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NEW YORK -- This is all too familiar for the New York Yankees. After Monday's Game 3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers (LA 4, NY 2), New York is down 3-0 in the World Series, and it's a matter of when the Dodgers will finish off the series, not if. Yes, the Yankees could make a comeback. It would just require flipping a switch the Yankees haven't shown they can flip at any point in the last eight years.

"We're trying to get a game tomorrow," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after Game 3. "That's where our focus lies. Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world."  

With the curtain almost closed, 2024 is shaping up to be a lot like 2017-22, the first seven years of the Aaron Judge era. The Yankees had a very good regular season, one that saw them finish with the American League's best record. They did that by overcoming obvious flaws with big-time power. The Yankees led baseball in home runs as a team and Judge led baseball in home runs individually.

Then came the postseason. The Yankees overpowered an AL Central team. Two, in fact: the Kansas City Royals in the ALDS and the Cleveland Guardians in the ALCS. The baseball gods paved about as favorable road to the AL pennant as possible, and the Yankees took advantage. Kudos to them. You can only play the schedule you're given and the Yankees handled their business.

The World Series, however, has been a different story. The Yankees are on the verge of being swept by the team they should be, but aren't. They aren't as good at developing players as the Dodgers, at identifying free-agent and trade targets, at defensive positioning, at basically everything. These two teams are not in the same weight class, regardless of what the regular-season records say.

Usually the Houston Astros do this to the Yankees. The Astros sent the Yankees home in the 2017, 2019, and 2022 ALCS and each meeting was increasingly noncompetitive. Houston swept the Yankees in four games in 2022, much like the Dodgers are on the verge of doing in the World Series. At no point in Monday's Game 3 did it appear the Yankees were about to make it a game.

The series losses to Houston and, potentially, the Dodgers all look the same. The Yankees pitch fairly well, they are in just about every game, but the offense no-shows and they shoot themselves in the foot with sloppy defense and poor baserunning. They gave away third base three times in Game 1. In Game 3, Giancarlo Stanton of all people was thrown out at the plate.

Teoscar Hernández had that ball in left field before Stanton reached third base. That's what the Yankees have been reduced to: hoping for an off-line throw from an outfielder with a pretty good arm to score one single run at home in the World Series. It was a bad send regardless of outcome. It also reeks of desperation. A team that knows it's not on the same level as its opponent.

The Yankees have scored seven runs in three World Series games and that's just not going to get to done against any opponent, let alone this one. As a team, the Yankees are hitting .186/.284/.294 in the World Series. Juan Soto and Stanton have been incredible. They're doing all they can for the Yankees. Those two are 7 for 23 (.304) this round. The rest of the Yankees are 12 for 79 (.127). It's a two-man army.

The fact of the matter is that the Yankees have not won a postseason series against a non-AL Central team since the 2012 ALDS against the Baltimore Orioles. They did beat the Oakland Athletics in the 2018 Wild Card Game, but that was one single game. In an actual series with multiple games, they haven't beaten a team outside the AL Central in 12 years. This is wretched:

This has gone on long enough, year after year, that the Yankees can no longer chalk it up to small sample size and postseason randomness, as they've done after they were sent home every year since 2017. This is Groundhog Day. It's the same season one year after the next year. Very good regular season, beat an AL Central team in October, get sent home by one of the sport's true titans.

Barring a miracle comeback, the Yankees have once again hit their ceiling. They're good enough to hit homers and rack up wins in the regular season, and beat up on the sport's second tier in the postseason, and go no further. Or perhaps they're the sport's second tier? Evidence is mounting they're not an elite group. The Dodgers are the latest team to show the Yankees what they aren't in October.