When the Yankees struggled in the postseason, Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez didn’t hold back. “The Yankees, they’re not a good team,” he declared. “I don’t care what their record is. They make a lot of mistakes in the field.” Those words cut deep in the Bronx. But now, with Martinez’s former team stumbling on baseball’s biggest stage, a New York writer is suggesting those bold claims might deserve a second look.

The October Glory has a way of exposing every mistake, and the Blue Jays learned that lesson the hard way. In the bottom of the second inning, confusion reigned on the basepaths when Bo Bichette made a critical mental error.

The home plate umpire’s late call caused a lot of confusion, and Bichette’s lack of awareness led to an embarrassing tag out. The error happened soon after Teoscar Hernandez hit a solo home run off of Max Scherzer, which gave the Dodgers an early lead. It was the kind of basic error that Martinez had suggested the Yankees were prone to making.

That’s when Thomas Carannante, a writer for the YANKS GO YARD, wrote a sharp editorial. He said that Toronto’s mistake was similar to the ones Martinez used to take jabs at the Yankees for. “New York is familiar with making gaffes on the national stage,” Carannante said, implying that the Blue Jays may now be feeling the same sting of embarrassment.

Carannante wrote that Martinez, despite his decades in baseball, might need to reconsider taking shots at rivals when those words could come back to haunt him at the worst possible time.

The tension between the two clubs isn’t new, though. These teams battled all season, finishing with identical records, yet it was Toronto who ended New York’s postseason dreams. That made Martinez’s comments sting even more for Yankees fans.

And back then, the manager, Aaron Boone, didn’t let the criticism slide. “Contrary to some thoughts up here, we’re a really good team,” he said in a press conference, defending his squad. Then he addressed Martinez directly: “I know Buck had some thoughts. That’s all I was responding to. He’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter.”

The back-and-forth captures baseball’s tribal nature. Words spoken in victory can feel very different when your own team stumbles under pressure. Whether Martinez revisits his assessment remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the baseball world is watching.

Now, the question looms: Will he take those words back, or will he reply in his classic manner, like we have seen when Boone called him out? He didn’t take his words back then, either. 

Buck Martinez’s unchanged view, even after being called out

After Aaron Boone spoke out in public, Buck Martinez didn’t back down quietly. Instead, he walked back into the spotlight and repeated what he had said, this time with a proper explanation.

“You know what? At that time, you guys know the Yankees went through a tough stretch in the summer, there’s no question about it,” Martinez explained. “Yeah, they’ve got some real prominent superstars. Arguably, [Aaron] Judge is one of the best players that ever played the game, and [Giancarlo] Stanton, and they’ve got Cody Bellinger. They’ve got a lot of talent. But it showed up last year in the World Series. They don’t run the bases well. They don’t have a good defensive team. Their shortstop (Anthony Volpe) made 19 errors — the most errors by any shortstop in the big leagues. Those types of things really rear their ugly head.”

Martinez doubled down by pointing to specific examples. “Now, you guys saw the Boston-Yankees series. If Boston catches the ball, the Blue Jays are playing the Red Sox. And [they] didn’t catch the ball. And it’s so important at this time in the season and postseason to catch the ball and make good pitches. You saw it in the first two games against the Blue Jays: Toronto’s defense has been exceptional all season. That’s all I said.”

His defense centered on fundamentals rather than talent. Martinez wasn’t questioning whether the Yankees had star power; he was questioning their execution when it mattered most. The irony, of course, was that his own Blue Jays would soon face similar scrutiny for their mental mistakes on baseball’s grandest stage.