The autopsy on the New York Yankees’ 2024 season could be described as “dead on arrival.”

For all their winning and monumental performances from the likes of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto throughout the year, they were often not a fundamentally sound team from the start – too many fielding and baserunning errors that many thought would ruin their season.

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During Wednesday’s World Series Game 5, the Yankees defense did just that, wresting away a 5-0 lead and ultimately watching the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate the World Series in their stadium as 7-6 winners. While Yankees legend Alex Rodriguez couldn’t believe what he was seeing, he told FOX viewers that these were the Yankees of 2024 and placed the blame on manager Aaron Boone and general manager Brian Cashman.

“This is one of the biggest meltdowns I’ve ever seen in 40 years,” Rodriguez said during the post-game show alongside Hall of Famer Derek Jeter and David Ortiz.

“This is who they’ve been all year. They have been very inconsistent and so from a manager and front office perspective, when you see problems you have to nip them in the bud. They’ve been sloppy all year. They were sloppy against Kansas City, sloppy against Cleveland, but you can’t get away with that when you have a much superior team in the LA Dodgers. Very unfortunate.”

Those repeated bad habits, often publicly excused by Boone, raised playoff concerns — which the Yankees largely overcame until facing the Dodgers in the World Series. In the fateful fifth inning, the Yankees led 5-0. Ten batters later, the Dodgers and Yankees were tied at 5-5, all of the Dodgers’ runs were unearned.

In that frame, New York committed two errors (and three for the game, which followed later on a catcher’s interference) and big-league Gerrit Cole failed to cover first base on an Anthony Rizzo ground ball, which would minimize the damage. have limited. The collapse began when center fielder Aaron Judge failed to take a catch from Tommy Edman in center on the second batter of the game (for his first error of the season) and continued on the next play when shortstop Anthony Volpe made a throw to third base failed. base.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an inning like that, especially in the World Series or in the postseason game,” Jeter said. “Look, the Yankees made some mistakes. You can’t make mistakes against a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers. That particular inning you gave them six outs.”