The Yankees went to Baltimore needing to win series and stack wins. Instead, they leave Baltimore having dropped another series and remain in last place in the AL East and out of a playoff spot.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I didn’t know what to expect from Luis Severino on Sunday night. I had a fear he wouldn’t be good because he has been mostly not good this season. But I hoped for the best and braced myself for the worst.

Well, maybe I didn’t exactly brace myself for the worst because for as bad as Severino has mostly been this season, what unfolded in the first inning isn’t one of the scenarios I visualized taking place: single, single, double, double, walk, home run to open the game. The first six Orioles Severino faced all scored. The Yankees trailed 6-0 before they could record an out, and just like that, the game was over.

2. I knew what to expect from Dean Kremer: a few runs at best and a lot of strikeouts. It was just over three weeks ago that Kremer went to Yankee Stadium and struck out 10 in seven innings of one-run ball. The Yankees had won the first two games of that four-game series, and Orioles legend and broadcaster Jim Palmer told Michael Kay on the day of that July 5 game that it was the biggest game of the season for the Orioles to prevent a second-half tailspin. Kremer stepped up, shut down the Aaron Judge-less Yankees and the Orioles went on an eight-game winning streak that eventually led to them taking over first place in the AL East.

With Kremer once again facing a Judge-less Yankees lineup, Sunday’s offensive performance wasn’t just expected, it was inevitable.

3. Kremer struck out seven Yankees and the Orioles bullpen struck out another 11. In an immensely important game, Aaron Boone sat Judge and gave the finally-heating-up DJ LeMahieu the night off and the rest of the Yankees struck out 18 times.

“Outside of the strikeouts, I thought at-bats were building off of last night,” Boone said. “I thought we grinded out really well.”

Outside of the team striking out for 18 of their 27 outs, Boone thought the offense did a good job grinding out at-bats. There’s no end for how far this idiot will will go to spin something into a positive.

“We made it really tough on Kremer,” Boone said.

Two weeks ago, the Yankees were shut down by Griffin Canning in Anaheim as Canning recorded a career-high 12 strikeouts. What did Boone say about his offense that night? “At least we made Canning work hard to do it.”

There was Boone again on Sunday night, citing the Yankees making Kremer work hard as a reason to be pleased with his team losing a game to the Orioles, losing the season series to the Orioles and losing on a day in which the Blue Jays, Rangers, Astros and Red Sox also lost.

4. “I thought we carried some of that momentum in from last night,” Boone said.

“Last night” refers to Saturday night. On Saturday night, the Yankees scored eight runs against a starting pitcher who was sent down to Double-A immediately after the game and a starter-turned-reliever due to performance with a 5.93 ERA. There was no momentum carried over because there is no momentum with this team. Unless they’re playing the A’s or Royals they can’t win back-to-back games. And now they are 47-49 when they play teams other than the A’s or Royals.

Since winning two of three against the A’s in the last week of June, the Yankees have lost two of three to the Cardinals, split a four-game series against the Orioles after winning the first two, lost two of three at home to the Cubs, lost two of three to the Rockies, got swept by the Angels, swept the Royals, split two with the Mets and lost a series to the Orioles. The Yankees finish July having won one series in the month and have lost four straight rubber games.

5. I have always liked Severino. Even when he couldn’t get out of the first inning in the 2017 wild-card game. Even when he sucked in the second half of 2018. Even when he didn’t know the start time for Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS and couldn’t get a 10th out in that game. Even when the injuries started piling up in 2019, forced him to miss all of 2020 and nearly all of 2021. Even when more injuries forced him to miss most of 2022. Even when he cited exit velocity and the Crawford Boxes in Houston as the reason for him losing Game 2 of the 2022 ALCS. Even as he has pitched as bad as any Yankees starter in the team’s history has pitched this season, allowing 108 baserunners in 57 2/3 innings.

When news broke in 2015 of a 21-year-old Severino getting called up to the Yankees, I anticipated him one day being the ace of a championship Yankees team. Instead, I will have to settle for him being one of the faces of the Baby Bombers era that once has so much hope and promise and instead turned into an unmitigated disaster. On Sunday, Severino allowed at least nine runs in a game for the second time in July becoming the first Yankee since 1934 to have two of those starts in a calendar month. It’s hard to believe Severino will get the ball in five days against the Astros.

6. It’s hard to believe Anthony Rizzo is under contract next season with the Yankees at $17 million and then has a $17 million option or $6 million buyout for 2025. Rizzo isn’t just bad, like most of the Yankees lineup he’s unplayable, and yet he has to play. When you miss on all of your free-agent signings, bring in a litany of oft-injured players and fail to develop your own talent, you get stuck with a lineup full of underachieving, unplayable players that then have to play. In a season in which the Yankees began paying Aaron Hicks to play for the first-place Orioles and continued to roster, play and bat Josh Donaldson fifth in the lineup, Rizzo has become the face of this historically bad Yankees offense.

Rizzo has one home run since May 20, a wall-scraping, short-porch job at Yankee Stadium that wouldn’t have been out of any of the other 29 stadiums in the majors. That home run came off of Jordan Lyles, whose season is making Severino’s look 1999 Pedro Martinez’s. Since that home run, Rizzo has a 53 wRC+, which is the lowest among qualified hitters in that time, making him the worst hitter in the majors for more than 10 weeks now. On Sunday night, Rizzo went 0-for-5 and his OPS fell to a career-worst .710.

7. Not far behind that abysmal OPS is Giancarlo Stanton with a .722. ESPN showed a graphic on Sunday night letting viewers know Stanton has homered in seven of his last 15 games. Here is the list of pitchers he hit those seven home runs off of.

Drew Smyly
Michael Rucker
Austin Gomber
Connor Seabold
Chase Silseth
Dylan Coleman
Tyler Wells

Smyly is the closest thing to a household name of those seven and you would have to be from a household that really follows baseball to know who he is. Smyly is on his fifth team in five years and seventh in 10 major-league seasons.

Rucker has a 5.03 ERA.

Gomber has a 5.83 ERA.

Seabold has a 6.95 ERA.

Silseth was making his ninth career start.

Coleman has a 9.95 ERA.

Wells was sent to Double-A after his performance on Saturday.

So if you’re a journeyman hanging on to a major-league career, the 26th man on a roster, a rookie trying to learn how to pitch at this level or an arm so out of whack you get demoted two levels down, and you throw a middle-middle fastball or hang a breaking ball, Stanton may take you deep. Other than that, Stanton isn’t going to do anything.

With or without Judge, these two have to hit. It’s been the same rhetoric all season and the season is dwindling down. It could be the last week of September and the Yankees could be eliminated from postseason contention and Boone will still be saying the Yankees just “need to get a few guys going” and that “they are going to get on a roll.”

8. No one is asking Rizzo to be and no one thinks he can be the .901 OPS player he was for the Cubs from 2014-19. No one is asking Stanton to be and no one thinks he can be the .908 OPS player he was for a decade from 2012-21. All anyone is asking is that they don’t be automatic outs, which is what they have been for the majority of this season, and what Stanton has been since the start of last season.

As for the rest of the lineup? There’s no hope outside a possibly-returning-to-form LeMahieu or the occasional few-game streak from Gleyber Torres. Jake Bauers plays infrequently, Harrison Bader is at best a fourth outfielder on a good team, Anthony Volpe is a disappointment and Kyle Higashioka and Isiah Kiner-Falefa will again be disappointments once their playing time increases and they are exposed like their career numbers suggest.

9. Boone continues to preach that the rest of the season and the Yankees’ path to the postseason is “right in front of them” to take advantage of. The only thing that appears to be in front of the Yankees is more losing. They have three against the Rays and four against the Astros. Next week’s “break” in the schedule comes against the White Sox, who took two of three from the Yankees in the Bronx earlier this season. Then it’s nine straight against the Marlins, Braves and Red Sox.

10. On Monday night, the Yankees will face Tyler Glasnow, a real, legitimate starting pitcher with ace-like stuff.

“We need to be ready to go,” Boone said of the upcoming series against the Rays. “Obviously, with the urgency of where we’re at in the season.”

“Where we’re at in the season” wouldn’t happen to be with 57 games remaining and the Yankees in last place in the AL East and 3 1/2 games out of a playoff spot, would it? The “urgency” Boone speaks couldn’t be sitting Judge and LeMahieu on Sunday, could it?

With the way the offense has performed against back-of-the-rotation arms and now-out-of-the-league starters, it’s difficult to envision a scenario in which Glasnow doesn’t dominate the Yankees lineup. If he does, Boone will be there after the game to tell us at least they made Glasnow work hard.

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The Yankees offense actually looked like Bronx Bombers for the first time in a long time in their 8-3 win over the Orioles. It was a much-needed win, and they’ll need to do the same on Sunday night.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I want to thank Brandon Hyde for waving the white flag early on Saturday night. With his Orioles trailing 3-2 in the third inning, Hyde removed starter Tyler Wells after just 2 2/3 innings and asked the lesser, backend arms of his bullpen to get 19 outs.

There was no way the Orioles were going to be able to navigate the middle innings relying on the soft-throwing, unable-to-strike-anyone-out, left-handed Cole Irvin against the all right-handed lineup (except for Anthony Rizzo) of the Yankees. Hyde let Irvin face 10 batters and six of them reached and four of them scored.

2. It was Giancarlo Stanton who gave the Yankees an early lead when he was able to clear the mile-long left-field wall in the first and it was Aaron Judge who got them the lead back in the third, but it was Isiah Kiner-Falefa who broke the game open with a bases-clearing double in the sixth.

Kiner-Falefa had impressive plate appearances throughout the game, going 1-for-3 with the three-RBI double and two walks. He saw 36 pitches in his five plate appearances and for the first time in his Yankees career, I found myself thinking he looked good. (Now if only he could that with some level of consistency.)

3. “Guys were giving really tough at-bats,” Aaron Boone said after the 8-3 win. “And that’s us and that’s who we want to be.”

Well, that’s not the Yankees. Yes, that’s who they want to be, but it’s not who they are. They haven’t been that type of offense in a long, long time.

The Yankees improved to 45-12 when they score four or more runs. Their pitching is so good that they just need to score four runs to have a really strong chance of winning, and yet, it’s so hard for them to do.

4. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” Boone said of the offense. “That’s what we’re working to.”

That is what an offense that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars should look like. Unfortunately, the offense rarely looks the way it did on Saturday.

Because of the offensive outburst, the Yankees were able to save their elite relievers, only needing to use Ian Hamilton and Nick Ramirez each for a pair of no-hit innings. Like the Orioles bullpen, the Yankees bullpen will be well rested for the crucial rubber game on Sunday Night Baseball.

5. Judge may be well rested too, as Boone said he plans on giving Judge the series finale off.

“Right now I’m leaning towards no,” Boone said of playing Judge for a third straight game. “But we’ll see.”

It’s inexplicable that Judge may not play on Sunday. He just missed two months and has been deemed healthy to play, but only healthy enough when Boone feels like it?

6. “As much as I want to run him every day, forget the toe,” Boone said, “He hasn’t come close to playing games for almost two months.”

If you’re saying “forget the toe” and that he needs a break because he hasn’t played, well, that’s the single dumbest idea I have ever heard from a man who once secretly used Deivi Garcia as an opener in playoff game, only to turn to JA Happ.

7. “I want him every game,” Boone said. “We have 13 in a row. Hopefully, he’s in a position to start nine or 10 of them.”

Or how about all of them? The Yankees are 31-20 when Judge plays and 24-29 when he doesn’t. Every game he doesn’t play greatly diminishes the Yankees’ odds of winning. When you’re in last place in the division (eight games back) and not even holding a playoff spot (3 1/2 games back), you can’t afford to greatly diminish the odds of winning any game.

8. “As much as I want him in there, we’ve got to be smart here,” Boone said. “If we get through these 13 days into the off-day and hopefully we’re in a good spot to where we can now roll.”

Judge’s toe isn’t completely healed or healthy. He has made it known he’s not 100 percent and yet he’s playing on it and so far has played extremely well, reaching base in six of nine plate appearances. Both Judge and the Yankees have said it’s not going to heal until the offseason and it’s about pain tolerance. If he’s not going to get better than how does it make sense that at the end of this 13-game stretch he will magically be better to play every day.

If Judge is out of the lineup on a given day and says it was his own call, then so be it. If he’s not in the lineup on a given day, and it’s not his call on how he feels about his own toe, then that will be incomprehensible.

9. “If we get through these games” is what Boone said. If the Yankees don’t get through these games by winning the majority of them, the final six weeks of the season will be a formality. These 13 games are against the Orioles, Rays, Astros and White Sox. The Yankees are already 1-1 in the 13, having wasted the first two games running in place in standings with now two less games to play this season. By the time these 13 games are over, the Yankees could be facing a mathematical unlikelihood of reaching the postseason. It’s possible that could be the case even if Judge plays every game, but why wouldn’t you want to do everything you can to give yourself the best chance to win?

10. The Yankees haven’t done everything they can to give themselves the best chance to win for a while now. It all started 13 years ago they wouldn’t include Eduardo Nunez in a trade for Cliff Lee and then admitted down the stretch of that season that they didn’t care if they reached the postseason as a division winner or wild-card winner. Since then their lackadaisical approach to winning has reached unbelievable levels.

The Yankees have done enough losing over the last 13 months. Their ownership, front office, managerial, coaching, roster and in-game decisions have proven they’re comfortable and OK with losing. If they think they can clinch a postseason berth without Judge, we’ll know they’re still OK with it.

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The Yankees played just a bad team and not a historically-bad team, so they lost. After sweeping the 29-73 Royals, the Yankees were blown out by the 46-53 Mets.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The weekend was enjoyable and easygoing because the Yankees played the Royals, a team on pace for 116 losses. The Royals can’t hit, they can’t pitch, they can’t field and they can’t run the bases, and all of their physical and mental mistakes led to a three-game series sweep for the Yankees. It was the Yankees’ first sweep since May 19-21 in Cincinnati, and it was their first series win since June 27-29 in Oakland.

2. It was also a mirage. The Royals aren’t just bad, they are historically bad and could very well challenge the worst 162-game record in modern baseball, just like the A’s. And just like the A’s, the Yankees are 8-1 against the Royals and A’s this season and 45-47 against all other teams. As satisfying as it was to see the Yankees not only win a series (something they hadn’t done in all of July), but sweep a series, it was nothing to get excited about given the opponent. And if you were foolishly excited about it, the Yankees, the real Yankees, returned on Tuesday in the first game of the Yankee Stadium portion of the Subway Series. The Yankees put together a disappointing effort in a 7-3 loss, losing to a Mets team that everyone beats.

3. The game got off to a poor start when Pete Alonso was able to bloop a two-out catchable ball into left-center to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. It was a ball that Harrison Bader rightfully took the blame for on the field. In the ninth inning, Bader booted a ball on a hop that led to another Mets run.

Like most of the roster, I’m sick of Bader and looking forward to when he’s no longer a Yankee, and that better be once this season ends. Extending or re-signing Bader would be a regrettable decision, just like the decision to extend Aaron Hicks was. And just like Hicks, Bader spent a large portion of his 20s on the injured list, so believing in him to stay healthy in his 30s is like believing in Albert Abreu to put up a zero in a high-leverage situation.

4. Bader spent his first two months of being a Yankee recovering from an injury before hitting .217/.245/.283 in 49 regular-season plate appearances in 2022. He went on to hit a bunch of postseason home runs, but also had the Yankees’ biggest blunder of the postseason when he dropped a fly ball in Game 3 of the ALCS that was immediately followed by a two-run home run. This season, he started the year on the injured list and didn’t debut until the 31st game of the season. He got hurt again on Memorial Day and didn’t return until June 20. During that time, he had a chance to come back for a crucial series at Fenway Park, but opted not to, citing his defense not being ready, so he stayed on his rehab assignment for two more games while the Yankees were swept in Boston.

If the wind blows the wrong way, Bader ends up out of the lineup or on the injured list. When he does play, he’s a good glove with a below-league-average bat. He’s hitting .249/.280/.420 in 2023, and is a .242/.273/.395 hitter as a Yankee. I was extremely worried about the Yankees adding another weak, right-handed bat when they traded for him and his 98 OPS+ with the Cardinals, but he’s been even worse as a Yankee than he was as a Cardinal with an 84 OPS+. Yes, give that guy a long-term deal!

5. In the third inning, the Yankees were still being shut out because Justin Verlander was pitching, and even if the rest of the league has hit around the reigning AL Cy Young winner this season, the Yankees haven’t, just like they never have. The Mets led 1-0, but after Domingo German quickly retired the first two batters of the third, another catchable bloop and a walk put two on with two outs for Pete Alonso, and he made it a 4-0 game. The Mets had built a four-run lead on two bloop hits that had expected batting averages of less than .050.

6. At that point the game was over. The Yankees couldn’t hit Chase Silseth, Austin Gomber and Chase Anderson recently. They weren’t about to hit Verlander. And if the Yankees were going to come back and win the game, they would need five runs to win it. If you’re a Yankees fan who turned the game off after Alonso’s three-run home run in the third inning, good for you as you saved your night and time. Me? I hung around and watched the Yankees get shut out for six innings by Verlander and then score three meaningless runs against a pitching staff that allowed 35 runs over its previous six games against the Red Sox and White Sox. I hung around, so I could write this and so you wouldn’t have to. You’re welcome.

7. The game never got better. It only got worse. In the sixth inning, Alonso hit his second home run of the game to Monument Park to give the Mets a 5-0 lead with all five runs driven in by Alonso. Alonso’s monopoly on driving in the Mets’ runs only lasted two pitches as Daniel Vogelbach, who has been the ire of every Mets fan this season, crushed a home run to right field to give the Mets a 6-0 lead and back-to-back home runs off German.

In German’s last start before the All-Star break, he dominated the Cubs for six innings, allowing just one hit — a solo home run — on 74 pitches. Aaron Boone removed him from that game after the sixth, and the Yankees’ bullpen blew a three-run lead. After the game, Boone said he “wanted to get Domingo out of there on a real high note heading into the second half.”

Like most concoctions in Boone’s brain, that one made no sense and has blown up magnificently. After German’s disastrous performance on Tuesday against the Mets, he has now allowed 11 runs in 12 innings since the All-Star break. A “high note,” indeed.

8. German sucked, but even if he was just bad and not unbelievably awful, the Yankees still would have lost. Through the first six innings, the Yankees had one at-bat with a runner in scoring position. They were able to plate their first run because of a hit by pitch, plated their second because a four-pitch walk set up a sacrifice fly and their third came after a bloop of their own. They didn’t have good at-bats or battle or grind or do anything that Boone would lead you to believe they did. They got a few baserunners and scored a few meaningless runs late when the game was over against a horrific bullpen. That’s it. There were no “good things” that Boone likes to talk about the from the game because the Yankees didn’t do anything well in the game. Because there are no “good things” when you lose, especially when you lose when you’re the team doing the chasing in the playoff race.

9. The entire night was cringeworthy, and even more cringeworthy than watching the Yankees celebrate Anthony Rizzo’s short porch home run over the weekend as if it clinched a postseason series. In 17 games in July against teams not from Kansas City, the Yankees have been held to four runs or less in 11 of them. Losing at this point of the season when you don’t hold a playoff spot is bad enough, losing to the Mets in the fashion the Yankees did on Tuesday made it that much worse. 

10. I have zero confidence in Carlos Rodon pitching well on Wednesday night against the Mets because why would I? Rodon was outpitched by Jameson Taillon in his Yankees debut and then got lit up by the Rockies and Angels in his only three starts this season. He also showed he is as soft mentally as Bader is physically with his kiss blowing in Anaheim and that doesn’t bode well for him in an extremely important Subway Series game at Yankee Stadium. Even if the Rodon who the Yankees thought they were getting when they gave him a six-year, $162 million deal shows up on Wednesday, does any sensible Yankees fan think the offense is going to show up? If you think the Yankees offense is going to show up on Wednesday, you were likely one of the Yankees fans excited about the rest of the Yankees season after this weekend’s sweep of the Royals, and if you were excited about the rest of the Yankees season after they swept the Royals, I feel sorry for you.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
is available as an ebook!