Austin Wells just admitted the Yankees' biggest flaw as scouts swarm to laugh at them

How many times - HOW MANY TIMES - did you scroll past a tweet on Monday night or Tuesday morning that recounted a "scout's text" to a beat writer about the Yankees, sneering and smirking?

Every single one of them seemed to say something like, "Here we go!" or "Clown show" or "How does this keep happening?" Everybody knows it. It's transcended beyond the territory of "open secret". Every scout is perfectly willing to go on record saying that the Yankees cannot handle pressure and are prone to goofs and flubs.

Maybe they know it's become so obvious to the naked eye that they gain nothing from hiding and leaking their takes. Maybe they know that the organization has proven, three-plus years running, that there will be no repercussions, so they're willing to speak freely without fear of costing anyone their job.

Or maybe they know the reckoning actually is coming, so they don't have to worry about protecting Aaron Boone's feelings any longer? Nah. Probably not that. But maybe that! No, definitely not. Oh well.

Baseball is an infuriating little game of inches that runs and ruins our lives. Maybe, just maybe, if Cody Bellinger's absurdly well-struck fly ball with the bases loaded in the fifth had been pulled a little bit instead of mashed to dead center, we'd be talking about how the Yankees overcame their own first-inning malfeasance and became the first-ever MLB team towin a playoff game while committing three or more errors.

Instead, we're talking about how they had a second unraveling left in 'em after getting whatever that was out of their system in the first inning.

And if the 2024 Dodgers barking about it wasn't enough to let the league in on these scouts' little secret, Austin Wells put the cherry on top in Monday's postgame. As Jazz Chisholm Jr. defended his baffling throw, admitting he'd do it again if given the chance, Wells all but revealed that the Rays poked at the Yankees' gaping wound and left them exposed for the entire league to feast on again next year.

“They put pressure on you. They’re fast, they bust their butt out of the box, so they make you feel like you have to do more," Wells told Bob Klapisch. And the Yankees' rebuttal? Still waiting.

The Rays, the Dodgers, the Toronto Blue Jays ... they aren't building teams to beat the Yankees in the same way the Red Sox were, piling on left-handers in an attempt to counteract the Yankees' boppers (update?). They're merely building baseball teams, and the consequence of the Yankees smashing together a bunch of mismatched, all-or-nothing parts is that baseball teams tend to beat them like drums, rather consistently.

If you can pair 97+ MPH with a changeup that tails away from lefties, field your positon, and gameplan offensively to put pressure on an ace, then congratulations. You've left the Yankees in the mud, fumbling for the ball. The Rays, hitting .203 with no pop in this series, haven't even been special yet. They've just pitched to the promise of the premise and outworked the unprepared and undercooked Yanks.

Maybe next year.

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