We all have our fandom idiosyncrasies – I certainly do – but there’s this weird reactionary behavior in sports where fans refuse to give credit to overachievers. If a team, or an individual player, has consensus expectations placed on them and those expectations are clearly exceeded, that’s reason for compliments and applause, not condemnations.
And make no mistake: Everybody – the experts, you, me – was wrong about the Yankees in 2025. The 2025 Yankees clearly overachieved and should be credited and acknowledged accordingly.
Let’s go back to late March of 2025 to properly frame this discussion…
FanGraphs staff predictions had the Yanks at third place in the AL East.
Baseball Prospectus’ preview series had the Yanks winning 85 games.
MLB.com had them as the 8th best team in MLB. (They had the third most wins in ’25.)
Of the six CBS Sports staff, only one predicted they’d win the division, four said they’d miss the playoffs.
Mike Petriello had them as a second-tier team along with Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia and the Mets. (Philadelphia is the only one to get as far as the Yanks did.)
ESPN had them at 89 wins.
In other words, if you were told on Opening Day that the Yanks would win 94 games, win a postseason series, and were in the ALDS, with a pitching matchup advantage in four of the five games – you would have signed on for that 100 times out of 100.
Max Fried and Carlos Rodon were both great this season and both got lit up in the ALDS, as sometimes even the best do. Shit happens in baseball. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great season.
Now, before you get your pinstripes in a bunch, let me address the ghost of the multiple time convicted felon, suspended owner of the past in the corner of the rom:
If your argument is that a franchise that is so valuable it’s Silver Spoons owner could throw $2 billion in the East River tomorrow and still be more valuable than the Dodgers and Mets should set their expectations higher than “80 something wins and hope we win a coin flip series” I agree 100% – I’ve been saying that for years. But that’s on the cowardice and self-serving interests of ownership and the front office.
It certainly is not on Aaron Boone, the coaching staff, or the players, who rather clearly exceeded expectations in 2025.
It was a damn good year. I’m going to circle back soon with a couple more thoughts on ’25 before we turn our sights to 2026.
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