Buck Martinez, the silver-haired broadcaster of the Blue Jays, was a popular man while wheeling his luggage out of Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night. As Martinez made his way toward the bus, team staffers were hugging him and congratulating him as if he had just blasted a couple of home runs to send Toronto to the ALCS.

“You were proven right, Buck,” one shouted.

“They f—– it up, didn’t they?” Martinez responded.

Yes, the New York Yankees did all of that on their way out the October door.

An old-school major-league catcher from the 1970s and ’80s, Martinez had made this declaration about Toronto’s divisional rival on a broadcast last month: “They’re not a good team.” Boone contested that claim before the Division Series, maintaining that his Yanks are “a really good team.” He said of Martinez: “He’s wrong.”

As it turned out, Boone was the one who was wrong.

“I never said it for any satisfaction other than I just thought (the Yankees) made a lot of mistakes,” Martinez told The Athletic. “And in these games, mistakes will kill you.”

Mistakes like the one Jazz Chisholm Jr. made in the seventh inning of Game 4, when he kicked a double-play ball into the outfield and helped Toronto turn a 2-1 lead into a 4-1 lead and, eventually, a 5-2 victory that ended yet another Yankees season painfully short of a ticker-tape parade.

“Turned the game around,” Martinez said. “And that’s what this team, Toronto, doesn’t do. Last night (Game 3) was uncharacteristic.

“I didn’t say what I said about the Yankees to be correct. I said what I thought was in my heart. Milwaukee and the Blue Jays play baseball like we used to play it.”

And the Yankees do not.

Truth be told, Boone indicted his own club in advance. Before the start of the Wild Card Series with Boston, the manager said the 2025 New York Yankees were the very best of the seven teams he led to the playoffs.

Better than the team he took to last year’s World Series.

Good enough, in other words, to win the whole thing.

“This has been a tough year for me personally. All you go through to become this team you think can really do something special, and for it to abruptly end is always difficult”

Aaron Boone spoke after the Yankees were eliminated from the Postseason pic.twitter.com/kvcCvh0qne

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 9, 2025

Boone based his take on the way his Yankees had finished the regular season, their good health, and the various ways they could vanquish opponents. General manager Brian Cashman had added speed, athleticism, defensive upgrades and a reliable closer before the trade deadline. Add that to a certified ace and the power in place, including one of the greatest sluggers of all time, and it was clear the Yankees had everything they needed to finally win their first championship since 2009.

And what did they do with all those pieces?

They barely defeated a Boston team that had an absurdly weak lineup, and yet one that might’ve beaten the Yanks in two games if Roman Anthony were available. They got humiliated in their two Division Series games in Toronto, got a reprieve in the form of Aaron Judge’s all-around brilliance in Game 3, and then got eliminated by the Blue Jays on Wednesday night, losing 5-2 in Game 4 while showing no sudden-death fight whatsoever.

A year after the Dodgers embarrassed them in the World Series, seizing upon — and later mocking — their fundamental flaws, the Yankees came up even smaller in the second round of this tournament. This was supposed to be their time. The Yanks saw firsthand what it took to win it all, and they were expected to apply the lessons the Dodgers had taught them to this October.

They applied nothing of the sort. The Yankees watched Judge play the game of his life Tuesday night, blasting one of the most dramatic home runs before one of the most emotional crowds in recent postseason memory, and then carried none of that feel-good karma into Game 4.

It was as if Game 3 was an isolated event booked in the middle of a Toronto smackdown. It was an exorcism of Judge’s October ghosts more than it was a relevant ballgame.

“They took it to us this series,” Boone said.

The Yankees started blowing this series over the summer when they handed away the division title. Had the Yanks won the AL East, they would’ve played the first two games against the Blue Jays in the Bronx, rather than in the Rogers Centre arena that swallowed them whole. Down 0-2, the Yanks couldn’t deal with consecutive nights of win-or-else pressure in their own building.

When it was all over, Judge appeared before the media looking like a man who had just allowed himself a good cry. He was amazing this October, answering all those uncomfortable questions about his ability to hit when the games matter most, and still the Yankees couldn’t win a championship.

“We didn’t do our job,” Judge said. “Didn’t finish the goal.”

Not even close.

Aaron Judge meets the media after Game 4 of the ALDS. pic.twitter.com/HHEF0KOfJP

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) October 9, 2025

Judge agreed with Boone’s assessment that this 2025 team was better than the 2024 team that included Juan Soto. But Giancarlo Stanton, normally a reliable postseason weapon, provided next to nothing this time around, assuming Judge’s old October role. Trent Grisham and Chisholm were alarmingly quiet. Anthony Volpe was a strikeout machine at the bottom of the order. The starting pitchers not named Cam Schlittler were a problem, and Devin Williams spent Game 4 returning to his wayward ways.

If nothing else, Ryan McMahon played his butt off on both sides of the ball.

In the end, the Yankees just wasted another year of Judge’s prime at the worst possible time — when there was no team in the American League, Toronto included, that should’ve represented a serious threat to them.

Judge will turn 34 in April, when Boone will be starting his ninth year on the job. He is a good manager, not a great one, and at some point someone with the last name of Steinbrenner has to ask:

When is good no longer good enough?

While all but assured of going down among the five greatest Yankees of all time, Judge is also in danger of becoming a tragic franchise figure. If he never wins a championship ring, Judge will end up as a New York, New York cross between another Big Fella, Patrick Ewing, and the old Yankee superstar who was bouncing barechested around the winners’ clubhouse hugging people — Toronto bench coach Don Mattingly.

Across the way, in his Groundhog Day news conference after another early exit, Boone talked and talked about how connected his players were as a group. But if clubhouse chemistry doesn’t show up on the field, well, who really cares?

Boone did say that he is confident the Yankees will break through before adding, “I have been every year.”

And every year, that confidence has been misplaced.

“It’s hard to win the World Series,” the manager said. “I’ve been chasing it all my life.”

The chase this year should have landed the Yankees in the Fall Classic. They had a favorable draw and, for the first time, they had their superstar slugger peaking in the playoffs.

But in a bid to save their season in Game 4, they came out flat and threw it all away. This golden opportunity lost is one that the 2025 New York Yankees will take to their graves.