Yanks' year in review: They were on top of the World . . . until they weren't

The Yankees had waited 15 years to get back to the World Series.

 For a franchise that sees late October baseball as a birthright, that's something approaching an eternity.

“A long time,” owner Hal Steinbrenner said on the field in Cleveland after the Yankees clinched their 41st American League pennant with a Game 5 victory over the Guardians. “It felt long.”

As it turned out, that on-field celebration at Cleveland’s Progressive Field would be the pinnacle for the 2024 Yankees.

They fell to the Dodgers in five games in a forgettable World Series flop, a series that started with Nestor Cortes allowing a walk-off grand slam to Freddie Freeman in Game 1 and ended with the Yankees banana-peeling themselves in the fifth inning of Game 5 as they flushed a 5-0 lead.

“I think falling short in the World Series will stay with me until I die,” Aaron Judge said in the silence of the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after Game 5.

Judge’s drop of a routine fly ball — the first error of the season for the typically sure-handed centerfielder —  aided the Dodgers’ fifth-inning rally, the capper for yet another rough postseason for the Yankees’ captain.

Judge, drafted in 2013, never played for George Steinbrenner, the win-the-World-Series-or-the-season-was-a-failure owner who died in July 2010.

But Judge, much like the club’s previous captain, Derek Jeter, bluntly and without hesitation uses the word  “failure”  to describe any season that ends without a title.

And Judge did so again after October’s World Series flameout.

But was 2024 truly a failure?

Certainly, for Judge, even with more playoff disappointment added to a career resume already full of it, the season was not.

After a brutal start to the season, Judge, who was hitting .197 as late as May 2, caught fire. He ended the season hitting .322 with 58 homers, a .458 on-base percentage and 1.159 OPS to win his second AL MVP award in three seasons.

Judge, of course, benefited from having Juan Soto hitting in front of him. Soto, since departed to the Mets for 15 years and $765 million (the Yankees offered $760 million over 16 years), was every bit the “transformational bat” that general manager Brian Cashman said he would be after landing the outfielder via trade during the 2023 winter meetings.

Soto was productive from Day 1 — homering in his spring training debut and throwing out the potential tying run at the plate  in the ninth inning of the Yankees' season-opening victory in Houston — and would have been in the thick of the MVP discourse if not for Judge. Soto, the most consistent of all Yankees hitters in 2024, batted .288 with 41 homers, a career high, and a .989 OPS.

Judge and Soto helped give the Yankees one of the best offenses in the game, though they weren’t the only reasons why. No one else came close to approaching their consistency, but there were others who had their moments.

Rookie catcher Austin Wells, even with a brutal postseason, solidified his standing as a potential cornerstone with both his work behind the plate and his comfort in sliding into the cleanup spot — a black hole much of the season — in the season’s second half. Giancarlo Stanton stayed relatively healthy and hit 27 homers, then, along with Soto, nearly carried the Yankees offensively in the postseason to a World Series title.

Anthony Volpe, again solid and at times spectacular at shortstop in his sophomore season, didn’t make as big a jump on the offensive side as the organization had hoped, but there still were far more positives than negatives. Jazz Chisholm Jr. provided a needed spark at the plate and on the bases after being acquired at the trade deadline.

Ace Gerrit Cole, the AL Cy Young Award winner in 2023, started the season on the injured list because of right elbow inflammation and was limited to 17 starts. But the rest of the rotation — namely Clarke Schmidt, Carlos Rodon and Nestor Cortes through the first two months  and eventual AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil throughout the season — helped mitigate Cole’s absence. As did the bullpen, which struggled for a significant part of the season’s second half but was lights-out in the first half (and, led by Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes, recaptured that form in the postseason).

Much went the Yankees' way in the postseason, starting with the fact that two teams from the always-to-be-treated-with-skepticism-come-October AL Central (first the Royals, then the Guardians) stood in their way of reaching the World Series.

But teams can only play who's in front of them, and the Yankees, as good teams will do, took care of business against Kansas City and Cleveland.

But that stopped cold against the Dodgers. The cruel ending was reminiscent of a comment made by long-time Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner after his team lost the 2018 Division Series against the Red Sox.

“This is the time of year,” Gardner said, “when good teams get sent home and great teams move on.”