1. For 8 2/3 innings on Tuesday it looked like the Yankees would blow their biggest divisional opportunity of September against the worst team in the American League. They stranded two runners in the first, scored once but left the bases loaded in the second, stranded one in the third, another in the fourth, ran into an out on the bases in the fifth and the sixth, hit into an inning-ending double play in the seventh and left two more on in the eighth.

2. Trailing 2-1 in the ninth, the unlikely rally bats of Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells led off the inning with back-to-back singles to turn the lineup over with the tying run on second and the winning run on first with no outs. Volpe and Wells combined to see 10 pitches in their ninth-inning at-bats, but Trent Grisham swung at the first pitch he saw and hit into a 4-6-3 double play. Fortunately, the White Sox are the worst team in the AL for a reason and they couldn’t get the last out of the inning as Aaron Judge walked and Cody Bellinger walked with ball 4 to Bellinger coming on a wild pitch to score Volpe to tie game. Jose Caballero followed by grinding out a nine-pitch at-bat, which ended the game with a single to center to score Judge and give the Yankees a 3-2 win.

3. The win clinched a postseason berth for the Yankees and clinched my preseason wager of over 88.5 wins for the Yankees. When the Yankees improved to 42-25 on June 12, the rest of the season seemed like a formality in achieving more than 88.5 wins since they would need to go just 47-48 the rest of the way. But after falling apart from that day through mid-August, it took until Game 157 for them to win their 89th game.

4. The Yankees are headed back to the postseason, but how they are headed there is still unknown.

I laid out a path to winning the division in these Thoughts at the end of August, and for a while, it seemed like it may work out. But after the Yankees took two of three from the Blue Jays in early September, the Blue Jays took of three from the Astros and swept the Orioles. The math was ruined at the point and it would take a full-fledged Blue Jays collapse for the Yankees to have a chance. Well, that full-fledged collapse is on with the Blue Jays having lost five of six and set to face Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello the next two nights. The Yankees’ division odds went from 9.1 percent before the weekend to 25.7 percent after Tuesday’s win.

5. The Yankees are one game back of the Blue Jays in the loss column, but two games overall because of the head-to-head tiebreaker. So for the Yankees to overtake the Blue Jays (after blowing an eight-game lead to the Blue Jays during the summer), here is the updated table on what needs to happen:

6. The Blue Jays are a mess. Their bullpen is in shambles, Bo Bichette is still out injured, they demoted Jose Berrios to a relief role and he didn’t take it well then Chris Bassitt was placed on the injured list and now Berrios will likely need to return to the rotation. They have played well above what their run differential suggests their record should be all season and now the jig seems to be up. If the season were a couple of games longer than 162, I would say there’s no doubt the Yankees win the division. Unfortunately, it’s not, and unfortunately, the Yankees annually treat the regular season like it will go on forever with a general lack of urgency throughout it. It’s never until the Yankees need to tell everyone “It’s right in front of them” that they begin to show a sense of urgency.

7. The only people rooting against the Yankees more than Blue Jays fans and Red Sox fans are the Steinbrenners. The Steinbrenners’ dream is for the Yankees to host the wild-card series and have that series go the distance and then have every round after it go the distance en route to a championship. If the Yankees receive the first-round bye, the Yankees lose two to three home game gates and everything that goes with them.

8. If the Yankees have to play in the wild-card series and survive it, I think they will reach the World Series. The AL is so bad. The only team I’m remotely worried about them playing is the Red Sox, simply because of Crochet and Bello’s success against them this season. If the Yankees are to play in the wild-card round then it will likely be against the Red Sox, and if they are to survive the wild-card round then that means the Red Sox are eliminated. The Mariners? The Yankees went 5-1 against them this season and swept them at a time when they couldn’t win a series against any team. The Tigers? No, I’m not scared of a team that bats Gleyber Torres second and has now blown the biggest division lead in baseball history. The Guardians? They are a dream scenario. A one-hitter team with no rotation and a bullpen that isn’t what it was at this time last year. The Blue Jays? Again, if the season were a few days longer, the Blue Jays would undoubtedly lose the division. They will enter the postseason with the worst bullpen of the entire field, and that will likely lead to their demise. The Astros? I’m only scared of the Astros because of what they have done to the Yankees in the past. But the Astros are no longer the Astros as we knew them from 2017-2023 and without Yordan Alvarez, they’re not to be feared.

9. Certainly, there’s always a “Be careful what you wish for” part of planning for the postseason. Any team can beat any team, especially in a best-of-3. The Yankees lost three-game series this season to the Diamondbacks, Giants, Orioles, Angels, Reds, Marlins and Rangers — seven teams that are currently outside of the postseason picture. The Yankees are the healthiest team in the AL with the best and deepest roster in the AL, though that doesn’t mean anything. The Yankees are their own worst enemy and needing to beat their own sloppiness and their own manager has been too much to overcome in their previous six postseason trips during the Boone era.

10. It’s Max Fried against a bullpen game for the White Sox. It’s about as lopsided a matchup as you could have in Major League Baseball, but there’s a reason John Sterling warned about predicting this game throughout his career. Tonight, I’m not only a Yankees fan, but also a huge Red Sox fan. Tonight, I’m a Garrett Crochet fan, knowing very well if the Yankees fail to win the division, it will be Crochet who the Yankees will likely face six days from now in the Bronx in the first game of the postseason. If the Yankees do their job and Crochet does his on Wednesday, the Yankees will be one win closer to avoiding him in a best-of-3.

1. A couple of easy wins, a tough loss and a good comeback win made up the weekend against the Orioles. It was the kind of weekend I expected. Nothing to get overly excited or upset about. The rest of the league provided those emotions.

The Blue Jays lost two of three to the Royals to fall to two games ahead of the Yankees in the loss column (and three overall because of the tiebreaker). The Red Sox lost two of three to the Rays to fall to three back of the Yankees in the loss column (and two overall because of the tiebreaker). The Mariners swept the Astros to all but wrap up the West and the Guardians won another series to pull within one game of the Tigers before their three-game series this week. The AL playoff standings are chaotic and the Yankees are outside observers since they conducted all of their chaos in the summer when they blew an eight-game lead to the Blue Jays.

2. I knew Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish would be an issue for the Yankees offense this weekend and they were, combining for this line: 12 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 14 K. That duo is a problem and I’m glad the Yankees are only scheduled to face one of them this coming week in Bradish.

3. That’s the kind of starting pitching the Yankees are going to see beginning next week and their performance against those two was worrisome. If the Yankees draw the Red Sox, they have to deal with Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello. If they get the Tigers, there’s Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize and Jack Flaherty (who sucks against every team other than the Yankees). They could get the deep rotation of the Mariners, Blue Jays or Astros. The only team any Yankees fan could feel confident about seeing next week is the Guardians, and that’s becoming a real possibility and the possibility every Yankees fan should root for.

4. The Yankees haven’t won a postseason series against a non-AL Central team since the 2012 ALDS against the Orioles. The Aaron Boone Yankees are 15-4 against the AL Central in postseason games and 7-19 against all other divisions. I’m the biggest Guardians fan in the world right now, rooting for them every night to somehow surpass the Red Sox and end up in the second wild-card spot and play the Yankees. They have no ace, their bullpen isn’t what it was last year and their lineup is one superstar and mediocrity. They are the easiest path for the Yankees to advance to the ALDS.

5. Michael Kay kept saying over the weekend how unfortunate the Yankees’ loss on Friday was because the Blue Jays lost that day and had the Yankees won they would be one-game back in the loss column. You can’t expect to four-game sweep any team, even a team that has nothing to play for like the Orioles. How about you don’t blow an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays? How about you don’t go 5-8 against the Blue Jays or 4-9 against the Red Sox or get swept by the Marlins in August or lose a game in Colorado in May or let Carlos Carrasco start six games? The Yankees aren’t two games back in the loss column and three games back overall from the Blue Jays because they lost to the best statistical starting pitcher in the league on Saturday. They’re where they are because they went 18-29 from June 13 to August 5. They have their annual summer swoon, their inability to win divisional games and their inability to treat all games throughout the season the same as to why they are in the position they are in.

6. Here is the updated table of what needs to happen for the Yankees to win the division:

While the Yankees play the White Sox, the Blue Jays will play the Red Sox. If the Yankees can stack wins against the worst team in the AL they will be guaranteed to either make up ground on the Blue Jays or create ground on the Red Sox every night from Tuesday through Thursday. The Yankees’ division odds went from 9.1 percent before the weekend to 14.3 percent after the weekend.

7. If Sunday’s game took place in early June, July or early August, the Yankees lose. There’s no doubt in my mind they lose. They either never score and get shut out or they lose in extra innings. I think it was fitting that the 2025 Yankees’ final regular-season road game was an extra-inning win, considering how bad they have been on the road in extra innings this season and how bad they have been on the road in extra innings since the automatic runner was implemented with the worst record in the majors.

8. My favorite Yankees lineup is when Ben Rice bats fourth or fifth, not second. Aaron Judge should always bat second. (I would bat him first, but we all know that was only a 2022 late-summer desperation tactic and the Yankees won’t revisit it.) Rice should never force Judge down the lineup and should never bat ahead of Cody Bellinger and not guarantee Bellinger a first-inning plate appearance.

This is the best Yankees lineup at the moment against a right-handed starter:

Trent Grisham, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Ben Rice, 1B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Jose Caballero, SS
Austin Wells, C

This is the best Yankees lineup at the moment against a left-handed starter:

Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Amed Rosario, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Ben Rice, C

9. Jose Caballero started the last two games of the Tigers series, the entire Red Sox series, two of three in the Twins series and two of four in the Orioles series. In those 10 starts, he hit .333/.412/.567 with a .978 OPS, five extra-base hits, five stolen bases and four walks. If the competition to see who will be the starting shortstop in the postseason is really a competition then the competition is over. But we all know it’s not really a competition and the slightest bit of success from Volpe over last week and this coming week will be enough for the Yankees to disregard three years of poor performance. And that’s exactly what’s happening. With each Volpe single or longer-than-three-pitch-at-bat, the Yankees are getting what they want which is a reason to start Volpe in the playoffs. I’m prepared for it. I know how these things go and how they have gone in the Boone era, and I’m prepared for Volpe to be playing and striking out and throwing balls away starting next Tuesday.

10. The Yankees are either going to be the first wild card and have home-field advantage for the best-of-3 or they are going to be the No. 1 overall seed in the AL and have home-field advantage in the ALDS and ALCS (if they get that far). Either way the Yankees are home this entire week and will stay home next week as well. If they survive the wild-card series, their next road game won’t be until Saturday, Oct. 4 (12 days from now), and if they win the division, their next road game won’t be until Tuesday, Oct. 7 (15 days from now). The Yankees are set up logistically, health-wise and rotation-wise right now for whichever round they open in. Now it’s just a matter of picking up a few wins this week, staying healthy and getting everyone whatever work they need to prepare for next Tuesday … or Saturday.

1. The version of Max Fried that pitched to a 1.92 ERA in his first 17 starts as a Yankee through June 25 has returned. The version of Fried that pitched to a 6.80 ERA over eight starts from July 1 through August 16 is gone. (At least I hope he is.) Fried dominated the Orioles on Thursday night with seven scoreless, three-hit innings and a career-high 13 strikeouts to improve to 5-0 with a 1.60 ERA since August 22.

“I’m feeling really good physically,” Fried said. “I feel like I did toward the beginning of the year.”

2. My biggest fear when the Yankees signed Fried was how he would pitch in important games, especially in the postseason given his spotty playoff history in 12 starts and 20 games. But over the last month Fried pitched well in Houston, against the Blue Jays and grinded through a solid start without his best stuff at Fenway Park. He’s looking like the best version of himself at the best possible time with one remaining start in the regular season before he takes the ball for Game 1 of the postseason.

“That’s when you want to really hit your stride, going into the last week or so,” Fried said. “We want to go out there and finish strong and go into the playoffs strong.”

3. The Yankees took an early lead on a two-run double in the first inning from Amed Rosario, who has solidified himself as a lineup must whenever a lefty is starting. That’s all the Yankees would need with how good Fried was, but they added a run in the fifth and four more in the seventh.

Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-5 leading off, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger each had a pair of walks, Austin Wells had a couple of hits, Jose Caballero reached base three times and Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm all had doubles. Aaron Boone opted to play Trent Grisham (0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts) over Austin Slater. If Slater isn’t going to start every game against a lefty then I don’t know what his purpose is.

4. It was a nice, easy win, which was a welcome sight. It’s been a long time since the Yankees have had a laugher. In the 18 games since August 29, only their August 29 win over the White Sox and September 11 win over the Tigers were games won comfortably. Every other game has been a nail-biter, won late or lost. That’s a long time to play nearly only stressful baseball.

5. If the Yankees play in the wild-card series, Fried will have five days of rest before Game 1. If the Yankees miraculously win the division, he will have nine days of rest before Game 1. Either way, the Yankees’ rotation lines up beautifully for whichever round they open in.

6. On Thursday, the Guardians and Mariners won and the Blue Jays and Red Sox lost. The Yankees are now three games back in the loss column from the Blue Jays for the division (and four games overall because of the tiebreaker) with nine games to play. Here is the updated table of what needs to happen for the Yankees to win the division:

7. Again, I’m certainly still scoreboard watching the Blue Jays and praying for their demise and a lengthy losing streak to end the season, but I’m realistic in knowing it’s going to take an all-time collapse for it to happen. The Yankees are going to need a lot of help from the Royals, Red Sox and Rays to make the dream come true. The Yankees’ division odds are 9.1 precent on FanGraphs and their postseason odds are at 99.9 percent.

8. As for the wild card, the Yankees now have a two-game lead in the loss column over the AL West and a three-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox (though it’s really two because of the tiebreaker). The Guardians are now just a game behind the Red Sox. The Rays are going to play a major role in deciding who the Yankees play as they have series left with the Red Sox and Blue Jays.

9. Will Warren gets the ball on Friday for the first time since his disastrous first inning on Sunday at Fenway Park. Warren’s latest first-inning meltdown now has him at a 6.39 ERA with an .839 OPS against in 31 first innings this season. With Trevor Rogers going for the Orioles, Warren can’t get lit up again like that. Rogers has a 1.43 ERA and a 0.894 WHIP in 16 starts this season. He has only allowed more than two runs in a start once this year and that was in his second start of the season. The Orioles are 12-4 this season when Rogers starts and 6-1 over the last six weeks. He doesn’t walk anyone (24 in 100 2/3 innings), doesn’t allow hits (66), doesn’t allow home runs (3) and he’s a lefty. If you were going to build a starting pitcher with the purpose of beating this Yankees team, you would build Rogers.

10. Because Rogers is a lefty, you’re likely going to see the same lineup from Thursday on Friday. Maybe Boone sits Grisham for Slater and Ben Rice plays instead of Wells, but other than that I don’t think anything changes. (It’s possible Ryan McMahon could start as he’s 2-for-4 against Rogers.) The Yankees will need to find a way to get a couple of runs off Rogers or wear him down enough to get the bullpen for three or four innings. Most importantly, Warren needs to be good.

1. A night after the Yankees came a run away from blowing a nine-run lead on Tuesday, it looked like they may blow a five-run lead on Wednesday.

After taking a 7-2 lead into the bottom of the fifth, Luis Gil imploded like Cam Schlittler the previous night and a 7-2 game became a 7-5 game with the tying runs on base. For the second night in a row, Aaron Boone summoned Fernando Cruz much earlier than he’s used to to relieve his starter and put an end to the Twins’ rally. And for the second straight night, Cruz ended the inning.

2. Unlike on Tuesday, the Yankees were able to tack on in the eighth and ninth. (Then again, you shouldn’t need to tack on when you have a 10-1 lead like they did on Tuesday.) Cruz pitched a scoreless sixth, Devin Williams did the same in the sixth, Luke Weaver matched it in the eighth and even Camilo Doval was able to put up a zero in the ninth. Not only did Doval pitch a scoreless inning, but it was the best he has looked as a Yankee, retiring the side on 10 pitches (eight strikes) with two strikeouts.

3. Doval got Byron Buxton looking at a 101-mph cutter on the outside corner for a three-pitch strikeout for the first out, got Austin Martin to pop up a 99-mph cutter on an 0-2 pitch for the second out and then got Trevor Larnach to swing through a 1-1 slider and then a 1-2 slider to end the game. If Doval pitched like that with any consistency he would be one of the best relievers in baseball, if not the best. That outing is why the Yankees traded for him and why he’s still on the roster despite doing everything he can to pitch himself off of it: because that version of him exists. I don’t know how the Yankees plan on getting that version out of him consistently, but it’s mind blowing that the guy on the mound on Wednesday is the same guy who was atrocious in nearly all of his 18 prior appearances as a Yankee.

4. Trent Grisham homered twice, Cody Bellinger homered, Aaron Judge had three hits (and a walk), Paul Goldschmidt had two hits, Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez had doubles, Ryan McMahon had an RBI single and Jose Caballero had a walk, run and stolen base. The only Yankee not contribute offensively was Jazz Chisholm with an 0-for-5 night at the plate, though he did have a great game defensively. (Chisholm should sit on Thursday with a lefty starting.)

“A lot of really big contributions,” Boone said. “Just really good offense.”

5. The Yankees won, the Blue Jays lost, the Red Sox lost, the Mariners lost and the Astros won. The Guardians also won. The Guardians’ six-game winning streak now has them two games back in the loss column of the Astros, Mariners and Red Sox.

6. The Yankees are four games back of the Blue Jays in the loss column, but five games overall because of the head-to-head tiebreaker. The division is over. For those of you who believe nothing is truly over until it’s over, here is what needs to happen for the Yankees to win the division:

I would say the worst the Blue Jays could go is 4-6, which means the Yankees can only lose one more game. Unless the Blue Jays completely unravel over the next 10 games (which is something they haven’t done all season), there’s no chance the Yankees can overtake them.

7. Certainly I’m still scoreboard watching the Blue Jays praying for their demise and a lengthy losing streak to end the season, but I’m realistic in knowing it’s going to take an all-time collapse for it to happen. If I had to rank who I would want the Yankees to play in a best-of-3 as of now I would go Guardians, Mariners, Astros, Red Sox.

8. The Red Sox aren’t the best team of the four, but the threat of Garrett Crochet in a short series and his dominance of the Yankees combined with the Yankees potentially being eliminated by the Red Sox for the fourth time in the postseason is too much for me. The Astros may be a better option than the Mariners because of the Mariners’ rotation and the absence of Yordan Alvarez, but 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 have left me forever scared of the Astros. The Guardians would be a dream scenario. The Yankees eliminated them in five games last year when the Guardians were a much better version of themselves, especially in the bullpen. I will always pick an AL Central postseason opponent for the Yankees when given a chance, considering they’re 15-4 against the AL Central dating back to 2018, having never lost a series to that division. The Aaron Boone Yankees have never won a postseason series against a team from outside the AL Central, and the Yankees haven’t won a postseason series against a team from outside the AL Central since the 2012 ALDS.

9. With two crappy starts his last three times on the mound, Schlittler has been giving the postseason Game 3 assignment to Gil. But with Gil’s control issues coupled with an awful outing on Wednesday, I’m not sure who the current frontrunner is to be the Game 3 starter. I trust Schlittler more to throw strikes, but I trust Gil more to escape jams unscathed. They are each scheduled to make two more starts and I guess how they perform in those starts will determine who gets the ball after Max Fried and Carlos Rodon in the playoffs.

“They’re each going to have a few more [starts] here, so hopefully they put us in a tough situation based on them performing well,” Boone said.

10. Fried gets the ball on Thursday in Baltimore as the Yankees go from playing a night game in one city to playing the next night in another city yet again. The left-handed Cade Povich goes for the Orioles, so this is what we should see:

Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF/DH
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH/RF
Amed Rosario, 3B
Austin Slater, LF
Anthony Volpe, SS
Jose Caballero, 2B
Ben Rice, C

(Please don’t let Slater lead off.)

It’s unlikely that’s what we’ll actually see, but at this point I don’t care as long as I see a win.

1. When the Yankees took a 10-1 lead over the Twins in the fourth inning on Tuesday night, I didn’t think I would be doing a Joba Chamberlain 360-fist pump around my living room after the final out of the game. The Yankees nearly blew a nine-run lead over the final five innings against the ninth-best offense in the American League, but managed to hold on for a 10-9 win.

2. The Yankees scored two runs in the first, four in the second, three in the third and one in the fourth. That should have been enough for the bats to go quiet for the rest of the game (which they did), but it wasn’t thanks to the pitching (and managing to some extent).

Cam Schlittler retired the first two batters he faced on two pitches. Then he allowed back-to-back, six-pitch walks and a five-pitch RBI single. He ended up needing 24 pitches to get the final out of the first.

Schlittler rebounded from that first-inning RBI single to retire 10 straight from the last out of the first through the first out of the fifth. Working with a nine-run cushion with one out in the fifth and no one on, the rest of the game seemed like a formality until Schlittler unraveled. After recording that first out in the fifth, the Twins went single, home run, walk, strikeout, walk, wild pitch and walk off him before he was removed for Fernando Cruz. It took five of six batters to reach against the clearly fatigued Schlittler for Boone to decide to make a change. Cruz ended the inning on four pitches.

3. Leading 10-4 going into the bottom of the sixth, Aaron Boone decided not to send Cruz back out for the seventh. Maybe he didn’t want him having an up-and-down. Maybe he wanted to save him in case he was needed on Wednesday. Maybe he thought the game was over with a six-run lead in the sixth. Whatever the reason was, it nearly came back to haunt the Yankees.

With Cruz out of the game, Boone gave the ball to Ryan Yarbrough. He likely wanted Yarbrough to eat the remaining four innings. Yarbrough wasn’t able to eat anything. He got one out while giving up four runs.

4. In came Mark Leiter Jr. and it was Leiter Jr. of all pitchers who restored order to the game for the Yankees by putting up a zero over 1 2/3 innings across the sixth and seventh.

“That’s one of the stories of the game for me, a huge four outs there from Mark to settle things,” Boone said. “Him getting four outs was massive and that allowed Devin and Bednar to take it from there.”

Devin Williams followed Leiter Jr. with a scoreless eighth, and clinging to a one-run lead, David Bednar allowed a one-out, solo home run in the ninth before retiring the next two batters to end a game that should have never been as close as it was.

5. Here are my current Bullpen Trust Rankings:

David Bednar

That’s it. Just Bednar. But if you want the entire bullpen ranked by level of trust, here it is:

David Bednar
Fernando Cruz
Tim Hill
Luke Weaver
Devin Williams
Ryan Yarbrough
Mark Leiter Jr.
Camilo Doval

Even with as many home runs as Cruz has given up of late, he has to be second. Hill never gets to pitch, but with a lefty up to end an inning, I trust him explicitly. If he has to pitch to a righty he plummets on this list. Weaver has been so bad of late outside of Saturday at Fenway Park that I nearly put him below Williams. Doval is the worst reliever on the team and should no longer be on the team.

(I didn’t include Paul Blackburn since he’s clearly only on the roster to get the team through Game 162. Blackburn and I have the same odds of being on the postseason roster.)

7. “A little exhale after that one,” Boone said.

It would have been a disastrous loss for the Yankees with the Red Sox losing to the A’s and an opportunity to create separation in the wild-card standings available. The win combined with a Red Sox loss, Mariners win and Astros win currently has the Yankees playing the Astros in the Bronx for the wild-card series. With the Yordan Alvarez ankle injury, playing the Astros is preferable to the Red Sox because the Astros don’t have Garrett Crochet.

8. “I feel like we have one of the best bullpens in the league,” Leiter Jr. said.

Clearly a graduate of the Aaron Boone School of Media, Leiter Jr. couldn’t be more wrong. The Yankees have the worst bullpen in the majors since the trade deadline with the highest ERA. The only truly trustworthy arm is Bednar.

9. Anthony Volpe returned to the lineup and went 2-for-4, which was enough for Jack Curry to call for him to start again tomorrow on the postgame show. Not you too, Jack! Twins starter Zebby Matthews sucks and doesn’t belong in the majors. Evaluating Volpe on hitting a guy that the entire Yankees lineup beat the crap out of isn’t impressive. Matthews put 13 runners on in three innings.

We have three years of performance to know Volpe shouldn’t be playing over Jose Caballero and if the Yankees are going to make the shortstop decision based on performance against a Triple-A pitcher (which is how we ended up in this situation with Volpe hitting Triple-A pitching in 2023 spring training) then they are even more lost than I originally thought. The starting shortstop shouldn’t be a daily decision. Start Caballero every day and play Volpe once the postseason position is set.

9. The Yankees will see an old AL East familiar face in Taj Bradley on Wednesday. The Yankees got to him for six runs back on April 17 at Yankee Stadium before beating them on May 4. He’s not going to allow the type of hit parade Matthews did, so the Yankees are going to need Luis Gil to have some semblance of control. It’s hard to envision Gil continuing to succeed while walking the park and with Schlittler struggling mightily in two of his last three starts, Gil is likely the Yankees’ Game 3 starter in the postseason. It would be nice if Gil could start to build some trust in throwing strikes.

10. The Twins are bad. Really bad. They have the second-worst record in the AL. Losing a series to them at this point of the season with what’s at stake for home-field advantage in a best-of-3 would be unacceptable.