The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 MLB Wild Card series.
Aaron Boone might have had a good reason to pull Max Fried on Tuesday night, though he was unwilling or unable to provide one. What, exactly, was the Yankees’ manager saving his ace’s wonderful left arm for?
The seventh and eighth years on his contract?
With one out in the seventh inning of Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, Fried did not tell Boone that he was gassed. “I definitely had enough in the tank for whatever the team needed,” Fried said.
And the team needed him to keep pitching brilliant shutout ball against the Boston Red Sox. Fried said the other day he wanted to “empty the tank,” and hey, this wasn’t a random Tuesday night in the second week of June.
This was a playoff duel on the last night of September involving historically bitter rivals. Fried was given a $218 million contract for this very moment. He was locked inside a steel cage match with the indomitable Garrett Crochet, who was mowing down every Yankee not named Anthony Volpe, and it made no sense to cut him off at 102 pitches, especially when Boston ultimately extended Crochet to 117.
Max Fried says he felt good at the end before he was taken out by Aaron Boone:
“I’m going to stay in until I get the ball taken from me” pic.twitter.com/hrFzziOS2P
— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) October 1, 2025
Boone paid the ultimate price by inserting Luke Weaver into a game he didn’t belong in, and after some heart-stopping drama in the ninth inning ended with a sickening thud and a 3-1 Red Sox victory, the Yankees were left to confront this forbidding truth:
They absolutely cannot lose this series. Boone absolutely cannot get bounced from the postseason for a third time by Alex Cora, whose Red Sox eliminated his Yanks in 2018 and 2021.
Boone said it himself before the game while assessing his chances with his seventh playoff appearance over eight seasons in the Bronx.
“I think at this point, where we are as a club, this is the best group we’ve gone in with,” the manager said. While acknowledging the dangerously fickle nature of a best-of-three series, Boone cited his team’s good health and its ability to find different ways to topple the opposition.
“I feel great about our group,” he said. “I feel like they’re playing with a lot of confidence. They’re playing for one another, they trust one another. It should be fun, and hopefully we get it done.”
The Yankees advanced to the World Series in 2024 and, by Boone’s own account, reached the 2025 playoffs as a superior team despite losing Juan Soto to the Mets. They can’t go one-and-done, not after their fundamental breakdowns against the Dodgers last fall cost them their first World Series title since 2009.
This was the run that was supposed to make up for that tragicomedy of errors. A lot of smart baseball people think the Yankees have as good a chance as anyone to win it all this time, and to blow this first-round opportunity the way they blew Game 1 would be to commit a near-criminal act against their fan base.
The Yankees have more talent than the Red Sox, who finished five games behind them in the AL East. I don’t care that the Red Sox have taken 10 of 14 games from the Yanks this year, including six of their last seven meetings in the Bronx. After a head-to-toe review of the visitors’ lineup, I was having a hard time identifying many lethal weapons.
As my Boston-based colleague Steve Buckley pointed out, there was no sign of Manny Ramírez or David Ortiz.
But Cora has something on his good buddy Boone, who suggested the other day that the Red Sox manager was sandbagging everyone by assuming the role of “The Little Engine That Could.” Truth is, Cora knows how to beat the Yankees with inferior players, a fact that leaves the top wild-card seed on the doorstep of the unthinkable.
A loss Wednesday night, or Thursday night, amounts to an unmitigated disaster, one that Boone believes his team will dodge.
“We’ve been playing these tight games for a while now,” he said. “We’ve been playing with a lot on the line seemingly every single day. Tonight was a great baseball game. We just couldn’t get that final punch in, so we’ll be ready to go, and I expect us to come out and get one tomorrow.”
The Yankees had better get one, and then another one, to at least advance to the Division Series. And it sure won’t be easy against Boston, which takes the field with so much belief when paired against its rival. The Yanks will be facing a Game 2 starter in Brayan Bello who has posted a 2.35 ERA against them in 11 starts.
More reason for the Red Sox to feel right at home in the Bronx. In fact, Cora spent some pregame time going on about how comfortable the Yankees make the Red Sox feel in the stadium, from the clubhouse manager to the chef. “There are a lot of things that they do here to accommodate the visiting team,” Cora said.
No, the Yankees did not rip that page from Red Auerbach’s playbook.
So now comes Judge-ment Day for Aaron Judge and friends. Cora planned for his players to test the right fielder’s bum elbow — the Red Sox always attack pinstriped vulnerabilities on the basepaths — and sure enough Nick Sogard turned a single into a double in the seventh because Judge can’t throw the ball. The second baseman scored what would be the winning run.
Joe Torre popped up on the big videoboard to great cheers in the eighth, and it didn’t matter. The Yankees loaded the bases in the ninth with no outs, and it didn’t matter.
Aroldis Chapman, who wasn’t exactly Mr. October when he pitched for the Yanks, continued his late-life revival by striking out Giancarlo Stanton, getting Jazz Chisholm on a soft fly ball, and then blowing away Trent Grisham with a 101 mph four-seamer before turning toward his dugout to scream and slam his left hand against his chest.
Yankees had the bases loaded with no outs in the 9th.
Then Aroldis Chapman retired three straight 😤 #Postseason pic.twitter.com/WbbZvSC7SM
— MLB (@MLB) October 1, 2025
The Yankees need to be saved by their Game 2 starter, Carlos Rodón, a good pitcher who was last seen in the postseason giving up three home runs to the Dodgers in 3 1/3 innings.
“We’re going to show up tomorrow,” Boone promised. “I expect us to do pretty well.”
Ever since Boone’s Game 7 walk-off homer beat Boston in the 2003 ALCS, the Red Sox are 3-0 against the Yankees in playoff matchups with four championships to the Yanks’ one. This series was supposed to reverse that curse.
“We came into this postseason rolling,” Judge said.
Now isn’t the time to start rolling over.
Aaron Boone’s Yankees had better win the next two games. No need to define or else.
(Photo of Yankees manager Aaron Boone taking out Luke Weaver in the seventh inning: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
