2018 Yankees

The 2018 New York Yankees won 100 games and didn't win the division. Let that sink in. A hundred wins -- the first time the club had hit that mark since the 2009 championship team -- and it wasn't enough to finish first. Because the Red Sox decided to win 108. You can do everything right, stack the lineup with five guys who hit 24-plus homers, and still end up as a Wild Card team. That's baseball in the AL East. That's 2018.

The Blockbuster

It all started on December 11, 2017, when Cashman pulled off the biggest Yankee trade since A-Rod. The club acquired Giancarlo Stanton -- the reigning NL MVP, fresh off 59 homers and a unanimous vote -- from the Marlins for Starlin Castro and a couple of minor leaguers. The price was laughably low. Derek Jeter, running Miami's fire sale, practically gift-wrapped a $325 million slugger and shipped him to the Bronx. Stanton had a full no-trade clause and rejected the Cardinals and Giants before choosing New York. He wanted to hit next to Aaron Judge. Can you blame him?

The idea was simple and terrifying for opposing pitchers: Judge and Stanton in the same lineup, back-to-back, night after night. Two guys who could hit a ball 450 feet without trying hard. Cashman stacked the deck. The rest of baseball braced for impact.

Opening Day Fireworks

Stanton went 3-for-5 with two homers in his Yankees debut on March 29. TWO HOMERS. The trade was already paying for itself before April was over (at least emotionally). But here's the thing about Stanton's first year in pinstripes -- it was a constant push-and-pull between "this guy's a monster" and "why can't he hit at home?" He went 0-for-his-first-batch at Yankee Stadium to start the year, and the Bronx crowd -- God love 'em -- got restless fast. The boos came early. They always do.

By season's end, Stanton hit .266 with 38 homers and 100 RBI across 158 games. On any other team, that's a franchise-year stat line. In New York, coming off 59 bombs, people called it a disappointment. (It wasn't. But try telling that to talk radio.)

The Kids Are Here

The real story of 2018 wasn't Stanton's adjustment. It was two rookies who showed up and acted like they'd been playing in the Bronx their whole lives.

Gleyber Torres -- the crown jewel prospect Cashman got from the Cubs in the 2016 Chapman trade -- arrived in early May and immediately looked like he belonged. Twenty-one years old, playing second base, hitting 24 homers with an .820 OPS. He made the All-Star team as a rookie. The Chapman deal already looked like highway robbery, and Torres hadn't even scratched the surface yet.

Miguel Andujar grabbed third base and refused to let go. The kid hit .297 with 27 homers, 92 RBI, and 47 doubles -- one of the highest doubles totals by any rookie in baseball history. His glove at third was a problem (we all saw the errors), but that bat was freakin' electric. Andujar finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting behind Shohei Ohtani, and honestly, in a year without a two-way unicorn from Japan, he'd have won it going away.

Torres and Andujar combined for 51 homers and 169 RBI. From rookies. The farm system was paying dividends in real time.

Sevy's Breakout (And Breakdown)

Luis Severino was the ace. Full stop. He went 19-8 with a 3.39 ERA, struck out 220 batters in 191 innings, and made the All-Star team. At 24, Sevy looked like he was on the verge of becoming one of those guys -- the type of pitcher you build a rotation around for a decade. His fastball sat at 97, his slider was filthy, and he attacked hitters with a confidence that hadn't been seen from a homegrown Yankees arm since Andy Pettitte.

Behind Sevy, the rotation had Tanaka (12-6, 3.75 ERA) doing his usual steady thing, CC Sabathia reinventing himself for the 400th time (9-7, 3.65 ERA), and Sonny Gray being Sonny Gray -- which is to say, an absolute mess. Gray went 11-9 with a 4.90 ERA and looked like he'd rather be anywhere else on earth than pitching in the Bronx. (He got his wish -- Cashman shipped him to Cincinnati after the season, where he magically turned back into a good pitcher. Funny how that works.)

The Wrist

July 26, 2018. Kansas City. Jakob Junis threw a 93-mph fastball that caught Judge on the right wrist. He stayed in the game for a few innings because he's Aaron Judge and that's what Aaron Judge does. But the X-rays told the real story: chip fracture, ulnar styloid bone. No surgery needed, but seven weeks on the shelf.

Before the injury, Judge was hitting .285 with 26 homers and a .946 OPS in 99 games. He was on pace for 42, maybe 45 homers alongside Stanton. The Judge-Stanton tandem was supposed to terrify the league all summer. Instead, it got cut short by one pitch. Judge came back in September, but the power wasn't the same. He finished with 27 homers in 112 games -- a "what if" season that still stings.

That wrist fracture was the 2018 season's turning point. You can draw a straight line from Junis's fastball to the ALDS exit.

The Cavalry Arrives

Cashman didn't sit around feeling sorry for himself when Judge went down. The trade deadline was an absolute masterclass:

J.A. Happ came over from Toronto on July 26 and went 7-0 with a 2.69 ERA in 11 starts. Seven wins, zero losses. The guy was automatic.

Zack Britton arrived from Baltimore on July 24, adding a ground-ball machine to an already nasty bullpen.

And then there was Luke Voit. Acquired from St. Louis on July 29 for basically nothing, Voit showed up and hit like he'd sold his soul to the baseball gods. In 39 games as a Yankee, he slashed .333/.408/.689 with 14 homers. An OPS north of 1.090. From a guy nobody had heard of. The first base job that Greg Bird kept fumbling away? Voit grabbed it and didn't give it back for years. (Sometimes the best trades are the ones nobody talks about.)

Boone's First Ride

Aaron Boone replaced Joe Girardi after the 2017 season, and the hire made half the fanbase lose their minds. The guy's only qualification seemed to be that he'd hit a walk-off homer in the 2003 ALCS and had been doing TV for ESPN. No managerial experience. None. Zero.

So naturally he won 100 games.

Boone's calm, player-friendly style turned out to be exactly what this young roster needed. He let the kids play, kept the clubhouse loose, and didn't overthink things. After Girardi's by-the-book rigidity, Boone felt like a breath of fresh air. The 100-win first season shut up most of the critics -- though October would reopen that conversation real quick.

The Problem Named Boston

Here's the brutal truth about 2018: the Yankees were great and the Red Sox were better. Boston won 108 games behind Mookie Betts (who won the MVP), J.D. Martinez (who hit roughly everything thrown in his direction), and a rotation anchored by Chris Sale. Alex Cora's first year managing was just stupid good. The Sox led the division wire to wire, and the Yankees spent the whole year chasing a ghost.

A hundred wins. Second place. Eight games back. In most years, 100 wins gets you a parade. In 2018, it got you the Wild Card.

October -- Short and Painful

The Wild Card Game against Oakland was the easy part. Severino started, the bullpen dominated, Judge hit a homer, Stanton hit a homer, and the Yanks rolled 7-2 at the Stadium. Professional, clean, exactly what you want from a one-game elimination. On to Boston.

The ALDS started at Fenway. Game 1: Boston 5, Yankees 4. Happ started and took the loss. J.D. Martinez crushed a three-run homer in the first, and the Yanks couldn't quite claw all the way back. Tight game, wrong result.

Game 2: The Yankees woke up. Tanaka outpitched David Price (shocking absolutely no one who'd watched Price choke in October for a decade), and the offense broke through for a 6-2 win. Series tied 1-1. Heading back to the Bronx.

Game 3: The worst game of the year. The worst game of the Boone era, actually. October 8, Yankee Stadium, and Severino -- the ace, the guy they'd built around all year -- got shelled. He couldn't get out of the first inning. Boston scored early, scored often, and never stopped. 16-1. That's not a baseball score. That's a football score. The Stadium emptied by the fifth inning. Sixteen to freakin' one.

Game 4: The Yankees fought. They made it close -- Boston 4, Yankees 3. But close doesn't count in October. Porcello got the win, Kimbrel locked it down, and the Red Sox clinched the series 3-1. They'd go on to destroy the Dodgers in the World Series, because of course they did.

The 2018 season ended the way nobody wanted: watching Boston celebrate at Yankee Stadium.

Key Moments

It's the biggest stage in the game. You want to be where you have the best chance to win.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the 2018 Yankees record?

The 2018 Yankees went 100-62, finishing second in the AL East -- eight games behind the Boston Red Sox (108-54). They won the AL Wild Card Game against Oakland 7-2 before losing the ALDS to Boston 3 games to 1.

How did Giancarlo Stanton do in his first year with the Yankees?

Stanton hit .266 with 38 home runs and 100 RBI in 158 games during his first season in pinstripes. He made the All-Star team and showed stretches of the terrifying power that made him the NL MVP the year before. The numbers were excellent by any normal standard, but the New York media measured him against his 59-homer 2017, which made "good" feel like "not enough."

What happened to Aaron Judge in 2018?

Judge suffered a chip fracture of the right wrist on July 26, 2018, when a Jakob Junis fastball hit him during a game in Kansas City. He'd been hitting .285 with 26 homers and a .946 OPS in 99 games before the injury. He missed about seven weeks and came back in September with diminished power, finishing with 27 homers in 112 games. The wrist was the biggest "what if" of the season.

Who won the 2018 ALDS between the Yankees and Red Sox?

The Red Sox won the series 3 games to 1. Tanaka gave the Yankees their only win in Game 2 (6-2), but the crushing blow was Game 3 -- a 16-1 Boston demolition at Yankee Stadium where Severino couldn't get out of the first inning. The Red Sox went on to beat the Dodgers and win the World Series.

How many home runs did the 2018 Yankees hit?

The 2018 Yankees smashed 267 home runs, a franchise record. Five players hit at least 24: Stanton (38), Judge (27), Andujar (27), Gregorius (27), and Torres (24). And Judge missed seven weeks with a broken wrist -- the total could've been even higher.

A hundred wins. A franchise-record 267 homers. Two rookie stars, a new MVP slugger, and a first-year manager who exceeded every expectation thrown at him. And the lasting image is Severino walking off the mound in the first inning of Game 3 while Boston piled it on. That's 2018 -- a season where being really, really good still wasn't good enough.