The New York Yankees followed up their “worst loss of the year” on Friday with a 2-0 loss on Saturday that featured brutal baserunning and manager Aaron Boone having a heated exchange with the first-base coach.
Ahead of Saturday night’s MLB Speedway Classic broadcast, Yankees legend and current Fox analyst Derek Jeter was asked to offer his thoughts on the team.
And Jeter — a five-time World Series champion with the Yankees — made it very clear that the Yankees “make way too many mistakes” to be a viable title contender at the moment.
Derek Jeter on the Yankees:
“They make way too many mistakes… They had a baserunning mistake today… You have to clean it up… There’s no excuses. You have to play better. If you don’t play better, you’re not going to go very far.” #MLB pic.twitter.com/hWuVZvbUPl https://t.co/XEw4KNCfDq
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 3, 2025
“The thing that’s concerning… They make way too many mistakes,” Jeter said. “Way too many mistakes. You can’t get away making that number of mistakes against great teams. It just doesn’t happen. They had a baserunning mistake today; we saw that guy get thrown out at home plate. You can’t continue to do it. You have to keep clean it up. I mean, it’s that simple. There’s no excuses. You have to play better. If you don’t play better, you’re not going to go very far.”
After being 17 games over .500 entering June 13, the Yankees are now nine games over .500 and in third place, 4.5 games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East. Despite the recent struggles, FanGraphs’ projections still give the Yankees the highest odds among AL teams to win the World Series.
But to Jeter’s point, the Yankees need to play much cleaner baseball and lessen mistakes to compete for a title, or even to just make the postseason. The stretch of poor play has featured an abundance of physical and mental errors, with those issues especially standing out over the Yankees’ last two games.
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.