Yankees can really only play spoiler as teams head down the stretch

On Tuesday the Yankees kicked off the final homestand of a disappointing 2023 season that, barring a miracle of math more than anything else, will result in them missing the postseason for the first time since 2016.

Still, before facing the Blue Jays, one of the teams ahead of the Yankees in the AL wild-card chase, Aaron Boone said the notion of playing “spoiler” wasn’t necessarily a motivating factor.

“We want to kick your [butt],” Boone said early Tuesday afternoon. “That’s how we’re looking at it.”

The Yankees came into this three-game series with a 76-74 record. They have actually been one of the sport’s hottest teams of late, 16-9 in their last 25 games and with the best record (14-6) in the majors since Aug. 28.

That surge put them six games behind the Mariners and Rangers for the third wild-card spot (the Blue Jays entered Tuesday one game ahead of those two teams at 83-67) but with just 12 games left, counting Tuesday’s, the math is decidedly against the Yankees.

Though they see the Blue Jays six times in the next 1 ½ weeks, winning all six still might not get them all that much closer to a postseason bid. The calendar works against them, as does the fact that over the next two weeks most of the contending teams play each other, making it unlikely two of the teams ahead of them completely collapse.  

It is for that reason FanGraphs had the Yankees’ playoff chances going into Tuesday at 0.4% and BaseballReference had them even lower, at 0.1%.

“Come prepared,” Boone said of the current clubhouse mindset. “Have some really good opponents [this week], Toronto and Arizona that are right in the mix. We want to win, we want to play well. We’re going to prepare to do that as best we can and, hopefully, we can continue to play good baseball and look up at the end and see how it all shakes out. Spoiler? Sure. We want to go out and win so if that means spoiling, then so be it.”

The Yankees came into this series having won five of their last series, including both on a just completed trip that saw them take three of four games in Boston and two of three in Pittsburgh.

Though the odds of postseason baseball remain long, the Yankees’ perspective is they’re not eliminated until they are.

“That’s why we’re here, to go out there and win some games,” Aaron Judge said over the weekend in Pittsburgh. “We’re not out of it, and we’re going to keep fighting, especially with this group. Like they’ve shown us this whole road trip, it doesn’t matter if we’re down to our last out, we’ve still got a chance, and we’re going to go out there and do our best.”  

For Boone, who took over as manager in 2018, this is the first September he’s been a part of in which the games, though technically still with meaning at this point, don’t have a division title or homefield advantage for a Division Series or wild-card round riding on them.

“Different circumstances, but one of the things I’ve been most impressed with, and it’s a credit to these guys and I talked to you guys a lot about it when we were at our lowest of lows and really struggling, that the preparation and the care and the fight was all there,” Boone said. “That’s remained constant, and I think it starts with the leadership in the Aaron Judges and the Gerrit Coles of the world that have set a great tone and set a great example for our young players. And we’ve started to see some fruits from that in the win column, finally, over the last few weeks, which has been nice.”