1. A wise man once said, “You can’t predict baseball,” and no one could have predicted Elmer Rodriguez wildly exceeding expectations on Wednesday against the best slugging lineup in the American League. Here is what I wrote about Rodriguez before the game:

The Astros will be the best lineup Elmer Rodriguez has faced in his life, and Yordan Alvarez will be the best hitter he has ever pitched to. It’s hard to expect someone who has put 33 baserunners on in 17 innings (and has more walks than strikeouts) to pitch well against the American League’s highest slugging team, so it’s up to the offense to hit well against arguably the worst pitching staff in the AL.

Rodriguez stepped up with the best game of his career and the offense stepped up by scoring nine runs. The Yankees have now scored 16 runs in 17 innings against the truly awful Astros pitching staff.

2. Rodriguez finished with six-plus innings pitched and three earned runs allowed, but it should have been six innings pitched and two earned runs allowed because Aaron Boone should have never sent him out for the seventh and Trent Grisham’s poor defense cost him a run in the first.

“He was nasty,” Aaron Boone said. “That’s what we get excited about right there.”

3. After blowing three different leads on Tuesday, the Yankees blew two leads on Wednesday. Rodriguez blew an early 2-1 lead and Boone letting Rodriguez start the seventh led to blowing a late 3-2 lead. Why is Boone trying to steal outs with Rodriguez in the seventh inning of a one-run game with the Astros’ 4-5-6 hitters about to face him for a third time in the middle of a pennant race? Because he’s Aaron Boone, that’s why, and there’s no level of ineptitude he won’t stoop to. Boone was willing to use Paul Blackburn in the seventh, he just figured he would let Rodriguez face Jose Altuve again before going to him. So instead of Blackburn getting a clean inning to work with, he got a runner on first and no outs to work with and the Astros ended up tying the game.

4. But for the second straight game, Boone building a four-lefty-batter lane didn’t negatively impact the team as Grisham, Ben Rice, Luis Garcia and Cody Bellinger teed off on left-hander Bennett Sousa. The Yankees scored four runs in the seventh to break the tie and break the game open. Grisham singled, Rice walked, Garcia singled to load the bases and Bellinger hit a booming double off the wall in center. Lombard Jr. struck out before Spencer Jones singled and Jazz Chisholm doubled. Those four runs allowed Michael Fulmer to make his Yankees debut.

5. I have always disliked Fulmer for being named the 2016 AL Rookie of the Year over Gary Sanchez, and because he always pitched well against the Yankees. Fulmer entered the game having only thrown 10 1/3 innings in the majors since the end of the 2023 season. He’s nowhere near the front-end starter he was a decade ago with the Tigers, but he can certainly be useful. It was odd that the Angels released him after 3 2/3 scoreless innings in relief for them this season, then again that’s the Angels for you. After a scoreless inning as a Yankee on Wednesday, I’m excited to see what he can do in these final weeks of the season now that Fernando Cruz is on the injured list with right elbow discomfort (which likely explains why he has been so bad since the end of June).

6. It’s amazing what can happen when your 2-3-4 hitters produce and the combination of Rice, Garcia and Bellinger went 5-for-12 with a double, two home runs, five RBIs and three walks. Every Yankee except for George Lombard Jr. (who committed an error for the fifth straight game) had a hit as the Yankees went 13-for-36 with five walks and nine strikeouts. The Yankees have scored 24 runs in their last three games. They scored 24 runs in the six previous games. They scored 25 runs from July 29 to August 7. Rice choosing to no longer swing at every pitch, Garcia waking up and Bellinger returning has turned the offense around.

7. Rice’s first-inning home run ended the Yankees’ first-inning scoreless streak at 23 games. The record remains 24 from the 2021 season. That’s a record I never want to see broken. I never want to see a streak like the one we just painfully sat through dating back to late July.

8. Grisham’s first-inning misplay was further proof he isn’t the fielder Boone and the Yankees believe he is. They tell us he’s still elite when in actuality he’s not even the best center fielder on the team. He may not even be the third-best center fielder on the team. He gets poor reads, has below-average speed and is nonchalant about everything. Those are the kind of habits and tendencies you can’t have in a center fielder. That wasn’t a random bad play from Grisham, it was the type of miscue he makes too frequently for a starting center fielder in the majors. But there’s a better chance the Mets will make the playoffs than there is that Grisham won’t be starting in center field and batting leadoff in October.

9. It’s the series and season finale between the Yankees and Astros on Thursday and it will be Gerrit Cole against former Yankees prospect Hayden Wesneski. Wesneski was traded by the Yankees to the Cubs for Scott Effross four years ago and it’s safe to say the Yankees didn’t win that trade. Effross threw 12 2/3 innings for the Yankees after the trade and got hurt. He missed the entire 2023 season and then had a 7.71 ERA over 14 innings for the Yankees over the following two years. He’s been pitching poorly in Triple-A for the Tigers and Mariners this season. Wesneski has been 3 percent better than league average in 249 2/3 innings in the majors over five seasons. He’s made five starts for the Astros this season and has lasted at least five innings in all of them.

10. On paper, the Yankees have the advantage in this game, but as Rodriguez proved on Wednesday, on paper means nothing. With the Rays and Red Sox both off, and four games in three days against the Red Sox beginning on Friday, this is a game the Yankees have to have if they want to maintain their current lead over the Red Sox and want to keep their division-winning dream alive.

1. What a missed opportunity Tuesday was for the Yankees. The offense scored SEVEN runs and the Rays lost, but the defense was poor, the bullpen imploded and the Yankees blew three different leads in a really bad 9-7 loss to the Astros.

“They beat our guys tonight, so you’ve got to give them some credit there,” Aaron Boone said. “We kept answering for the most part, but they just did a little bit more offensively tonight.”

The Astros put nine baserunners on in five innings against Will Warren. They got to the untrustworthy Fernando Cruz for two runs and got to Brent Headrick for three more. Headrick has been so good this year that no Yankees fan can be upset with him for his worst outing of the season on Tuesday. He’s second in the majors with 68 appearances to Mason Fluharty’s 70. But in two fewer appearances, Headrick has pitched 14 1/3 innings more than Fluharty. Headrick’s previous single-season high for innings in a major-league season is 25 2/3, which he will end up tripling by the end of the year.

2. Headrick is greatly overworked and has been overused because the Yankees only play close games and because he is one of two trustworthy options in the bullpen not named David Bednar. But I have no idea what Boone was thinking with Headrick on Tuesday. Headrick allowed the game-tying home run to Yainer Diaz then with two outs, he allowed a single to Jeremy Pena and a go-ahead triple to Yordan Alvarez. Headrick was at 22 pitches, had already allowed two runs and had a runner on third. Not only is Headrick likely fatigued from the season, but he was clearly fatigued in the inning, having allowed three barrels in the inning and having turned a lead into a deficit. But Boone left him in to face the right-handed Isaac Paredes and Paredes singled to make it a two-run game. Then Boone decided to bring in a right-hander.

3. I expect the Yankees to lose when Warren starts because he isn’t any good and because the offense can’t be trusted to score enough to make up for him not being any good. So when the offense scores seven runs in a game started by Warren, it’s a game that needs to be won. When the offense scores seven runs in a game started by anyone, it’s a game that needs to be won.

4. Cruz is a concern because Boone continues to use him as if he’s still trustworthy when he hasn’t been in more than a month. Compared to last season. Cruz’s WHIP, hits per nine innings, home runs per nine, walks per nine, strikeouts per nine and strikeouts to walks are all worse. Since June 28, he has a 4.95 ERA and has put 32 baserunners on in 20 innings, while allowing five home runs.

“He’s got to be part of the equation,” Boone said about Cruz. (No, he doesn’t?) “We still need him to get big outs for us. Tonight, they got him when he fell behind.”

But Cruz has a propensity to fall behind because his best pitch is a splitter, and if you take the good splitters, which are the ones that look like strikes but aren’t, then you get ahead of him, and once he has to come in the zone with his 93-mph fastball, he gets hit.

5. As of now, the only pitchers I trust to throw a pitch in October are that game’s starter (as long as that game’s starter is only Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole or Max Fried), Headrick, Paul Blackburn and Bednar. Obviously, that won’t be the case and the Yankees will use and need Cruz and Tim Hill to get outs in the playoffs.

6. Luis Garcia’s 4-for-4, three-RBI night was wasted, as was Cody Bellinger’s first home run since June 17. George Lombard Jr. made an error for the fourth straight game when he picked up a ball that Jazz Chisholm failed to field cleanly and rushed a throw to first. No, Lombard Jr. shouldn’t have made the throw, but at the same time, field the ball, Chisholm.

7. Jose Caballero picked up a single in the game after a 1-for-25 stretch, but also had arguably the second-worst plate appearance of any Yankee this season when he swung at all three pitches of in at-bat and didn’t come close to putting the ball in play. (Caballero proudly owns the worst plate appearance of the season from the Braves series.) Caballero is hitting .186/.252/.307 since June 20. Ryan McMahon doesn’t have to worry about losing any playing time to Caballero.

8. The Rays lost and the Red Sox won, so the Yankees’ deficit to the Rays is still three games in the loss column, and their lead over the Red Sox is now down to two games in the loss column. The Rays are doing their part to hand the Yankees the division, having lost eight of their last 12. The door was officially opened last week, and if the Yankees had won on Tuesday, I was ready to be a full-on believer that they were going to win the division. The difference between three back and two back is enormous though. It’s a massive swing, and when you add in that the Rays just need to beat the Yankees once in their four remaining games to win the division tiebreaker, the swing of last night’s loss is even bigger. There are plenty of “what if” losses you can go through from the season that have the Yankees trailing in the division and Tuesday is one of them. The Yankees can’t afford many more, if any, “what if” losses if they want to avoid the Wild Card Series.

9. Here is the updated path to winning the division:

The Yankees are 74-57.
The Rays are 78-54.
3 1/2 games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Astros and Red Sox. 78-59.
The Rays go 2-2 against the Tigers and Padres. 80-56.
2 1/2 games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Angels and Padres. 82-61.
The Rays go 3-4 against the Mets and Rangers. 83-60.
One game back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Rockies and Mets. 86-63.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Braves and Astros. 86-63.
Tied.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Twins and Diamondbacks. 90-65.
The Rays go 4-2 against the Athletics and Red Sox. 90-65.
Tied.

The Yankees go 2-2 against the Rays. 92-67.
The Rays go 2-2 against the Yankees. 92-67.
One game back due to the Rays winning the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The Yankees go 2-1 against the Orioles. 94-68.
The Rays go 1-2 against the Phillies. 93-69.
The Yankees win the division by one game.

10. The Yankees are doing the right thing by pushing Schlittler back to pitch in the Red Sox, but even though Elmer Rodriguez is pitching on Wednesday, the Yankees need to beat the Astros. Rodriguez has made four major-league starts with his last being June 21, and he has never lasted more than 4 2/3 innings. He faced the Rangers twice, the Mets and Reds. The Astros will be the best lineup he has faced in his life, and Alvarez will be the best hitter he has ever pitched to. It’s hard to expect someone who has put 33 baserunners on in 17 innings (and has more walks than strikeouts) to pitch well against the American League’s highest slugging team, so it’s up to the offense to hit well against arguably the worst pitching staff in the AL.

1. I ended Thursday’s Thoughts with this:

The Yankees have an opportunity to sweep a series for the first time since the last series before the All-Star break and for just the second time since June 8-10. I expect Cole will do his part in giving the Yankees a chance to pull off the sweep. It’s the offense I don’t trust. But if the offense can “just suck” and score four runs on Thursday, I like the Yankees’ chances at the sweeping their third series since the end of May.

Gerrit Cole did his part and the offense put together their second straight five-plus-run game and the Yankees won 6-1 to pull off their first sweep in more than a month. It was the first time the Yankees scored at least five runs in back-to-back games since June 16-17.

2. Not only did the Yankees score at least five runs for a second straight game, but Trent Grisham led off the game with a base hit for the second straight day. It was the first time Grisham had reached base safely to begin a game in back-to-back games since September 24 and 25 of last season.

3. The Yankees scored three runs in the third inning on Thursday thanks to a fielder’s choice error, Ben Rice RBI single with two outs and Heliot Ramos RBI double with two outs. It was Ramos’ first RBI in 16 games as a Yankee. The Yankees added two more runs in the sixth with solo home runs from Luis Garcia and Spencer Jones and added a run in the eighth on a Jazz Chisholm RBI triple. The only two Yankees to not get hits in the game were George Lombard Jr. and Jose Caballero.

4. Cole was excellent with six innings and just one earned run allowed on a Dylan Beavers solo home run. Cole struck out eight and the combination of his length and the offense “exploding” for six runs made it possible for Ryan Yarbrough to eat up the final three innings, of which he did perfectly.

5. The Red Sox were off and the Rays lost, so the Yankees maintained their four-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox and have now brought their deficit in the loss column to the Rays down to four games. The math is still heavily in the Rays’ favor for the division, but their 2-5 slide over the last week has opened the door slightly for the Yankees. Sweeping the Orioles instead of simply just winning the series and finishing the road trip at 4-2 instead of 3-3 made a huge impact on the path to winning the division I laid out yesterday.

6. Here is an updated version:

The Yankees are 72-55.
The Rays are 76-51.

The Yankees go 2-1 against the Blue Jays. 74-56.
The Rays go 1-2 against the and Orioles. 77-53.
Three games back.

The Yankees go 4-3 against the Astros and Red Sox. 78-59.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Tigers and Padres. 80-56.
2 1/2 games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Angels and Padres. 82-61.
The Rays go 3-4 against the Mets and Rangers. 83-60.
One game back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Rockies and Mets. 86-63.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Braves and Astros. 86-63.
Tied.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Twins and Diamondbacks. 90-65.
The Rays go 4-2 against the Athletics and Red Sox. 90-65.
Tied.

The Yankees go 2-2 against the Rays. 92-67.
The Rays go 2-2 against the Yankees. 92-67.
One game back due to the Rays winning the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The Yankees go 2-1 against the Orioles. 94-68.
The Rays go 1-2 against the Phillies. 93-69.
The Yankees win the division by one game.

7. The Yankees failed to score a first-inning run again, having last done so on July 29. The streak is up to 19 games. The franchise record is 24 games from July 8, 2021 to August 6, 2021. and very much in reach. It would be nice to end the streak as early as Friday against the Blue Jays’ bullpen game, considering the Blue Jays have already shut the Yankees down in two bullpen games this season and beat them in Game 4 of the ALDS with a bullpen game as well.

8. The Yankees will face the bullpen on Friday, Dylan Cease on Saturday and Jose Soriano on Sunday. It’s a worst-case three starters for the Yankees to have to see when playing the Blue Jays because of their lack of success against Blue Jays bullpen games, Cease being the second-best pitcher in the American League and Soriano being very good. It would have been nice to get Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer.

10. The Yankees have Cam Schlittler, Ryan Weathers and Carlos Rodon lined up for the weekend. If the Yankees were to stay in rotation and not adjust anything with Monday’s day off, the Red Sox would miss both Schlittler and Cole next weekend. This can’t happen:

Friday (Blue Jays): Schlittler
Saturday (Blue Jays): Weathers
Sunday (Blue Jays): Rodon
Monday: OFF
Tuesday (Astros): Warren
Wednesday (Astros): Cole
Thursday (Astros): Schlittler
Friday (Red Sox): Weathers
Saturday (Red Sox): Rodon
Saturday (Red Sox): Spot starter
Sunday (Red Sox): Warren

Something like this needs to happen:

Friday (Blue Jays): Schlittler
Saturday (Blue Jays): Weathers
Sunday (Blue Jays): Rodon
Monday: OFF
Tuesday (Astros): Cole
Wednesday (Astros): Warren
Thursday (Astros): Spot starter
Friday (Red Sox): Schlittler
Saturday (Red Sox): Rodon
Saturday (Red Sox): Weathers
Sunday (Red Sox): Cole

After the Red Sox series, the Yankees have three games in Anaheim, a day off, three games in San Diego and another day off. They can sort out the rotation that week with the two days off, but again, it’s imperative both Schlittler and Cole face the Red Sox.

1. I couldn’t believe Wednesday’s Yankees-Orioles game wasn’t stopped after Trent Grisham’s leadoff single in the first inning. How could the moment not be celebrated and commemorated? No in-game speech and award presentation? It was the first time since July 3 that Grisham led off a game with a hit and it should have been recognized.

Not only did Grisham lead off the game with a hit, but Ben Rice followed with a single as well. The Yankees had runners on first and second and no outs and a chance to score a first-inning run for the first time since July 29. But they did not. Luis Garcia grounded into a double play and Heliot Ramos grounded out to end the inning.

2. The Orioles did score a first-inning run though and didn’t even need a hit to do so. Will Warren, who was removed from the rotation for a few minutes on Monday, allowed a pair of walks and eventually the Orioles pulled off a double steal of second and home to take an early lead. Austin Wells’ decision to throw down to second with a runner on third wasn’t as inexplicable as Ali Sanchez’s decision to attempt a pickoff at third against the White Sox at the end of July, but it was up there in terms of low Baseball IQ plays.

The Yankees answered back in the second with a Jazz Chisholm walk, Spencer Jones single, Ryan McMahon single and George Lombard Jr. sacrifice fly to take a 2-1 lead. McMahon was injured on his single, while idiotically trying to stretch it into a double. He jammed his hand on second base and was eventually removed from the game because of the injury.

3. The Yankees added a third run in the third inning when Ben Rice hit a 447-foot home run to make it 3-1, but Pete Alonso cut the Yankees’ lead in half in the second with a solo home run of his own. (Alonso would later hit what appeared to be a go-ahead home run off Brent Headrick, but it was called foul on the field and the call stood after review despite replay angles showing it looked fair. I guess it evens out the call against Judge at Steinbrenner Field last year.) The game remained 3-2 Yankees until the sixth when Fernando Cruz allowed a game-tying solo home run to Dylan Beavers.

Tied at 3 in the eighth, the Yankees loaded the bases with two outs for Lombard Jr. The rookie put the ball in play with a slow roller to third for an infield single to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead. Following a Yennier Cano wild pitch, the Yankees lead increased to 5-3. Paul Blackburn pitched around a couple of baserunners in the eighth and David Bednar pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to close out a 5-3 win.

4. All I asked of the Yankees on Wednesday was for them to “just suck” and score four runs per game. Doing that would allow them to win enough to get the first wild card and possibly even win the division. Four runs would have been enough on Wednesday, but they provided five, which was more than enough. The Yankees are now 55-16 when scoring four runs.

5. The Yankees went 10-for-33 with three walks and 10 strikeouts against six Orioles pitchers. Grisham went 1-for-4 with a walk and a strikeout. Rice went 2-for-5 with a home run and two strikeouts. Garcia went 1-for-5 with a strikeout. Ramos went 1-for-3 with a strikeout. Chisholm went 1-for-2 with two walks. Jones went 1-for-4 with three strikeouts. McMahon went 1-for-3 with a strikeout. Lombard Jr. went 2-for-3 with a sacrifice fly and strikeout. Austin Wells went 0-for-4.

6. Warren was bad yet again. He needed 90 pitches to get through four innings and allowed two earned runs. The Yankees’ rotation currently lines up in a way that is not great for the four-game series against the Red Sox next weekend. If the Yankees keep the rotation in its current order, the Red Sox will miss Cam Schlittler. That can’t happen. The Yankees will need to keep Warren in the rotation for now and I would even use a spot starter against the Blue Jays or Astros to ensure the best possible rotation against the Red Sox. Something like this:

Thursday: Cole
Friday: Schlittler
Saturday: Weathers
Sunday: Rodon
Monday OFF
Tuesday: Cole
Wednesday: Warren
Thursday: Spot starter
Friday: Schlittler
Saturday: Weathers
Saturday: Rodon
Sunday: Cole

7. A schedule like that gives Schlittler, Carlos Rodon and Ryan Weathers each two extra days of rest before the Red Sox series, and with Schlittler and Weathers having set new single-season highs for innings and Rodon having just returned from the injured list, they could all use the extra rest. When the Red Sox series ends, there will be 25 games left. That series is going to decide where the Wild Card Series is played and having the best four available starters all pitch in it is imperative.

8. The win was the Yankees’ third straight and combined with a Red Sox loss, they are up four games in the loss column again on the first wild card. The Rays also won though, so the division deficit remains five games.

In order to defy the math and win the the division, the Yankees will need something like this to happen:

The Yankees are 71-55.
The Rays are 76-50.

The Yankees go 2-2 against the Orioles and Blue Jays. 73-57.
The Rays go 1-3 against the Blue Jays and Orioles. 77-53.
Four games back.

The Yankees go 4-3 against the Astros and Red Sox. 77-60.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Tigers and Padres. 80-56.
3 1/2 games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Angels and Padres. 81-62.
The Rays go 3-4 against the Mets and Rangers. 83-60.
Two games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Rockies and Mets. 85-64.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Braves and Astros. 86-63.
One game back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Twins and Diamondbacks. 89-66.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Athletics and Red Sox. 89-66.
Tied.

The Yankees go 2-2 against the Rays. 91-68.
The Rays go 2-2 against the Yankees. 91-66.
One game back due to the Rays winning the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The Yankees go 2-1 against the Orioles. 93-69.
The Rays go 1-2 against the Phillies. 92-70.
The Yankees win the division by one game.

It’s crazy, but not impossible. That path is asking the Yankees to go 22-14 and the Rays to go 16-20. The Yankees missed a massive opportunity since Friday with the Rays losing four of their last six and the Yankees only going 3-2 during that time.

9. The Rays had a 7-13 stretch from June 1 to June 23 and another bad stretch from July 4 through July 19 when they went 4-9. From June 1 through July 19, the Rays went 20-22, but the problem is the Yankees actually lost a half-game to the Rays during that time. That was the time for the Yankees to pass the Rays and create separation and they failed to do so. The Yankees haven’t led the division since June 26.

The Rays have had two different runs where they were several games under .500 and the last six days suggest they may be experiencing that again after a nine-game winning streak. The Yankees started the season 25-11 and are currently on a 21-13 run, so they have had similar records to the 22-14 run needed above, but given the state of their offense where three-run performances feel like outbursts, I don’t know if the pitching staff can continue to perform this well or if the offense can hit enough.

10. It will be Cole against Kyle Bradish in the series finale. The Yankees struggled against Shane Baz and left a lot of men on against Chris Bassitt, which doesn’t bode well against Bradish, who is the Orioles’ best starter. The Yankees have an opportunity to sweep a series for the first time since the last series before the All-Star break and for just the second time since June 8-10. I expect Cole will do his part in giving the Yankees a chance to pull off the sweep. It’s the offense I don’t trust. But if the offense can “just suck” and score four runs on Thursday, I like the Yankees’ chances at the sweeping their third series since the end of May.

1. I have heavily criticized Trent Grisham continuing to bat leadoff in the Yankees lineup, and rightfully so. Grisham is a really bad leadoff hitter. He’s hitting .098/.225/.180 in 72 games as the first batter of the game, and he’s hitting .165/.289/.281 when leading off any inning. He hasn’t led off a game with a hit since July 3 and has led off one game since then with a walk (July 22). There is no metric to support Grisham batting first.

2. On Tuesday, Grisham led off the game with a strikeout. Orioles starter Shane Baz struck out the side in the first and picked up two more Ks in the second. This is what I wrote about Baz before the game:

Baz is as average as it gets as a major-league starter. He’s also the exact pitcher who will hold the Yankees scoreless for six innings because many pitchers like him have done just that this summer.

Baz didn’t hold the Yankees scoreless for six innings, but he did pitch into the seventh and did rack up a season-high 10 strikeouts, the most he’s ever had as an Oriole. But the reason he didn’t throw six scoreless innings is Grisham.

Grisham homered in the third inning as the third batter of the inning and hit a two-run single in the seventh inning as the sixth batter of the inning. Grisham finished the game 2-for-4 and drove in all three Yankees runs.

3. I get that Grisham is batting first in the order right now because he and George Lombard Jr. (and Ben Rice at times) are the only hitters capable of hitting on the team at the moment. But as I have written many times, I analyze the Yankees with the big picture in mind, with the postseason being the big picture . And we all know Grisham will be leading off in the postseason even if the Yankees are at full strength because he did so last postseason and the only thing Aaron Boone hates more than change is change backed by data.

4. Grisham went 2-for-4 with a strikeout on Monday and the rest of the Yankees went 3-for-28 with 13 strikeouts. Rice’s 10th-inning home run on Sunday did nothing to get him going as he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout. Heliot Ramos inexplicably batted third again and went 0-for again, this time going 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. I was skeptical of the trade for Luis Garcia because while he led the NL in slugging at the time of the deal with an .843 OPS, he had a .709 OPS in his first six seasons in the majors. He has a .608 OPS as a Yankee. Spencer Jones went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts. Boone stayed true to his word that no matter how well Jose Caballero played on Sunday (and he single-handedly allowed the Yankees to avoid a sweep on Sunday), Jazz Chisholm would return as the starting second baseman on Tuesday. Chisholm went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and added an error in the field because he didn’t know to communicate to the umpire where he was positioned. I can’t believe not playing baseball for two days didn’t magically make him good at baseball. Chisholm is down to an 88 OPS+ on the season. Lombard Jr. went 2-for-4 with a strikeout and continues to turn in the most consistent plate appearances on the team despite having played 12 major-league games. Ryan McMahon went 0-for-1 with a walk and a strikeout before being removed from the game and Austin Wells went 0-for-2 before being removed from the game.

5. If a major-league team scores four runs a game for an entire season, they will score 648 runs for the season. Only one American League team fell short of that mark last year: the 102-loss White Sox who finished one run shy at 647. The other 14 AL teams all finished with more than 648. The 92-loss Twins? Yes. The 90-loss Angels? Yes. The 87-loss Orioles? The 86-loss Athletics? Yes and yes. Why did every AL team other than the White Sox average four or more runs per game? Because it’s easy to score four runs per game in the major leagues.

6. The 2026 Yankees are 54-16 when they score at least four runs in a game. That’s a .771 winning percentage. That’s a 125-win pace in the regular season. Do you know how absurd that is? If you gave the Yankees four runs in all 55 of their losses this season, they would have 14 more wins. Fourteen! So if the 2026 Yankees played with the 2025 White Sox offense in their 55 losses this season, they would have a nine-game lead in the AL East. If the Yankees scored just four runs per game since the All-Star break, they would have six more wins and would have a one-game lead in the AL East. I’m not asking this Yankees offense to be great or good or average or slightly below average or moderately below average or severely below average. I’m asking this Yankees offense to just suck and not be historically inept. Just suck and with this pitching staff you’re guaranteed the first wild card and may even prove the division math wrong and pass the Rays. JUST SUCK!

7. But the Yankees’ offense doesn’t just suck and is in fact historically inept. On Tuesday against the Orioles, they failed to score a first-inning run for the 17th straight game. As Katie Sharp let me know, the Yankees’ franchise record is 24 games. So we are a week of first-inning zeros away from another new negative franchise record being set during the Boone era. (Funny enough, the current record is already from the Boone era from July 8, 2021 to August 6, 2021.)

8. The first inning presents the best chance for an offense to score. It’s the only guaranteed inning in a game in which your (supposed) three best hitters will bat in the same inning. But when your three “best” hitters are the worst leadoff hitter in the league in Grisham, swing-at-anything Rice and Jasson Dominguez’s replacement who is much worse than Jasson Dominguez, you get the kind of first-inning scoreless drought the Yankees are experiencing.

9. If the Yankees are going to end the drought on Wednesday, it’s going to come against Chris Bassitt. Bassitt has had a miserable season, and so, he’s the exact starting pitcher the opposition wants to pitch against this Yankees lineup. Would Bassitt pitching into the seventh inning with a lead on Wednesday surprise any Yankees fan? Not this one.

10. Will Warren was removed from the rotation for Carlos Rodon and then immediately added back because of Max Fried landing on the injured list. You would think that would be a wake-up call for the extremely mediocre Warren to turn in his best possible outing of the season against the Orioles. The problem is Warren isn’t very good. There’s a better chance he will ruin the bullpen for the next day than there is that he will shut down the Orioles, but there’s no other option to start. The only option the Yankees have is for their offense to go out and just suck and put up four runs and maybe it will be enough to outdo whatever Warren allows.