? Does it respond to mistakes? Does it enter difficult situations prepared? Does his leadership produce observable improvement?
A manager can care about his players, maintain their trust and still fall short in enforcing standards. Public support has value. So does knowing when support needs to include a hard conversation and a changed expectation.
It would also be inaccurate to describe the entire coaching operation as having no experience. The more useful demand is that the Yankees demonstrate that their instruction works.
Fans are entitled to ask why basic problems remain visible after years of opportunities to address them.
Randy Levine’s record includes a lesson in how to alienate a player
If Levine wants to discuss organizational standards, his handling of Dellin Betances’ 2017 arbitration case belongs in the conversation. After the Yankees won, Levine publicly criticized the position taken by Betances’ representatives. Betances said the experience left him feeling attacked:
“They take me in a room, trash me for about an hour-and-a-half.”
Levine also praised Betances as an elite setup man, but his decision to continue the dispute publicly helped turn a completed salary proceeding into an unnecessary confrontation. That episode is an older example, and it should be identified as one. It nevertheless illustrates a leadership failure worth remembering: winning a negotiation does not excuse damaging a relationship with someone whose work you depend on.
The Yankees should bring the same energy to examining executive mistakes that they bring to defending executive decisions.
Hal owns the outcome. Steinbrenner has said, “I don’t believe I should have a $300 million payroll to win a championship.” Fair enough. Then demand better results from the people spending it.
A large payroll is a resource. Turning it into a balanced, prepared team is management’s job.
Hal does not have to imitate his father’s temper. He does have to establish expectations that carry consequences. He chooses who leads baseball operations. He decides whether continuity remains justified. He has the authority to require an independent examination of development, coaching and roster construction.
Backing your employees can be admirable. Continuing to back an approach without demanding convincing evidence of improvement becomes something else.
The public record cannot tell us every private conversation Hal or Levine has had. Fans can judge whether the organization’s actions are producing the promised standard.
The Yankees need changes people can see
A serious response would begin with clear responsibility: for player development, defensive preparation, baserunning, roster balance and the correction of recurring mistakes.
It would include baseball voices empowered to challenge Cashman’s assumptions. It would judge coaches by their ability to teach and improve players. It would examine departures such as Bauers without pretending every successful former Yankee represents a scandal.
And it would require ownership to explain why the people entrusted with solving these problems are still the right people to do it.
Fans should not have to choose between loving the Yankees and questioning their leadership.
That love is precisely why the questions matter.
Rizzo is questioning the repetition. Sabathia is questioning the standard. Rodriguez is questioning the philosophy. Girardi is questioning the accountability.
The men running the Yankees should be answering them.
The championship history belongs to the franchise.
The responsibility for what happens next belongs to its leadership.
