When the New York Yankees lost in the 2024 World Series, they became the laughingstock of the MLB world. Many said that they did not have the requisite fundamentals to get it done in the grand stage. This seems to be haunting them once more. In Game 2 of the ALDS against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Yankees committed four errors on the night, including three in the very first inning.

This proved to set the tone for New York on a night where they did not cover themselves in glory, especially on the field. Their three errors in the first inning (one from Ryan McMahon, one from Jazz Chisholm Jr., and one from Austin Wells) allowed the Rays to score one run, and in the fifth inning, with ace Cam Schlittler already out of the game, one of the runners Brent Headrick inherited came around to score when George Lombard Jr. committed the team's fourth error of the night.

What made this so much worse is that the Yankees, in their 5-2 loss in Game 2 to the Rays to fall down 2-0 in the series, had more players commit an error (four) than they had get a hit (three). They became the first team since 2010 to do so in a playoff setting since the Cincinnati Reds pulled off this embarrassing feat during Roy Halladay's no-hitter back on the sixth of October, as per OptaSTATS on X.

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Only Ben Rice (two hits, two home runs, two RBIs), Cody Bellinger (one hit), and Austin Wells (one hit) reached via a base hit on the night. McMahon and Rice did add a walk each. That gave the Yankees a grand total of six baserunners on the night, which simply does not cut it.

The Yankees, if they were to rescue themselves from a 2-0 deficit in the ALDS, have to figure out how to take care of the little things which, if left neglected, tend to add up and cause a disaster out there on the field.