1. Late-game comebacks on back-to-back nights? Who are these Yankees?

After erasing a one-run deficit in the seventh inning on Tuesday with a 10-run outburst for their first win when trailing after the sixth inning of the season, the Yankees had another late-game rally on Wednesday. A night after getting to the best bullpen in baseball for their highest-scoring inning in nearly a decade, the Yankees got to the best bullpen in baseball again, this time erasing a two-run deficit in the eighth.

2. The Yankees were down 3-1 in the eighth because they were no-hit for 6 1/3 innings by Dylan Cease. Cease arrived in the Bronx with one quality start in seven games this season, had been unable to get through five innings in his two most recent starts against the light-hitting Pirates and Rays, and earlier this season got tagged by the A’s for nine runs. So of course, he took the Yankee Stadium mound with his best stuff and gave his best performance of the season.

3. It wasn’t until Cody Bellinger’s game-tying solo home run in the seventh that the Yankees put a hit on the board. The reason a solo shot was able to tie the game that late is because Max Fried was unbelievable again: 7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K, 1 HR. The Yankees have now won all eight of Fried’s starts this season (they are 13-16 when he doesn’t start) and he leads all pitchers in WAR, wins, ERA, innings pitched and ERA+. If Fried were to allow 10 earned runs in his next start without recording an out, his ERA would still be 2.79, which is essentially what Paul Skenes’ ERA (2.77) is.

“I thought this might have been his best command game, in my opinion, all year,” Aaron Boone said. “Obviously, that’s saying something with how well he’s pitched.”

I was fearful the Yankees’ offense would waste another strong Fried start with a lackluster effort the day after exploding for a 10-run inning. Fearful because the Yankees can’t afford to lose Fried starts.

4. If you find yourself wondering why the Yankees are so bad in one- and two-run games, Boone was in the dugout on Wednesday to remind you. Boone did everything he could to manage his team to a loss on a night when Fried was exceptional and Bellinger provided a big blast.

With the game tied at 1 entering the eighth and the top of the Padres’ order due up, Boone decided to go to Ian Hamilton. Why? Because of his belief in set innings for relievers. I warned in these Thoughts that Luke Weaver becoming the closer of the team would be detrimental to the team’s success because instead of Weaver getting through the toughest part of the opposing lineup in winnable games, he would now be locked into the ninth inning and pitching to a meaningless statistic: the save. That’s exactly what happened on Wednesday.

5. Hamilton has been in Boone’s relief circle of trust since becoming a Yankee despite his struggles in big spots and Wednesday was no different. Hamilton walked two of the three batters he faced (Fernando Tatis and Manny Machado) and then Boone decided to go to Weaver with two on and one out. If Boone was willing to use Weaver in the eighth inning, why he didn’t he just let him start the inning clean against the top of the order? Instead, Boone decided to try to steal a few outs with Hamilton and it backfired, like it always does, and then he broke the emergency glass to call on his only trustworthy relief option.

Weaver entered his second game of the series with little margin of error because Boone likes to make things as hard as possible on his relievers. That margin was erased after an RBI single and a sacrifice fly. The more close games the Yankees play, the more games they will lose solely because of their manager.

6. Thankfully, the Yankees didn’t lose this one. After inexplicably keeping Trent Grisham on the bench to start the game, Boone used him as a pinch hitter for Jorbit Vivas representing the tying run in the bottom of the eighth and Grisham crushed his ninth home run of the season to the second deck in right.

“Every game we were down, fighting back,” Grisham said. “We were in every single one of them, and then to come away with the last two was huge.”

With every Grisham home run and every big play in the outfield, it’s hard not to think about the 621 plate appearances the Yankees gave Alex Verdugo last season as he finished 17 percent below league average at the plate. If Grisham had been an everyday plater in 2024, are the Yankees the defending champions?

Both closers pitched scoreless frames in the ninth and to extra innings the game went.

The Yankees had lost both extra-inning games this season, and as a whole they are medicore-at-best in extra innings since the implementation of the automatic runner. Again, this is solely because of Boone’s lack of creativity and logic with a runner on second and no outs.

7. With a tired bullpen (tired in the Yankees’ organizational eye), Boone decided he would give the middle finger to the fan base by having Devin Williams pitch the 10th. Williams had already lost one extra-inning game this season (in Pittsburgh) to go along with his other three blown games in non-extra innings.

Williams struck out Tatis on three pitches to lull Yankees fans into thinking maybe he’s fixed. But before that thought could even process, Williams walked Arraez, struck out Machado and drilled Jackson Merrill. Williams had loaded the bases and for a pitcher who has had no idea where the ball has been going this season, it wasn’t exactly promising.

Up came Xander Bogaerts, who had a big hit in the series opener on Monday and has destroyed the Yankees throughout his career. (No hit bigger than his two-run home run in the first inning of the 2021 wild-card game.) Williams got ahead of Bogaerts 1-2, but then threw a non-competitive changeup in the dirt and a fastball that nearly sailed to backstop. With a full count, Williams went back to his changeup and had Bogaerts let it go, it would have walked in the go-ahead run, but Boagerts swung over it and Williams celebrated as if he had just clinched a postseason series for the Yankees.

8. Williams is anything but fixed. Wherever the catcher puts his glove, Williams’ pitch finds itself on the other side of the plate. The fastball is wild and the changeup is all over the place. I’m happy he finally had a big moment in pinstripes and the Yankees won, but it’s hard to come away from the outing and think he can be trusted the next time he enters in a big spot. And the next time he enters it will be a big spot. Boone has shown he’s only going to use Williams in high-leverage situations. There’s no finding himself in blowouts and mop-up duty. Boone is going to let Williams figure it out on the fly with games on the line.

9. After Williams pitched a scoreless top half, the Yankees ended the game with two batters in the bottom half. A day after popping up a sacrifice bunt for an easy Oswaldo Cabrera laid down a beauty to lead off the inning and move Jasson Dominguez to third. Boone went to his bench and used J.C, Escarra to pinch hit for Oswald Peraza. Down in the count, 1-2, Escarra battled back to send a sacrifice fly to left to win the game.

“Theres are things you dream about as a kid,” Escarra said, “and it’s all unfolding in real time in front of my eyes.”

10. There’s nothing better than a comeback win going into a day off. For the Yankees, there’s nothing better than a comeback win before hopping a cross-country flight for the first West Coast trip of the season.

The Yankees head to Sacramento to play the A’s in a Triple-A stadium. The A’s are two games over .500 and much improved from the team they were the last two seasons. Unfortunately, the Yankees are going to let Will Warren start another game and start the series opener on Friday.

Warren was given an unbelievable opportunity this season with injuries to Gerrit Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt, he was going to be given countless chances to start and prove himself worthy of staying in the rotation as the Yankees got healthy. But instead of taking the opportunity and running with it, he continues to fall behind hitters, nibble around the edges to elevate his pitch count and pitch the Yankees out of games. He has no quality starts in seven starts and has failed to get through five innings in four of them. The Yankees have lost five of his seven starts and every time he takes the ball it’s irresponsible for a team with championship aspirations. It also says a lot about their pitching depth at Triple-A and Double-A. It says it sucks if no one there is a better option than Warren and his 7.71 ERA and 1.695 WHIP in 51 1/3 career innings.

Six games in Sacramento and Seattle before the Mets come to the Stadium next weekend. Get your rest in today, it’s going to be a long, late week.

1. Finally. Finally the Yankees won a game in which they trailed later than the sixth inning. It took until the 36th game of the season (22 percent of the season), but the Yankees overcame a one-run deficit in the seventh inning on Tuesday with a 10-run outburst — their most runs scored in an inning in nearly 10 years — in a 12-3 win over the Padres.

For the first six-plus innings on Tuesday, it was more of the same from the Yankees. Defensive issues, a run forced in by a balk and a whole lot of nothing against a dominant starting pitcher other than an Aaron Judge solo home run and a run produced by a throwing error.

When the Padres took a 3-2 lead in the the top of the seventh, I figured that was it. In every other instance in which the Yankees trailed at any point after the sixth inning this season, they went on to lose. Going out against the best bullpen in the majors figured to be their latest such loss.

2. The latest comeback the Yankees had staged prior to Tuesday was on April 15 against the Royals. They trailed 2-o in the sixth inning of that game before Jasson Dominguez, hitting right-handed, cleared the bases with a double to left field. Dominguez served as the rally starter on Tuesday with a hustle double to lead off the seventh.

“It’s fun to watch him run,” Aaron Boone said. “He can really go.”

It’s so fun for Boone to watch Dominguez that he only plays him half the time. Dominguez doesn’t play every day so that Cody Bellinger can. Why? Owed money. 

3. Anthony Volpe followed Dominguez with a single to put runners on the corners with no outs. Austin Wells drove in Dominguez with a single to tie the game at 3.

Maybe Boone is a reader of Yankees Thoughts based on some of his decisions to put pressure on the Padres in the seventh. After what I wrote about him on Tuesday and always waiting around for the  multi-run home run, Boone called for a sacrifice bunt and double steal in the same inning.

After Wells’ single, Boone had Oswaldo Cabrera bunt, but Cabrera popped up the bunt for an easy out. Instead of sitting back after the failed sacrifice bunt, Boone called for a double steal with Volpe and Wells, and they were both successful. The Baseball Gods then went on to reward Boone for his managerial creativity with the Yankees’ highest-scoring inning in nearly a decade.

4. Paul Goldschmidt was intentionally walked to load the bases with one out and the Padres turned to former Yankee Wandy Peralta. It’s almost a guarantee a former Yankee will perform exceptionally well against the Yankees. Almost. There’s the example of Nestor Cortes getting bombed in the second game of the season, and there’s Peralta on Tuesday. Michael King did his part against his former team (6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR), but Peralta had nothing.

5. With the bases loaded, Peralta walked Trent Grisham on four pitches. Then came a Ben Rice two-run double followed by an intentional walk of Judge. Bellinger singled in Grisham and Dominguez (batting for the second time in the inning) flew out. Volpe hit his second single of the inning to give the Yankees a five-run lead and Wells ended the game with the first grand slam of his career. (Cabrera ended the inning with a ground out. The Yankees sent 13 batters to the plate in the inning and scored 10 runs, and somehow, Cabrera made two of the inning’s outs.) Peralta’s line: 0.2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR.

6. This is what the Yankees do. They struggle to score runs for a week then blow a team out to prop up their run differential and give postgame quotes about how good and deep their lineup is (it isn’t). The Yankees have a plus-60 run differential on the season and lead the American League in runs scored with 202. But that plus-60 is a mostly a product of four games: a 20-9 win over the Brewers, a 12-3 win over the Brewers, a 15-3 win over the Orioles and a 12-3 win over the Padres. The Yankees outscored the opposition by 41 runs in those four games.

7. The Yankees are 20-16 on the season, though their expected record suggests they should be 24-12 based on their run differential. The problem with expected record is it treats the offense as if it’s playing in one long continuous game instead of 162 games. Look at last week’s series against the Orioles. The Yankees outscored the Orioles 22-12. They lost the series because while they blew the Orioles out in one game, they lost two one-run games.

8. A blowout win is always fun. Scoring 10 runs in an inning is fun. Hitting grand slams is fun. Consistent offense is the most fun though, and the Yankees haven’t been that. Far from it. If you were to have not watched a game this season and looked at the standings and run totals, you would think the Yankees were some offensive juggernaut, which simply isn’t the truth.

9. The offense will see Dylan Cease on Tuesday, who has struggled this season. Cease has made it to the sixth inning in one of his seven starts, pitching to a 5.61 ERA and 1.604 WHIP. In his two most recent starts he couldn’t get through five innings against the Pirates or Rays and a month ago the A’s scored nine runs off of him in four innings. If the Yankees’ offense is to be believed to be anything other than a lineup that gets mostly held in check and goes off once every couple of weeks, this would be the matchup and game to show it.

10. Max Fried gets the ball for the Yankees for his eighth start of the season. The Yankees have won all seven of his starts to date, as he has averaged 6 1/3 innings per start to go along with a league-best 1.01 ERA and 0.940 WHIP. How about Fried for eight and Luke Weaver for the ninth for a nice, easy Yankees win going into the day off on Thursday?

1. The Yankees are 16-16 since sweeping the Brewers to open the season. That’s a .500 record over 32 games, which is equal to 20 percent of the season.

The Yankees fan who thinks Aaron Boone can do no wrong, believes Anthony Volpe is closer to being a star than a bust, feels Cody Bellinger can’t possibly be this bad and promises Devin Williams will figure it out will tell you the Yankees have the second-best run differential in the American League, are playing three games worse than their expected record and are in first place in the division.

The Yankees fan who has watched this team underachieve in every season during the Boone era knows this team for what it really is: a roster with a top-heavy lineup, a top-heavy rotation, a top-heavy bullpen and a manager who is every bit in over his head in 2025 as he was in 2018. The Yankees fan who sees a team with a run differential propped up by a couple of blowout wins over the Brewers, one over the Blue Jays and one over the Orioles. A team that has lost three straight at home and four of five and five of seven overall.

2. The offense is Aaron Judge, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt, and at times Ben Rice. The rotation is Max Fried and half the time Carlos Rodon. The bullpen is Fernando Cruz and Luke Weaver. The Yankees have no depth, and the depth they do have is mismanaged in inexplicable ways. It’s how you get Pablo Reyes starting and batting seventh twice recently. It’s how you get Reyes playing over Jorbit Vivas and pinch-hitting nightmare matchups created by a manager who seems to be unaware the opposing manager is allowed to make counter moves.

3. Boone manages the team the same way no matter the personnel. He manages a team whose infield the other day was Vivas, Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza as if he had Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano. He manages his rotation as if it’s full of studs and his lineup as if it’s full of sluggers. He thinks fringe major-league starting pitchers (at best) are going to figure it out mid-game after allowing 12 baserunners in three innings. He thinks a 31-year-old, career 76 OPS+ right-handed bat should not only play against a right-handed starter over a left-handed bat, but bat seventh. If you’re going to have a roster with so few impact players, you can’t have this manager managing it.

4. The Yankees aren’t managed, they’re mismanaged. It’s rare when Boone puts his players in the best possible position to succeed. They can’t create offense and fail to ever put the pressure on the defense. They play station-to-station baseball and wait for a multi-run home run to save them, and when they don’t get it, they lose. The Rays used creativity and speed to cause chaos on Saturday and come from behind, just like the Guardians did recently against them as well. When the Yankees get a baserunner on in the eighth or ninth, the runner never advances past their initial base. They’re never in motion. They stand there and wait for the ball to go over the wall, and when it doesn’t, they lose. The ball hasn’t gone over the wall in late-game spots year, and that’s why they keep losing close games: a combination of no late-game power and middle relief decisions made without logic.

5. The two one-run losses last week in Baltimore were frustrating, and the Yankees followed those up by losing another one-run game on Saturday, a two-run game on Sunday and yet another one-run game on Monday. If you’re wondering why the Yankees are 6-13 in games decided by one or two runs and 13-3 in games decided by three runs or more, it’s because they are without a competent manager, are a disgrace fundamentally and lack capable situational hitters. At their core they are the same team the Dodgers spent the offseason publicly laughing about any chance they got.

6. Sunday’s eighth inning roster management was disturbing. Here is the thought process of the man responsible for in-game strategy of the Yankees on his eighth-inning personnel choices on Sunday:

Boone said he was going to pinch hit Ben Rice for J.C. Escarra or Jorbit Vivas. He decided to let Escarra hit because he’s “the guy that’s been here and more experienced.”

(What exactly is Escarra experienced at? Rice has more games played in the majors and then Escarra and has had much more success.)

Once Escarra grounded into the double play, Boone “shut that (idea) down.” Then Vivas had the two-run hit, so Boone used Rice as the potential tying run instead of Oswaldo Cabrera. Boone went on to say he could have used Austin Wells as a pinch hitter, “but I can’t shoot both of them because all I have is Escarra left.”

(Guess what happened? Wells ended up appearing in the game for defense, but wasn’t used as a pinch hitter.)

If you’re confused by all of that, so am I. But Boone has had similar nonsensical answers in the past when asked about lineup choices. Three years ago, Boone went on CC Sabathia’s podcast and was asked how to comes up with his daily lineups:

“My process for making the lineup is actually a little bit different all the time. There’s the ebb and flow of the season. Let’s assume everyone is healthy and we’re not going to bed that night with ‘We’re waiting to find out if this guy’s available tomorrow.’ So if our guys are available, a lot of times, I’ll buzz by my coaches the night before going home where we may have a thought. A lot of times it’s usually with Mendy where I’ll just be like, ‘What do you think about this guy in tomorrow?’ And we’ll kind of bounce things off. When Marcus was here, I said, ‘What do you think of this guy in tomorrow? This guy out? What do you think about flipping these guys in the lineup?’ So that’s usually how it starts and then when I come in, usually I’ll come into my office and Mendy will follow me in and we’ll kind of go through our different things if theres a little tweak we want to make.

Boone said that’s the process he uses if the team is completely healthy. If he said that’s how he thought about things when the lineup was full of Greg Allen, Tim LoCastro, Estevan Florial, Ryan LaMarre and Rob Brantly in mid-July, it would be somewhat acceptable, but that’s the process he uses when “our guys are available?” He’s not even close to done explaining.

“Sometimes I’ll reach out to like I’ve even done this with Cash and Cash is not usually very much involved at all. But sometimes if I have a tough decision that I’m really wrestling with, I may call Cash on it. I may call Mendy on my way home. I may call Marcus Thames when he was here on my way home. When there’s that tough decision I have when I’m thinking about getting a different guy in tomorrow or sitting a guy a day, I may go to different people and ask their opinion on it, and then ultimately, I gotta decide which way I want to go.”

When Boone interviewed to be manager of the Yankees, he was so extraordinary that the front office canceled all other interviews and didn’t even hold a second round of interviews, handing Boone the job with no prior coaching experience at any level. I’m certain he didn’t explain this process in his supposed spectacular interview.

“We have a very strong analytics department that gives us so much information that kind of helps us decisions, give us context on what we’re seeing, what we’re looking at. And I think the reality is any of the really strong franchises are very strong analytically, but ultimately, the teams that do it the best are able to … the secret sauce is how do you strike the balance? Because every day is unique amongst itself, especially in a big league season when you’re playing 162 games. So you’ve gotta be able to strike the balance, but as Cash puts it, ‘We want to have a buffet of everything available to us,’ so that we can make really good decisions and I think we do that here even though we get criticized about it a lot.”

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t know where it’s going. I just hope to find it somewhere along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.“

OK, that final part was from Michael Scott on The Office, but everything else came out of Boone’s mouth. Now knowing exactly how his lineup creation process works, I feel much more at ease about the team’s failure to meet expectations since he became manager because it makes perfect sense that someone who uses the above strategy to create a lineup would fail to meet expectations. The man who gave that answer is now in his eighth season in the same position, having overseen more than $2 billion in payroll.

Boone’s managing on Sunday was a mess. It was nonsensical, illogical choice after choice, and ultimately (to use Boone’s favorite word), the Yankees lost 7-5 in the latest disastrous Will Warren start (4.2 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 8 K, 1 HR).

The day before Boone had another banner day when he decided with a one-run lead in the eighth to use Mark Leiter Jr. against the Rays’ 2-3-4 hitters. It went about as well as expected when the Rays scored twice to take the lead and go on to a 3-2 Saturday afternoon win.

It was the latest example of the Yankees blowing a late lead in a game and then rolling over and losing with a chance to stage a comeback of their own. It was the latest example until Monday.

7. On Monday, the Yankees and Padres started late due to a rain delay and then were interrupted in the fourth inning with another rain delay. When play resumed, the Yankees had a 3-0 lead they would carry into the seventh inning.

With two outs in the top of the seventh, Boone removed Carlos Rodon from the game (6.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K). Rodon provided his fourth straight quality start after having none in his first four starts of the year.

Boone went to Cruz and Cruz ended the innings with two pitches.

The Yankees still led 3-0 when the eighth began. Cruz had only thrown two pitches in the seventh, so it made sense for Cruz to get two or all three outs in the eighth and for Weaver to take care of the rest. A simple formula with a high win probability.

Boone had a different plan.

Boone removed Cruz from the game in favor of Williams. After removing Williams from the closer role last week, Boone has continued to use him a high-leverage role and only in close games. Boone felt three scoreless appearances from Williams was enough to erase his first 10 miserable appearances of the season.

After recording a leadoff strikeout, Williams walked Tyler Wade. He then allowed a two-strike single to Brandon Lockridge, and with two outs, he walked Luis Arraez. Williams walked career .590 OPS Wade, couldn’t put away career .561 OPS Lockridge and then walked Arraez who despises free passes. Boone removed Williams for Weaver, leaving Weaver zero margin for error and that margin was destroyed by a Manny Machado double and a Xander Bogaerts single.

8. Why did Boone remove Cruz after one out and two pitches?

“Cruz had thrown two innings two days ago,” Boone said. “Keep everyone in play moving forward.”

There it is. There is Boone admitting he was playing for tomorrow with his decision to remove Cruz. He’s more worried about a fictional late-game scenario in the future in this series in which he may need Cruz instead of the three-run, late-game situation that actually existed.

The best part about Boone’s answer is that once Cruz entered the game with two outs in the seventh, he either had to get the last out of the inning or face up to three batters to come out of the game. When Boone went to him, he was accepting of the possibility that Cruz may throw a lot of pitches and then be down for a few days, which makes his thought process even more idiotic.

9. Once Williams ruined the eighth and the Yankees fell behind, the rest of the game became a formality just like it does every time these Yankees trail late. These Yankees only blow late leads, they don’t overcome late deficits. They have yet to win a game this season when trailing after six innings. They lead the majors in games blown in the eighth inning or later with five.

10. The always-injured Clarke Schmidt who was scratched on Saturday with discomfort that couldn’t be detected with imaging tests (just like Volpe’s shoulder “pop” that wasn’t enough to take him out of Saturday’s game, but was enough to keep him out of Sunday’s game only to return on Monday couldn’t be found with imaging either) will take the ball on Tuesday. He will be asked to outpitch former Yankee Michael King.

Wade continued the tradition of ex-Yankees coming back to haunt the team with his eighth-inning walk to start the Padres’ rally on Monday. King is a bad matchup for the Yankees lineup, though I guess what opposing starter isn’t? The Yankees need Schmidt to match or better King to end the current three-game losing streak, but even if that happens, there’s a good chance the manager will be more worried about a future late-lead the Yankees may have instead of the one they actually have.

1. What a comeback win for the Yankees on Wednesday night in Baltimore. Trailing late, the Yankees rallied against the struggling Orioles to win the three-game series and go into their scheduled day off feeling good.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true.

The Yankees didn’t come back to beat the last-place Orioles on Wednesday. Instead, they blew an early lead and then rolled over and lost the way they always do when they trail late in a game. These Yankees only blow late leads. They don’t overcome late deficits.

2. The reason they were in a deficit for most of the game was because of Carlos Carrasco. In his sixth start of the season, Carrasco put together his worst performance: 3.1 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 2 HR.

Carrasco blew an early two-run lead and allowed more hits (8) then he got outs (7), including two home runs. The Yankees lost 5-4 and lost a series to the team with the worst run differential in the American League.

3. It’s time for Carrasco to be designated for assignment. It’s more than time. Someone else needs to get an opportunity to start. I don’t care if it’s someone at Triple-A or Double-A or someone recently waived or released by another team. It’s hard to hear “So-and-so isn’t ready” from the same people employed by the Yankees who think Will Warren is ready and believe Carrasco is still a major leaguer. Something has to change with the rotation. The white flag can’t be waved in two of every five games between Carrasco (5.90 ERA) and Warren (5.63 ERA).

4. The way the torpedo bats don’t seem to work if you can’t make contact, it turns out when the Yankees’ offense isn’t facing an end-of-spring-training-scrap-heap pickup making his first start of the season like they did on Tuesday, they can’t score. Unless, Aaron Judge scores for them.

Judge was 3-for-3 with a walk in the game to raise his slash line to an absurd .427/.521/1.282. (If he were to go 0-for-50 beginning on Friday, he would still be hitting .299.) The first of his three hits was a two-run home run in the first inning, the second a single and the third an RBI single. He drove in three of the Yankees’ four runs with Paul Goldschmidt driving in the other with his first home run since March 29. Unfortunately, Judge didn’t get a fifth plate appearance in the game and was left watching the final out of the game from the on-deck circle because his trusty manager inexplicably decided to bat him third instead of second.

5. Judge, Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham combined to go 5-for-12 with two walks and all four of the Yankees’ RBIs. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-21 with three walks. That includes Pablo Reyes, who is not only a New York Yankee, but somehow started and batted seventh in this one. Remember last year when Boone batted Jahmai Jones leadoff and J.D. Davis fourth in the same game? This wasn’t exactly that, but it was a step just below that. (Jones hasn’t been in the majors since his time with the Yankees and Davis has a -36 OPS+ with the Angels this year. Yes, he’s 136 percent worse than league average.)

6. The Yankees had their chances to erase their deficit, but each time they got close, the sloppiness the Dodgers spent all offseason on a media tour publicly laughing about showed up.

With two outs in the fifth, Judge singled to bring up Ben Rice. Rice was getting a favorable matchup against a righty, but Judge got picked off first, and when Rice came back up to lead off the sixth, the righty was gone and he was greeted by the left-handed Keegan Akin, who struck him out with ease. Judge’s pickoff helped created a nice little sixth-inning lane for Akin, and Akin thanked him by striking out the side.

When the Yankees cut the deficit to one in the top of the fifth, they gave it right back in the bottom of the fifth when Anthony Volpe booted a double play ball. What exactly is it that Volpe does well? His offense is abysmal. Every error of his seems to come in a big moment, and with three stolen bases in six attempts this season, he’s no longer a threat on the bases. When Volpe led off the eighth with a walk, it seemed like the perfect time for him to run and put pressure on the defense representing the tying run. Instead, all he did was his jumps and hops around the bag, acting like he may go, only to never go and never advance past first.

7. That would be the last baserunner of the game for the Yankees, as they went quietly in the eighth and as quiet as anyone could possibly go in a 1-2-3 ninth. Judge getting left on-deck because he was inexplicably batting third was the icing on the cake in the ninth, but the cake was Oswald Peraza getting to bat for himself against the hard-throwing righty Felix Bautista.

8. For a moment it seemed like Rice may have hit a go-ahead, two-run home run in the seventh. After Judge singled with two outs, Gregory Soto threw a wild pickoff attempt to allow Judge to go to second.

“A gift,” David Cone said.

“Can they capitalize on it?” Joe Girardi asked.

No, they couldn’t. Rice flew out to right on a ball that was easily caught, but a ball Michael Kay thought was going to travel 570 feet and break a window on the warehouse across the street from the park with the way he got excited when it left Rice’s bat.

It was a forgettable day for Rice at the plate, as he went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. I don’t think there’s anyone in the league who takes more check swings against left-handed pitching than Rice, and he always goes around. If you’re a lefty who throws Rice anything other than breaking balls away, you’re a fool.

It’s not like Rice is the only Yankee who can’t hit lefties. Pretty much the entire lineup can’t. It’s how they lost a game started by Cade Povich. It’s how they got embarrassed by Andrew Heaney and stifled by Kris Bubic and had no chance against Tarik Skubal. The only lefty the Yankees have been able to hit this season was Nestor Cortes, whose elbow had been hanging by a thread dating back to last season.

9. A 3-3 week against the Blue Jays and Orioles isn’t anything to get excited about. One of the three losses was by two runs (the game in which they blew a one-run lead in the ninth to the Blue Jays), and the two losses to the Orioles were both by one run. The Yankees are 6-10 in games decided one or two runs and 12-3 in games decided by three-plus runs. That’s not a coincidence. The larger the gap in score, the less managing, situational hitting and fundamentals matter. At some point you would think the Yankees would come back and win of these late-and-close games. But when the going gets tough for these Yankees, they get going.

10. Now they’re going home with a day off on Thursday and this frustrating loss lingering until Friday’s series opener against the Rays. The Rays won’t be throwing any Kyle Gibson types this weekend in the Bronx, so it would be welcome if others in the lineup outside of the top third of the order could hit actual major-league pitching. If not, Max Fried is pitching Friday, so the Yankees are assured at least win one game this weekend. 

1. What a difference a day makes. Or what a difference a starter makes.

A day after getting shut down and striking out an excessive amount against the starter with the worst strikeout rate in the majors in Tomoyuki Sugano, the Yankees faced a late-spring-training-scrap-heap signing making his first start of the season in Kyle Gibson. The Yankees bombarded Gibson from the moment he stepped foot on the mound.

2. Trent Grisham homered on the second pitch of the game for his second leadoff home run in three games. Aaron Judge homered on the third pitch of the game for his ninth of the season. Ben Rice homered on the fifth pitch of the game for his seventh. After Gibson retired Paul Goldschmidt on four pitches, Cody Bellinger homered on the second pitch he saw for his third. The Yankees started the game with back-to-back-to-back home runs just like they did in the second game of the season against Nestor Cortes, and just like they did against Cortes, they homered four times in the first inning. Add in back-to-back doubles from Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe after the Bellinger home run, and the Yankees had a 5-0 lead before Carlos Rodon threw a pitch.

3. This was a lead and an offensive outburst and a game not even Rodon could ruin. When you never know which version of Rodon you’re going to get, scoring five runs before he throws a pitch is a good way to negate the possibility of the bad version of Rodon showing up. But not only did the best version of Rodon show up, he took a perfect game into the sixth inning and finished with a strong line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K. It was his third straight quality start after having not thrown one in any of his first four starts of the season.

4. “I was able to attack the zone and just get outs because we had such a nice lead,” Rodon said. “Get outs as quick as we can and get the boys back in the dugout so they can score more runs.”

Rice homered against in the second to give the Yankees a 6-0 lead. They added three more in the fourth, which is when Gibson was finally pulled, finishing the day with this unfortunate line: 3.2 IP, 11 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 5 HR.

The Yankees extended their lead with three more in the fifth, and had a 12-0 lead before the Orioles got on the board in the sixth. A run in the seventh, one in the eighth and another in the ninth for the Yankees led to 15 in total on 19 hits, four walks and two hit batters. Every starter had at least one hit, and 11 of the 12 players to appear in the game had one. The offense hit four doubles and five home runs.

5. “It really starts with Grish,” Judge said. “Grish got it going for us.”

I’m glad Aaron Boone went with my suggestion from Tuesday’s Thoughts to go with Grisham, Judge and Rice at the top of the order. The trio went 6-for-11 with four home runs and two walks. That should be the top of the order for the foreseeable future whether the starter is right-handed or left-handed.

6. Unfortunately, Jasson Dominguez was on the bench for this one and was the only position player to not enter the game. If Dominguez isn’t hurt, he needs to play. He should be playing over Bellinger, but again, owed money trumps performance and development. It’s nice that Bellinger went 2-for-4 with a double, home run and two walks in the game, though it was against Gibson and Matt Bowman, not exactly elite arms. Bellinger’s big day against the scrap heap assures him of indefinite playing time (not that it was ever in question with the more than $20 million owed to him).

7. Chisholm was injured in the game on a swing in the first inning. It looked like an oblique injury and he was attended to mid at-bat before hitting a double down the right-field line on what looked like a half-effort swing. (Maybe good things happen when you don’t try to hit a 750-foot home run with every swing? Or maybe it was just Gibson on the mound.) Chisholm slid into third (thanks to an error) on the hit and when he got up was in obvious pain and was removed from the game. The Yankees reported it as a “right flank” injury mid-game and after the game Boone said Chisholm would go for testing, while Chisholm said he was fine. It didn’t look like he was fine, but if he is, at best I would think he would be back in the lineup on Saturday or Sunday.

8. The big day from the offense and the six innings from Rodon meant a day off for the back end of the bullpen. Ian Hamilton was able to pitch two innings after having pitched once in the last 10 days and Tyler Matzek was able to throw an inning to continue to get his feet wet after having thrown 10 innings since 2022.

9. The bullpen is more than rested for the series finale on Wednesday and with a day off on Thursday I expect Boone to go to the bullpen at the first sign of trouble with Carrasco. There’s no need for him to take one on the chin if he’s off or to eat innings. Luke Weaver has thrown 11 pitches in a week. Fernando Cruz has pitched once in five days. Mark Leiter Jr. has thrown 28 pitches in eight days and Tim Hill has thrown 21 pitches over the same time. There’s at least 12 outs available between those four on Wednesday, and I would think even more.

Cade Povich is going for the Orioles, and while he’s a lefty, which poses an extreme threat to the Yankees, he’s not a good one. If there’s a lefty in the league the Yankees can hit, it should be someone of Povich’s stature. Povich pitched well in his last start against the Nationals, but even with that start, he has allowed 43 baserunners in 25 innings this season.

10. Both teams have a shaky starter going and both teams have well-rested bullpens and both teams desperately want this rubber game with the Orioles trying to climb slowly back to .500 and the Yankees wanting to go into their day off on a high note. If the version of Carrasco who pitched against the Blue Jays on Friday or the offense that lit up Camden Yards on Tuesday, they’ll get that high note.

1. Here is what I wrote about Monday’s Orioles starter prior to the game:

The Yankees will see Tomoyuki Sugano for the first time ever in the series opener. Sugano doesn’t strike anyone out with just nine strikeouts in 28 innings this season, but he doesn’t walk anyone either with five free passes so far.

After striking out nine in his first five starts in the majors, Sugano struck out EIGHT Yankees over five innings in what was an offensive performance from the offense. As advertised, Sugano only walked one in his start and managed to get every big out.

2. Paul Goldschmidt struck out in the first to leave two on and after a Jazz Chisholm hit by pitch, Anthony Volpe left the bases loaded.

In the third, the Yankees had first and third and one out and couldn’t get on the board as Goldschmidt struck out again and Chisholm did the same.

In the fourth, Jasson Dominguez was stranded, and in the fifth, Trent Grisham was as well when Goldschmidt was robbed of a two-run home run by Cedric Mullins.

“We pressured him,” Aaron Boone said of Sugano. “We had some chances and just couldn’t break through on him.”

In typical Yankees fashion, the team wasn’t able to score a run until the seventh, and added two more in the eighth, in what was the latest rally-enough-to-make-you-think-they-may-come-back-and-win-only-to-lose effort.

3. And in typical Will Warren fashion, the right-hander followed up a promising start with a miserable one.

Warren immediately put himself in a jam in the first with second and third and no outs, but miraculously escaped to momentarily make you think he may be figuring out pitching in the majors. That thought was short-lived as he allowed a two-out rally in the second to score a run and then in the fourth, he walked the first two hitters of the inning with his nibbling act and hung a 2-2 sweeper to Ryan O’Hearn that was crushed over the high wall in right for a three-run home run and a 4-0 Orioles lead.

Let’s go through what I wrote about Warren prior to Monday’s game:

Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones.

Last start: 5 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Monday’s start: 3.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 1 HR

He needs to attack the strike zone, believe in his stuff and let the ball get put in play. He can’t be afraid to pitch in the zone and he can’t nibble around the edges, which how he gets in trouble with deep counts and walks.

Two costly walks to begin the third that led to the three-run home run.

4. “It’s been up and down,” Warren said. “I think it’s been a mix where you have some good ones in there.”

Warren has made six starts this season. Three have been good to solid and three have outright disasters. He has done just enough to continue to be part of the rotation despite his 8.14 ERA in 12 career starts because he shows promise at times and because the Yankees have no one else. They traded their starting pitching depth to the Padres for Juan Soto, and then were unable to re-sign Soto. They banked on Gerrit Cole who missed a portion of last season with elbow issues to be healthy moving forward only for him to now be out until next summer. They brushed aside Luis Gil’s entire career being marred by injuries, and did the same with Clarke Schmidt who is 29 and has made more than 16 starts in a season once. Warren is in the rotation because there is no alternative. The same goes for Carlos Carrasco and the same went for Marcus Stroman before his supposed knee injury.

5. Ryan Yarbrough was fantastic in relief of Warren: 3.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Yarbrough hadn’t pitched in a week and after throwing 53 pitches will likely be down for about another week. I would be all for sending Warren down and using Yarbrough as an opener.

6. It’s going to be hard for the Yankees to put together extended winning streaks because of their rotation, considering you don’t know what you’re going to get the 80 percent of the time Max Fried isn’t starting. It’s also going to be hard because you don’t know which version of the offense is going to show up as well. Is it the version that chased Kevin Gausman and got to Chris Bassitt? Or the version that can’t hit the starting pitcher with the worst strikeout rate in the majors?

7. Chisholm had another banner night at the plate: 0-for-3 with three strikeout and a hit by pitch. Chisholm is now hitting .173 on the season. To put into perspective how bad that is (and how good Judge has been), if Judge were to go 0-for-150 beginning tonight, he would then have the same batting average as Chisholm.

8. Another blah game from Bellinger (1-for-4 with a walk), who struck out to end the game. I don’t think there was a person in the world (not even Bellinger himself) who thought he was going to put the ball in play against Felix Bautista in his ninth-inning at-bat.

9. A day after being removed from the closer role, Devin Williams found himself in a one-run game in the eighth. You would think Boone would have found a way to get him into Sunday’s first-game blowout to get some work in. Nope. Not Boone. Throw him right back into a winnable, one-run game in the eighth. Williams pitched his third 1-2-3 inning in 11 outings and even got three whiffs and a strikeout. He’s going to need to do that for about a month before I want to see him in a late-game situation with a lead.

“It’s just little things here that can you your mojo and remind you just how darned good you are this game,” Boone said of Williams. “Hopefully, it’s a step in the right direction.”

I don’t think it’s possible for Williams to go anywhere other than the right direction, after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in his first eight innings of the season.

10. The Orioles have the worst run differential in the American League. Their lineup is struggling and their starting pitching sucks. And yet, they won the first game of the series. The Yankees had their opportunities to win between stranding runners, leaving a runner on third with less than two outs and having a two-run home run robbed, but they still lost. They need a win on Tuesday with Carlos Rodon going against Kyle Gibson in his season debut because Carrasco goes on Wednesday. No one wants to be looking at needing to win a Carrasco start to salvage the third game of a series, especially going against the Yankees’ kryptonite in the series finale: a left-hander.

1. The weekend couldn’t have started out worse with Devin Williams blowing his second games in as many appearances. After blowing a four-run lead on Saturday in Tampa, Williams blew a one-run lead on Friday to the Blue Jays. It was the first time he entered a game with only one run to work with, and he gave up that run and two more without recording an out.

It took Clay Holmes five months of blown saves last season for him to be removed from the closer role. It only took Williams a month after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in just eight innings.

“Being a closer is a position you have to earn and you have to keep earning to continue to be in that role,” Williams said. “I haven’t been doing that. It’s disappointing.”

The wild part about how bad Williams’ numbers are is that all of this damage has come without allowing a home run. Eight singles, four doubles, seven walks and a hit batter. An impressive combination of ineptitude.

Everyone treated the update of Williams’ removal from his role as news on Sunday. No one should be surprised that a pitcher who single-handedly cost the Yankees two games in six days was removed from being the closer when the team has another elite option already in place.

2. Luke Weaver has been exceptional since the beginning of last season. This season he has allowed three hits over 14 scoreless innings and has stranded all five inherited runners, and now he moves back into the ninth-inning role where he was at the end of last season.

“I prepare the same way,” Weaver said. “I try to not look at the situation any different. I need to get outs.”

I wish the Yankees would operate without a set closer. Because now Weaver will be attached to the ninth inning (and maybe used for an out or two in the eighth here and there), when he’s most valuable pitching when the game needs him the most. Maybe that’s in the sixth inning with two on and the heart of the order coming up. Maybe that’s in the seventh inning of a one-run game with the tying run in scoring position and the lineup turning over. I don’t like that Weaver is now the “ninth-inning guy” when the game can be ruined before he ever gets into it.

3. The Yankees answered back from their latest late-game collapse with a sweep of Sunday’s doubleheader. In the first game, Max Fried started, and when Fried starts, the Yankees win, and they did again, 11-2.

The Yankees trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the third before Kevin Gausman fell apart.

After a couple of walks and an Aaron Judge single to the wall in right (that Oswaldo Cabrera inexplicably didn’t score from second on in what was another example of the Aaron Boone Yankees’ sloppiness), Cody Bellinger hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game at 1. Gausman was an out away from getting out of the inning, but then walked Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe consecutively to score two runs. (You know you suck if you’re walking Chisholm and Volpe with the bases loaded.) The Yankees led 3-1 when Austin Wells came up with the bases loaded, worked a nine-pitch at-bat, and on that ninth pitch, hit a bases-clearing double to center field to break the game open. (It felt weird to experience the Yankees getting a hit to break a game open.)

With Fried on the mound, the rest of the game became a formality. The Yankees plated three more in the fifth, one in the sixth and one in the eighth. Fried finished the day with one earned run allowed over six innings, to remain undefeated on the season with a 1.43 ERA. The Yankees are 6-0 when he starts.

4. I was worried the Yankees used up all of their runs for the day in the first game, but Trent Grisham took care of that fear with a leadoff home run off of Chris Bassitt. It was the first home run Bassitt had allowed this season.

Clarke Schmidt — in his third start — allowed just one hit over five innings (but did walk four). That one hit was an Anthony Santander blast to the second deck in right.

With the game tied at 1 after five, Boone made the right decision to remove Schmidt from the game (90 pitches) rather than let him face Santander for a third time. The idea anyone would let Schmidt face Santander a third time seems outrageous as a possibility, but with Boone you never know.

Tim Hill pitched a scoreless sixth and Judge greeted Bassitt with a first-pitch home run to lead off the bottom half of the inning. After a Chisholm single, a Jasson Dominguez RBI double and a J.C. Escarra RBI single, the Yankees led 4-1.

Escarra added the first home run of his career in the eighth (a long home run into the right-field bleachers) in the 5-1 win, and we got a look at the new eighth-and-ninth-inning tandem of Fernando Cruz and Weaver. We actually got a look at the new sixth-seventh-eighth-ninth formula with Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Cruz and Weaver. Those four combined to allow two hits and no walks with six strikeouts over four scoreless innings. The first game with Williams out of the late-and-close equation was a resounding success.

5. Volpe looked the best he has in nearly a month in the doubleheader (4-for-7 with a double and home run), but don’t let him fool you. His home run in the first game came off a Triple-A pitcher and we have seen this from Volpe before where he leads many to believe he has turned the corner only to then spend the next four weeks without an extra-base hit while playing every day. He needs to be consistently productive for an extended period of time for anyone to think he has figured out how to hit in the majors.

6. It wasn’t a great day for Bellinger (1-for-7), but what day is a great day for Bellinger? He was in the lineup for both games of the doubleheader, while Grisham sat the first one and proceeded to go 1-for-2 with a home run and two walks in the second one to reach base three times. Bellinger has been on base three times in a game once since March 29. He has one home run since March 29. But he and his .570 OPS are going to keep on playing because he’s owed more than $20M by the Yankees this year and Grisham is owed $5M. Owed money always trumps performance.

7. Judge finally hit his eighth home run of the season after getting screwed in Tampa and then hitting the top of the giant wall in the deepest part of the park in Cleveland over the last week. Judge should always bat second. Either Grisham or Ben Rice can lead off, but then it should be Judge and the other one who isn’t leading off behind Judge. So:

Grisham
Judge
Rice

or

Rice
Judge
Grisham

Either of those work, though I prefer the first one.

That makes the best possible lineup this:

Grisham, CF
Judge, RF
Rice, DH
Goldschmidt, 1B
Chisholm, 2B
Dominguez, LF
Wells, C
Volpe, SS
Cabrera, 3B

That is the optimal Yankees lineup at the moment, even if it’s not a lineup we will see because it doesn’t include Bellinger and has Volpe too low for Boone’s liking.

8. Dominguez quietly had a nice first month in his first full season as a major leaguer. He’s fifth on the teams in hits (despite being seventh in plate appearances), second on the teams in doubles (7), has less strikeouts than Chisholm and Volpe, has yet to be caught stealing (3-for-3), is hitting .315/.383/.500 against right-handed pitching and is hitting nine percent better than league average overall.

Hopefully as he gets more plate appearances against lefties (36) his .450 OPS against them will improve. It’s never going to be the .883 it is against righties, but something respectable in the 6s would be nice. Either way, I’m happy with Dominguez through the first month.

9. Offensively, I’m also happy with Cabrera, who’s hitting .278. Cabrera just needs to continue to hit for average consistently, draw the occasional walk and hit the occasional homer and he’ll be fine, as long as he plays solid defense. The solid defense part seems to be the hardest as Cabrera has been throwing balls to first base all over the place. He has five errors on the year, and while I think he’ll be fine, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the throws coming from the left side of the infield. For as good as Goldschmidt has been over there, things would look a lot worse if an average first baseman had been playing with the way Cabrera and Volpe throws have been.

10. It’s off to Baltimore for the first series of the season against the struggling Orioles. The Orioles are seven games under .500, in last place in the AL East and 6 1/2 games behind the Yankees with an AL-worst minus-39 run differential.

The Yankees will see Tomoyuki Sugano for the first time ever in the series opener. Sugano doesn’t strike anyone out with just nine strikeouts in 28 innings this season, but he doesn’t walk anyone either with five free passes so far.

The Orioles will see Will Warren for the first time ever in the series opener as well. Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones. He needs to attack the strike zone, believe in his stuff and let the ball get put in play. He can’t be afraid to pitch in the zone and he can’t nibble around the edges, which how he gets in trouble with deep counts and walks. Go out and challenge the Orioles and make them earn it. If he does that, he should be fine, like nearly every starter has been against the Orioles this season.

1. The Yankees needed a win in Cleveland on Wednesday, and thanks to their offense and Carlos Rodon they got a 5-1 one. And when I say offense, I mean Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt since those three are the Yankees’ offense.

Those three combined to go 6-for-12 with three walks, three extra-base hits and drove in four of the Yankees’ five runs. The rest of the lineup was 5-for-25 with 10 strikeouts. The rest of the lineup is a problem.

2. Jasson Dominguez and Oswaldo Cabrera aren’t necessarily part of the problem since Dominguez has 48 career games to his name and Cabrera is unnecessarily benched nearly every other day. But for the rest of the lineup excluding those two, yes, it’s a problem.

The two biggest problems are Cody Bellinger and Anthony Volpe. One will seemingly be given endless opportunities to bat second, third and fourth in the lineup, and the other has been given endless opportunities since the day he was called up at the beginning of the 2023 season. One is protected by owed money and the other is protected by the organization’s belief he will eventually figure it out. Together, they are destroying rallies, having issues making contact and are magnets for double plays.

3. I wrote this about Anthony Volpe after Tuesday’s game:

It’s hard to watch Anthony Volpe bat. It’s cringeworthy. Volpe went 0-for-3 with a walk and strikeout in the game, but nothing was worse than his final at-bat against Hunter Gaddis in the eighth. With the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, Gaddis blew a middle-middle 95-mph fastball right past Volpe to begin the at-bat. Knowing Volpe’s inability to hit fastballs, even ones in the zone, Gaddis threw three more to set up a 2-2 count. Volpe had seen four pitches, all fastballs. Gaddis then threw a slider about two feet off the plate, but Volpe, guessing fastball and knowing he would need to cheat to catch up to it had committed to swing. Once Volpe recognized slider, his hips had already flown open, his bat was on the plane of where he thought the pitch would end up, and instead he missed it by a laughable amount.

Volpe followed up that performance with an 0-for-5, four-strikeout game on Wednesday. His slash line is down to .198/.295/.385. Volpe hasn’t homered since April 2. He has one multi-hit game and two extra-base hits since April 5. This isn’t a slump. This is what he is, now sitting at an 84+ OPS in 1,395 plate appearances. Continuing to bat Volpe sixth (like he has been) would be unbelievable, and yet totally believable with how he has been treated since he was called up. If Volpe is batting sixth on Friday against the Blue Jays, all you can do is laugh. (Get ready to laugh.)

4. All you can do is laugh if Cody Bellinger is batting third as well. (More laughter coming.) Bellinger has hit one home run since March 29. He has one double this season. He’s hitting .177/.236/.291. For as bad as Volpe has been, Bellinger wishes he had a .295 on-base percentage and .385 slugging percentage.

Here is what I wrote about Bellinger after Monday’s game:

Bellinger is a big problem because he’s going to play because of owed money and his name and for the front office to justify the trade for him. The problem is he’s going to bat near the top of the lineup when he plays because of those things, whether he’s producing or not. The biggest problem is that there’s precedent for Bellinger being this bad.

It looks like the Yankees are going to get the version of Bellinger the Dodgers gave up on and not the one who saved his career with the Cubs.

5. Volpe can’t bat sixth. Bellinger can’t bat third. Bellinger shouldn’t even be in the lineup. This is what the lineup should be on Friday:

Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Trent Grisham, CF
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Austin Wells, C
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Oswaldo Cabrera, 3B

6. We all know that won’t be the lineup. Bellinger will play because he’s 3-for-4 with a home run off Jose Berrios. (Bellinger has yet to hit any pitcher this season he has good career numbers off of.) Grisham should be back, and if he is, you have to play with how good he has been. Judge obviously plays and Rice is only a designated hitter it seems. That means it’s likely the development of Dominguez is stunted and he’s benched so Bellinger can play. Not only that, but Boone will continue to do his nonsensical lefty-right alteration throughout the lineup to plan for some late-inning lane that will likely never come.

7. Nothing will change because it takes an inordinate amount of underperformance for the Yankees to make a change, especially if the proposed changes involve the Golden Boy (who has been treated differently than any other prospect during the Boone era) and Bellinger, a player the Yankees traded for, and the team will stop at nothing to prove they were right about a underperforming player they traded for. Just ask Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks and Alex Verdugo.

8. The Yankees have too many holes in the lineup that anyone who is giving them offense needs to play, regardless of their expected role coming into the season, and anyone who isn’t hitting can’t play every day, regardless of their expected role coming into the season. Reward success. It’s a simple concept. Don’t keep running the same players out there in the same order waiting for something to happen. It’s the same way the team operates when they get a pair of runners on with no outs and wait for a three-run home run that doesn’t come before the inning-crushing double play.

9. Carlos Rodon turned in the best start of his season (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K), and didn’t allow a home run for a second straight start. Progress! It’s frustrating to know that version of Rodon exists, but too many times we get the version of Rodon who unraveled against the Diamondbacks, Tigers and Giants. The left-handed A.J. Burnett.

The good news is he is one off the American League lead for strikeouts with 45 (Cole Ragans has 46). The bad news is he leads the majors with 18 walks. Combine a lot of walks with his penchant for giving up the long ball and you have a frustrating starter who at times can be dominant like he was in Cleveland, or a disaster like he mostly is. Rodon can’t be trusted (like Burnett) and likely never will be because he can unravel in any start in the matter of pitches, and once the unraveling start it never ends. You just have to pray he has more starts like he did on Wednesday than he does clunkers.

10. The Blue Jays are in the Bronx this week and they arrive in the middle of a five-game losing streak. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything with Carlos Carrasco getting the ball for the Yankees on Friday. Carrasco in Yankee Stadium is about as good of a matchup you can ask for in the league to end a losing streak. The Yankees are going to need their offense to extend the Blue Jays’ losing streak to six, and by offense I mean more than just Judge, Rice and Goldschmidt.

1. A two-run lead with 12 outs to go and a completely rested bullpen. That’s the position the Yankees found themselves in on Tuesday night in Cleveland. Twelve outs to get between some combination of Mark Leiter Jr., Tim Hill, Fernando Cruz, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams. It may not have been as easy of a winning formula as Max Fried to Weaver to Williams, but in terms of easy-to-navigate scenarios, it wasn’t exactly difficult.

Aaron Boone made it difficult. After getting five shutout innings from Will Warren in what had been his best start in the majors, Boone decided to push Warren a little more. Boone’s obsession with stealing outs knows no boundaries, even if a pitcher who has never pitched more than 5 1/3 innings in his career and is about to face the top of the lineup for a third time should be the boundary.

Boone thought it would be wise to let Warren pitch to Steven Kwan — one of the game’s premier leadoff hitters — to begin the sixth. Kwan had already singled off Warren earlier in the game after picking up two hits in the first game of the series. He singled again off Warren to lead off the sixth. (Kwan is now hitting .341/.400/.505 on the season.)

OK, leadoff man on and the 2-3-4 hitters due up. Now Boone would pull Warren with the tying run at the plate.

No, he wouldn’t.

He would let Warren face Nolan Jones for a third time in the game. Jones promptly singled.

The tying run was now on base and the go-ahead run at the plate in Jose Ramirez. Apparently, that was enough for Boone to remove Warren and bring in Leiter Jr., who could have easily started the inning clean.

2. Leiter Jr. struck out Ramirez on three pitches to bring up Kyle Manzardo. Stephen Vogt knew he would need to be creative to score runs after Ramirez was retired, so he called for a double steal with Kwan and Jones. The two took off and J.C. Escarra tried to pick-and-throw Leiter Jr.’s pitch rather than simply catch it, and it created a passed ball. Kwan raced around to score and Jones reached third. The Yankees’ lead was now 2-1 with the tying run at third and one out.

Manzardo then hit a ball to Aaron Judge, who dove and missed it, allowing Jones to score the tying run and Manzardo to go to second with a “double”. After getting Carlos Santana to ground out for the second out of the inning, Manzardo moved to third. Leiter Jr. then walked the light-hitting Bo Naylor and allowed an infield “single” to Angel Martinez on a ball Anthony Volpe misplayed to score the go-ahead run.

3. The rest of the game became a formality with the Guardians’ elite relievers slamming the door on the Yankees. If you thought the Yankees would mount a comeback, you must not know these Yankees.

These Yankees were on full display on Tuesday. The game was a good summarization of the Boone Yankees as a whole, representing the same type of team the Yankees have fielded for the last eight seasons. It was the type of the game the Dodgers spent all season laughing about at the Yankees’ expense. It had poor managing, incapable hitting and disastrous defense.

4. When the Yankees led off the fourth with back-to-back walks to bring up Volpe, Boone let his shortstop, who is 15 percent worse than league average for his career swing away. And swing away into a inning-destroying 6-4-3 double play he did. When the Guardians had to two on with no one out in the sixth, they put pressure on the Yankees, created a shitstorm and watched the Yankees unravel and lose the game. The Yankees spent all game waiting around for a multi-run home run to save them and it never came, and when they don’t get said home run, they lose.

5. The Yankees’ offense is essentially Judge, Ben Rice and Trent Grisham (and singles-hitting Paul Goldschmidt). Their rotation is Max Fried and their bullpen is Luke Weaver. It’s a top-heavy team whose flaws are outrageous. Judge is hitting .411, Rice has a 1.004 OPS. Fried has a 1.42 ERA and the Yankees are 5-0 in his starts. Luke Weaver has allowed two hits and no runs in 12 innings. What happens when Judge cools off even a little? What happens if or when the clock strikes midnight on Rice and Grisham? What happens if the Yankees lose a Fried start? What happens if Weaver blows a late lead?

Those things are likely to happen, which is why losses like Saturday’s and Tuesday’s hurt so much. The Yankees need to win the games they are supposed to win, the games in which they hold a late lead. Unless they are going to start winning games they aren’t supposed to, and so far this season you can say that has happened once at most (their 4-2 win over the Royals).

6. Tanner Bibee had been rocked in his two starts not against the Royals, allowing 13 earned runs and seven home runs in 9 2/3 innings. It was the perfect matchup for the Yankees to put up runs, and instead, they scored two runs over six innings, with one of those runs coming on the first pitch of the game. A putrid performance.

7. The Guardians do the little things on the field and do them right because they have to. They create runs, they cause havoc on the basepaths, they play exceptional defense and they try to get to their bullpen as quickly as possible. They can’t sit around and wait for a home run that isn’t going to come because it won’t. They can’t play station-to-station baseball or they won’t score. They make the most of what they have.

8. The decision to steal outs with Warren with all five “elite” relievers available was egregious by Boone. But if the offense could have done more or done anything really, he wouldn’t have been put in the position to ruin the game. When the Yankees play close games, they are going to lose a lot of them with Boone at the helm. The Yankees are going to play a lot of close games with so many automatic outs in the lineup.

Each day I write about how bad Cody Bellinger has been and each day he makes things worse, as he went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Guess where he hit, yet again? Third. His OPS is down to .519.

Jazz Chisholm was 0-for-1 with a hit by pitch and two walks, and that’s actually a really good day for Chisholm, who was passed yesterday for the league lead in strikeouts. Congratulations, Jazz! (He also made a throwing error in the game.)

9. It’s hard to watch Anthony Volpe bat. It’s cringeworthy. Volpe went 0-for-3 with a walk and strikeout in the game, but nothing was worse than his final at-bat against Hunter Gaddis in the eighth. With the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, Gaddis blew a middle-middle 95-mph fastball right past Volpe to begin the at-bat. Knowing Volpe’s inability to hit fastballs, even ones in the zone, Gaddis threw three more to set up a 2-2 count. Volpe had seen four pitches, all fastballs. Gaddis then threw a slider about two feet off the plate, but Volpe, guessing fastball and knowing he would need to cheat to catch up to it had committed to swing. Once Volpe recognized slider, his hips had already flown open, his bat was on the plane of where he thought the pitch would end up, and instead he missed it by a laughable amount. After Volpe’s inning-ending act, it took Cade Smith four pitches to close out the ninth. When the going gets though, these Yankees get going.

10. The Yankees had a four-run lead in the ninth on Saturday and lost. They had a late two-run lead with their entire bullpen rested and lost on Tuesday. A 3-1 trip to Tampa that could have been more wasn’t and now a seven-game road trip that started out promising is on the brink of being a 3-4 letdown. That is, unless Carlos Rodon and the offense can save it.

1. When the Yankees get shut down by the opposing starting pitcher, they tend to have an opportunity early on to get to them, don’t and end up being stifled for the remainder of the outing.

It happened on April 2 against the Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen. The Yankees had second and third with one out against the righty in the second inning and failed to score and Gallen settled in to throw 6 2/3 scoreless innings (with 13 strikeouts).

It happened on April 8 in Detroit against Tarik Skubal. The Yankees led off that game with back-to-back singles, couldn’t get either of them in and Skubal found his groove to retire 16 straight in a Yankees’ shutout loss.

It happened again on Monday in Cleveland. Gavin Williams isn’t Gallen or Skubal, but he certainly has the stuff to be, and like the other two, Williams was in trouble early in the game. The Yankees were gifted a leadoff error by defensive wizard Brayan Rocchio and also had two walks in the first and didn’t score a run. Cody Bellinger unsurprisingly hit into a double play and Jazz Chisholm struck out and the Yankees were held scoreless.

2. Williams kept the Yankees off the board until the seventh when he gave up a two-run home run to Jasson Dominguez right before being relieved at 104 pitches. While Williams (6.1 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 1 HR) was throwing up zeros, Clarke Schmidt (4 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 2 HR) was throwing batting practice to light-hitting Guardians.

“I felt like he was a little off command-wise,” Aaron Boone said, stating the obvious.

Schmidt put 10 baserunners on in four innings, allowed up five earned runs and two home runs. Lefties mashed off of him, especially Jose Ramirez and Kyle Manzardo who hit back-to-back homers off Schmidt in the third.

“We did a good job limiting the damage,” Schmidt said in all seriousness.

3. Prior to Monday, Schmidt had made three career starts at Progressive Field with this line: 13 IP, 16 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 9 BB, 17 K, 3 HR, 6.23 ERA, 1.923 WHIP. Add in him blowing Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS, being unable to get through five innings in Game 4 of the 2024 ALCS and Monday night, and it’s a good thing the Yankees don’t play in Cleveland again this season.

“I think I was able to make some good pitches,” Schmidt said after getting lit up.

4. The Guardians had a 6-0 lead after six, but the Yankees put together one of their patented trick-you-into-thinking-they-may-actually-come-back comebacks that fall just short. The Yankees scored two in the seventh (Dominguez home run) and another two in the eighth on a Chisholm home run. In the ninth, they brought the tying run to the plate in Aaron Judge, but he struck out against Cade Smith to end the game.

If only the Yankees had scored in the first when they had three baserunners and Williams had tiring at 25 pitches. It may have not mattered since Schmidt was so bad anyway, but the inability to move runners over and get them in and score runs while making outs continues to be a problem during the Boone era. It’s why the team has been awful in extra innings games since the implementation of the automatic runner. The situational hitting remains poor and the manager doesn’t have the creativity to build runs unless someone is hitting the ball over the wall.

5. When you remove two Yankees from the lineup who have been hitting the ball over the wall in Ben Rice and Trent Grisham (who is out on paternity leave), it’s hard to win. Rice was held out of the game after being hit on the elbow on Saturday (despite all tests coming back negative), however, he was able to pinch hit in the ninth. So Rice (who is only used as the designated hitter) was healthy enough to bat once in the game, but not four times? Was his elbow going to break with three more plate appearances?

6. It’s hard to win without Rice and Grisham because so much of the lineup sucks. Austin Wells went 0-for-5 and his OPS is down to .687. Bellinger (.548 OPS) may as well not bring a bat to the plate and hope the pitcher throws four balls before three strikes. Chisholm (.680 OPS) seems to hit a home run every few days and do nothing else in between. Anthony Volpe has a .614 OPS since April 2 with 20 strikeouts in 60 at-bats. Pablo Reyes isn’t a major-league player.

The lineup is essentially Judge, Rice, Paul Goldschmidt (who is basically a singles hitter), Oswaldo Cabrera (who is also a singles hitter), Dominguez against righties (.926 OPS against righties and .390 OPS against lefties) and Grisham when he plays, which isn’t every day since the Yankees have to play Bellinger because of owed money.

7. Bellinger is a big problem because he’s going to play because of owed money and his name and for the front office to justify the trade for him. The problem is he’s going to bat near the top of the lineup when he plays because of those things, whether he’s producing or not. The biggest problem is that there’s precedent for Bellinger being this bad.

Bellinger won the NL MVP in 2019 when the baseball was juiced and Brett Gardner (28 home runs) and Gleyber Torres (38 home runs) became power hitters. Since then, Bellinger has a 99+ OPS in 575 games and 2,352 plate appearances. He’s a .242/.304/.421 hitter since the start of 2020.

Within these last five-plus seasons, Bellinger posted a .542 OPS in 2021 and a .654 OPS in 2022, and the Dodgers moved on from him. The Dodgers –the best organization in baseball — moved on from their homegrown, 2017 Rookie of the Year, 2019 MVP and Gold Glove center fielder after his age 26 season. That’s not great.

8. The Yankees have used Bellinger in the 2-hole hoping he would mash in-zone pitches expected with Judge behind him. They have used him as Judge’s protection. They have used him to clean up. He has done nothing in every spot. The season may only be 14 percent through, but again, there is precedent for Bellinger being a complete zero at the plate for an entire season. And if this is one of those seasons from Bellinger in a year where a single game could decide the AL East or a wild-card berth, the Yankees can’t afford to play him over other bats, whether those other bats are owed less money or not.

9. Bellinger isn’t the only problem, he’s just the biggest once. Chisholm, Volpe and Wells have been atrocious, Devin Williams has been a joke and every starter not named Max Fried has an ERA of at least 4.34. Despite their glaring issues, the Yankees are fortunately 14-9.

Schmidt was bad and Williams was solid, but the Yankees hit into three double plays in the game (one of them was bad luck on a Chisholm line drive), and when you hit into three double plays in six innings, it’s going to be difficult to win.

10. It’s going to be difficult to win on Tuesday as well. Will Warren gets the ball and based off of his Thursday night showing in Tampa (1.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K), it’s hard to have much confidence in him. Tanner Bibee goes for the Guardians. Bibee has made four starts this season. Two of them were against the Royals, in which he 10 1/3 scoreless innings. The other two were against the Angels and Orioles, and he allowed 13 earned runs and seven home runs in 9 2/3 innings. The Yankees are going to need that Bibee to show up. They’re also going to need some combination of Bellinger, Wells, Volpe and Chisholm to show up and for Rice to play.

1. When the Yankees led off Thursday’s home game on the road against the Rays with three straight singles to take a 1-0 lead, I was feeling great about where the game was headed. When only one of those three baserunners came around to score, that great feeling quickly turned ominous.

The Yankees have struggled in the past against Taj Bradley (one run in 13 innings) and with runners on first and third with no outs and one run already in and the 4-5-6 hitters in the lineup due up, they had the opportunity to break the game open and didn’t. After Aaron Judge’s single scored Paul Goldschmidt, Bradley faced one batter over the minimum for the next 4 1/3 innings.

2. During those 4 1/3 innings, Will Warren gave a reminder to anyone who thought he may have turned the corner last Saturday against the Giants that he hasn’t. With Marcus Stroman on the injured list, Warren paid tribute to his teammate by putting up a Stroman-like line: 1.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K. Warren couldn’t get through the second inning, needed 53 pitches to get five outs and got one swing-and-miss on those 53 pitches. When he was removed from the game, he left the bullpen needing to get 22 outs in the middle of a 13-game-in-13-days stretch, and he left with the bases loaded.

3. It’s rare for Aaron Boone to make a wise in-game pitching decision, considering his lack of feel for what’s unfolding on the field in front of him. But his decision to remove Warren in the second inning and turn the ball over to the bullpen saved the game, and helped lead the Yankees to a win. Had Warren stayed in with two outs and the bases loaded, he was either going to walk in a run or allow the bases to clear. Boone got in front of it for the first of only a handful of times in his seven-plus years as manager.

Ryan Yarbrough (2.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 1 K) managed to keep the damage to a minimum in relief of Warren, despite putting seven baserunners on in 2 2/3 innings, and Tim Hill (2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K) put up a couple of zeros following Yarbrough.

4. The Yankees trailed 3-1 with one in the fifth until Oswaldo Cabrera hit his first home run of the season off of Bradley. I keep writing it in each of these Thoughts, but let Cabrera play every day at third. He had three hits in the game and his average is up to .308 and his OPS up to .757. PLAY HIM EVERY DAY until he gives you a reason not to.

5. After Cabrera homered, Goldschmidt singled and Ben Rice doubled. Judge walked and Cody Bellinger — with the bases loaded — hit the ball on the ground to score Goldschmidt and tie the game at 3. (That’s about all anyone can expect or ask of Bellinger at the moment: put the ball in play. He did his best to end the rally and inning with a double play, but managed to beat it out.)

6. The Yankees added a run in the sixth on a Jasson Dominguez groundout, and later in the inning, with the bases loaded and two outs, Rice singled in two more to give the Yankees a 6-3 lead, which is how it would stay.

Rice finished the game with a career-high four hits. He has a .317 average and 1.064 OPS and with each passing game he looks more and more like this is for real at the plate. He’s doing in front of Judge what Juan Soto did last year.

7. Jazz Chisholm has gone out of his way to complain about the weather since the start of the season as the Yankees have only played in frigid New York, Pittsburgh and Detroit. But now they’re in Tampa and Chisholm still went 0-for-3 with a walk. He was a pitch away from having a second walk, but the umpire called a 3-2 pitch low and away for a strike and Chisholm went wild, getting himself tossed in the process. Minutes after getting tossed he took to social media to voice his displeasure with the call only to later delete the message. Keep it together. One missed strike call isn’t why you’re hitting .169 with a .723 OPS. Having one non-home run hit in your last 11 games is why. Maybe try an approach that isn’t think every pitch thrown is going to be the equivalent of a middle-middle, 3-0 fastball and not take your “A” swing with every swing?

8. On a night when Boone needed to go to his bullpen in the second inning and clearly made Luke Weaver unavailable, he was able to piece together 22 outs between Yarbrough (8), Hill (6), Ian Hamilton (5) and Devin Williams (3). Williams had the easiest outing of his Yankees tenure with a six-pitch ninth. Williams, Weaver and Fernando Cruz will all be available on Friday.

9. They’ll only be needed on Friday if Carlos Rodon doesn’t suck the way he has in three of his four starts this season, and the way he has so many times as a Yankee. Rodon has allowed five home runs in 23 innings this season, and his ability combined with Steinbrenner Field isn’t ideal with the way the ball has been flying out of there.

10. The Yankees will need their offense to show up with Rodon on the mound, and unfortunately, they’re going against Drew Rasmussen, who has allowed one earned run and no home runs this season across three starts. It’s never been easy for the Yankees against the Rays in the Boone era and it won’t be for the rest of the weekend.

1. Earlier this week, Juan Soto went out of his way to call Aaron Judge “the best hitter in baseball” and essentially told the world he misses being a Yankee.

During the three-game series against the Royals, Judge went out of his way to make his former teammate’s claim stand up. Judge went 2-for-4 on Monday, 2-for-3 with a walk on Tuesday and then 3-for-3 with a double, home run and walk on Wednesday. That home run (Judge’s first in 10 games) was a go-ahead shot to lead off the seventh. It gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead and was enough to carry them to a series sweep.

“I just feel like, in any situation, he’s going to come out on top,” Cody Bellinger said. “He’s the best player on this planet.”

2. Judge also scored 25 percent of the Yankees’ runs in the series and is now hitting .409/.519/.803 on the season. He joins Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Paul O’Neill as the only other Yankees to have a .400 batting average, .800 slugging percentage, 20 RBIs and 10 walks through the team’s first 18 games of the season (per Katie Sharp).

“I want to get on base. That’s the biggest thing, hitting in the middle of the order and hitting second a lot,” Judge said. “I’ve got to touch first base. That’s my job.”

3. Judge touched ‘em all with his seventh-inning shot off of John Schreiber. His late-game heroics were made possible because of another solid pitching performance from the Yankees staff. Clarke Schmidt made his season debut and wasn’t as good as Carlos Carrasco was on Monday or Max Fried was on Tuesday, but he was good enough (5.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 2 K) to get into the sixth inning on a night when the bullpen was shorthanded.

“The whole rotation has to step up,” Schmidt said. “I know that my job is to go out there and be as consistent as possible every five days and give my team a chance to win.”

4. Going into the game without Luke Weaver and Devin Williams (to a lesser degree) meant a close game may get tense and trusting Aaron Boone to push the right buttons without his best arms available would likely prove challenging. Boone went to Mark Leiter Jr. for four outs and Fernando Cruz for a two-inning save, and it all worked out.

5. It all worked out thanks to Cody Bellinger’s lead-saving catch with two outs in the ninth when he laid out in right field to prevent a game-tying extra-base hit.

“That’s the reason he’s got gold on his glove,” Judge said. “Very few people make that catch, especially in a big moment like that with the game on the line.”

Bellinger has been atrocious at the plate (.538 OPS), but managed to sneak a hard-hit ground ball inside of first base for an RBI double in the fourth and let his defense make up for his bat with the spectacular grab in the ninth.

“That might be my first game-saving catch,” Bellinger said. “I was just glad I was able to catch it and get the win.”

6. Anthony Volpe had a big, two-run double in the third to cap off a two-out rally. There’s nothing better than a two-out rally. Nothing. Judge doubled, Jazz Chisholm walked and then Volpe crushed a ball to left to score both runners. The Yankees managed to score three runs (on seven hits and four walks) off of Kris Bubic after he had allowed just two earned runs in his first three starts and 18 2/3 innings.

7. Chisholm had that third-inning walk to go along with a single to center off the end of his bat in the first. (He was also hit by a pitch in the seventh.) The first-inning single was the first non-home run hit for Chisholm since the series finale in Pittsburgh 10 days prior.

8. A night after going 3-for-3 with the game-changing, three-run double, Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-3 with a walk, but he did get to play all nine innings of the game with Judge as the designated hitter. No balls were to hit to Dominguez in the eighth or ninth after Judge made it a one-run game.

9. The Yankees have been playing with three near-automatic outs in their lineup in Bellinger, Chisholm and Austin Wells, and yet, they lead the American League in runs scored with 107 and a plus-24 run differential. (Thanks, Brewers.) The lineup has been heavily reliant on Judge, Ben Rice, Paul Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham (when he plays) and some timely hitting from Volpe and Dominguez. The Yankees need their three “everyday” left-handed bats to contribute, especially this weekend in Tampa.

10. It’s off to Steinbrenner Field where the Yankees will be visitors at their own place. (Maybe a trip back to spring training is what Bellinger needs to get going after he had a 1.214 OPS in 19 games during spring training.) It will be Will Warren against Taj Bradley. Now in his third season, Bradley has made two starts against the Yankees over the last two years, holding them to one run over 13 innings and a .331 OPS. But he has never faced the Yankees at their spring training home in real game where they are accustomed to playing and where the ball has been flying out of this season.

1. For the first time since Opening Day the Yankees won a game in which Max Fried didn’t start and the offense didn’t score at least eight runs. It took 15 games, but the Yankees finally proved they can win if their ace isn’t on the mound or if the offense doesn’t go completely off. They have Carlos Carrasco and solo home runs to thank for that.

2. Carrasco was outstanding in the Yankees’ 4-1 win over the Royals on Monday (5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR). One hit allowed in five innings? Sure, it was the Royals’ who are averaging 3.1 runs per game, but one hit allowed in five innings is one hit allowed in five innings.

3. After Carrasco walked two of the the first three batters of the game, I figured it was only a matter of pitches until the game would be out of hand and out of reach, especially with Seth Lugo starting for the Royals. But Carrasco managed to get out of the jam, pitched a perfect second, allowed a solo home run to Bobby Witt Jr. in the third and went six up, six down in the fourth and fifth.

“Everything we did before the game was working,” Carrasco said. “In the first inning, we got two walks and I was able to hold it right there.”

4. Six days after getting blasted for four home runs by the Tigers while Casey Mize shut down the Yankees, this time Carrasco shut down the Royals while the Yankees blasted four home runs against Lugo, all from left-handed hitters.

Trailing 1-0 in the fourth, Jazz Chisholm tied the game with a shot to right-center. Then in the fifth, Trent Grisham led off the inning with a home run, followed by Ben Rice two batters later and Austin Wells two batters after that. The Yankees led 4-1 through five and that’s how it would end thanks to four scoreless innings from Fernando Cruz (three of four outs for strikeouts), Tim Hill (two outs), Luke Weaver (1-2-3 eighth) and Devin Williams (save).

5. I don’t know that there’s anyone who thought the tying run wouldn’t come to the plate with a three-run lead in the ninth against Williams. And sure enough, Williams gave the Royals two cracks at the tying the game with one swing before getting out of it. Williams has now allowed 13 baserunners in in five innings. He nearly blew a three-run lead on Opening Day, a four-run lead in Detroit, made everyone nervous with a four-run lead against the Giants and let the tying run come up against the Royals with a three-run lead. What’s going to happen when he enters a game with a one- or two-run lead? I don’t know want to find out. At least not until he gets himself right and who knows when that will be.

6. Jasson Dominguez had an awesome night in left field, but that didn’t stop Aaron Boone from removing him from the game for a defensive replacement (Cody Bellinger) in the eighth. Bellinger struck out in his only at-bat and his OPS is down to .539. Maybe Bellinger should be the fourth outfielder and late-game defensive replacement? Grisham (1.124 OPS) certainly doesn’t deserve to sit.

7. Wells hit his first home run since the second game of the season against the Brewers, Rice improved his slash line to .300/.417/.680), Aaron Judge (1.212 OPS) and Paul Goldschmidt (.909 OPS) each had two more hits and Oswaldo Cabrera bumped his average up to .278.

8. After going 0-for-24, Chisholm has homered in the last two games. He’s hitting .175 with a .246 on-base percentage, but his OPS (.738) is being propped up by his six home runs (not that a .738 OPS is anything to feel good about). Maybe sprinkle in a walk or a single with runners in scoring position here and there? That would be nice.

9. It’s getting more difficult with each game to not think Anthony Volpe’s hot start to the year was nothing more than what it was last year. Going back to the Sunday walk-off loss in Pittsburgh, Volpe is 2-for-24 (both singles) with six walks and eight strikeouts. He’s walking more than did in either of the last two seasons, but he also has one stolen base through 16 games since you need to get on base with some frequency to steal a base.

10. Michael Wacha gets the ball for the Royals on Tuesday night, and unfortunately for him, he’s going against the Yankees’ ace in Fried. If Carrasco could hold the Royals to one hit through five innings, it’s hard not to envision the possibilities for Fried against that lineup if he pitches the way he did last Wednesday in Detroit.

1. If you sat through the rain and through the Yankees’ 9-1, rain-shortened loss at Yankee Stadium on Friday night I feel sorry for you. The only way I was going to the Bronx on Friday night with the forecast being what it was would have been if the Yankees used me as the starting pitcher. They should have. Instead, Marcus Stroman started for the Yankees in what should be his last start as a Yankee. Unfortunately, it won’t be.

Stroman finished last season by allowing 131 baserunners in 75 innings and pitching to a 5.88 ERA. In those 16 games (15 starts), hitters had an .847 OPS against him. Francisco Lindor finished second in the National League MVP voting last year with an .844 OPS. So Stroman turned every hitter over the last three months of last season into a better hitter than the NL MVP runner-up.

Stroman went to spring training with a trade seemingly inevitable as the odd-man out in the rotation before three injuries made him the No. 3. In his first two starts, he was just plain bad, pitching 8 2/3 innings with a 7.27 ERA. but on Friday agains the Giants, he wasn’t just his usual bad self, he flat-out sucked.

2. The first pitch of Stroman’s night was crushed into the right-center gap for a double. After nibbling around the strike zone for a walk, he allowed a three-run home run to Jung Hoo Lee. A couple of walks and another double later, and Stroman had the Yankees in a five-run hole with a runner on second and still no outs. Stroman didn’t make it through the first inning. He needed 46 pitches to get just two outs. With 13 games over the next 13 days, Stroman put the bullpen in a tough spot, needing to get 25 outs in the game. Fortunately, for the Yankees, the game was called during the top of the sixth inning with them trailing by eight runs, so they could preserve their bullpen for the rest of the night and the series.

3. On Saturday, it was Will Warren’s turn to provide something other than disaster from the four-fifths of the rotation not named Max Fried. Warren was given an early two-run lead to work with, but in the half-inning immediately following those runs, he gave them right back. Warren settled down after the two-run second to pitch three scoreless innings. His final line for the. day: 5 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 6 K 1 HR. If he can do that every five days, everyone would be happy.

4. The Yankees scored five runs in the fifth to break the 2-2 tie and take a 7-2 lead. Fernando Cruz gave two of the runs right back in typical Yankees fashion as he was allowed to face the heart of the Giants’ order with Aaron Boone treating a five-run lead in the sixth inning like a 10-run lead in the ninth. The Yankees got one back to take an 8-4 lead into the seventh.

Because Boone let Cruz unsuccessfully face the heart of the order, he had to lean on Luke Weaver for four outs before turning the ball over to Devin Williams in the ninth. Despite having a four-run cushion, Williams made it as hard as possible to close the game out, allowing a walk and double to begin his outing before finally retiring the side. Williams has now allowed 11 baserunners in four innings this season. My 1-to-10 confidence level with him is about a 1.2 through two-plus weeks. Right where Clay Holmes left off.

5. Then there was Sunday: the rubber game. A chance for the Yankees to win a series and move to three games over .500.

The Yankees were able to jump on Logan Webb early, plating one run in the first and two in the second. They held a 3-0 lead going in the fourth with Carlos Rodon having yet to give up a hit. But then Rodon gave up a solo home run to Lee (who hit the three-run, first-inning home run off Stroman on Friday) to get the Giants on the board. The Yankees’ 3-1 lead held up until the sixth when Rodon unraveled.

No. 9 hitter Christian Koss led off the sixth with an infield single to short. It was a tough play for Anthony Volpe, but one you would think a “Gold Glove” shortstop should make. With one out, Rodon walked Willy Adames, to put the tying run on base and to bring up Lee as the go-ahead run. When adversity hits Rodon on the mound, he tends to lose it all within seconds. Every Yankees fan knows this after watching him make 54 starts with the team. The only person who doesn’t know this is his manager.

I don’t fault Boone as much as normal for leaving Rodon in to face Lee, considering it was a left-on-left matchup. Pitch him away, keep him to the big part of the Stadium and you’ll be fine. But like clockwork, Rodon started unraveling after the infield single and never stopped until he was removed from the game.

Rodon got ahead of Lee 1-2 and then threw the equivalent of a get-me-over-curveball which hung in the middle of the plate for Lee to drive over the wall in right field. Before playing the Yankees this weekend, Lee had hit three home runs in 48 career games. He hit three against the Yankees in the series, and his second on Sunday gave the Giants a 4-3 lead.

Rodon allowed five earned runs in six innings in his last start and Boone said, “I thought he threw the ball great. I really did.” In this one, Rodon only allowed four earned runs in 5 2/3 innings. How did Boone think he pitched? “I thought he was excellent,” his manager said. Nothing exemplifies “excellence” like allowing four earned runs in 5 2/3 innings, including two home runs to the same player, while blowing a three-run lead.

6. If Rodon reminds you of a former Yankee who seemed to always have “great stuff” but frequently imploded, couldn’t control his emotions on the mound and could unravel in the span of a few pitches, it’s because you’re thinking of A.J. Burnett. As Katie Sharp posted on social media, Rodon has pitched 36 games in the regular season since the start of last year and has allowed 36 home runs, 69 walks and 10 hit batters. The last Yankee to do that was Burnett. At least Burnett gave us a World Series-saving gem. In Rodon’s only World Series start with the Yankees, he got blasted for three home runs and four earned runs in only 3 1/3 innings.

7. Combine the Yankees’ knack for rolling over and dying when trailing late in games with the Giants’ bullpen depth and once the Giants had the lead the remainder of the game became a formality.

Hayden Birdsong pitched a 1-2-3 sixth on eight pitches, came back out for the seventh, drilled Aaron Judge and threw up another zero.

The Giants led 5-3 in the eighth when Jazz Chisholm led off with a short-porch home run to break an 0-for-24 slump, but Volpe, Jasson Dominguez and J.C. Escarra followed by lying down for Tyler Rogers.

In the ninth, after Austin Wells pinch hit for Oswaldo Cabrera and flew out, Ben Rice grounded out and Judge kept the bat on his shoulder to go down looking to end the game for a 5-4 loss. A nice, solid 1-for-13 with four strikeouts and a hit by pitch for the Yankees against the Giants’ bullpen.

It was a bad loss, the Yankees’ third of the season, along with the April 1 loss to the Diamondbacks (when they blew a two-run lead in the eighth) and the April 6 loss to the Pirates (when they overcame a three-run deficit in the ninth only to lose in the 11th).

8. The Yankees could have scored more early on on Sunday, just like they had their chances to get back in the game on Friday, but in both games, they left runners on all over the place.

On Friday, they stranded one in the first, two in the second, two more in the third and another in the fifth before the game was called.

On Sunday, they left one on in the first and another in the second. In the fourth, they had runners on first and second with no outs, but Boone let Escarra hit rather than sacrifice bunt, and the runners never advanced in the inning. (Not only did Boone let Escarra hit there, but he also let him swing away on 3-0 in the eighth trailing by a run.) They left two more on in the fifth when they had first and second and one out, and then after that, the Giants’ bullpen put them to sleep.

9. When the going gets tough, these Yankees get going. They aren’t about to rally late to win a game. In Pittsburgh, they rallied only for their lack of situational hitting to doom them in extras. At best, they put together enough of a rally to make you think they may come back and win, only to fall short.

The Yankees are now 8-7. They are 2-3 in their five series. They are 5-7 since the season-opening Brewers series. They lost five of seven this past week to the Pirates, Tigers and Giants. On days when Fried doesn’t pitch, they need the offense to score eight-plus runs to have a chance, and it’s hard to do that when you have an inconsistent bat hitting third (Cody Bellinger) and a blackhole in the middle of the lineup in Chisholm. There is one truly trustworthy arm in the bullpen (Luke Weaver) and the manager doesn’t seem to know when to best use him and is mostly too scared to use him.

10. Through 13 games the Yankees have received at least six innings from a starter TWO times. TWO! I’m not sure how the team thinks it can keep that up, but they are going to keep it up as long as Rodon continues to implode and Stroman and Carlos Carrasco keep getting the ball. And they are going to keep getting the ball. At least Carrasco is since Stroman is now suddenly “injured” with knee inflammation. (Yeah, knee inflammation is the cause of him nibbling around the strike zone with 90-mph sinkers dating back nearly a full calendar year.)

10. If Fried starts or the offense scores eight-plus runs, the Yankees win. If neither of those things happen, they lose. When Fried starts, they’re 3-0. When Fried doesn’t start, but the Yankees score eight-plus runs, they’re 4-0. When Fried doesn’t start, but the Yankees don’t score at least eight runs, they’re 1-7. Thankfully, it’s Fried’s turn to pitch on Tuesday.

But before Tuesday, Carrasco will get the ball on Monday. We know how the game will go: the Yankees will score at least eight runs and they’ll win, or they won’t, and they’ll lose.

1. The Yankees had to have the series and road trip finale in Detroit. A loss on Thursday in Detroit would have extended their losing streak to four straight, would have dropped them to .500, would have wasted a dominant starting pitching effort, would have made for a depressed plane ride and trip back home and would have lingered throughout Thursday’s day off. Thankfully, none of that happened or will happen. The Yankees have Max Fried and Ben Rice to thank for that.

2. After Fried’s most recent start in Pittsburgh (5.2 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 1 HR), I wrote: It’s exciting to think about how good Fried will be when he’s “on” in one of his starts, which he certainly wasn’t on Opening Day and really wasn’t against the Pirates.

Well, Fried was “on” on Thursday for the first time as a Yankee: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 11 K. He stifled the Tigers’ bats in a way the two Carloses couldn’t and led the Yankees to a win.

Prior to Wednesday’s game, I wrote: The series finale is the kind of start the Yankees got Max Fried for. Three straight losses and a matchup against an unimpressive offense. This is a game the Yankees need to Fried to go out there and hand the ball off to Luke Weaver and then Devin Williams with no one in between and salvage the final game of the series and road trip. Fried did just that.

3. For six-plus innings it felt like Fried’s best day as a Yankee may be for nothing. The Yankees couldn’t score against Jack Flaherty (5.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 9 K) and let Flaherty and Tyler Holton off the hook in the sixth inning, unable to score with runners on second and third and one out.

In the seventh, Holton quickly retired Jasson Dominguez and J.C. Escarra.

“The Yankees are a team that’s built on home runs and they have not homered in three games and 6 2/3 innings,” Michael Kay said with two outs in the seventh. “When a pitcher or pitching staff can keep them in the ballpark, you have a chance.”

After Kay finished opining, Oswaldo Cabrera singled.

The Yankees hadn’t homered since Saturday and were a few innings away from not homering in four straight games for the first time since September 2020. Rice made sure that unfortunate stat wasn’t duplicated.

Rice crushed a 1-0 pitch from Holton 419 feet over the center-field wall to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead.

Prior to the home run, the Yankees had scored five runs in their last 34 innings. Those five runs came in three innings, so the Yankees had scored in 31 of the last 34 innings.

4. After the Rice home run, Fried put up his seventh and final zero of the day before turning the ball over to Weaver (just like I had asked for). Weaver worked around a one-out single to pitch yet another scoreless inning.

In the ninth, the Yankees scored two extremely important insurance runs as a result of some Yankees-esque defense from the Tigers. The game had an ominous feel as though it could turn into a complete letdown after the heroics from Fried and Rice if Williams were to blow the game in the ninth. And based off Williams’ early-season appearances, it certainly wasn’t out of the question.

5. Williams walked the first batter of the ninth. A walk with a four-run lead. If not for the two tack-on runs in the eighth, the Tigers would have the tying run at the plate with no outs in the ninth. Williams struck out the next two, but after a two-out single from Javier Baez (you know Williams isn’t right when Baez is getting a line-drive base off of him), he unraveled. Williams walked Trey Sweeney, threw a wild pitch to score Baez (who had taken second on defensive indifference) and allowed a single to Zach McKinstry to make it 4-3. Aaron Judge (who earlier in the game idiotically got caught in a rundown between third and home on a ball hit back to the mound) moronically threw the ball home, allowing McKinstry to go to second. With two outs in the ninth, the Tigers had the tying run on second and Aaron Boone was forced to take the ball from Williams and give it to Mark Leiter Jr. It’s bad enough Williams nearly blew a three-run lead in the ninth on Opening Day, but now he was about to blow a four-run lead, had given up a hit to Baez and was being pulled for Leiter. What a first 13 days in pinstripes.

6. Leiter got Justyn-Henry Malloy to pop up to Jazz Chisholm in shallow center to end the game. If the Yankees had lost, it would have been a loss that would be hard to top as the worst of the season even with 150 games remaining. A loss would have wasted Fried’s brilliant outing. It would have wasted Rice’s heroics. It would have extended the losing streak. It would have lingered on the plane ride, travel home and day off. It would have dropped the Yankees to .500.

7. The win wasn’t withouts its warts with Williams being the biggest. Chisholm had another hitless day and is down to .180/.255/.460. Anthony Volpe continues to morph back into his 2023-24 self (and lost the grip on the bat on two different strike 3s in the game). Dominguez had an 0-for (.205/.295/.359), and then’s there Cody Bellinger.

8. Bellinger is a problem. Normally, you would think someone being bad (.562 OPS) through seven percent of the season isn’t a big deal, but it is. It is because Bellinger is evidently going to bat second ahead of Judge or third behind him no matter what because of his veteran status, because he was the National League MVP (with the juiced baseball) six years ago and because he bats left-handed. It takes an extraordinary amount of struggling for Boone to move a veteran down in the lineup, and it’s going to take a lot for him to move Bellinger down even if it’s deserved. Here’s to Bellinger figuring it out after a day off with the familiar-for-him Giants coming to the Bronx this weekend.

9. On the positive side (aside from Fried and Rice), Judge looked like himself at the plate after a few shaky days, Paul Goldschmidt had two more hits and Cabrera had a two-hit day with the second hit coming from his “weaker” side (the right side). That hit led to him being on base when Rice blasted his two-run home run.

On Friday, Cabrera had a three-hit game then was benched on Saturday and Sunday, played on Monday and was benched again on Tuesday. With a lefty scheduled to start against the Yankees on Friday, Cabrera will likely be on the bench again. How about just letting him play every day and bat from both sides? The Yankees clearly don’t believe in Oswald Peraza (and shouldn’t believe in Pablo Reyes as even a bench option), otherwise Peraza would have played more in 2022, 2023 or 2024, so they need to stop acting like they believe in him now. Play Cabrera every day, against all starting pitchers and let him be the everyday third baseman.

10. The Yankees head home at 7-5 instead of 6-6. They head home having salvaged the third game of the series to finish the road trip at 3-3 instead of 2-4. They head home on a happy and upbeat plane rather than a somber and disappointed one. They head home to host the Giants where they will have their work cut out for them with Robbie Ray, Jordan Hicks and Logan Webb scheduled to pitch. They can’t let what happened to them against the Diamondbacks and Tigers happen to them against the Giants when facing a team’s best three starters.

1. Against the reigning American League Cy Young winner, the Yankees opened Tuesday’s game with back-to-back singles. Tarik Skubal had struggled in his first two starts of the season, and it looked like the Yankees may be able to get to him early with the heart of the order due up and a chance to give Carlos Carrasco a lead before throwing a pitch.

Instead, Aaron Judge struck out after getting ahead in the count 2-0, Jazz Chisholm hit a weak ground ball back to the mound and Anthony Volpe had an ugly at-bat for an inning-ending strikeout, and that was the game. After that first-inning jam, Skubal looked like his 2024 self, retiring 16 straight until a Paul Goldschmidt single in the sixth.

2. “He’s as good as it gets,” Aaron Bone said. “He had a good day against us today.”

A good day from Skubal is to be expected. But Casey Mize also had a good day against the Yankees the day before and Andrew Heaney had a good day against them the day before that. Add up three consecutive days of a disappearing offense and bad starting pitching and you get a three-game losing streak, which has the Yankees a loss away from falling to .500.

3. During the six shutouts innings from Skubal, Carrasco got lit up. The Tigers scored one run off of him in the second and hit three solo home runs in the span of four batters in the fourth. He lasted just 4 1/3 innings and the Yankees trailed 4-0 when he left the mound in the fifth.

“It’s imperative that he really commands all of it,” Boone said of Carrasco. “He’s gotta be near the edges.”

Ryan Yarbrough relieved Carrasco and gave up a home run to the first batter he faced to make it 5-0, and that’s how it would stay for another Yankees loss.

4. The Tigers are a problem and a horrible matchup for the Yankees. It’s why before the series, I wrote: Had the Yankees played the Tigers in the ALCS, I think it would have been problematic given their pitching staff.

Between their strong rotation, deep pitching staff and experienced manager, they are very Rays-esque. The Rays have dominated the Yankees during the Boone era and the Tigers are starting do the same, having won the last four games against the Yankees dating back to last season. I fear them as much as any team in the AL, and in a short series in October, they would be a big problem.

4. Clarke Schmidt is expected to return to the rotation next week, and there is a debate about whether it will be Carrasco or Will Warren who loses their spot. The argument for Carrasco is that he doesn’t have a minor-league option like Warren does. Umm, who cares? It’s highly unlikely Carrasco will be claimed by another team, and if he is, who cares? Does anyone want him making another start for the Yankees? In three appearances (two starts) this season, he has put 19 baserunners on in 11 2/3 innings and has allowed 10 earned runs. No, don’t let the the guy with a 7.71 ERA and 1.628 WHIP this season (and 5.39 ERA since 2021) get claimed or elect free agency!

5. The Yankees’ 1-through-3 were 6-for-12 in the game. The 4-through-9 were 0-for-20.

Clean-up hitter Chisholm’s big weekend against the Brewers is starting to fade and he’s now down to .196/.260/.500. Austin Wells’ stats are no longer being propped up by homering in the first two games of the year as he’s down to .189/.279/.432. Jasson Dominguez has yet to get going aside from a few plate appearances and sits at .222/.317/.389, though if Volpe had Dominguez’s current .706 OPS during either of the last two seasons there would already be a plaque for him in Monument Park.

7. Cody Bellinger missed another game, this time with food poisoning. Bellinger has missed three of 11 games this year and when he has played he has been bad (.233/.278/.333). He is no way deserves to be hitting second or third before or after Judge in the lineup with the way Ben Rice and Trent Grisham have been hitting, but I expect to see him back in the lineup on Wednesday hitting second or third.

8. The Yankees have a problem right now in that Bellinger is always going to play, Dominguez needs to play, Grisham is tearing the cover off of the ball and Rice is the team’s second-best hitter after Judge. You can’t sit Rice right now. You shouldn’t sit Grisham. But because none of those four play third base, someone has to sit. It may be time for Rice to start taking ground balls at third? Maybe he already is or already has? Maybe he has and he sucked at it? All I know is the Yankees are wasting a lineup spot with whichever third baseman of the day they choose and are putting someone on the bench that shouldn’t be on the bench at the moment..

9. The Yankees will face Jack Flaherty in the series finale. The last time the Yankees saw Flaherty, they chased him in the second inning of Game 5 of the World Series. Flaherty has been very good in his first two starts of the season, and given the way the Yankees offense has hit the last three days, it’s hard to feel confident with them at the moment. It’s also hard not to think they will be thinking about an afternoon getaway day game and returning home tonight with tomorrow off.

10. The series finale is the kind of start the Yankees got Max Fried for. Three straight losses and a matchup against an unimpressive offense. This is a game the Yankees need to Fried to go out there and hand the ball off to Luke Weaver and then Devin Williams with no one in between and salvage the final game of the series and road trip.

1. If a starting pitcher allows five earned runs in six innings, it equates to a 7.50 ERA. There isn’t a person who should think that’s acceptable, especially if the pitcher is making roughly $800,000 per start. But there’s one.

“I thought he threw the ball great,” Aaron Boone said of Carlos Rodon’s disastrous start in Detroit, “I really did.”

2. Last week at Yankee Stadium, Zac Gallen (6.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 13 K) “threw the ball great.” Ex-Yankee Andrew Heaney on Sunday against the Yankees (7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 10 K) “threw the ball great.” Tigers starter Casey Mize on Monday against the Yankees (6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K) “threw the ball great.” What Rodon did on Monday wasn’t “great.” It was abysmal. It was the type of performance Rodon has given as a Yankees more often than not.

3. “Look, he doesn’t get a call in that inning and makes the one mistake that turns into a three-run homer,” Boone said. “But really outside of that I thought he was excellent.”

Ah yes, outside of the three-run homer that decided the game, Rodon was excellent. Even if outside of the home run he allowed two other earned runs to score and an unearned one. Six runs and five earned in six innings: the definition of excellence.

4. The whining about the missed third strike call in the third inning is embarrassing. Rodon got countless fastballs outside the strike zone called in his favor early in the game. When he didn’t get a 3-2 pitch called his way in his third, it set up first and second with one out for the Tigers. (The 8- and 9-hitters were on first and second, both from walks.) Rodon bounced back to get the second out of the inning on a strikeout. He was one out away from getting out of the inning and couldn’t get it.

5. “We roll that Carlos every time,” Boone said, “we’re going to be in a good spot.”

If the Yankees allow a run per inning every start they’re going to be in a good spot? What? They did that on Monday and lost. They did it on Sunday and lost. They did it on Saturday and were fortunate the offense showed up.

6. “I thought he did a lot of really good things,” Boone said. “I thought he was in control of the game.”

Why was he in control? Because he had eight strikeouts in six innings against a weak offense? He certainly didn’t look in control when he walked the 8- and 9-hitters to start the Tigers’ third-inning rally. He didn’t look in control when he gave up the three-run home run to Andy Ibanez. He didn’t look in control when he walked the 8-hitter again in the fifth and allowed two runs to score immediately after the Yankees had gotten on the board.

In Rodon’s last start, we had to hear about how the rain and weather affected him, while Gallen tossed an all-time gem. Today, it was the wind chill impacting Rodon, while Mize continued to get out after out. There’s always an excuse with him. The weather, heckling fans, a mound visit he didn’t want, a pitch that didn’t get called his way.

7. Rodon was bad on Monday, which he usually is, but even if he had been better, it likely wouldn’t have mattered because a day after getting humiliated by Heaney in Pittsburgh, the offense gave themselves a day off in Detroit.

“I thought we were very close there to really putting together a couple of big innings,” Boone said of his offense as each delusional answer he provided Meredith Marakovits one-upped his previous one.

That will be a good name for the Boone autobiography about his time as Yankees manager whenever his time in the position ends (if it ever does).

“‘I Thought We Were Very Close:’ My Time as Yankees Manager” by Aaron Boone with Andy Martino, foreword by Brian Cashman.

8. Ben Rice reached base three times (but was also inexplicably picked off third), Aaron Judge had an RBI single and a walk and Paul Goldschmidt had two hits. Those were the offensive highlights. The Yankees had seven hits in the game and one for extra bases. Jazz Chisholm, Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells at 5-6-7 combined to go 1-for-12 with five strikeouts. Cody Bellinger continued his early-season failures with runners on and Oswaldo Cabrera went 0-for-4 after being bench the last two games following his three-hit game on Friday. Jasson Dominguez didn’t play because the only prospect to get to play every day from the moment he reached the league (despite horrific results) in this era has been Volpe.

9. The Yankees’ offense scored one run and the Tigers’ defense gave them another. They were shut down by Mize, and three relievers, with Tommy Kahnle being the last of those three. Sure enough, Kahnle pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to close out the game and striking out two, while successfully mixing his fastball and changeup, after only using his changeup for an extended period of time in October, which ultimately led to the Yankees’ demise in Game 5 of the World Series. A memorable performance on consecutive days for ex-Yankees Heaney, Kahnle, Dennis Santana, Caleb Ferguson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

10. The Yankees couldn’t hit Casey Mize and now they get to face the reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal on Tuesday. Carlos Carrasco will go for the Yankees in what is the biggest discrepancy in starting pitching ability you can have in a matchup this season. Aside from the ninth inning on Sunday, the offense has taken the last two days off. It would be nice if it decides to return to work on Tuesday.

1. On Friday, before the Yankees opened a three-game season in Pittsburgh, I wrote: Anything less than a series win (especially with Paul Skenes not pitching), would be a disappointment. The series wasn’t a disappointment and was successful because the Yankees did win it, but it could have been and (nearly was) so much more if they had completed their three-run, ninth-inning comeback on Sunday and finished the job with a sweep.

2. The Yankees received one strong starting pitching effort in the series and that came from Max Fried on Friday (5.2 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 1 HR). It felt like Fried wasn’t even that good, and yet, he allowed one run over 5 1/3 innings. It’s exciting to think about how good Fried will be when he’s “on” in one of his starts, which he certainly wasn’t on Opening Day and really wasn’t against the Pirates.

Fried was the beneficiary of 20 runs from his offense in the second game of the season, and he got more than enough run support again on Friday in the Yankees’ 9-4 win.

“It’s been incredible, especially the early runs,” Fried said. “It takes a lot off me, where I know that I can be a little more aggressive and go after guys.”

Fried is the last pitcher on the Yankees who needs run support. Marcus Stroman, on the other hand, could use all the help he can get.

3. After being bad against the Brewers last weekend (4.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 1 HR), Stroman was even worse against the Pirates (4 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K). In two starts, he’s pitched 8 2/3 innings, allowing seven earned runs for a nice, tidy 7.27 ERA.

In his start on Saturday, after giving back a two-run lead and then some with four runs against in the fourth, he was saved by a six-run outburst from the offense the following inning. I thought with a four-run lead Aaron Boone would send Stroman back out for the fifth to try to squeeze every last out of him, but instead, he did the right thing and pulled him, preventing further damage and the Yankees were able to coast to a 10-4 win.

I don’t think Boone pulled Stroman because he recognized it as the smart thing to do to win the game. I think he pulled him because the Yankees are going to do everything they can to prevent Stroman’s innings clause for 2026 from kicking in. If Stroman throws 140 innings this season, he is guaranteed $18 million for next season. With 8 2/3 innings through two starts, Stroman is on pace for 139 innings if he were to make 32 starts. For as bad as he has been, there is a very realistic path to him reaching that number even with four- and 4 2/3-innings starts. That means Boone will always have a short leash and an early hook for Stroman this season, and that’s a good thing.

4. Will Warren had himself a Stroman-esque start on Sunday: 4 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 4 R, 1 BB, 5 K. Warren retired the first eight batters of the game before unraveling in the fourth.

“There was a lot of good in there,” Boone said of Warren, “mixed with little spots where he lost it.”

I would say it was a big spot where he lost it: with two outs and no one on in the fourth. From that moment on, Warren went walk, single, double, single, strikeout, groundout, triple, sacrifice fly, single, double, strikeout. I thought Warren was going to be good and then he walked Isiah Kiner-Falefa (who doesn’t walk) with two outs to start the third-inning rally and let Kiner-Falefa crush a first-pitch, RBI double to the gap in the fourth.

Kiner-Falefa wasn’t the only ex-Yankee to have big day against his former team, keeping up with a tradition that seemingly will never end (except for Nestor Cortes in the second game of the season, though Cortes is now on the injured list with the same injury that kept him out for most of September and most of October last season before Boone decided he was the best option to try to get Freddie Freeman out in Game 1 of the World Series). Joining Kiner-Falefa in the series finale was the pitching trio of Andrew Heaney, Dennis Santana and Caleb Ferguson, all former Yankees pitchers who were all designated for assignment by the team. Heaney had a 7.32 ERA in 35 2/3 innings as a Yankee, Santana had a 6.26 in 27 1/3 innings and Ferguson had a 5.13 in 33 1/3 innings. The trio combined to throw nine innings of one-run ball in the Yankees’ 5-4, 11-inning loss on Sunday.

5. The Yankees’ issues with left-handed pitching have been pronounced through nine games as every opposing manager is doing what he can to throw as many lefties as possible against the Yankees. This isn’t a small sample size issue either. When you can’t hit Heaney (who struck out 10 over seven innings) and Ferguson (who pitched around the automatic runner against the heart of the order in the 10th), it’s a big-time problem.

After staging an improbable comeback down three runs in the ninth, the Yankees were set up to take the lead in the 10th with Cody Bellinger, Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm due up. They had used Luke Weaver in the eighth, had him available for a second inning, if needed, and also had Devin Williams available. The extra-inning setup was heavily advantageous for them. And they pissed it away.

With the automatic runner (Paul Goldschmidt) on second to start the 10th, Bellinger got ahead of Ferguson 3-0. If Bellinger were to walk, the Pirates would be forced to pitch to Judge. Bellinger took the 3-0 pitch down the middle and then swung at a slider low, away and in the other batter’s box for strike 2. It was a selfish, undisciplined swing decision from Bellinger. Now at 3-2, he would need to at least put the ball in play to move Goldschmidt to third. He did that, but the Pirates, as expected, sent Judge to first.

Then came Chisholm, who is about the last Yankee you want up in a situational hitting scenario. After putting himself in a hole, Chisholm eventually put the ball in play, but it was a weak flare just past the infield that was easily catchable and too shallow for Goldschmidt to tag up on. Anthony Volpe ended the inning with a groundout.

6. Weaver made quick work of the Pirates in the 10th, but the Yankees couldn’t capitalize on a Pirates error in the 11th with the automatic runner on third and one out. In the bottom of the 11th, the Pirates stole third with one out against Williams, and idiotically Boone let Williams pitch to Tommy Pham, the Pirates one veteran hitter, with first and second base open and Pham hit the ball to left field for the walk-off win.

“It was a little bit of a tough day for us offensively,” Boone said, but what a great rally there in the ninth to get us back into it.”

It was a great rally, ruined by the Yankees’ situational hitting in extras. There’s a reason the Yankees have been one of the league’s worst teams in extra innings since the automatic runner was implemented five years ago: a combination of bad situational hitters and an uninspiring manager. The Pirates stole third with one out in the 11th, knowing they were unlikely to get a hit off of Williams to win the game. The Yankees? They waited around for a hit that never came and wasn’t going to come once Judge was intentionally walked.

7. Williams’ numbers were so good with the Brewers that he had become the best reliever in baseball, at least on paper. But so far, as a Yankee, he has been extremely underwhelming. Maybe that’s because it’s not ideal to have your closer’s best pitch be a changeup. He gets a pass for now, considering his Opening Day debacle was his first appearance with his new team in freezing weather, then he missed time with the birth of his child, and had a long layoff. I expected him to be more unhittable than he has been, and not Tommy Kahnle 2.0.

8. Trent Grisham has been Juan Soto 2.0 through the first week-and-a-half of the season. Grisham is hitting .455/.538/.909 with three home runs, nine RBIs, three walks and only four strikeouts. He homered twice on Saturday and drove in the game-tying runs in the ninth on Sunday. He has already passed Alex Verdugo’s 2024 season in terms of WAR despite this season being only six percent complete and despite Grisham having only started only five of the Yankees’ nine games.

9. After a big first two games as a Yankee, Bellinger is 2-for-19 with six strikeouts sandwiched around missing a couple of games with a stiff back on Friday and Saturday. In the last four games hitting in front of Judge, he’s 2-for-16 with two walks and seven strikeouts. The Yankees are 1-3 in those games. If you’re going to hit in front of Judge, you have to hit, especially since you’re getting pitches to hit.

10. It would be good if Bellinger started hitting in Detroit because the Yankees are going to need him. They are going to need all of the offense they can get (and will continue to need it until Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil return) as they face Casey Mize (5 2/3 shutout innings in his first start this season), Tarik Skubal (reigning Cy Young winner) and Jack Flaherty (typically tough except for Game 5 of the World Series) over the next three frigid afternoons. They will counter with Carlos Rodon (5.48 ERA in 13 career starts against the Tigers), Carlos Carrasco (I don’t think anyone will ever feel good about him starting) and Max Fried (the Yankees’ only trustworthy starter).

The Yankees struggled with Detroit last season and then the Tigers miraculously made the playoffs, knocked off the Astros and took the Guardians to do-or-die Game 5 before their season ended. The Tigers paved the path to the World Series for the Yankees. (Had the Yankees played the Tigers in the ALCS, I think it would have been problematic given their pitching staff.) This is going to be a tough series.

1. Last July, in the middle of their annual midseason free fall, the Yankees were swept at home in a three-game series by the Reds. It was the first time the Yankees were swept at home by a National League team in a series of at least three games in the history of interleague play. (Another nice highlight for Aaron Boone’s managerial résumé.) On Thursday, the Yankees were faced with the possibility of being swept at home by an NL team for the second time in as many seasons after having never been from 1997 through 2023.

“We don’t get swept at home,” Giancarlo Stanton reportedly told the Yankees clubhouse before Thursday’s series (and season) finale against the Diamondbacks (apparently forgetting about last season’s Reds series). And they didn’t. But their manager, his bullpen management and the back end of their bullpen tried their hardest to.

2. The Yankees took a 3-0 lead in the first inning before making an out, thanks to an Aaron Judge three-run home run. The lead was extended to 4-0 in the opening inning after a Jasson Dominguez single and Trent Grisham double.

Carlos Carrasco gave a run back in the second, but the Yankees got that run back and more when Grisham hit a two-run home run to give them a 6-1 lead through three. Carrasco allowed two in the top half of the fourth, but again the Yankees responded in the bottom half of the inning with a Judge RBI single and a Jazz Chisholm two-run home run to make it 9-3. A six-run lead through four with a well-rested bullpen? Not even Boone could screw this up, but he would try.

3. Carrasco was pulled with one out in the sixth and Adam Ottavino got the last two outs of the inning to preserve the 9-3 lead. In the seventh, the game began to unravel.

Ryan Yarbrough relieved Ottavino for the seventh. He began his night by walking the Diamondbacks’ 8 and 9 hitters. Corbin Carroll followed with a base hit to load the bases with no outs. Yarbrough had thrown 15 pitches and only six for strikes. He had loaded the bases with no outs for the heart of the Diamondbacks’ order. He had faced the minimum three batters and could be removed from the game. Boone decided to stick with the pitcher the Yankees signed three days before Opening Day after he opted out of his minor-league deal with the Blue Jays believing Yarbrough was about to find “it” and turn his night around. Yarbrough allowed a grand slam to the next batter, Geraldo Perdomo.

4. The Yankees’ 9-3 lead was now 9-7 with still no one out in the seventh. Boone decided not retiring any of the four batters Yarbrough faced while allowing four runs wasn’t as bad as it was, so he stayed with him until he recorded a couple of outs. Then Boone called on Mark Leiter Jr. to get the last out of the inning.

The Yankees’ six-run lead had been cut to two, but with a more-than-rested Luke Weaver available, certainly Boone would go to his best (available) reliever (with Devin Williams still on paternity leave) for two innings. Six outs from Weaver would be more than doable since Boone passed on using him in a similar situation on Tuesday and because Weaver hadn’t been used in a week since Opening Day last Thursday.

5. When the eighth began, Leiter Jr. was still on the mound and Weaver was still in the bullpen. Was Weaver hurt and the Yankees weren’t announcing it? Was Boone trying to save him for only the ninth like he regrettably had two nights prior? What the fuck was going on?

After Leiter Jr. allowed a two-out base hit to bring the tying run to the plate, Boone called for Weaver. So Boone was willing to go to Weaver for four outs, but not before Leiter Jr. brought the tying run to the plate. If Boone was willing to go to Weaver for four outs (which he did), why didn’t he come into the game after Leiter Jr. got the second out of the inning? Stealing outs, that’s why. In Year 8 of Boone as manager, he’s still managing like he’s making his managerial debut in Toronto eight years ago.

6. Unsurprisingly, Weaver retired pinch-hitter Gabriel Moreno to end the eighth and then pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to prevent the Yankees from being swept by the Diamondbacks and from falling to .500. (If only Boone had used Weaver two nights early in a situation that called for Weaver rather than a set inning, the Yankees may be 5-1 right now instead of 4-2.)

7. “We never exhale,” Judge said. “We’ve seen that too many times in this game, where you score early and a team answers right back. That’s been our thing at the beginning of this year: Don’t let off the gas.” Keep scoring until you get that final out.”

Judge knows the team can’t exhale with Boone’s bullpen management. No lead is safe with Boone pushing the buttons. This new mantra from the Yankees must be from what unfolded after they took a 5-0 lead in Game 5 of the World Series.

For any Yankees fan who want to blame Yarbrough for the grand slam rather than Boone for sticking with him after he loaded the bases, you’re a fool. This wasn’t Boone sticking with an elite relief option. This was Boone sticking with a reliever who couldn’t get a major-league offer in the offseason and then became a Yankee at the end of spring training because of the litany of injuries to the pitching staff.

8. To Boone’s credit, he did put together a lineup that generated nine runs, even if four of those runs were driven in by Judge and penciling Judge into the lineup is as automatic as Boone stealing outs late in a close game. But Boone did slot Ben Rice in the leadoff spot and he doubled, walked twice and scored two runs, and he played Grisham and he went 3-for-4 with a double, home run and three RBIs.

9. A year ago to the day (April 3), Merrill Kelly pitched well against the Yankees in Arizona (7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), but in this one he was atrocious: 3.2 IP, 9 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 3 HR. Carrasco was “fine” for Carrasco (5.1 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K) and pitched about as well as any Yankees fan could ask for at this stage of his career. If he can hold the damage to three runs in five-plus innings per start for as long as he’s here, the team will be OK in games he starts. The next time he will get the ball is on Tuesday in Detroit.

Before then, the Yankees will play three against the Pirates in Pittsburgh as part of their first road trip of the season. Thankfully, they’ll miss Paul Skenes in the series (though they will see Tarik Skubal next week).

10. The Pirates are horrible. They are off to a 2-5 start with a negative-12 run differential and it’s highly likely they never see .500 again this season. Anthony Volpe has as many home runs (4) as the entire Pirates roster and the Yankees scored more runs in eight innings last Saturday (20) than the Pirates have scored in seven games (18). This is the type of team contenders beat up on, which the Yankees believe they are. Actually, this is the type of team every team beats up on, as the also-lowly Marlins took three of four from them to begin the season. Anything less than a series win (especially with Skenes not pitching), would be a disappointment.

1. Yesterday, following Tuesday’s first loss of the season, I wrote:

The Yankees can never just lose. By “just lose” I mean get blown out, shut down, shut out, never have a chance in the game. They either win, blow a game late, bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth, have an abundance of blown opportunities to tie or take the lead, or suffer a painful, excruciating loss. Yes, it keeps every game entertaining and means the Yankees are “in” every game, but at the same time, their losses and the way they lose always seem to be extremely detrimental to the health and wellbeing of their fans.

I finished yesterday’s Thoughts with this:

If the Yankees don’t get back in the win column on Wednesday or Thursday, I’m sure it will come as the result of an agonizing loss. That’s the only way they lose.

The Yankees lost a second straight game on Wednesday, and sure enough, it was the type of loss where they drag you back in in the ninth by bringing the tying run to the plate only to lose anyway.

2. For the first eight-and-a-half innings on Wednesday, the Yankees’ 4-3 loss to the Diamondbacks was shaping up to be a “Get ’em tomorrow” kind of game. Carlos Rodon was brutal in the first two innings, staking the Diamondbacks to a 4-0 lead, and Zac Gallen was masterful for 6 2/3 innings, completely stifling the Yankees’ bats, both standard and torpedo.

It was exactly a year to the day (April 2) that Gallen shut down the 2024 Yankees in Arizona: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 6 K. But he was even better against the 2025 Yankees on Wednesday: 6.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 13 K. Combine those two lines and you get 12.2 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 19 K. That is a Cliff Lee-against-the-Yankees line.

“It will be a game we will look back on,” Aaron Boone said. “He was just dialed in. He had both breaking balls going. The changeup was working. He was moving the fastball around.”

So based on that summarization, Gallen was … pitching? Using two two breaking balls?! Throwing an effective changeup?! Moving around the fastball?! He was … doing his job? Something Rodon didn’t do in the game until it was too late.

3. Gallen kept the Yankees’ bats off balance the entire night, consistently getting swings and misses on his curveball and changeup. It was frustrating to watch his dominance as he became the first pitcher in history to strike out 13 Yankees without allowing a walk for a win.

The strikeouts didn’t end with Gallen. In 2 1/3 innings of relief, the Diamondbacks’ bullpen added three more for a game total of 16. Add those 16 to the 13 from the previous night and the Yankees struck out 29 times over the last two nights. Twenty-nine! TWENTY-NINE! Over two games, they struck out the equivalent of a full game of outs plus two more outs. That’s the thing about the torpedo bats: they only work when you make contact.

4. Austin Wells was the only Yankee to not strike out, while Aaron Judge, Jasson Dominguez and Ben Rice all picked up hat tricks at the plate. I wasn’t OK with the Yankees’ offensive effort, especially after they mustered only three non-error-aided runs the night before, but I was OK with them losing the way it seemed like they were going to lose rather than giving fans hope they may stage a late comeback. And then they went and tried to stage a late comeback.

5. After making a three-run lead stand up on Tuesday, A.J. Puk took the mound with a four-run lead on Wednesday. Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge greeted him with singles, but Jazz Chisholm flew out for the first out. Then Anthony Volpe torpedo’d the first pitch he saw just over the wall of the short porch for a three-run home run. Suddenly, the Yankees’ four-run deficit was one.

In that situation I wish Volpe had singled, or walked, or doubled. If Volpe had loaded the bases with one out, or had driven in a run with still two on, I would have liked the Yankees’ chances more. I under statistically that’s wrong, but the math doesn’t account for the human element of Puk having to deal with runners on base and increased pressure. Once Volpe cleared the bases, it allowed a Puk to reset, and he got Wells to pop up and struck out Dominguez to end the game.

6. Never a normal loss. That’s what I wrote after Tuesday’s loss, and it proved true again on Wednesday. The Yankees couldn’t just go down quietly in the ninth. They had to make you momentarily believe they could do to the Diamondbacks what the Diamondbacks had done to them the previous night. They had to make you start playing the “what if” game from the earlier innings. Like what if the Yankees hadn’t stranded runners on second and third with one out in the second? What if Rodon hadn’t thrown 92-mph meatballs in the first two innings? Unfortunately, they did strand those runners, and unfortunately, Rodon was awful in the first two innings.

7. “[Early in the game] maybe it was just a little weather-related, a little cooler and stuff,” Aaron Boone said of Rodon’s performance. “[Rodon] was searching to find the strike zone a little bit there in those first couple of innings, but I thought stuff-wise, once he settled in, he was pretty good.”

YES also talked about Rodon being affected by the weather in the first two innings. Oddly, Gallen didn’t have any issue with the weather. Rodon has spent his career pitching for the White Sox, Giants and Yankees, all teams that are exposed to the elements and all teams that have games at the beginning and end of seasons in poor weather. Gallen has only ever pitched for the Marlins and Diamondbacks, in controlled climates, where weather isn’t a factor.

It’s nice that Boone thought Rodon had “pretty good” stuff “once he settled in.” Once he settled in the Yankees were down four runs against once of the game’s best pitchers. It was the type of performance we have seen from Rodon so many times where he puts the team in an early hole and then figures it out once it’s too late. I guess being able to regrow facial hair wasn’t the key to unlocking the White Sox and Giants version of Rodon.

8. It was a bad night at the plate for everyone other than Wells (single, double, only Yankee to not strike out) and Volpe (three-run home run). I understand Wells hasn’t led off since Opening Day because Boone says the Yankees have faced reverse-split starters since then, but it didn’t seem to matter which hand any of the Yankees used to bat against Gallen on Wednesday. As for Volpe, he has four hits this season and all are home runs. He batted seventh on Opening Day, and then after homering in that game, he has batted fifth since. Being the Golden Boy of the organization is nice.

I could see Wells sitting for the first time of the season on Thursday. I could also see Paul Goldschmidt sitting since Michael Kay said as much on the broadcast, opining, “In all likelihood — he’s played all five games — probably gets tomorrow off,” in regard to Goldschmidt. I’m sure Kay knows something. No Wells and no Goldschmidt would mean the Yankees would need to use a third leadoff hitter for their sixth game of the year.

9. It will be Merrill Kelly against Carlos Carrasco on Wednesday in the series finale. Kelly was good in his first start of the season and was good against the Yankees on April 3 of last year: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR. (It’s crazy both Gallen and Kelly will face the Yankees on the same dates in consecutive seasons.)

I don’t have a lot of confidence in Carrasco. He was good enough to win a roster spot on the team in spring training, helped by the excessive injuries to the Yankees’ staff, but he was horrible in two innings of relief against the Brewers. Do you think Carrasco is the guy who pitched well in fake games in March, or the guy who a 5.36 ERA over his last 401 1/3 innings dating back to 2021? I don’t expect much from Carrasco. I don’t expect anything. I expect Carrasco to make Rodon’s performance from Wednesday feel like Gallen’s based on how I think Carrasco is going to fare on Thursday.

10. Carrasco is pitching for his career at this point. He’s already in line to be a DFA candidate once (if) the Yankees’ pitching gets healthy. Maybe that’s enough for him to turn back the clock five-plus years. It wasn’t when he pitched on Saturday. It needs to be on Thursday, or the offense is going to have to show up after taking the last two nights off. Otherwise, all of the runs, all of the home runs, all of the winning from the weekend will be undone and the Yankees will be sitting at .500.

1. The Yankees can never just lose. By “just lose” I mean get blown out, shut down, shut out, never have a chance in the game. They either win, blow a game late, bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth, have an abundance of blown opportunities to tie or take the lead, or suffer a painful, excruciating loss. Yes, it keeps every game entertaining and means the Yankees are “in” every game, but at the same time, their losses and the way they lose always seem to be extremely detrimental to the health and wellbeing of their fans. Sure enough, they couldn’t “just lose” for their first loss of 2025.

2. It would have been easy to stomach Will Warren getting knocked around by a very good Diamondbacks lineup in his first start as officially part of the Yankees’ rotation. It would have been acceptable if the bats went quiet against Corbin Burnes and never had a chance in the game. But no, Warren was solid (5 IP, 2 ER), Burnes gave up a pair of solo home runs to Jasson Dominguez and Anthony Volpe to allow the Yankees to tie the game, and Josh Naylor, of all players, gifted the Yankees a two-run error to give them a 4-2 lead in the fourth inning.

3. Aaron Boone had it easy in the first three games of the season. On Opening Day, he was able to go from starter to middle relief to Luke Weaver to Devin Williams for a win. Things got rocky with Williams, but if he had blown the three-run lead in the ninth, no one would have faulted Boone as the game unfolded easily for him, presenting the blueprint for a win my four-year-old son could have implemented. Then in the second game of the season, the Yankees blasted the Brewers for 20 runs, and in the third game, another 12. Boone didn’t have to manage or make any difficult decisions for the first three games of the year. Then came Tuesday.

4. Once it was announced Devin Williams would be out of the equation for the birth of his child, you knew the back end of the game would have the opportunity to be complicated for Boone, and it was. After Fernando Cruz gave the Yankees two perfect and dominant relief innings with four strikeouts to keep their 4-2 lead from the fourth, Boone went to Tim Hill with the 8-9-1 hitters due up in the eighth. Torey Lovullo had Randal Grichuk (who kills both lefties and the Yankees) on his bench, and once Hill took the mound, Grichuk went in as a pinch hitter, and immediately rocked a leadoff double to left. Geraldo Perdomo followed with a single down the first-base line, and just like that, the Yankees’ lead was down to 4-3 and the Diamondbacks had the tying run on base with no outs.

Hill retired Corbin Carroll for the first out of the game, and then Boone had a decision to make. He could gamble and try to preserve the lead by getting the next out or two with Hill or another middle relief option to save Luke Weaver for the ninth inning, or he could go to Weaver right then with the tying run on second and heart of the Diamondbacks’ order due up. If you didn’t see the game, you already know which choice Boone made.

5. Boone called on Mark Leiter Jr., who was good in the Brewers series, but has been a disaster since becoming a Yankee. In order to preserve the lead, Leiter would have to get the final two outs of the eighth against the Diamondbacks’ 2-3-4 hitters.

Leiter didn’t get the last two outs of the eighth. He got one, and then gave up a go-ahead grand slam to Eugenio Suarez on a 2-2 splitter that split in the strike zone. After taking a fastball down the middle in the second pitch of the at-bat and swinging through a fastball on the fourth pitch of the at-bat, it was obvious Suarez wasn’t sitting on a fastball from Leiter. Paul O’Neill said as much based on Suarez’s takes on YES. But that didn’t stop Leiter (and Austin Wells) from going away from the fastball on the fifth pitch, and the Yankees were on their way to their first loss of the season.

“Just not his sharpest outing,” Boone said of Leiter. “It just wasn’t a good split, obviously, that he threw there.”

6. You have to love Boone essentially saying the loss was on Leiter. Did Leiter insert himself into a high-leverage situation against the heart of an order on Tuesday? If Williams had been with the team, it would have been Weaver in the eighth and Williams in the ninth, and Boone’s job would have been as easy as it had been on Opening Day. But because Weaver became the interim closer for the night he had to pitch the ninth for Boone. I thought baseball had evolved from set innings for relievers when Terry Francona went to Andrew Miller in the middle innings of the 2016 postseason. I thought the idea of having your best reliever pitch against the heart of the order with the game on the line regardless of the inning was more important than having them pitch in a set inning regardless of which part of the order was due up. Just look in the other dugout where Lovullo did just that.

7. “The Diamondbacks’ closer is Kevin Ginkel and he is out with shoulder inflammation, so they are mixing and maxing with Martinez who we saw in the eighth and A.J. Puk,” Michael Kay said on YES. “The better hitters were coming up in the eighth inning and they had Martinez pitch the eighth and he stuck them out.”

Lovullo went to his best reliever in the eighth with Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm due up. All Martinez did was strike out the side and put any hope of a comeback on life support. Puk pitched the ninth and even though Puk typically can’t be trusted, he could be with a three-run lead against the bottom of the order. Puk’s chance at success was vastly improved when the left-handed reliever was given an all-left-handed-batter lane to face in the ninth. How did Puk get that lane? From Boone, of course, who inexplicably pulled Dominguez after his at-bat in the sixth to put Trent Grisham in the game for defensive purposes.

“Taking Dominguez out and bringing in Grisham,” Kay said, “you set up a lane for Lovullo to bring in a lefty and counteract three straight lefties.”

8. Do the Yankees really need Grisham playing one-third of every game for defensive purposes? Do they really think that’s best for the development of Dominguez as an outfielder? All Dominguez did earlier in the game was improve his OPS to .974 on the year with his first home run of the season. (After getting ahead of Puk 1-0, Grisham took three straight strikes to strike out.)

9. Yes, it was just one loss, their first loss. Yes it’s going to happen many more times this season (but hopefully not more than 73 times for my over 88.5 wins wager). Did the Yankees deserve to win? No, it’s hard to win when you score three non-error-aided runs, strike out 14 times and have a manager who continues to be clueless in his eighth season in the position. But the Yankees could have won. They were gifted two runs with a Cy Young-caliber pitcher on the mound and were four outs away from a win.

10. Now it’s up to the two Carloses to prevent undoing everything from the wild opening weekend against the Brewers. If the Yankees don’t get back in the win column on Wednesday or Thursday, I’m sure it will come as the result of an agonizing loss. That’s the only way they lose.

1. I feared Nestor Cortes shutting down the Yankees on Saturday at the Stadium the way so many ex-Yankees have over the years. My fear was all for nothing as Cortes did his best to repay Yankees fans for the Freddie Freeman walk-off grand slam he allowed in Game 1 of the World Series. Cortes will never be able to completely make up that moment to Yankees fans (though the blame is really more on Aaron Boone for using Cortes in that spot after he hadn’t pitched in weeks), but his performance in the second game of the season was a good start.

2. The first three pitches Cortes threw were all hit out of the park. First, it was Paul Goldschmidt, then it was Cody Bellinger, and finally, Aaron Judge. My four-year-old son who was in attendance with me and taking in his second game in the Bronx was stunned. As “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” played again and again and again and the crowd enjoying the 80-degree March weather went wild, my son trying to process what was happening looked at me with an expression of ‘Does this happen at every game?’

Sadly, it doesn’t. But after the back-to-back-to-back home runs had Cortes sitting on an infinite ERA three batters into his season, Austin Wells hit one out three batters after Judge. The next inning, Anthony Volpe did the same. Cortes was removed from the game after facing one batter in the third, and left having allowed eight earned runs, 11 baserunners and five home runs, while recording just six outs.

3. Amazingly, the power barrage didn’t end there. After Cortes was removed for walking Jasson Dominguez, Connor Thomas entered for his major-league debut and allowed a Trent Grisham single then hit Paul Goldschmidt with a pitch. Bellinger singled in Dominguez and Judge followed with a grand slam. Three pitches later with the crowd still celebrating Judge’s slam, Jazz Chisholm drilled a solo homer. The Yankees led 13-3 and had hit seven home runs. It was the third inning.

The next inning, Bellinger drove in another run and Judge hit another home run, his third in as many at-bats. The Yankees led 16-4 and had hit eight home runs. It was the fourth inning.

In the seventh, Oswald Peraza hit the Yankees’ ninth home run of the day, setting a franchise record for a single game.

4. After surviving the ninth inning on Opening Day, the Yankees blasted the Brewers 20-9 on Saturday. In a game that was essentially over in the second inning and had the floodgates blown open in the third inning, it wasn’t a game that lacked criticism for the Yankees. The same type of sloppy defense that we saw throughout 2024 (and have seen throughout the Boone era) was on full display in this one. The Yankees made five errors in the game, had trouble fielding ground balls and throwing to first base. Max Fried wasn’t sharp (4.2 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 K), but he got zero help behind him.

5. During the game, the YES booth went into the Yankees’ use of the “torpedo” bat designed by an MIT physicist and former Yankees employee. They explained how the team had developed new bats based on where their players were most likely to make contact with the ball. For players like Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm who were shown using the bat, that happened to be on the label.

The Yankees’ analytics team has finally used their intelligence for good. After years of creating fictional stats to try to sell on the fans on the notion Gleyber Torres is among the best defensive second basemen in the game, that Joey Gallo is worth trading for and that taking on the $53 million owed to Josh Donaldson would be worth it, the brains behind the scenes did something great with the invention of the torpedo. With it, Volpe (.952 OPS) is a major-league hitter and Chisholm (1.667 OPS) is hitting like the left-handed Judge. Bellinger (1.057 OPS) is using some form of it, as is Goldschmidt (1.250 OPS). I love the torpedo bat.

6. Maybe the Yankees were going to destroy Brewers pitching to open the series no matter what. (It’s not like the trio of Freddy Peralta, Cortes and Aaron Civale is anything special.) And maybe with the weather being what it was on Saturday, feeling like mid-June in late March, the ball was going to fly out of the park with 90-mph middle-middle meatballs being thrown. But I would like to think the torpedo bat is what led to this because I want to be proud of the Yankees’ analytics department.

7. After going 4-for-6 with a double, three home runs and eight RBIs on Saturday, Judge, who isn’t using the torpedo bat, homered in his first at-bat on Sunday, which made the wind in the Bronx less annoying as the weather had turned back into what late-March weather is expected to be.

The two-run shot gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead after Marcus Stroman unsurprisingly allowed a first-inning run. The Yankees added to their lead in the second when Ben Rice hit a solo home run, and added more in the third when Chisholm hit a two-run home run. After homering on Saturday and in the third inning on Sunday, Chisholm, the face of the torpedo bat, hit his third home run of the weekend in the seventh inning, and the Yankees went on to win 12-3. Again, I love the torpedo bat.

8. I’m sure by the end of this week (and maybe by Monday’s games) many players throughout the league will be trying out a version of the torpedo bat. When you hit 15 home runs and score 36 runs in 24 innings at a time of year when pitching is supposed to dominate, people tend to notice.

9. Going into this season-opening series I figured Boone would be able to lean on Luke Weaver and Devin Williams more than he normally would with a day off on Wednesday and Friday and Monday. Williams took himself out of the equation for the rest of the weekend with his Opening Day performance and Judge and the torpedo made it so Weaver wasn’t needed for the rest of the weekend as well.

Aside from Williams’ self-created mess on Thursday, the bullpen (including only real relievers and not Carrasco who threw two innings on Saturday) shut out the Brewers. Weaver, Tim Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Yoendrys Gomez, Fernando Cruz, Brent Hendrick and Ryan Yarbrough combined for this line: 9.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 14 K. For a bullpen that lost Clay Holmes and Tommy Kahnle and is waiting on Jonathan Loaisiga and Jake Cousins, that will work.

10. I don’t think the Yankees can count on double-digit runs this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night against the Diamondbacks. In the Yankees’ favor is the Diamondbacks having to go from spring training to their indoor home in Arizona to now the freezing Bronx where temperatures are supposed to be postseason-like aside from Thursday. In the Diamondbacks’ favor is the trio of Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, who are all scheduled to start. The Yankees plan to counter with Will Warren, Carlos Rodon and Carlos Carrasco. At best, the pitching matchup in the second game of the series is even, otherwise the Diamondbacks have a massive edge on the mound with their three best. But their best has yet to face the torpedo bats.

1. The last nearly five months were long. Sure, the Yankees’ offseason was shorter than every team other than the Dodgers, but it didn’t feel that way.

First, it was the depression of reaching and losing the World Series, and losing it in such embarrassing and humiliating fashion. Then there was losing it to the Dodgers, my wife’s team, her family’s team. The team I have spent the 13 years I have known her chirping her for having never won a “real” World Series in her life and having not won a “real” one since 1988. (Of course that drought ended at the Yankees’ expense.)

The weeks following the World Series were filled with hearing her watching the Freddie Freeman Game 1 grand slam on a seemingly endless loop on the other side of the bed and listening to countless interviews of Dodgers players mocking the Yankees for their fifth-inning meltdown in Game 5.

I have spent some part of every day since thinking about what could have been in the World Series. What could have been if Aaron Boone hadn’t pulled Gerrit Cole early in Game 1 and gone to Nestor Cortes instead of Tim Hill. What could have been if Aaron Judge could catch a fly ball, if Anthony Volpe could make a basic throw to third base and if Cole could have covered first. Twenty years after the Yankees performed the only 3-0 series collapse in baseball history, I still believe they would have pulled it off if not for that fifth inning. My belief was only made stronger when Dave Roberts agreed over the winter, saying his team’s pitching would have been in a bad place if a Game 6 had been forced.

Then came the departure of Juan Soto. Then there was the Yankees’ disregard for signing a healthy, proven starting third baseman. While the offseason was technically the shortest the Yankees have experienced in 15 years, it felt a lot longer. I needed the 2025 season to start. I needed the Yankees to have a new last game that wasn’t the Game 5 of the World Series. I needed Opening Day.

2. I was in complete agreement with the Yankees when they announced Austin Wells would be their leadoff hitter this season (at least against righties). Unlike Yankees’ lineup decisions in the past like making Aaron Hicks the No. 3 hitter in 2021 (and then laughing at the media for questioning it when he started that season 1-for-15 with seven strikeouts, only for him to be removed from the spot two weeks into the season) or making Volpe the leadoff hitter despite being one of the worst everyday hitters in the league or rolling with Alex Verdugo as the cleanup hitter for an extended period despite being the actual worst everyday hitter in the league, putting Wells at leadoff made sense.

“It’s kind of exciting just getting to hit in front of Aaron Judge and trying to get on base for him,” Wells said of hitting leadoff. “I think that’s helped me a little bit mindset-wise, just getting on base any way I can.”

Wells at leadoff makes sense, simply because of his on-base percentage. The Yankees are starved for bats that get on base consistently, and outside of Judge, Wells is the next best on the team at it. Add in his power and the threat of giving the Yankees an early lead and Wells at leadoff works.

It certainly worked on Opening Day when he gave the Yankees that early lead, sending the third pitch of the year from Freddy Peralta into the short porch.

“To go out there and give us an early lead with that swing, we’ve seen it all spring,” Judge said. “He set the tone for the whole day for us.”

It wasn’t just a day of offense for Wells. Behind the plate he called a game that produced 13 strikeouts.

“I thought Wells was great with the pitch calling,” Carlos Rodon said. “He calls the pitches and I just roll. There’s not much decision-making on my part.”

3. If Rodon being able to have facial hair is all he needed to unlock the pitcher he was before he became a Yankee then they should have changed the policy two years ago. Rodon was getting swings and misses from all over the Brewers’ lineup, finishing with seven strikeouts and only one earned run on six baserunners across 5 1/3 innings.

“Really sharp command-wise,” Boone said of Rodon. “Good presence with everything. I thought he was really in command of his motions.”

Not only his motions, but Rodon kept his emotions in check and prevented the patented unraveling that seems to come in all of his starts when things don’t completely go his way from start to finish. Instead of letting a couple of baserunners turn into a crooked number, he kept getting outs.

4. If you thought Boone’s latest contract extension would change him as a manager, there he was sending Rodon back out for the sixth inning to face the 2-3-4 hitters for a third time. With a day off on Friday and one coming on Monday, the Yankees would be able to use their bullpen more than they would at most parts of the season. When Rodon went back out for the sixth, the Yankees held a one-run lead. I thought after he walked Christian Yelich he would be pulled, but he wasn’t. I thought after he retired William Contreras he would pulled, but he wasn’t. Boone then let him face the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, who has the most career plate appearances of any Brewer against Rodon and has had concerning success against him in those plate appearances. Rodon walked Hoskins and then Boone pulled him.

5. The middle relief of the Yankees was outstanding. Tim Hill got the last two outs of the sixth and keep Rodon’s ERA in tact. Mark Leiter Jr. pitched a perfect seventh, striking out two. Luke Weaver pitched around a walk in the eighth and struck out two. And then there was Devin Williams.

I called Williams the best reliever in baseball when the Yankees traded for him this winter. He came to the Yankees with 375 strikeouts and a 1.83 ERA and 1.023 WHIP in 235 2/3 career innings. In his Yankees debut, it felt like I was watching Clay Holmes still. (It was refreshing to see Holmes struggle in his Mets debut as their Opening Day starter in Houston.)

A three-run lead in the cold with the Brewers’ 6-7-8 hitters due up is as optimal as it gets for making your debut with a new team on a new mound in a new uniform in a new stadium. It couldn’t have been a better situation for Williams to ask for to get his feet wet as a Yankee, and he nearly ruined it.

A single, double and walk loaded the bases with no outs for the Brewers. The game had gone from nice, smooth Opening Day win to the tying run being on base and the winning run being at the plate. It’s not an exaggeration to think if the Brewers took the lead against Williams and went on to win that it would end up being the worst loss of the season.

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Williams got a sacrifice fly for the first out and then went on to strike out Jackson Chourio and Yelich to end the game, almost as if he was fucking with everyone to that point. After throwing 36 pitches in winter-like weather in the first game of the season, it wouldn’t surprise me if Williams is now down for the rest of this series.

“Love that he didn’t break,” Boone said (as we all know Holmes would have broke last year). “I was getting very uncomfortable to where he was from a pitch count standpoint.”

6. The Volpe we watched in the first two series of 2024 (against Houston and Arizona), and the Volpe we watched in the postseason in October is unlike the Volpe we have seen in roughly 94 percent of his 333 career games. The six-percent Volpe is the Volpe that played on Thursday. He may have only gone 1-for-4, but the one was a home run, and he saw 20 pitches in his four at-bats.

Volpe had an 83 OPS+ in his first two seasons. At 17 percent worse than league average, he is much closer to being a bust at this point than the franchise shortstop the Yankees have made him out to be over the last two years. For Volpe to take that next step, he’s going to need to have a lot more games like he had in Houston and Arizona to open last season and in the postseason and on Thursday.

7. Paul Goldschmidt, wearing No. 48, may as well be the right-handed Anthony Rizzo: a once-great player who became a Yankee in the middle of an obvious decline in abilities. Goldschmidt did his best to honor Rizzo’s 48 in the field by not taking the ball to first himself with Rodon on the mound and at the plate by going for 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in four non-competitive at-bats. Sure, it’s one game, but when you have been in decline for two full seasons as a player and when you have been scarred as a fan by recent organizational belief in Hicks, Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu, it’s hard not to think about Goldschmidt not working out.

8. Goldschmidt wasn’t the only hitless Yankee in the opener. Jazz Chisholm was swinging for the fences like he did in October and Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-3 before being removed for defense late in the game. I understand wanting to get Grisham into games as often as possible to keep him fresh (he picked up a single in his only at at-bat), but is Dominguez going to be removed early in every game the Yankees lead? Based on Cody Bellinger’s comments after the game saying he knew he would be shifting from center to left late, it seems like that is Boone’s plan.

9. Judge and Bellinger both had hits in the game and the duo extended the Yankees’ lead from one to three in the seventh. Ben Rice looked good at the plate (double and walk), Oswaldo Cabrera hit a few balls on the screws and picked up a single. Overall, it was a pleasant first game of the season aside from the first three batters Williams faced in the ninth.

10. It’s annoying there’s no game on Friday for the scheduled day off in the event of an Opening Day rainout. But there’s a game on Saturday and another on Sunday. And another on Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. Yankees baseball is back, and after the way last season ended, the first game of this season and the way it went was needed.

1. Spring training is two weeks away. When the Yankees report to Tampa in a couple of weeks, there will be no Juan Soto. There will be no Gleyber Torres, Anthony Rizzo or Jose Trevino. There will be no Nestor Cortes or Clay Holmes. (If we’re lucky, there will be no Marcus Stroman.) The Yankees will look much different in mid-February than they did at the end of October. That’s a good thing.

The Yankees as currently constructed will be a better team when they show up to Steinbrenner Field than they were when they lost the final game of the 2024 MLB season at Yankee Stadium. Their lineup is longer, their rotation is better and their bullpen is deeper. They still have the same manager who decided to pull Luke Weaver in Game 1 of the World Series only to eventually bring in Cortes to face Freddie Freeman, but unfortunately, he will be here forever.

And with that let’s get to some questions from readers …

2. What’s the likelihood that the roster construction is essentially complete because Hal won’t approve any additional spending? – Mark

It’s not a likelihood, it’s a certainty. Whenever Hal Steinbrenner approves a massive signing, he skimps on some other area of the roster to make up for it. When the Yankees traded for Soto, they went into the season without a third baseman. When they signed Carlos Rodon, they decided not to have a left fielder. The Yankees signed Max Fried, and that means they are going to start the season without a trustworthy option at either second base or third base depending on which position Jazz Chisholm plays.

3. What internal options should be given the longest look at the infield spot Jazz doesn’t play? – Chris

It seemed like Caleb Durbin was in line to be that internal candidate, but he was traded for Devin Williams, so that leaves DJ LeMahieu, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza.

LeMahieu is going to get the first look and the longest look. We know this because owed money is the first place the Yankees go in building their roster. LeMahieu is owed $30 million over 2025 and 2026, so even if Cabrera or Peraza make more sense, it’s going to take a while, and I mean months for LeMahieu to not play the majority of the games. Just look at how much the Yankees used LeMahieu last season when he couldn’t hit the ball in the air for weeks at a time and was 49 percent worse than league average as a hitter.

4. Cabrera deserved to play more than he did in 2024, but that’s the way it has gone for him in his three years in the majors. The Yankees did everything they could to not play Peraza in 2022 and 2023 when they had every opportunity to give him everyday playing time, so I find it hard to believe he will be given the chance to be an everyday player in 2025.

5. How short is DJ LeMahieu’s leash if he is the Opening Day third baseman? – Paul

The Yankees didn’t release LeMahieu last season because of the two years and $30 million owed to him. The same way the Yankees told everyone Aaron Hicks and Josh Donaldson would be fine in 2023 before releasing them both is likely what happens to LeMahieu in 2025. Hicks and Donaldson were easy to root against and extremely hard to root for. LeMahieu is the complete opposite. I desperately want LeMahieu to turn back the clock and be his old self because when he was at his best he was awesome.

6. Sadly, over the last four seasons he has missed 26 percent of the Yankees’ regular-season games and all of their postseason games, posting a .698 OPS in 2,010 plate appearances. LeMahieu is 36 now and will be 37 in July, and I don’t see how he suddenly becomes a player he hasn’t been in five years. I want him to, but I don’t know that it’s possible. The leash is going to be at least three months I would think.

Even without a complete infield for the second straight year (after deciding to not have a complete outfield for multiple consecutive seasons), the Yankees are the best team in the American League. But the goal isn’t to win the American League, it’s to win the World Series.

7. Who do you see as possibilities for left-handed bullpen signings besides Tim Hill? – Gregg

Tanner Scott? Oh wait, he signed with the Dodgers, just like seemingly everyone else.

I’m jealous of the Dodgers, and therefore, I’m jealous of my wife’s fandom as a Dodgers fan. For the entire holiday season, every time I entered the living room, there was a Dodgers World Champions ornament glistening on our Christmas Tree, serving as a daily reminder of the Yankees’ humiliating performance in the World Series.

8. The Yankees used to be the destination for every big-name international star, Japanese or Cuban, but now the Dodgers have cornered the Japanese market. The Yankees spent two decades living in the past, referencing the late-’90s and early-2000s rather than doing everything they could to keep the winning ways going. They have been to two World Series in 21 years and won one. Their payroll in 2017 was less than it was in 2005. After coming within one win of the World Series in 2017, they cut payroll by $50 million for 2018. TV revenue, ticket prices, merchandise and concession costs have grown exponentially, while the Yankees’ payroll has grown depressingly slowly … when it infrequently has increased. The Yankees went to the World Series last year and despite playing 14 postseason and seven home postseason games, they are going to have a lower payroll in 2025 than they had in 2024. I wonder if tickets to the Stadium and beer at the Stadium will cost less in 2025 than it did in 2024.

9. The Dodgers won 98 games last season despite losing Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Bobby Miller and Gavin Stone to season-ending injuries. Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed half of the season. Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin missed the entire season. They went into October with a bullpen/punt game built into a makeshift rotation and still won it all.

The Dodgers could have done nothing this offseason and still would have gone into 2025 as the odds-on favorite to win the World Series. They could have sat back on their first real championship since 1988 and tried to run it back without adding payroll. Rather than do nothing, they did everything. They gave Blake Snell a five-year deal. They won the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes. They brought back Teoscar Hernandez and replaced Gavin Lux with Hyeseong Kim. They re-signed Blake Treinen, added Scott and signed Michael Conforto for shits and giggles.

10. The Yankees are better to begin 2025 than they were to end 2024, but they’re still playing the parlay game with their roster construction. The same game that caused them to go 15 years between World Series appearances. The same game that led to the light-hitting Trevino being used as a pinch hitter with two outs and the bases loaded in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the World Series. The Yankees have been trying to cut corners for a long time now and why it’s been more than a decade-and-a-half since a new World Series game could be used as a Yankees Classics game on YES. Needing a handful (or more) things to go right to the best version of the roster possible isn’t ideal, but that’s where the Yankees are again without a complete infield and without a lefty in the bullpen. Maybe the Dodgers will sign Tim Hill as well because why not?

1. I have completed the five stages of grief when it comes to Juan Soto no longer being a Yankee. It took me a couple of weeks to move through the first (denial) and second (anger) steps, but I was only briefly in the third (bargaining) and fourth (depression) steps. Acceptance (the fifth step) is where I am now and where I plan on remaining.

I didn’t know how the Yankees’ roster or I would rebound from the loss of Soto, but the dark place the roster and I were in when the news broke to where the roster and I are now has been quite the turnaround. It has been turned around enough that I’m breaking my promise to walk away from the Yankees and baseball and learn an instrument or language rather than suffer through a Soto-less season. At least for now.

2. I have liked what the Yankees have done this offseason since Soto chose the disgusting orange and blue. If the Yankees had been successful in signing Soto, I believe it’s obvious he would have been their entire offseason. I realize I would have willingly been accepting a less-rounded team to guarantee Soto in the lineup for the next decade and a half.

Two years ago, after the Yankees signed Carlos Rodon, no impact moves were made. Last year, after trading for Soto, no impact moves were made. History would have repeated itself with Hal Steinbrenner looking ways to cut costs after giving Soto $765 million of his inheritance. At best, by re-signing Soto and doing nothing else, the Yankees’ ceiling would have been getting humiliated in the World Series again.

Since Soto left for Queens, the Yankees have made themselves into a better team. That’s not to say losing Soto doesn’t suck or that he would have prevented them from being a better team (the Steinbrenners would have prevented the Yankees from being a better team with Soto because they would have been reluctant to add more to their payroll). But the Yankees now have a deeper rotation with the signing of Max Fried. They have a stronger bullpen with the trade for Devin Williams and re-signing of Jonathan Loaisiga, and they are much better defensively with Aaron Judge back in right field, Cody Bellinger now in either center or left, Paul Goldschmidt at first base and Jazz Chisholm back to second base. The offense has taken a hit because of the loss of Soto, but that was always going to be the case if he left. The only bat that would have come close to replacing his would have been to trade for Kyle Tucker, but after seeing what Soto received in free agency, there was no chance the Yankees would have been able to extend Tucker past 2025.

3. The additions of Fried, Williams, Bellinger and Goldschdmit make the loss of Soto hurt less. It doesn’t make the hurt completely disappear. It makes me sick to see highlights or images of Soto playing for the Yankees knowing that he won’t again. That pain will likely never go away. The only way it goes away is if Soto gains 50 pounds and hits the way he did in 2022 when he posted a .242/.401/.452 slash line with 27 home runs and was only 47 percent better than league average. If Soto puts up a sub-.900 OPS in 2025 or 2026 or any of his “prime” seasons, it’s a disaster. As the highest-paid player in the sport, he now has to be as good as he was in 2024 in each season of his prime.

4. I loved the Fried signing. The rotation before him couldn’t be trusted after Gerrit Cole, and given Cole’s arm and fatigue issues last year, it feels like he’s on borrowed time with each pitch he throws. I don’t care about the money or years given to Fried. If you haven’t come to the realization the Yankees can afford any player at any cost, you never will. If you have been tricked into thinking a $300 million payroll is a lot by the league’s owners, I feel sorry for you. Fried is great. He makes the Yankees better. That’s all that matters. As long he stays healthy and covers first base on ground balls hit to the first baseman, he will do just fine with the Yankees.

5. When you can trade an injured starting pitcher a year away from free agency and a prospect who wasn’t in the Top 30 and no one gave two shits about before the Arizona Fall League for the best reliever in baseball, you’re doing something right. Like Fried, Williams is great. He’s the best reliever in baseball. I enjoyed people bringing up the home run to Pete Alonso in the playoffs as a reason why Williams isn’t great. Emmanuel Clase was a disaster in the ALCS against the Yankees and any fan of any team would take him in a second. Should the Yankees have gotten rid of Mariano Rivera after 1997 for giving up the ALDS-winning home run to Sandy Alomar Jr.? Moronic. Like Fried, as long as Williams stays healthy, he will be great for the Yankees. 

6. Why didn’t the Yankees just sign Bellinger last offseason when all he would have cost was money, and when they could have had another strong left-handed bat in a World Series-bound lineup? I guess it’s because they didn’t want to tie up money they planned on needing to make a run at Soto with. Whoops. But now that the money for Soto is still in Hal’s bank account they’re able to finally make Bellinger a Yankee.

The trade for Bellinger was a good move. A good move that was inevitable. Possibly a year too late, but nevertheless, a move the Yankees had to make to try to balance the lineup. And they still need lineup balance. They are still too right-handed heavy. They removed Anthony Rizzo and added Bellinger. But they removed Soto and added Goldschmidt. That’s two lefties out (even if one sucked) and one in. The Yankees need another left-handed infield bat. I don’t think there is one out there worth signing. Anything of quality will have to come from a trade.

7. Last year, Soto was a 7.9 WAR player. Two years ago, Goldschmidt won the NL MVP with a .317/.404/.578 slash line and 7.7 WAR. Just two years ago, 2022 Goldschmidt was essentially 2024 Soto. Unfortunately, there has been two seasons of baseball since then, and after being 77 percent better than league average in 2022, Goldschmidt was just 20 percent better in 2023 and shockingly 2 percent worse in 2024. 

You can look at the signing of the now-37-year-old Goldschmidt in one of two ways: The Yankees just signed a 37-year-old first baseman coming off the worst season of his 14-year career OR by having the worst season of his 14-year career, the Yankees were able to sign Goldschmidt for only one year and $12.5 million!

Typically, when a player at the advanced baseball age of 36 has the worst season of their career, they settle for a minor-league deal or an invite to spring training. Because typically, the downward slope of their offense doesn’t reverse course. Sadly, the ways to reverse course are no longer a part of the game the way they were in the 80s, 90s or 2000s.

There’s the chance the pinstripes rejuvenate Goldschmidt the way they have for so many others over the years. But for every player like Matt Carpenter, there’s three of players like Anthony Rizzo, Josh Donaldson or Matt Holliday. Hopefully, Goldschmidt has one more full season of offense left in the tank. And if not, hopefully, he will at least take ground balls hit to him to the bag himself.

8. After seven mostly disappointing seasons, Gleyber Torres is no longer a Yankee. Back in 2018 and 2019 when Torres was a force in the lineup (thanks to the juiced baseball) there weren’t many, if any, players in the league the Yankees would have traded him for. Now they let him walk for nothing.

Torres said the Yankees didn’t even reach out to him during the offseason. He was a player they kept through every trade deadline and offseason of his Yankee tenure, a player they made endless excuses and changed the makeup of their infield for multiple times to cater to and a player who was batting leadoff for them in the World Series and the Yankees didn’t even call to check in with his agent on his market over the last two months? What a fall from grace for a player I thought seven years ago was going to be an up-the-middle glove and middle-of-the order bat for the Yankees for the next decade and a half.

9. The Yankees have removed the player with the lowest Baseball IQ in the league from their lineup, but they still desperately need an infielder. Aaron Boone recently said given the current roster, Chisholm will move back to second and DJ LeMahieu and/or Oswaldo Cabrera will play third.

C: Austin Wells
1B: Paul Goldschmidt
2B: Jazz Chisholm
3B: DJ LeMahieu/Oswaldo Cabrera
SS: Anthony Volpe
LF: Cody Bellinger/Jasson Dominguez
CF: Cody Bellinger/Jasson Dominguez
RF: Aaron Judge
DH: Giancarlo Stanton

It’s good. It’s not great, but it’s good and good enough. In today’s AL, good enough works. The Yankees won the AL with Soto, lost Soto and are still favored to win the AL. That’s how weak the entire league is. The Mets added Soto, are going to run a payroll north of $300 million again, and may be the third-best team in their division let alone the entire NL. The NL has become what the AL once was.

That’s fine with me! I love seeing every big-name player traded to or signing with an NL team. It makes it easier for the Yankees, at least until they reach the World Series, which is exactly what happened in 2024: They finished with the best record in the AL despite being .500 since mid-June, steamrolled two AL Central teams in the ALDS and ALCS and then got embarrassed in the World Series by a better all-around team.

10. The Yankees were able to outlast the Orioles for the division because the Orioles couldn’t get out of their own way in the second half. They were able to outlast any threat from the Astros for a first-round bye because the Astros got off to such a bad start. They were able to get past the Royals and Guardians in the ALDS and ALCS because of Soto and Stanton. But once they got to the Dodgers, a complete team was too much for two players to overcome. The Dodgers were the better team. Since losing Soto, the Yankees have taken necessary steps to become a better all-around team than they were last year, when they relied on two players in the regular season (Soto and Judge) and two players in the postseason (Soto and Stanton).

It’s been nine weeks since the World Series ended and the Yankees are a better team today than they were for the last out of last season. There’s six weeks until spring training and plenty of time for them to get even better.

1. Juan Soto wasn’t Plan A for the Yankees this offseason. He was the only plan. And now that he will be a Met for the rest of his career, the Yankees are currently freaking out at the Winter Meetings in Dallas without a plan. At least without a plan worthy of being accepted by the fan base. Because there is no backup plan when you lose out on a generational bat. There is no backup plan when the remaining free-agent options are on the wrong side of 30, have low on-base percentages and hit right-handed.

Soto was always going to go to the highest bidder and he stayed true to his plan. Whichever team gave him $1 more than the other teams was going to get him whether that team was the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Phillies, Mariners, Reds or Tigers, it didn’t matter. Everyone always knew that about Soto from the moment he turned down the Nationals’ money and wouldn’t sign an extension with the Padres.

2. Soto went to the highest bidder, but there may have been other factors at play. No one knows what Soto’s relationship was with Aaron Judge. Judge said just a couple of weeks ago he hadn’t talked to Soto during the offseason, citing “giving him space” as the excuse why. Maybe Soto didn’t like playing for Aaron Boone and couldn’t foresee ever winning a championship with him at the helm. Maybe he didn’t trust Brian Cashman after he went a whole season without attempting to upgrade left field or first base. Maybe he didn’t like that Hal Steinbrenner didn’t care to have a relationship with him until he became a free agent. Maybe after sharing a field with the Yankees’ so-called top prospects (most of whom are similar to age as him but still in the lower and middle levels of the minor leagues) he figured the team’s long-term future was bleak. No one knows what Steve Cohen said to Soto when they met in California last month. No one knows what kind of relationship they formed and what promises were made.

3. I don’t understand Yankees fans who are giving Hal a pass here and saying they are proud of the team’s inherited owner for going toe-to-toe with the sport’s wealthiest owner. The reason the Yankees are in the position of needing to bid $760 million on Soto is because of Hal and his invincible front office headed by Cashman. The organization has made a decade-and-a-half of poor choices, and none poorer than not even meeting with Bryce Harper six years ago when he desperately wanted to be a Yankee and eventually signed for half the average annual salary of Soto. The Yankees’ offseason choices from six-plus years ago led them to where they are today. It’s the Yankees’ own fault for putting themselves in a position where the loss of a single player through free agency could disrupt their entire future because of poor planning and poor roster construction. That’s on ownership and the front office. They don’t get a pass for “being competitive.” They lost. Again.

And that’s the issue with these Yankees. They’re OK with losing. The higher-ups likely feel good about this loss to the Mets because they were “competitive” the same way the manager of the team talks about how he likes his team’s “compete” after avoidable losses. The only person happier than Soto today is Hal who nows gets to keep the $760 million he offered to Soto and is somehow being praised for “trying.”

4. Why do you think seven minutes after Soto’s 15-year, $765 million contract with the Mets was reported, the Yankees’ offer of $760 million over 16 years was also reported? The Yankees wanted to leak their offer to show their fans they didn’t lowball Soto and they offered $5 million less and one year more. In actuality, they offered less money overall and less money per year. Add in the Mets’ willingness to give Soto a $75 million signing bonus, escalators after five years that can bring the contract to $800 million and not a single deferred dollar in the deal, and the Mets’ offer blew the Yankees’ away. Hal wanted to save face after being repeatedly called cheap in recent years, and the best way to do that was to get the Yankees’ offer out there as soon as possible, so the fans would turned on Soto instead of him. It worked. It worked beautifully in Hal’s favor. Since last night, the vast majority of Yankees fans are calling Soto greedy and money hungry, as if they wouldn’t change employers within the same city in their own lives for more money.

The Yankees needed Soto more than he needed them. In fact, he didn’t need them at all, and the Yankees fans who have talked themselves into this being a good thing are fools. They are likely the same people who think Hal isn’t cheap because he offered a contract that wasn’t accepted despite owning the team that generates the most revenue in the sport, but is 18th in revenue-to-payroll ratio. The same fans who think paying $765 million is a bad business decision in a salary-cap-less league.

5. The Yankees have to live in the free-agent market because of their player development issues. It’s always been a problematic realization because the team’s owner has created a salary cap for his team in the salary-cap-less league, and now the problem has been elevated because the Mets just proved they will stop at nothing to get any free agent they covet. And odds are, every free agent the Yankees covet is going to be coveted by the Mets. As I said after every Clay Holmes blown save this season, when you have a closer who relies on balls in play to get outs, bad things can happen. Well, when your only way to build your roster is to rely on an auction process, bad things can happen. And taking Soto off this roster is as bad as it gets.

6. Things are bad. Real bad. This is currently the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup by position.

C: Austin Wells
1B: DJ LeMahieu
2B: Oswaldo Cabrera
SS: Anthony Volpe
3B: Jazz Chisholm
LF: Jasson Dominguez
CF: Trent Grisham
RF: Aaron Judge
DH: Giancarlo Stanton

A second-year catcher who was abysmal for the last month-plus of the season; a middle infielder-turned-first baseman who has been shut down by the end of the season in three of the last four years; a utility player with no set position; a shortstop whose development has stalled; a middle infielder-turned center fielder-turned third baseman; a left fielder who wasn’t deemed good enough to play over the worst everyday bat in the majors in the most important games of the season; a center fielder who was allowed to appear in the same amount of playoff games as me; the reigning AL MVP winner who can’t hit in October and a 35-year-old designated hitter who can only hit in October. If you want to know how the Yankees’ consecutive season wining streak since 1993 comes to an end, there you have it.

7. I can’t imagine that will be the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup on March 27 against the Brewers, but maybe it should be, at least in terms of free agency? The Yankees’ best course of action may be to do nothing in free agency. The only two intriguing free-agent options left on the board are Corbin Burnes and Max Fried, but neither of them are left-handed hitters who are going to hit elite pitching in October. Though we know the Yankees aren’t going to sit idly. Not when their highest-paid stars are in their mid-30s, not when they are coming off a World Series appearance and not when the player responsible for them appearing in that World Series is now playing for the cross-city team that was supposed to always be the little brother.

8. Where do the Yankees go from here? Who knows. Eleven years ago when they lost Robinson Cano in an auction, they pivoted and spent crazily on Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran. They eventually released Ellsbury and filed a grievance against him to not pay him, paid McCann to play for the Astros and help beat them in the 2017 ALCS and traded Beltran to the Rangers.

Next year’s free-agent class is much better. But who’s to say the top names expected in it will still be free agents by the end of the next season? And who’s to say the Mets won’t want the best available free agents next year again and just keep upping their bid for them until the Yankees pull out and then leak their best offer to show they tried?

9. In all likelihood, the Yankees were going to sign Soto and call it an offseason. They would have run back the same team that just proved it wasn’t good enough to win it all against a watered-down version of the Dodgers. If the Yankees’ ceiling as currently constructed with Soto was to get embarrassed by the Dodgers without a rotation in the World Series, what would happen if the Yankees were to reach the World Series again against the Dodgers and have to face some combination of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyer Glasnow, Blake Snell, Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw and others?

10. Like Boone’s 2003 pennant-winning home run that resulted in the Yankees losing the World Series, the Red Sox retooling that offseason to change the course of the rivalry’s history and Boone eventually being named manager of the Yankees only to have the most disappointing tenure of any person in the position’s history, Soto’s time with the Yankees is eerily similar. The Yankees traded away Michael King along with all of their pitching depth to acquire Soto. He led them to the World Series, which now will keep Boone and Cashman in place forever, only to be humiliated in the World Series, and now he has left them for their cross-city rival, completely changing the landscape for New York baseball moving forward. Was getting a lucky free pass to the World Series against the AL Central only to be destroyed by the Dodgers worth it to now not have King, a depleted farm system, Boone and Cashman forever and the Mets and their fans laughing in Yankees fans’ faces? Not for me it wasn’t.

On top of that, Judge’s reputation and legacy was tarnished with his ALDS, ALCS and World Series performances as was Gerrit Cole’s with him pointing to first base rather than covering it, and the Yankees pitching staff had to pitch an extra month worth of high-stress games only to win nothing, which will now impact their health and stamina for next season. Again, none of it was worth it.

It was only ever going to be worth it if Soto was going to play in New York until at least 40, try to help lead a parade through the Canyon of Heroes and one day wear the interlocking NY in Cooperstown. He’s going to do all that, it’s just going to be for the Mets and not the Yankees.

1. It’s hard to care about the Yankees until Juan Soto is signed, whether it’s with the Yankees or not. The entire elite free-agent market is on hold until Soto comes off the board, and therefore, the 2025 plans for the Yankees and every other team that is in on Soto are on hold until he signs.

There is nothing worse than the MLB Hot Stove. The amount of sourced, rumored and exaggerated reports are annoying and tiresome … every single year. No one knows a fucking thing about where Soto is going to sign outside of Soto, his family and Scott Boras, and it’s possible none of them know and won’t know until the bids start coming in. I’m sure Soto knows where he wants to play and hopes that team is the highest bidder, but there isn’t a reporter or fan who has any idea of what’s going to happen with him or how much he’s actually going to sign for.

And with that let’s get to some questions from readers …

2. I know you feel strongly about re-signing Soto (as in you won’t follow the team anymore if they don’t). But hypothetically if they don’t sign him, what would be the best use of the money they’ll save on him and the others they’ll release based on this years free-agent class? – Chris

I have made my stance clear about the Yankees and Soto: re-sign him or I’m out. I will gladly resell my season tickets on the secondary market if he goes elsewhere. I’m not going to stick around to watch Aaron Boone manage the team for an eighth season with the faces of the franchise being Mr. May, who can’t hit or catch routine fly balls in the World Series, or Big Game Gerrit, who couldn’t have given less of an effort to cover first base in the inning that currently defines both of their careers.

The only way Soto leaves and I stay is if the Yankees pull off blockbuster trades to improve the offense and go to town on the free-agent starting pitching market. But there’s a better chance Soto ends up signing with the Red Sox than there is that that backup plan comes to fruition if Soto leaves.

3. Fourteen years ago, the Yankees were trying to sign Cliff Lee to fortify their rotation after not trading for him that summer because they didn’t want to include Eduardo Nunez in the deal. The same Eduardo Nunez, who, four years later would be released by the team for nothing in spring training, and then four years after that, helped the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALDS and win the World Series.

Back then, the Yankees didn’t have a Plan B if Lee signed elsewhere, and he did. He went to Philadelphia and the Yankees filled their rotation with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. By the time October came, Colon was hurt and Garcia was fatigued and ineffective. The Yankees went out in the first round. I wrote about the Yankees’ lack of a Plan B back then and I’m writing about their lack of a Plan B for Soto now.

4. The Yankees think they have a Plan B. We saw it begin to unfold at the end of last week when they non-tendered Jon Berti, but gave Trent Grisham $5 million. Why did they make those two moves? Well, not bringing back Berti freed up money for Soto, and bringing back Grisham allows him to potentially be their everyday center fielder if Soto goes elsewhere and Aaron Judge moves back to right. Why do you think Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo were held on to at the deadline? Why do you think Verdugo played over Jasson Dominguez and was never pinch hit for a single time by Dominguez in the playoffs? Because they are part of Plan B and the Yankees didn’t want to sour the relationships.

If Soto goes elsewhere, the money allocated from him will have to spent somehow. And then somehow is a combination of Torres and Verdugo and the Yankees going after free-agent bats like Pete Alonso, Teoscar Hernandez and Christian Walker and free-agent arms like Corbin Burnes, Slake Snell and Max Fried.

In actuality, there is no Plan B for the offense. The only plan this offseason for the offense is to re-sign the generational 26-year-old star and have him anchor the lineup for the better part of the next decade. Anything else is a letdown.

5. I know your posture on Soto, but realistically, if we had a better GM we could spend on better impact players with shorter contracts? – Douglas

I don’t think signing Soto to a 14- or 15-year deal is a bad business decision. Soto is a historic talent who may not have even entered his prime yet. Stocking up on the game’s best players increases your odds of wining. The first three hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup are all current and former MVPs. Two of them have exceedingly long contracts. That’s the price of doing business with top talent.

The Yankees’ trio of Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton couldn’t hang with the Dodgers’ trio because Judge was such a zero, but remove Soto from the trio and you have a soon-to-be, 33-year-old Judge and a 35-year-old Stanton. Who becomes the third member of the trio? Alonso? Please, no. Anthony Volpe? Please hold your laughter. Austin Wells? Doubtful.

As of right now, the Yankees’ 2025 Opening Day position players will be Wells at catcher, either DJ LeMahieu, Oswaldo Cabrera or Ben Rice at first base, either LeMahieu, Cabrera, Jazz Chisholm or Caleb Durbin at second base, either Chisholm, LeMahieu or Cabrera at third base, Volpe at shortstop, Dominguez in left field, Grisham in center field and Judge in right field with Stanton as the designated hitter. I don’t know that a lineup featuring only those names keeps the Yankees’ consecutive season winning streak going.

6. We know what the Yankees are without Soto: a postseason-less team. We saw that in the last season without Soto in 2023. Without Soto in 2024, they certainly don’t win the division, and maybe aren’t a postseason team for the second straight year? It was Soto and Stanton who carried the Yankees in the ALDS and ALCS. It was Soto who had a 1.373 OPS against the Guardians and a 1.084 OPS against the Dodgers in the World Series. While Mr. May was striking out every at-bat, Soto hit the way he hit all year. He hit the way he has hit his entire career. Because there is no difference between regular-season Soto and postseason Soto. For the truly great ones, which he is, there is never a difference between their regular-season numbers and their postseason numbers.

Even more so, Soto cares deeply about winning, even for someone who has already won. It was Soto sitting in the dugout by himself staring out at the field watching the Dodgers celebrate their World Series win, while the rest of the Yankees had retreated to the clubhouse to listen to their manager (who still has never won anything as a player or manager) tell them how proud he is that they were embarrassed in the World Series, producing the single-worst defensive inning in the history of the Fall Classic.

7. How much is Cohen going to pay Soto? In my opinion, let him go and use the money to make a more rounded team. – Mike

To me, Soto is either going to sign with the Yankees or the Mets.

Last week, Hal said, “I’ve got ears. I know what’s expected of me.” I don’t know that Hal actually knows what’s expected of him, but we’re going to find out. The Yankees generate more revenue than any other team, and yet, they aren’t even in the top half of the league in terms of revenue-to-payroll ratio.

If the Yankees offer X and the Mets also offer X and Soto signs with the Mets, well there’s nothing you can do about it. (In that event, I wouldn’t walk away from the Yankees.) If the money is equal and Soto leaves, so be it, what can do you do? But if the Mets outbid the Yankees then that’s unacceptable. If you’re not going to go out of your way to sign Soto, who are you going to go out of your way to sign?

8. How did Boone manage to garner a second-place vote for AL Manager of the year? – Floyd

Knowing that the Yankees’ lack of ability to situationally hit and poor fundamentals keep getting exposed, what is being done to address the one defines that are the clearest weakness of this franchise? – Mark

Let’s lump these two together since they both have to do with the manager.

The first one is easy: Someone who never watches the Yankees play or is lazy or a combination of both voted for Boone.

As for the second one: Nothing is being done. It’s about accountability, which is a concept Boone doesn’t believe in.

Do you know why the Yankees love Boone and love “playing for him?” Because there is no accountability. Who doesn’t love a boss who doesn’t care about performance, production or results? Boone is the boss everyone in every job in every industry dreams of.

Boone doesn’t hold his players accountable because he isn’t held accountable by Brian Cashman, who isn’t held accountable by Hal, who doesn’t hold anyone accountable because the Yankees aren’t something he purchased because he achieved extraordinary wealth after a lifetime of hard work and smart business decisions.

After 2023, Steinbrenner said the season was “unacceptable” and then didn’t fire a single employee. Cashman has blown through more than $3 billion of payroll over the last 15 years while producing one embarrassing World Series appearance. Boone has a litany of performance-related excuses for his players after every single game and those players spend all season talking about tomorrow until there are no more tomorrows and then they talk about next year. Boone mentioned already looking forward to next year in his statement after his option was picked up. Hal said last week he is looking to talk about an extension with Boone. Why? Because the Yankees beat up on the AL Central in the postseason and reached the World Series before getting beat up themselves by a non-AL Central team? What does it say about accountability that the entire Boone era has been a collective disappointment and the owner is ready to extend him and go against the no-extension policy within the organization?

Can you imagine the Yankees running back a Boone-led team, but without Soto in 2025? It’s not only dangerously close to happening, it’s more likely to happen than it is to not because free agency is crazy and all it takes is one team out of nowhere to come in with some absurd offer and Soto is gone.

9. Soto is the last player of his caliber to ever reach free agency. Every young player is taking the double-digit year deals for the nine-figure payouts years before they can reach free agency. In the summer of 2022, Soto turned down a $440 million offer from the Nationals. Sure, he’s going to blow past that number now, but it’s hard to think anyone else would be willing to turn down nearly half a billion dollars.

It would be one thing if the Yankees could produce great everyday talent or recognize the right free agents to sign. That would make missing out on Soto hurt much less and even acceptable. But look around the field and aside from Judge, the rest of the non-Soto players were signed as free agents, acquired through trades, are busts or unknowns. The Yankees’ two top prospects right now are Dominguez, who they didn’t want to play over Verdugo in the playoffs, and Spencer Jones who is a month younger than Volpe and couldn’t even muster an .800 OPS in Double-A this year. Soto just spent a year with the Yankees and is familiar with their young talent, and it’s why he likely questioned player development when the Yankees visited him in California.

10. Everyone expects Soto to make a decision during the Winter Meetings which begin two weeks from today. I wish he would do it earlier than that. I just want to know where he’s going, so I can know where I’m going. I don’t want to walk away from the Yankees and baseball, but without Soto I don’t see another option, knowing Cashman and Boone aren’t going anywhere.

Is Soto going to spend the rest of his career in the Bronx or elsewhere? Am I going to spend six-plus months a year watching and writing about the Yankees or is it time to learn a language or an instrument? As of now, I can’t help but feel like when the Yankees open against the Brewers on March 27 at Yankee Stadium I’ll be spending the afternoon playing the saxophone and speaking Italian.

1. I’m still not over what happened in Games 1 and 5 of the World Series, and I don’t think I will ever be. The Yankees could have had a 3-2 series lead going back to Los Angeles for Game 6. At worst, they should have been down 3-2 going back to Los Angeles for Game 6 with a chance to do to the Dodgers what was done to them 20 years ago in the ALCS.

A lot has come out over the last nearly two weeks from the Dodgers’ side suggesting they may have completed the collapse given their fatigued pitching staff and the momentum the Yankees would have boarded their cross-country flight with. At the same time, a lot has come out over the last nearly two weeks from the Dodgers’ side suggesting they knew exactly how to beat the Yankees and avoid every losing to them: play hard and execute fundamentally. Two simple ideas that should be givens for any major-league player and any major-league team, yet two simple concepts that are foreign to the Yankees.

2. The Yankees thought they were talented enough to win on talent alone against a team equally as talented as them. They were sloppy in both the ALDS and ALCS, but their talent won out and they went a combined 7-2 in those two series because of the great disparity in talent. As soon as they faced an opponent of equal or better talent than them in every fact of the game, they were exposed as the fundamental disaster that they were for most of the 2024 season.

3. “We had a struggle with our baserunnning this year. We were a bad defensive team, without a doubt, at times this year,” Brian Cashman said last week. “But we also, when you add it all together, we were a really good baseball team that earned the right to win the American League and get all the way to the World Series.”

That quote from Cashman is everything that is wrong with these Yankees. While admitting the team’s glaring weaknesses, he turns around and tells you how good the 2024 team was. A team that needed an AL Central-only path to reach their first World Series in 15 years and then got the shit beat out of them once they got there. A year ago, Cashman was unhinged in telling the media the 2023 Yankees “were pretty fucking good” despite going 82-80 and missing the playoffs. So why wouldn’t he think a team that got their ass kicked in the World Series isn’t “really good.”

With those words, Cashman confirmed my suspicion that the Yankees’ front office was overjoyed with simply reaching the World Series and getting that weight off their shoulders. Everyone associated with the Yankees was just happy to be there. Everyone except Juan Soto, who was the last Yankee sitting in the dugout staring out at the field watching the Dodgers celebrate, while his teammates had already retreated to the clubhouse to listen to their manager tell them how proud he was of them losing the World Series.

4. The moment the Yankees clinched the ALDS over the Royals, Aaron Boone was officially coming back, and I believe even if the Yankees had lost their first-round series to the Royals, he would have been back. The man was brought back after 2023 when the team posted the franchise’s worst record in more than 30 years. Did you really think ownership and the front office was going to decline his option for 2025 after the team reached the World Series, especially since reaching the World Series was clearly the equivalent to winning the World Series for ownership and the front office.

On the same day Cashman told you how good the 2024 Yankees were, he also said, “I’m a big Aaron Boone fan. I think he’s a great manager and we’ve been luck to have him.” A few days later the Yankees announced Boone would be back. The pennant guaranteed Boone would have his option exercised, and exercised it was.

5. “The manager’s job is so impossible,” Cashman said last week. “It’s a very hard job to do. It gets harder in the postseason, because ultimately whatever you do either works or doesn’t.”

Poor, Boone. What a hard job he has. There were tens of thousands of people on social media in real time saying Luke Weaver should pitch the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series after going five up, five down on 19 pitches the previous inning and after having not pitched in six days. The same amount of people in real time questioned why Tommy Kahnle got the eighth inning in Game 5 if Boone was willing to go to Weaver in that inning anyway. I thought an impossible, hard job was being a brain surgeon. I don’t think the same tens of thousands of armchair major-league managers who know more than the actual major-league manager of their team could in real time make more sensible decisions than someone about to remove a brain tumor. Now that I know how hard and impossible Boone’s job of putting his players in the best possible position to succeed is I think I will cut back on my criticism of him.

6. “Aaron is a steadying presence in our clubhouse and possesses a profound ability to connect with and foster relationships with his players,” Cashman said after exercising the option.

Do you know why the Yankees love Boone and love “playing for him?” Because there is no accountability. Who doesn’t love a boss who doesn’t care about performance, production or results? Boone is the boss everyone in every job in every industry dreams of.

Boone doesn’t hold his players accountable because he isn’t held accountable by Cashman, who isn’t held accountable by Hal Steinbrenner, who doesn’t hold anyone accountable because the Yankees aren’t something he purchased because he achieved extraordinary wealth after a lifetime of hard work and smart business decisions.

After 2023, Steinbrenner said the season was “unacceptable” and then didn’t fire a single employee. Cashman has blown through more than $3 billion of payroll over the last 15 years while producing one embarrassing World Series appearance. Boone has a litany of performance-related excuses for his players after every single game and those players spend all season talking about tomorrow until there are no more tomorrows and then they talk about next year. Boone mentioned already looking forward to next year in his statement after being retained.

6. “I think he’s a really, really good manager,” Cashman said. “I think we’re lucky to have him.”

If I had a dollar for every sarcastic congratulatory text I received from friends who are fans of rival teams when Boone’s 2025 option was exercised, I could buy the Yankees from the Steinbrenners and re-sign Soto myself. That’s the first indication you know you aren’t “lucky” to have the manager you have of your favorite team: when everyone who isn’t a fan of your team is happy he’s still the manager.

7. All of those same friends have also chimed in to let me know Soto would be signing with their team, whether it’s the Dodgers, Mets or Phillies. They all think the best hitter in the world will be wearing their team’s uniform in 2025. There’s nothing for me to say to rebut them since I think they are right. When I watched Soto sitting in his pinstripes in the dugout looking at out the Dodgers, I think that was the last time I will see him wearing a Yankees uniform.

Since the moment the Yankees traded for Soto I have repeatedly written how I will walk away from the Yankees and baseball if he is not a Yankee for 2025 and beyond, and I’m holding to that. If Soto isn’t a Yankee for 2025 and beyond, I won’t be around to watch. I will learn an instrument or a new language or do whatever people who don’t watch baseball daily from late-March through October do. If the team that makes more than any other team can’t sign the player who is expected to make more money than any other player, then what’s the point?

We know what the Yankees are without Soto. They are the 2023 Yankees. An 82-80, postseason-less team. Without Soto, the Yankees are nothing. The guy just hit .327/.469/1.102 in the playoffs with more walks (14) than strikeouts (9). Nine strikeouts in 14 games against the game’s best pitchers. Aaron Judge had that many strikeouts by Game 2 of the ALDS.

8. Watching Soto this season has been like sitting in first class on an international flight with a cabin, personal bathroom and all-you-can-eat-and-drink options. I don’t want to go back to sitting in the last row of economy in a middle seat next to the bathroom. That’s where Yankees fans were while being forced to watch Jake Bauers, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero and Greg Allen as outfielders in 2023 before the trade for Soto. I’m not going back to that.

If Soto leaves, so will I. It was a good three-decade-plus run as a Yankees fan. But I’m not about to sit around and listen to Steinbrenner and Cashman tell us how they made a competitive offer as Soto holds a press conference at some other stadium in some other city. I’m not going to sit around and watch Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo and Clay Holmes be re-signed and settle for a wrong-side-of-30 Pete Alonso. Because that’s what’s going to happen if Soto isn’t re-signed. The money allocated for him is going to have to be spent somewhere.

9. The Yankees just proved they’re not good enough to win a championship with the roster they had, including Soto. They aren’t re-signing Soto away from winning it all. They are Soto and more away from doing so. And with Boone coming back, they are Soto and a lot more away from negating the detrimental impact Boone has on winning.

10. There’s an expectation Soto will sign during the Winter Meetings a month from now. I don’t know if it will happen that early, but I hope it does. I just want it over with. I want to know if he’s going to be a Yankee for the rest of his career or if I just freed up three-plus hours a night from late March through October every year for the rest of my life. I want to know if I need to worry about what other pieces they are going to sign or trade for to end their championship drought or if I need to choose between Spanish or Italian and the guitar or drums.

1. The Yankees spent a little more than seven months showing who they truly were and everyone brushed it aside. It didn’t matter that they went 44-46 from June 15 on. It didn’t matter that they lucked into the easiest path to a pennant any team has ever had. They were in the World Series and everyone seemed to be so overjoyed by that fact they assumed the Yankees could hide their flaws over a seven-game series against the best team in baseball.

These flaws were on display against the Royals in the ALDS and the Guardians in the ALCS, but the talent disparity and lack of offense was too much for either of those two teams make the Yankees pay. Then came the Dodgers.

Stacked with three consecutive MVP bats at the top of their lineup, a true cleanup hitter, lineup balance and the deepest 5 through 9 in the majors, the Yankees would need to play a way they hadn’t with any consistency from Opening Day through the ALCS: flawlessly. They didn’t, and they lost the World Series in five games.

“They were the better team in this series,” Aaron Boone said.

They weren’t the better team in this series, they were the better team all season. They have been the better team for the last decade. The Dodgers have reached the postseason every year since 2013. They have reached the World Series four times in the last eight years, have won it twice and now have a full-season title to replace their shortened-season one.

2. The Dodgers lost Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow and Dustin May to season-ending injuries. They lost their replacements to season-ending injuries. They lost their replacements’ replacements to season-ending injuries. They had every reason to accept this wasn’t their year, but they never did. They never made excuses and they never blamed an endless list of injuries to their pitching staff when they easily could have. Can you imagine the amount of excuses the Yankees would have conjured up if they had the same injury fate as the Dodgers? The Yankees weren’t missing a single everyday position player or rotation member or bullpen arm in the World Series (unless you count Jonathan Loaisiga who last pitched on April 3) and they still couldn’t win.

3. The Yankees played all of the hits in the World Series: sloppy defense, bad fundamentals, awful baserunning, illogical managing, questionable lineups and poor situational hitting. To the Yankees’ credit, they showed up for the World Series the same team they were in the 171 games prior to the series. They never changed their identity. They conducted the worst defensive inning in World Series history and watched their season end with who else other than Alex Verdugo striking out. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

4. Gerrit Cole had a no-hitter going and a 5-0 lead to work with when the fifth inning of Game 5 began. The Yankees hadn’t blown a five-run lead all season, had their ace on the mound and were 15 outs from becoming the first team in World Series history to force a Game 6 after being down 3-0. They were about to shift all of the pressure in the series to the Dodgers by sending the series back to Los Angeles after staving off elimination for two straight nights. Instead, an unbelievable collapse erased their lead, and eventually ended their season.

“I think falling short in the World Series will stick with me until I die, probably,” Aaron Judge said.

I know why Judge took his eye off the line drive as it approached his glove to check on the runner at first. He thought Kike Hernandez was dumb enough to get caught on the bases trying to advance on an out because the Yankees assume players on other teams are as dumb and as poorly coached and have as low of Baseball IQs as they do.

I know why Anthony Volpe didn’t make a better throw to third to cut down the lead runner. Because Volpe tends to botch big plays in big moments. Who could forget the late-inning error in Arizona back in April or the one in Baltimore in the final game before the All-Star break. Sure, it was a somewhat unusual play with the shortstop throwing to third to cut down the lead runner, and it was a play Jazz Chisholm had maybe experienced two times since becoming a third baseman three months ago. But when you trade for a shortstop turned center fielder and have him play third base for the first time in his life things like that can happen. Only the Yankees would make their right fielder an everyday center fielder. Only the Yankees would play someone at first base in the postseason that has never played first base. Only the Yankees would call up their top prospect who’s not a left fielder and play him in left field and when he’s not perfect playing that position then not play him at all in the playoffs.

I know why Anthony Rizzo didn’t charge the ground ball hit at him and then take it himself to the bag to end the inning. Because he did it all season. I wrote about that same exact play countless times this year where Rizzo favored flipping the ball to the pitcher covering rather than taking it himself and each time it ended poorly. Cole shouldn’t have assumed anything and should have raced to the bag even if Mookie Betts was going to beat him.

5. “I think from a PFP standpoint we’re pretty good,” Boone said on a night when a Pitcher’s Fielding Practice play cost them the season. 

That quote is why the Yankees do the things they do. It’s why they run the bases “like they’re drunk” as John Sterling analogized this postseason. There’s no accountability. Cole failed in an unimaginable way to conduct an easy cover of first and Boone had the balls to say his team “is pretty good” at such plays. The night before in Game 4, Boone called Volpe a “great baserunner” after he only advanced to third from second on a double, which came before he later tried to stretch a single into a double and was only safe because his head dislodged the ball on his slide. It’s quotes like that which make Verdugo jogging to first base all season OK and why Gleyber Torres pimps fly balls that don’t go over the wall. It’s why Rizzo felt it was acceptable for him to stop running from first to second earlier in the series.

There isn’t a single Yankee that would have run as hard to first like Betts did when Cole failed to cover. There isn’t a Yankee that would have run to third as hard as Hernandez did to cause a bad throw by Volpe. There isn’t a Dodger that would have let the cutoff throw evade them like Torres did in Game 1. The Yankees played the World Series as if they were going to win simply because they reached the World Series. The Dodgers played like a team that knows what it takes to win because they have actually won before.

The talent gap between the Yankees and Dodgers isn’t much if there’s any at all. But the Yankees don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone. They don’t do any of the little things right. They drop balls and boot grounders. They don’t cover bases and don’t catch cutoff throws. In Game 5, they dropped a line drive, threw away a grounder, failed to cover first on a ground ball, picked up a catcher’s interference and even had three disengagements leading to a balk. That would be a bad week in the regular season. The Yankees did all of that between the fifth and ninth innings of a World Series elimination game. After losing Game 1 of the World Series when they had an 89 precent win probability, they one-upped themselves by blowing a 96 percent win probability in Game 5.

“We didn’t take care of the ball enough,” Boone said stating the obvious.

6. The praise for Cole’s performance is a little over the top. Boone called him “awesome” and everywhere you look he’s getting celebrated like he’s Madison Bumgarner. Did he pitch well? Yes. Was he part of the meltdown? Yes. He didn’t cover first on the potential inning-ending play. He was also the one who put a 1-2 fastball in the same spot to Freddie Freeman that Nestor Cortes did in Game 1 to plate two runs, and it was Cole who let Teoscar Hernandez tattoo a hanging slider in a 1-2 count to tie the game. Cole pitched well and was able to give the Yankees two more innings after the fifth-inning mess, but let’s not act like he was a hero. There were no heroes wearing pinstripes in Game 5. Not on the field playing, and certainly not in the dugout managing.

7. “I haven’t had that feeling of celebrating and going home,” Boone said. “I’m 51. I’ve poured my life into that. When you get that close it’s heartbreaking.”

It’s hard to envision the Yankees ever winning under Boone. We just saw what he was capable of in the biggest games he has ever managed and it was a shitshow centered around not knowing how to properly utilize his best bullpen asset in Luke Weaver.

In Game 1, Boone didn’t go back to Weaver for the 10th inning with a one-run lead despite Weaver having gone five up and five down on 19 pitches and having not pitched in six days. The next day Boone said it was a move he would have liked to do differently. In Game 3, he let the Dodgers see Weaver in a game the Yankees trailed by four runs in the ninth. Then Boone saved his best act of the season for last in deciding he would use Weaver for two innings in the game, but not before he tried to steal an innings worth of outs from Tommy Kahnle. If Boone was willing to get six outs from Weaver, why didn’t he start the eighth inning when the Yankees held a one-run lead. By the time he was allowed to remove Kahnle, the changeup-only righty had loaded the base with not outs.

8. “I let my team down,” Kahnle said.

Yes, you did, Tommy. Kahnle didn’t throw a fastball in the World Series. He threw only changeups in every appearance and when you only throw changeups, they are no longer changeups since they don’t “change up” from anything. And when you can’t throw one for a strike and the opposition stops chasing them outside of the zone, you get the type of inning Kahnle provided in Game 5: three batters faced and none retired.

9. “The ending is cruel,” Boone said.

He should know. Seven years as manager and none have ended happily. Boone has overseen a postseason-less season, a wild-card game loss, two ALDS losses, two ALCS losses and now a World Series loss. The only type of loss he has yet to manage is the three-season-old, best-of-3 wild-card series. Maybe he will gift Yankees fans that type of loss in 2025 to complete the list.

I don’t think the season was over for even 15 seconds before Andy Martino put out a sourced report Boone will be back for 2025. No shit, Andy. The guy was given a new contract after the 2021 season when the team was the odds-on favorite to win the World Series and instead finished third in their division and fifth in the AL. He was retained after last season when the team missed the postseason entirely and posted the franchise’s worst record in three decades. Getting to the World Series is like winning the World Series for ownership and the front office. Not even a week ago Brian Cashman once again brought up how he still believes the Yankees were the AL champions in 2017 even though they didn’t win the ALCS.

10. The Dodgers used their bullpen in the postseason like no team ever had before and it was clear in the final innings of Game 5 when they were willing to possibly let Blake Treinen destroy his elbow and rotator cuff that they were running out of options for the series. I have no idea how the Dodgers planned to piece together 27 outs in Game 6 and again if the series got to Game 7. The Yankees would have had momentum, no pressure and an immense advantage pitching-wise if the series went back to Los Angeles. They would have had a real chance of pulling off the historic 3-0 comeback. But the series isn’t going back to Los Angeles. The series is over and the season is over because the Yankees couldn’t hold a five-run lead in the fifth inning.

1. When I left Yankee Stadium on Monday after Game 3, I had come to terms with the Yankees’ season ending in a World Series loss to the Dodgers. The realization began when Freddie Freeman hit the two-run home run in the first inning and continued with the Yankees’ offense being retired with ease inning after inning. I woke up on Tuesday accepting of the fact that my wife and her family would be holding a Dodgers’ championship at the expense of the Yankees over me for all of time.

2. I decided to watch Game 4 from home instead of at the Stadium. If the Yankees’ season were to end on on Tuesday, at least I could turn off the TV and walk to bed to begin the five-month layoff until the next meaningful baseball game. If they were to win, great, I would get to watch at least one more game of Juan Soto as a Yankee on Wednesday.

3. They did win. And while the final score makes it look like a lopsided rout, it really wasn’t.

“It was a good ballgame,” Dave Roberts said, “until it wasn’t.”

The Yankees trailed early, made an egregious baserunning error, and then finally got the big hit they have been waiting for all series from the player who made the egregious baserunning error. That player was Anthony Volpe and the big hit was his third-inning grand slam to give the Yankees their first lead since the 10th inning of Game 1.

“I think I pretty much blacked out,” Volpe said, “as soon as I saw it go over the fence.”

4. Volpe’s blunder on the bases on Austin Wells’ double off the right-center wall was ridiculous. It’s no less ridiculous because he hit a grand slam the following inning, it just made the pain and the potential disaster of it in an elimination game go away. Later in the game, Volpe again made a baserunning mistake when he went for two and was initially thrown out by Teoscar Hernandez at second base before his head dislodged the ball on his slide. This from a player Boone called “a really good baserunner” during his in-game interview immediately after Volpe’s mistake on Wells’ double.

The Golden Boy had himself a night and it ended with David Ortiz taking a picture of Volpe and Derek Jeter together on the field after Volpe did a postgame interview with those two and Alex Rodriguez. Three men who were all part of the only 3-0 comeback in baseball history.

“We’ve been through so much the whole year,” Volpe said. “We’re not going to go down easy at all.”

5. Aaron Judge reached base three times (hit by pitch, walk and single) and drove in his first run of the series. Gleyber Torres homered and had three RBIs, Wells had a pair of extra-base hits (double and home run), Soto doubled and even Alex Verdugo had two RBIs. Every Yankee except for Anthony Rizzo reached base.

“We just wanted to go 1-0 today and win today,” Volpe said, “and see where it took us.”

6. The 11-run outburst was enjoyable as it was the Yankees’ first laugher in the postseason. Prior to Game 4, their first 12 postseason games this October were all decided by three or fewer runs. After scoring seven runs in the first three games and 28 innings of the World Series they scored five runs in the eighth inning alone. I don’t expect a similar outburst in Game 5, but the Yankees don’t need an outburst like that to win.

7. In the past, when the Yankees were on the verge of being swept in four, like they were in the 2012 ALCS or 2022 ALCS, they just rolled over and went to the offseason, so I expected a similar ending in this series, especially after the Freeman home run in the first inning. I didn’t expect a win and because I had accepted the season was essentially over, Game 4 presented an odd feeling: I was relaxed watching it. I wasn’t upset when Freeman hit another first-inning home run. I wasn’t angry when Volpe ran the bases like “he was drunk” which is how John Sterling has described the Yankees’ baserunning. I didn’t get overly excited when Volpe hit his slam or when the offense put up a 5-spot in the eighth. I wasn’t worried when the Dodgers turned a three-run deficit into a one-run deficit in the middle innings. I didn’t celebrate when they closed out the win.

That will change on Wednesday in Game 5. Now that they showed some life and some fight and some offense, it’s hard to not look at the Gerrit Cole-Jack Flaherty matchup in Game 5 and feel like this series should get to a Game 6.

8. In order to get to a Game 6 on Friday at Dodger Stadium, Cole needs to be an ace in Game 5 at Yankee Stadium. I don’t trust Cole to go out and shut down the Dodgers because I don’t think he’s completely healthy (why else would he be removed after 88 pitches in Game 1?) and because he hasn’t been the type of sure-thing he should be in games like this in his career. But I have no choice. The only way the Yankees extend their season is with Cole pitching like he’s supposed to in these moments and the offense building off their Game 4 performance and not reverting back to their Games 1, 2 and 3 performances.

9. The formula in Game 5 needs to be Cole for seven and then Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver for the eighth and ninth. That’s the cleanest path to victory. I doubt it will be that easy. These Yankees never seem to make anything easy.

10. “Why not us?”

That was the moniker of the 2004 Red Sox when they began their historic comeback against the Yankees. The Yankees and Yankees fans aren’t there. Not yet. But if the Yankees are able to win Game 5, save their season for a second straight day and send the series back to Los Angeles? Then the “Why not us?” talk can begin.

The Dodgers are going back to Los Angeles after Game 5 no matter the result. I’m cautiously optimistic the Yankees will be going with them.

Nine down, Three to go.

1. Pathetic.

Needing to win Game 3 to avoid going down 3-0 in the World Series, the Yankees’ offense put together a disgraceful performance against a starting pitcher that every team has gotten to this season. The Yankees were no-hit into the fourth inning and were held scoreless by Dodgers pitching through 8 2/3 innings. Their only two runs in the loss came on a meaningless two-run home run by Alex Verdugo in the ninth that he admired as if he were Freddie Freeman hitting an actual timely home run. They got another shit start from a starting pitcher — the one facet of the game they had a distinct advantage in entering the series — picked up another infield error and had their moronic third-base coach create yet another out at home plate in a season full of them. Once again, the bullpen did its job to keep the Dodgers at bay for a lengthy amount of time to give the offense a chance to come back, but the offense never came back, taking fastball after fastball down the middle, while continuing to chase breaking balls off the plate.

2. After Game 2, I wrote:

The first inning of Game 3 is the most important inning of Clarke Schmidt’s life. Yankee Stadium is going to be loud. It’s going to be raucous. It’s going to be full of believers who think this series isn’t over (including yours truly). He has to put up a zero. He can’t let Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandes get to him. Not in the first inning. If they get to him later, so be it. He has to give the bats a chance to get on the board first. He has to give the crowd a reason to stay loud and stay involved. He can’t go out and have a Rodon-like inning and allow a crooked number. Don’t allow any number.

So much for that. Schmidt walked Shohei Ohtani on four pitches to begin the game and two batters later fell behind Freeman 2-0 and then threw the future Hall of Famer a fastball he crushed into right-field seats for an early 2-0 lead. Freeman has now homered in every game of this series and for the player who was supposedly playing on one leg entering the World Series, he’s now in line to be the unanimous MVP of the series.

Schmidt was bad, just like Rodon was in Game 2, and now after 12 postseason games, the Yankees have received three good starts (ALDS Game 4, ALCS Game 1 and World Series Game 1). Their starting pitching has failed them just like their offense has.

3. The always-delusional Nestor Cortes put it best in how the Yankees will spin the series: “This series, stuff hasn’t gone our way.”

The Yankees internally likely feel the same way as an organization as Cortes. They don’t look across the field and see a team that is doing everything better than the Yankees. They look across the field and think the Dodgers have gotten all the breaks. That they’re luckier. That they’re better at playing craps. Since the postseason is just a crapshoot, right?

Aaron Boone not using Luke Weaver in the 10th inning in Game 1 wasn’t a bad break. The offense having one hit through eight innings in Game 2 and Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe destroying the ninth-inning rally wasn’t unlucky. The offense taking the night off in the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium in 15 years wasn’t the result of bad bounces. In the World Series, the Yankees haven’t played like the championship-caliber team Boone, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner will tell us they are once they lose one more game. They have played like the team that went 11-23 from the middle of June until the end of July.

4. After watching the team’s listless offensive performance in Games 1 and 2, Boone decided he would change his lineup for Game 3. Except he only made one change. He removed the struggling Austin Wells for in favor of Jose Trevino. Wells has been bad for more than a month, but at least there’s the threat of him running into a fastball, no matter how small that threat is. There’s no threat for the opposition with Trevino at the plate. The only threat is toward his own team that he will hit the ball on the ground and make two outs instead of one. And for as bad as Wells has been, at least he’s capable of holding the running game in check.

5. Boone’s intelligent move to jumpstart his offense was to put the worst bat of the 13 position players on the roster in the starting lineup, completely disregarding the additional righty-righty matchup he was creating — the type of matchup he lives to avoid. But with the Yankees trailing late in the game, he decided Wells gave him a better chance to produce offense and had him pinch hit for Trevino. A genius at work. Never change, Boone, you idiot, never change.

The Boone Yankees are 6-18 in the postseason against non-AL Central teams with no series wins. 

6. “I know how good this team is,” Alex Verdugo said, “and if that team can win three in a row, why can’t we win three in a row?”

That team’s star players are hitting like stars and their role players are playing their roles. The Yankees’ offense is being propped up by Giancarlo Stanton and Juan Soto and no one else is doing anything, especially Judge.

7. “Don’t listen to the outside noise, because it’s just noise,” Judge said. “We’ve got a job to do on the field.”

The outside noise was all positive for Judge on Monday. Yankee Stadium erupted when his name was called during player introductions before the game. The Stadium gave him standing ovations for each of his four miserable plate appearances. And he repaid the pity cheers and embarrassingly soft display by the fan base by going hitless once again. After going 0-for-3 (with a meaningless walk in the eighth inning) in Game 3, Mr. May is now 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in the World Series. He has completely devalued his regular season with his postseason, striking out in 20 of 43 at-bats.

8. “We’re trying to get a game tomorrow, OK?” an annoyed Boone said. “Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world.”

What time do you think the viewing party is in the Yankees clubhouse of the 2004 ALCS video Boone showed the team two years ago? 3:30? 4:30? Maybe Boone can have the Stadium video screen operator show Dave Roberts’ Game 4 stolen base and David Ortiz’s walk-off home run off of Paul Quantrill in between innings on Tuesday? Maybe Boone can ask those two to address his team prior to Game 4 since they will both be at the Stadium?

Since the comedic comparisons of this team in the 2024 World Series to the 1996 and 2001 Yankees are no longer valid, I’m sure there will be plenty of talk on Tuesday about how this Yankees team compares to the 2004 Red Sox. Spoiler: they don’t.

9. I want nothing more than for the Yankees to win on Tuesday and Wednesday in The Bronx, and then win on Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles to become the second team ever to erase a 3-0 deficit in MLB history. But it’s hard to believe in this Yankees team when there’s a better chance they are getting no-hit into the fifth inning or being shut out into the eighth inning of Game 4 than there seems to be that they can win Game 4.

10. For the first time this postseason, the Yankees will play a game facing elimination in Game 4. If the Yankees lose Game 4, their season is over. There won’t be another Yankees game in 2024 and there may never be another game with Juan Soto as a Yankee. Their last two postseason appearances will have ended in four-game sweeps to two teams that are actually championship-caliber and not in the way the Yankees talk about being since you have to actually win a championship to be considered such.

1. It’s a good thing Aaron Boone didn’t go back to Luke Weaver in the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series, considering he wasn’t needed in Game 2. The decision to not use Weaver after the righty went five up and five down on just 19 pitches is the single biggest reason the World Series isn’t going back to New York tied at 1.

2. The second biggest reason is Aaron Judge. Judge was atrocious once again in Game 2, as he continues to hit like a 6-foot-7 version of Anthony Volpe. After going 1-for-5 with three strikeouts in Game 1, Judge followed it up with a nice 0-for-4 with three more strikeouts. Back-to-back hat tricks from the AL MVP in the World Series with the championship on the line — the same championship he relentlessly refers to needing to win.

3. Judge certainly has a funny way of showing how important winning is to him. His strikeout rate and chase rates are through the roof in October compared to March through September. If Giancarlo Stanton is the second coming of Mr. October then Judge is the second coming of Mr. May. When Joe Davis exclaimed, “Gibby, meet Freddie!” following Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam, the image of Judge standing next to Dave Winfield on the Dodger Stadium field before Game 2 made me think, “Winnie, meet Judgey!”

4. Before Game 2, I wrote about how big of a problem Judge has been and he went out and added to his problematic resume. After breaking the AL home run record with 62 in 2022, he went 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS. After producing one of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of baseball this season, he’s 1-for-9 with six strikeouts in the World Series (after going 5-for-31 with 13 strikeouts in the ALDS and ALCS).

This is a legacy series for Judge. He can’t be considered among the all-time Yankees greats without a championship. It would be different if he were playing with the putrid players Don Mattingly was surrounded with during his career, but Judge has been surrounded by elite talent, superstars and one of the Top 3 payrolls in the league in his career. It would be different if he were having an all-time postseason and the rest of the lineup was doing nothing, but he’s the one doing nothing. He is the one holding the Yankees back.

5. You would think this can’t possibly continue, but I thought that during the ALDS and it continued in the ALCS. After the Yankees won the pennant, I thought it wouldn’t continue in the World Series but it has. Judge isn’t just missing pitches or hitting into bad luck. He’s taking fastballs down the middle and swinging at curveballs in the dirt and splitters on the verge of hitting him. He’s a mess. It’s hard to believe a switch can just be turned on and he can be the real version of himself in Game 3 after having not been that version of himself in a month now.

6. If you remove the idiotic decisions from Boone in Game 1, the Yankees were an out away from winning that game. Despite the offense producing one hit over the first eight innings of Game 2, they were a base hit away from tying the game in the ninth and an extra-base hit away from taking the lead. That’s how close these games have been and Judge has been the difference. The Dodgers are doing everything they can to not let Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton beat them since no one else is capable of it, and Soto and Stanton are nearly beating them. If Judge were his regular-season self right now, the Yankees may be heading home up 2-0 in the series. Instead their backs are against the wall and in desperate need of a win in Game 3.

7. Judge and the offense as a whole aren’t entirely to blame for the Game 2 loss. Carlos Rodon wasn’t any good, of course, because Rodon isn’t very good. Another regular-season hero, Rodon was praised for pitching to 3.96 ERA this year while making roughly $800,000 per start. No one shuts down a team with nothing to play midseason while racking up double-digit strikeouts like Rodon, the way no one will smash five home runs in five games against teams playing out the string like Judge. After Rodon’s Game 2 stinker, he now has a 5.60 ERA in four starts this October and a 6.64 ERA for his postseason career. The Royals, Guardians and Dodgers have an .820 OPS against him in the postseason. He may have only walked one in 17 2/3 innings, but that doesn’t matter when you’re giving up home runs at the rate Rodon has in the playoffs. If the Yankees are going to come back and win the series, Rodon will get another start. I wouldn’t expect a different kind of performance.

8. Going into the series I wrote the only advantage the Dodgers had over the Yankees was at 5 through 9 in the lineup and that has held true. While the Dodgers are getting production from career league-average- and below-league-average hitters, the Yankees continue to not. A player like Tommy Edman is the definition of league average for his career with a 100 OPS+, and yet he won NLCS MVP against the Mets, and in the World Series, he’s 4-for-8 with two doubles and a home run and some great infield defense. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ career league-average- and below-league-average hitters all suck whether it’s Volpe, Alex Verdugo or Austin Wells. There’s no belief any of them will ever come through in a big moment, and that was never more true than when Volpe struck out in the ninth inning in Game 2. Every time you think Volpe has figured it out and is about to emerge as a star he reminds you why he has an 83 OPS+ in 1,290 career plate appearances.

9. The first inning of Game 3 is the most important inning of Clarke Schmidt’s life. Yankee Stadium is going to be loud. It’s going to be raucous. It’s going to be full of believers who think this series isn’t over (including yours truly). He has to put up a zero. He can’t let Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandes get to him. Not in the first inning. If they get to him later, so be it. He has to give the bats a chance to get on the board first. He has to give the crowd a reason to stay loud and stay involved. He can’t go out and have a Rodon-like inning and allow a crooked number. Don’t allow any number.

10. I don’t want to hear about what the Yankees did in 1996 when trailing 2-0 or how the 2001 Yankees returned home down 2-0 before winning three straight in the Bronx. Unless youthful and prime and peak Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte are going to be playing and pitching for the Yankees over the next few nights, it’s meaningless. This Yankees group has never done anything. They have never won anything. This is their first time in the World Series and they have yet to win a game in it. Until they do it, there should be no comparisons to the dynastic teams and players that went to the World Series in six of eight years and won four of them. Let’s start with one win and that win has to come in Game 3. Otherwise, I hope Boone still has the 2004 ALCS highlights video lying around that he used to motivate his team in the 2022 ALCS when they were down 3-0.

1. Cortes delivers …

Freeman hits a ball to right field …

SHE IS GONE! …

GIBBY, MEET FREDDIE! … GAME 1 OF THE WORLD SERIES!

For many Yankees fans, they probably only heard Joe Davis’ call of Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam once. They probably heard it in real time, turned off the TV and went to bed. Not me. I heard it a second time. And a third time and fourth time. I heard it for nearly an hour after the game had ended from the other room as my wife — a Dodgers fan — watched the historic moment on an endless loop.

I’ll never get over Game 1. I’ll never get over the litany of bad decisions that started with Gerrit Cole being removed in the seventh inning and ended with Nestor Cortes being asked to get Shoehei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman out.

2. When these Yankees lose, they don’t just lose. They lose in the excruciating, heartbreaking, kick-you-in-the-nuts-then-punch-you-in-the-face-when-you-go-to-grab-your-nuts fashion. They don’t lose games 7-2 or 5-0. They lose games like Game 1 of the World Series or Game 4 of the ALCS, which is how these Yankees always lose in the playoffs. The Dodgers lost two games to the Padres by scores of 10-2 and 6-5. They lost two games to the Mets by scores of 7-3 and 8-0. Normal, easy-to-accept losses. The Yankees? They carry high-’90s win probabilities into the final inning and come within an out or a strike of a winning before suffering an unbelievable loss.

Game 1 didn’t have to be an unbelievable loss. It should have been a statement win, letting the Dodgers know they aren’t playing the Padres or Mets anymore. Instead, the Dodgers let the Yankees know they aren’t playing the AL Central anymore. (The Yankees have not won a postseason series against a team outside of the AL Central since the 2012 ALDS against Baltimore.) The game was a perfect summarization of the Aarons era with Aaron Boone managing his team to a loss and Aaron Judge doing absolutely nothing at at the plate to prevent it.

3. Boone desperately wants to be known as some kind of baseball genius or managerial savant. It’s why he interjects himself into games in the oddest ways, even when he doesn’t have to. His father — a 19-year veteran, World Series champion and seven-time Gold Glove winner — and brother — a 14-year veteran, four-time Gold Glove winner and two-time Silver Slugger winner who led the league in RBIs one season — had careers that overshadowed Boone’s 92 OPS+ in the majors. (Maybe that’s why he’s so infatuated with giving endless chances to below-league-average hitters he manages.) Managing the Yankees was going to be his way of stepping of that shadow.

Boone was selected as the manager of the most prestigious organization in major sports following the young, exciting core coming within a win of the World Series despite having no managerial or coaching experience at any level. His lack of experience showed in his first spring training when he called on Dellin Betances to enter a game even though Betances had yet to warm up. The umpiring crew gave him a mulligan and let Betances warm up anyway. In the first series of his first regular season in Toronto, he managed the Yankees to a late-inning loss with his bullpen choices and from that moment on he has never evolved.

4. His longing to be the smartest baseball mind in a major-league dugout is why he makes the moves he makes. He didn’t need to remove Cole from the game. Not after 88 pitches. He didn’t need to show the Dodgers all of the Yankees’ elite relievers in Game 1 of the series. He didn’t need to use Clay Holmes in relief of Cole. He didn’t need to try to steal outs with Tommy Kahnle. He didn’t need to pinch run Jasson Dominguez for Gleyber Torres with two outs, but he wanted Judge to single in Dominguez, so talking heads would praise him for the awareness to use Dominguez in that spot. He didn’t need to go to Jake Cousins in relief of Luke Weaver with the Yankees three outs from a win in the 10th and Weaver having thrown only 19 pitches. He didn’t need to use Cortes over Tim Hill, but he wanted to try to turn one of his starters into a shutdown postseason reliever like his friend, rival and much more heralded and respected Alex Cora did in 2018.

5. Boone had his worst night as Yankees manager in the biggest game he has ever managed. It was the type of managerial performance I have feared from him for seven years. It was a performance he foreshadowed to us all over the last seven years.

“I just like the matchup,” Boone said of using Cortes in the 10th. “The reality is, Cortes has been throwing the ball really well the last few weeks as he’s gotten ready for this.”

What are you talking about? What reality? Cortes facing Jahmai Jones in live batting practice in an empty Yankee Stadium isn’t reality. That’s a controlled environment. Reality is pitching in Game 1 of the World Series with a former MVP at the plate and the bases loaded.

“I knew with one out there, it would be tough to double up Shohei if Tim Hill gets him on the ground,” Boone said. “Then Mookie behind him is a tough spot matchup there. So I felt convicted with Nestor in that spot.”

Whenever Boone lays out the thought process he uses to make decisions, we all get a look inside the brain of a confused idiot. If Hill gets Ohtani on the ground, he doesn’t need a double play. There were runners on first and second with one out. Ohtani goes on the ground and there are two outs. Cortes didn’t face Betts, so Hill wouldn’t have either. If the bases are loaded and Hill gets Freeman on the ground, guess what? Game over.

6. I don’t blame Cortes for the missed location to Freeman. Once the bases were intentionally loaded, he had to throw strikes. Freeman knew this and was ready for a fastball in the zone. Even if Cortes hits his intended location, Freeman likely still gets a hit and ends the game. It’s Freddie Fucking Freeman, not Josh Naylor. But no, it’s not Cortes’ fault. He last pitched in a game on September 18. He didn’t put himself on the World Series roster after missing five weeks and being on the brink of Tommy John surgery and he didn’t put himself in that spot.

7. Boone doesn’t believe the Yankees’ Game 1 loss is on him. In his mind he pressed all of the right buttons and his players didn’t perform. The idea of putting your players in the best possible position to succeed isn’t a concept Boone comprehends. The ironic part about Boone is that he is always managing with tomorrow on mind. It’s why he pulled Weaver after going five up and five down on 19 pitches, rather than using Weaver in the 10th and securing a win. But while Boone always manages for tomorrow, he never manages a game thinking the game may go to extra innings, and when it does the Yankees are ill-equipped to win. Do you think it’s just a coincidence the Yankees have lost every extra-inning game in the postseason with Boone as manager?

The bigger the game, the worse Boone is at his job. Just like his superstar, $40-million-per-year MVP.

8. Giancarlo Stanton is everything that Judge isn’t. He’s a big-game performer who saves his best for the playoffs and has become the second coming of Mr. October. Judge is Mr. May. No one destroys back-of-the-rotation starters and middle relievers like Judge does in the spring and summer.

Everyone thought Judge had moved past his postseason failures when he hit the home run off Emmanuel Clase in Game 3 of the ALCS. But since his home run off Clase (that came in the Yankees’ only loss of that series), Judge is 2-for-14 with a pair of singles and 10 strikeouts. He has struck out 16 times in 36 at-bats this October.

If Judge just sucked and wasn’t abysmal, the Yankees’ offense wouldn’t be in such a dire position. But he has been impossibly bad, culminating in his three-strikeout performance in Game 1 of the World Series, a game in which he looked blindfolded swinging at Jack Flaherty breaking balls. Late on fastballs and unable to hit curveballs. That’s Mr. May.

9. Judge’s absence has turned the Yankees into a two-batter lineup. Opposing pitchers can fear Juan Soto and Stanton and no one else. The threat of slug in the lineup dies after Stanton bats. Sure, Jazz Chisholm and Austin Wells each hit solo home runs in this postseason, but no one is threatened by the idea of them doing that consistently. Anthony Rizzo is a slap singles hitter and Anthony Volpe is the same. Alex Verdugo has trouble getting the ball in the air past infielders, so the thought of him hitting one over the fence is far-fetched. When Wells makes contact it’s a miracle, so no one is expecting him to drive the ball with any authority. When the bat gets taken out of Soto’s hands through an intentional walk and Stanton’s at-bat doesn’t end with a home run, the Yankees don’t score. Unless the Dodgers are going to start walking in runs like the Royals did or throwing wild pitches and dropping popups like the Guardians, the Yankees are going to have a tough time scoring without Judge being himself.

10. At this point, I have no expectation he will be himself. The last time he looked like himself was exactly a month ago today when he finished a streak of five straight games with a home run at the end of September. Since the calendar turned to October he has performed his annual disappearing act while the two batters he is sandwiched between in the lineup have carried him and the team. The Dodgers are too good to let Soto and Stanton alone carry the Yankees to another series win.

The narrative after the ALDS was that the Yankees were able to advance without Judge hitting, so just wait until he starts hitting! Then the ALCS came and he went 3-for-18 with eight strikeouts and the narrative remained the same: The Yankees were able to advance to the World Series without Judge hitting, so just wait until he starts hitting! Well, the World Series is here. It’s a game in and Judge looked worse at the plate than he did at any other time in the playoffs. There are some star players who can’t handle the postseason with any consistency, and to this point in his career, Judge is one of them.

1. Eighty-eighty pitches. That’s how many pitches Gerrit Cole had thrown in Game 1 of the World Series when Aaron Boone emerged from the Yankees dugout for a slow walk to the mound.

Cole had mostly dominated the Dodgers’ offense through six innings, allowing one run on four hits with that one run coming as the result of a misplayed fly ball in right field by Juan Soto. It was the seventh inning now, and after Teoscar Hernandez won his eight-pitch battle against Cole with a line-drive single, Boone decided to pull the plug on his ace’s night.

It’s not as if Boone was opting to replace Cole with Tommy Kahnle or Luke Weaver. He was going to go with Clay Holmes who has spent the last seven months doing everything he can on the mound to say STOP PITCHING ME IN HIGH-LEVERAGE SITUATIONS! Boone ignored all of the warnings during the regular season and has continued to ignore them in the postseason. Despite removing Holmes from the closer role during the regular season and despite Holmes allowing a walk-off loss to the Guardians in the ALCS, it hasn’t mattered. There’s no level of disappointment Holmes can provide that will make Boone stop using him in big spots.

2. For Boone, the decision to turn to Holmes in the seventh inning was his second poor decision of the night following the choice to not run Gleyber Torres on a 3-2 count with Juan Soto up in the third inning. But the move to go to Holmes was the move that sent the Yankees on a downward spiral to their eventual 6-3 walk-off loss.

Holmes immediately proved to be a disaster. His first pitch was in the dirt, his second pitch was high and inside and his third pitch drilled Max Muncy in the foot. Boone had brought Holmes in specifically to induce a ground ball in an effort to get a double play, and instead, Holmes pushed his inherited runner into scoring position.

Fortunately, for Boone, his counterpart, Dave Roberts, is every bit as bad at managing as Boone is, and he had Kike Hernandez give himself up with a sacrifice bunt. A free out for a pitcher who can’t handle pressure in the most pressurized situation of his career. After Holmes got a popup, he had faced the required three batters and was removed from the game for Tommy Kahnle. The Yankees would get out of the inning unscathed, but it came at a cost. Boone had pulled his ace and burned through two relievers in a single inning.

3. I wanted Boone to use Cole for at least the seventh and then a well-rested Luke Weaver for the eighth and ninth. Boone still had the option to use Weaver for six outs and with a one-run lead in the eighth, it made sense to. He declined, choosing to stick with Kahnle in the eighth.

Kahnle had thrown 48 straight changeups entering Game 1 and stayed with the pitch to get the last out of the seventh and the first out of the eighth. It’s one thing to throw the same pitch that many times in a row to the Royals and Guardians and the bottom of the Dodgers’ order, but not to the best hitter in the world. To think you’re going to retire Ohtani with a single pitch like you’re Mariano Rivera is irresponsible, but Kahnle and Austin Wells tried anyway. Ohtani banged a double off the wall.

Soto threw the ball into second and Torres failed to get in front of the short hop and the ball trickled to the middle of the infield as Ohtani raced to third to give the Dodgers a runner on third with one out. Then Boone went to Weaver, but it was too late, as a Mookie Betts sacrifice fly tied the game. Not even one full game into the World Series and the combination of sloppy play by the Yankees’ defense and the attempt to steal outs by the Yankees manager had given the Dodgers both of their runs.

4. Boone had been willing to use Holmes in the seventh, but not until there was a runner on. He was willing to go to Weaver in the eighth, but not until the tying run was at third with one out. Giving relievers clean innings isn’t something Boone is capable of. And after watching the way he managed in the biggest game of his career, it’s terrifying to see what he’s capable of on baseball’s grandest stage.

Weaver got the final two outs of the eighth and pitched the ninth: five up, five down for the Yankees’ best reliever, who should have been in to start the eighth, and the Yankees wouldn’t be trailing in the series right now.

5. The Yankees managed to take the lead in the 10th after Jazz Chisholm singled, stole second and third and scored on an Anthony Volpe ground ball. Boone had another chance to redeem himself by sending Weaver back out for the 10th. He had only thrown 19 pitches to get five outs and hadn’t pitched in six days. He was more than rested. Boone declined, choosing to go with Jake Cousins.

Cousins retired Will Smith to begin the 10th, but with the Yankees two outs away from a Game 1 win, Cousins inexplicably walked the 8-hitter Gavin Lux. Tommy Edman followed with a ground ball to second that Oswaldo Cabrera dove for, but couldn’t come up with. It’s a ball that Torres would have handled had he been at second, but he was removed from the game in the ninth for a pinch runner even though there had been two outs in that inning. Another Boone gem.

6. In the pivotal Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS, Boone’s starting pitcher didn’t know the start time of the game. The next night, facing elimination, he let his starting pitcher face the entire Red Sox’ lineup a second time because he said he liked the matchup of his starter against their No. 9 hitter. In the 2019 ALCS, with a 1-0 series lead, he let J.A. Happ pitch in relief until the Astros finally walked him off. In Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, he tried to outsmart Kevin Cash by using Deivi Garcia as a one-out opener before going to Happ. After the wild-card game loss in 2021, he said “The league has closed the gap” on his team, a team that had never won anything. In Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS, he opted to not go with his best relievers in the sixth inning of a tie game in an eventual loss, and when his team lost again the next night, he blamed the Houston roof being open as the reason. Down 3-0 in that ALCS he used video from the 2004 ALCS as motivation for his players, players who were members of the same franchise that endured that historic loss in the 2004 ALCS. In 2023, he spent the summer telling everyone how “capable the guys in the room are” as they posted the franchise’s worst record in three decades and missed the playoffs. Now in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, in the biggest game of his managerial career, he tried to steal outs in both the seventh and eighth innings.

Even with all of these “highlight” ill-advised choices and impossibly bad decisions over seven years and his shortcomings as a sound baseball mind despite being a third-generation major-leaguer, nothing he has done as Yankees manager will ever be as bad as what he would do next in Game 1.

7. After choosing to not pitch Weaver in the 10th, Boone’s decision to use Cousins had created a shitstorm. The Dodgers had the tying run on second and the winning run on first with Ohtani up. It was the perfect opportunity for the left-handed ground-ball specialist Tim Hill, who had dominated in the ALDS and ALCS. Boone declined, choosing to go with Nestor Cortes, who last pitched in a game on September 18, more than five weeks ago. Unless the Yankees come back to win the series, it will be the decision that defines Boone as a manager.

Cortes retied Ohtani when Alex Verdugo fell into the stands to make an outstanding catch in foul territory. With Betts due up, Boone called for an intentional walk to bring up the supposedly-hobbled Freddie Freeman. Cortes threw a first-pitch, 93-mph fastball down the middle and Freeman destroyed it for the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.

A day ago, the Yankees were waiting on Cortes to say how he felt and recovered from throwing live batting practice before putting him on the World Series roster. He went from facing Cabrera and Austin Wells in a controlled environment to a couple of days later facing Ohtani and Freeman with a World Series game on the line, while admittedly being less than 100 percent, as the Yankees’ left-handed specialist sat on his thumb in the bullpen. It’s a move so egregious I’m still stunned by it hours later. After seven seasons of watching every move Boone has made I thought the possibility of being stunned by him no longer existed. I was wrong.

8. Boone is here to stay. The ALDS win locked it up and winning the pennant threw away the key. He will be here forever. The Yankees could get humiliated in the next three games and get swept out of the Fall Classic because of similar moves by him and he’s not going anywhere.

9. The Yankees lost a game in which they outhit and outwalked the Dodgers. They lost a game in which their ace started and gave them six-plus innings of one-run ball. They lost a game in which they used their best reliever for multiple innings. They lost. agame in which they got to the Dodgers starter and got to Dodgers bullpen early. They lost a game in which they had a one-run lead with five outs to go and then a one-run lead in extra innings with the bottom of the Dodgers’ lineup due up.

This doesn’t feel like a it’s-a-long-series loss or a just-win-one-game-on-the-road loss. This feels like a series-changing, series-defining loss. The Yankees had the opportunity to be up 1-0 in the series, needing to just play .500 baseball over the next six games to be champions. Instead, they wound up on the wrong end of a devastating defeat and now need to go 4-2 against the best team in baseball to be champions.

10. Game 1 wasn’t just one loss in a seven-game series. It was a demoralizing defeat. The kind of defeat that could end this series much quicker than the six- or seven-game series everyone seems to think it will be. That’s not me being dramatic as I can hear my wife from the other room replaying the Freeman grand slam over and over, that’s me being a realist.

There are no moral victories in postseason losses, especially in the World Series. There is nothing good and nothing positive to take away from Game 1. They lost. They let a winnable game slip away twice thanks to their sloppy play, the disappearing act from their MVP and unfathomable managerial decisions: the trio of issues that has always doomed this core.

1. It feels like it’s been a month since the Yankees last played, and with still one more day to go until Game 1 of the World Series, it feels like it will be another month until they play again.

When the Yankees last won the pennant, they clinched on Sunday night and Game 1 of the World Series was Wednesday. The Yankees will have had six full days off between eliminating the Guardians in Game 5 and playing the Dodgers in Game 1.

2. The only good thing to come of the extra time is that the baseball season is extended and the offseason is shortened. For teams that didn’t reach the postseason, this Sunday will already be four weeks since they last played. By the time the World Series ends, it will have been nearly five weeks since the majority of the league played. Thankfully, the Yankees are still playing.

3. The hype and anticipation for this series has been unlike any other World Series, and the ticket prices are there to prove it. You could pay for a year of college, put a down a payment on a house, buy a boat or … sit in the 100 level at Yankee Stadium for Game 3 of the World Series.

4. There has been talk of the possibility of Shohei Ohtani pitching in this series after missing the whole season as pitcher following Tommy John surgery. Please let this happen. Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Alex Verdugo have all faced Ohtani and are 7-for-20 with two home runs and three doubles against him. That was against Ohtani as a star pitcher. Ohtani coming off surgery with no rehab outings? Again, please let this happen.

5. For now, I’m happy for Aaron Boone. At this moment, I even like him. With four more wins, I will even respect him! But if he tries to steal outs in this series, pinch runs for Stanton too early, bats a lefty between Judge and Stanton or gets Tim Mayza and/or Marcus Stroman up in the bullpen, all goodwill will be lost.

And with that let’s get to some questions from readers …

6. Nestor in place of Stroman? – John

It looks like Nestor Cortes will be on the World Series roster. I don’t know if it will be in place of Stroman, but it will be in place of someone.

Cortes last pitched six shutout innings in Seattle on September 18 before going on the injured list and looking like he will need Tommy John surgery.

“We have weighed the consequences that this can lead up to,” Cortes said, “but if I have a ring and then a year off of baseball, then so be it.”

Cortes threw 28 pitches in a simulated game at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, facing Oswaldo Cabrera, Jose Trevino and Austin Wells to simulate the left-right-left lane he will likely be asked to face.

“Coming out of the bullpen, I’ll be restricted to throwing 20 to 30 pitches, so they’re not going to bring me in face three righties,” Cortes said. “I know those are the guys I’m going to face. It’s a tough task, but I know I’m able to do it.”

If he appears in a World Series game, it will be more than five weeks since he last pitched in a game. Even not at 100 percent, Cortes gives the Yankees another viable option in relief. It moves Stroman and Mayza (and Mark Leiter Jr.) down a peg on the option-to-pitch chart. Tim Hill will likely get the Ohtani-Mookie Betters-Freddie Freeman lane the first time a reliever is needed, but then Cortes would get it the second time?

7. Who has the advantage in this series? Is it the Yankees’ pitching health and bullpen? Or the Dodgers offense through this playoffs? – Manny

Give me the Yankees’ rotation health. If injuries didn’t exist, yes, the Dodgers would have the better team because it would mean they would have Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw and Dustin May as rotation options. Instead they are going to try to win it all using their bullpen more than any team has ever used their bullpen before.

The only way the Yankees’ advantage of an actual rotation becomes a disadvantage is if Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon suck, which is possible. Cole was bad in ALDS Game 1, very good in ALDS Game 4 and then bad again in ALCS Game 2. Rodon was bad in ALDS Game 2, very good gin ALDS Game 1 and then so-so in ALCS Game 5. The Yankees have played nine games this postseason and have gotten strong starts in two of the nine (ALDS Game 4 and ALCS Game 1). Outside of that, they haven’t received a single quality start and getting their starters to get outs in the fifth inning has seemed like the equivalent of throwing complete games.

The Dodgers are going to be looking for their bullpen to get at least 15 outs in games when they use a traditional starter and then all 27 outs during bullpen games. The Yankees will see their relievers multiple times in a short amount of time. The Yankees just destroyed the Guardians’ “Four Horsemen” in the ALCS and they will do the same to the Dodgers’ relievers after multiple looks as well.

If Cole and Rodon pitch to the best of their abilities, the Yankees will win it all.

8. What’s your confidence level (1-10 scale) in this World Series matchup? – Osvaldo

My wife is from Los Angeles. Her family are Dodgers season ticket holders. She has never seen the Dodgers win a World Series in a non-shortened season, not held at a neutral site in a season in which they only had to play the NL West and AL West without fans in the stands. She can’t see them do it now. It’s imperative the Yankees win this series for their own history and the legacies of their managers and star players and to end their championship drought. But for me personally, it’s imperative for my own well-being.

This morning I asked my wife the same question of on a scale of 1-10 how confident she is about the World Series. She responded, “7.5.” It was higher than I thought it would be, and it was higher than any Dodgers fan should be. I’m a 9. Yes, a 9. I’m extremely confident about this series. Too confident.

The Dodgers have a good team, but this is probably the worst roster they have had during Dave Roberts’ tenure. Their rotation is in shambles. Freddie Freeman is playing on one leg. Sure, they have Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernandez, but I’m not scared of Max Muncy, Will Smith (who is having a miserable postseason), Tommy Edman and Kike Hernandez or Andy Pages and Chris Taylor. The Yankees just ripped out the hearts and destroyed the confidence of Emmanuel Clase, Hunter Gaddis and Cade Smith, do you think I’m going to be up at night worrying about Michael Kopech, Blake Treinen, Ryan Brasier or Anthony Banda, who faced 10 batters as a Yankee two years ago and eight of them reached base (0.2 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 1 HBP, 1 WP).

The Yankees can lose this series. That’s baseball, Suzyn. But I would be surprised if they did. They are the better team. They have an actual rotation. They have actual starting pitchers. They have the better 1-2 punch. They have Playoff Stanton. And there are only a few matchups in the league where this holds true, but the Yankees even have the managerial advantage.

9. Is it time to give Cabrera a shot in place of Jazz? Maybe give Jazz another game or two and if he doesn’t produce, try Oswaldo? – John

There’s a better chance John (who asked this question) will be given playing time over Jazz Chisholm than Cabrera.

The Yankees had endless opportunities this season to make Cabrera a starter in place of injured players and they never did, despite him hitting whenever he played. He did an outstanding job at first base in the ALDS, and even still, they sat him at time for Jon Berti and then sat him entirely for Rizzo in the ALCS. The Yankees seem to think he’s most valuable as a bench player, who can be inserted into the lineup as pinch runner or pinch hitter or defensive replacement.

As for Chisholm, he can’t suck as bad as he did in the ALDS and ALCS in the World Series. When he’s right, he can be a star, but he hasn’t looked right in the postseason. For someone who called the Royals “lucky” for winning Game 2 of the ALDS and then said the Yankees are going to win the World Series during the ALCS, he sure hasn’t done anything to help them. Chisholm is 5-for-34 with 11 strikeouts in the postseason. He’s going to continue to hit in the middle of the order, so it’s time he started hitting like someone who hits in the middle of the order.

10. Do you think the Yankees winning the World Series would have any influence at all on Soto staying with the Yankees, and/or the Yankees’ eagerness to keep him? Or do you feel winning the World Series might make Hal & Cash feel that they’d now have some currency with the fans & could let Soto walk, which I hope like hell wouldn’t be the case.  – Rich

With each win in October, the Yankees have guaranteed themselves another game of Soto being a Yankee. Now we’re at the point where we have somewhere between four and seven games guaranteed with Soto. It’s depressing to think about, but it’s hard not to think about. I think about it each time he comes to the plate, as I have for each of his plate appearances this season. I never wanted to take his being a Yankee for granted.

In terms of Soto re-signing with the Yankees, I don’t think it would have mattered if they finished in last place or missed the playoffs or lost to the Royals or were eliminated by the Guardians, and I don’t think it matters if they win or lose the World Series. Soto is going to the highest bidder whether it’s the Yankees or Mets or Giants or Mariners or Angels or anyone else.

Yankees fans seem to think there’s no way Soto will sign elsewhere. Mets fans seem to think there’s no way Steve Cohen will be outbid for him. I think there’s a number Hal Steinbrenner won’t exceed for Soto, even with the absurd amount of money coming off the Yankees’ books following this season. If the Yankees don’t win the World Series and Steinbrenner is outbid, he can say, “Well, we couldn’t win with Soto.” If the Yankees win the World Series, he would justify not re-signing him by believing he got a championship out of him, somewhere between six and seven extra games at the Stadium, postseason revenue from TV, merchandise and concessions and thinking he will have a grace period with fans now that the championship drought is over.

The Yankees make more money than any of the other 29 teams, and yet, they are middle of the pack in terms of payroll to revenue ratio. Don’t ever believe for one second the Yankees can’t afford to pay Soto whatever the asking price ends up being. There’s no market smaller than San Diego and in the last six years years, the Padres gave $340 million to Fernando Tatis, $300 million to Manny Machado, $100 million to Jose Musgrove, traded for Yu Darvish’s $21 million average annual salary and tried to give Trea Turner $342 million, and Judge $400 million after 2022 and then gave Xander Bogaerts for $280 million. If the Padres of all teams can spend the way they do, it’s disturbing to think what the Yankees could truly afford to spend compared to what they actually spend.

If Soto isn’t a Yankee in 2025, that will be it for me as a Yankees and baseball fan. If the team that generates more revenue than any other team can’t sign the player who will command more money than any other player, then what’s the point? I don’t care about Hal Steinbrenner’s bank account or financial statements, which are what they are because he inherited the biggest ATM machine in sports by being luckily born to the right parents. He didn’t do anything to become owner of the Yankees, and he has done very little since becoming the head of the franchise, a franchise he didn’t want to manage and his father didn’t want him or his siblings to run. If the Yankees win the World Series, and Soto leaves, at least I will being going out as best I can.

1. “Pay Juan Soto!” Jazz Chisholm emphatically yelled into Meredith Marakovits’ microphone as champagne and beer showered the duo in the Yankees’ clubhouse.

“I’d ask you how much, but we’ll leave that for another day,” Marakovits jokingly responded, not expecting an answer.

“$700 million!” Chisholm shouted back.

For all of the talking Chisholm has done this postseason, I finally agree with him.

Whether the Yankees end their championship drought after having now ended their World Series appearance drought or not, this can’t be it for Soto as a Yankee. There can’t only be between four and seven games left of him in pinstripes.

Like I have written many times in these Thoughts this season, if he’s not a Yankee in 2025, I will have to retire from the game. A clean break. It’s been a good three-plus decades. If he’s not a Yankee in 2025 and beyond though, I won’t be around to watch. I will learn an instrument or a new language or do whatever people who don’t watch baseball daily from late-March through October do.

Watching Soto this season has been like sitting in first class on an international flight with a cabin, personal bathroom and all-you-can-eat-and-drink options. I don’t want to go back to sitting in the last row of economy in a middle seat next to the bathroom. That’s where Yankees fans were while being forced to watch Jake Bauers, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero and Greg Allen as outfielders last season before the trade for Soto. I’m not going back to that. I will retire as a Yankees fan and baseball fan if I have to go back to that. If the team that generates the most revenue in the sport can’t sign the best available free agent in the sport, then what are we even doing?

“We need him to stay,” Giancarlo Stanton said. “He’s going to stay. We need to bring it home and then we’ll bring him home also.”

2. Soto’s 10th inning at-bat against Hunter Gaddis that ended with a three-run home run over the right-center wall was a perfect summation of Soto as a hitter. He fell behind 1-2, never panicked, fouled off three straight pitches and then on the first fastball of the seven-pitch at-bat, he sent it 402 feet to send the Yankees to the World Series.

“I’d already faced him a couple of times this series,” Soto said. “I knew everything he had, so I was just waiting for the mistake and trying to do damage.”

Jeff Francoeur on the broadcast said Stephen Vogt should walk Soto and have Gaddis face Aaron Judge in the 10th, even though it meant loading the bases. Earlier in the game, Francoeur said Vogt should walk Stanton and pitch to Chisholm. Had Francoeur been managing the Guardians in Game 5, the Yankees likely would have been shut out.

3. Because like Soto, Stanton also hit yet another clutch, mammoth home run in the sixth inning with a runner on and two outs. And to that point in the game the Yankees offense had done nothing. Nothing except have Gleyber Torres inexplicably sent home with no outs (and Judge and Stanton due up) and thrown out at the plate. Tanner Bibee had shut the Yankees out for 5 2/3 innings and had already struck Stanton out twice. Vogt figured Bibee could do it again, and when Bibee got ahead 0-2 from Stanton taking two swings as if he were blindfolded, it looked like Bibee would hand Stanton a hat trick. Instead, Stanton took a slider, curveball and changeup, and then at 3-2, crushed a hanging slider 446 feet.

“That guy’s gotten booed so many times, at the Stadium, road, everything,” Judge said. “He’s been battling some tough injuries along the way, but the guy always shows up when we need him.”

Stanton finished the ALCS with four hits in five games, all home runs. He homered in Games 1, 3, 4 and 5 leading to him being named ALCS MVP.

“This ain’t the trophy I want,” Stanton said holding his series MVP award. “I want the next one.”

4. In order to get the next one, the Yankees are going to have to clean up some things between now and Friday, starting with the baserunning gaffes that plagued them in both the ALDS and ALCS (after being an issue all year in the regular season). Whether the Yankees face the Dodgers or the Mets, they are both a far cry from the Royals and Guardians, and running into outs on the bases is something that can’t happen in the next round.

5. They’re also going to need better starts from their rotation, as they have received two quality starts in nine outings in October. Here are the starting pitching lines from the ALDS and ALCS.

ALDS Game 1 (Gerrit Cole): 5 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR
ALDS Game 2 (Carlos Rodon): 3.2 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 HR
ALDS Game 3 (Clarke Schmidt): 4.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K
ALDS Game 4 (Cole): 7 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 K
ALCS Game 1 (Rodon): 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 1 HR
ALCS Game 2 (Cole): 4.1 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 4 K
ALCS Game 3 (Schmidt): 4.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R , 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR
ALCS Game 4 (Luis Gil): 4 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 3 K
ALCS Game 5 (Rodon): 4.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K

On paper, the Yankees will have the rotation advantage against both potential World Series opponents. They need to make ensure that advantage happens in actuality. We just saw what happens when your starters fail to give you length in a postseason series: it exhausts the bullpen and forces pitchers like Mark Leiter Jr. and Tim Mayza into games. It also makes the elite relievers lose their eliteness by pitching nearly every day and facing the same hitters repeatedly in a short span. The rotation has to be better.

6. The offense will also have to start coming through with runners in scoring position. The lineups of the Dodgers and Mets are vastly superior to that of the Royals and Guardians. Relying on two- and three-run home runs nightly to cover up offensive issues likely won’t be enough. Leadoff doubles need to score. Runners on third with less than two outs need to score.

7. Boone will have to be wiser. No stealing outs. No early pinch running for important bats only to not attempt to steal. No not starting runners with double play candidates at the plate. Only using Leiter Jr. Mayza and Marcus Stroman in emergency and desperate situations. Remembering that Clay Holmes is an untrustworthy risk. Not needing to bat a lefty between Judge and Stanton. These are all very simple changes.

8. When it comes to Boone, I’m happy he finally got a team to the World Series and with four more wins he can stay as long he wants (as if he isn’t already going to be able to stay as long he wants just for getting to the World Series). It doesn’t mean I won’t be critical of him in the future even if the Yankees win the World Series and it doesn’t rewrite history and change what happened from 2018 through 2022 under his watch, but I will finally respect him if he makes logical choices in the World Series and the Yankees win it all.

9. After the final out of the 2017 ALCS, I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t angry, mad or disappointed. The Yankees weren’t expected to make the playoffs that season and instead they came within a win of the World Series. That surprising, memorable October run saw them overcome a three-run deficit in the wild-card game and an 0-2 series deficit in the ALDS, and they nearly overcome an 0-2 series deficit in the ALCS. They had a young, talented core with budding stars and were less than two months away from acquiring Stanton. I wasn’t sad because it seemed like getting to the World Series was about to become the norm again after an eight-year hiatus.

It never happened.

The core got older, underachieved, became oft-injured and failed miserably. They lost both home games in the 2018 ALDS, hit .214/.289/.383 in the 2019 ALCS, scored one run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS, got run out of Fenway Park in the 2021 wild-card game, were swept in the 2022 ALCS after scoring nine total runs and then missed the postseason entirely in 2023 with the franchise’s worst record in three decades.

Seven years after that Game 7 loss in Houston when I thought going to the World Series would happen as frequently as it once did, the Yankees have finally reached it. Fifteen years after winning Game 6 over the Phillies, the Yankees are back in the World Series.

10. Getting to the World Series isn’t enough. After taking for granted the appearances from 1996-2003, I learned my lesson from 2004-2008. The last 15 years have been a painfully excruciating lesson in the realization of how hard it is to get there. Once you’re there you better win because you don’t know when you’ll be back.

Seven down, four to go.

1. A four-run lead over the 2024 Guardians should be an automatic win. Their offense isn’t any good, finishing seventh-best in the American League. They were shut out in two of five games against the Tigers in the ALDS. They scored five runs total in the first two games of this ALCS. They have no depth, two of the worst regular bats in the league in their lineup and feature one true star. They are built around making contact, putting the ball in play, bloop and infield hits, stealing bases and their league-best bullpen. And when you get to that league-best bullpen and have a 6-2 lead with 12 outs to go, that should be more than enough to secure a win.

It wasn’t.

“No lead is safe,” Giancarlo Stanton said after Game 4. Well, some leads should be. The Yankees’ lead in Game 4 should have been, if not for their manager.

2. A day after the Yankees got to the best reliever in the game for three runs, they got to the best setup man in the game for three more. In a game in which Aaron Boone managed like it was a getaway day game at the end of a long road trip in August, Stephen Vogt managed like he had never managed a game before. With runners on second and third and one out and Stanton due up against Cade Smith in the sixth, Vogt decided to let Smith face Stanton. The alternative was to intentionally walk Stanton and bring in the dominant left-handed Tim Herrin to face Anthony Rizzo with the bases loaded. Vogt let Smith pitch to Stanton and Stanton made him pay, hitting a mammoth three-run home run to left-center field to extend the Yankees lead from 3-2 to 6-2, passing Babe Ruth in home runs per postseason at-bats in the process. After the home run, Vogt went to Herrin, and he struck out Rizzo.

It was a foolish mistake. A mistake that can’t happen in October. But it was a mistake made by the Guardians manager. I don’t care about the Guardians. I care about the Yankees, and the Yankees manager made enough mistakes in Game 4.

3. Boone’s litany of mistakes began with removing Luis Gil after four innings. When you know you have limited options in the bullpen and that your elite relief options are exhausted, you can’t only get four innings from your starting pitcher. How are they going to get 15 outs? I thought after Gil was removed.

“We had a long way to go to the finish line, and frankly, I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to get there,” Boone said.

Oh, you weren’t sure where you were getting five innings of outs from your bullpen from? You had me fooled!

In a vacuum, removing Gil when he did made sense because the top of the order was due up for a third time and the top of the order had plated both Guardians runs the first two times they faced Gil. But the postseason isn’t operated in vacuum, and by removing Gil and asking the bullpen to get five innings worth of outs, the path to victory would be littered with obstacles.

The first arm out of the bullpen was Tim Hill for the fifth to preserve a one-run lead. Fine move. Hill has become at worst the Yankees’ fourth-best reliever. He got through the top of the order on 17 pitches.

I would have gone back to Hill for the sixth given the supposed limited resources available, but Boone decided to go with Jake Cousins. OK. Cousins was good for the Yankees all season and had only appeared in one postseason game to date. He’s rested and when he’s on, he’s great. By the time Cousins entered, Stanton had hit the home run off of Smith, so Cousins wasn’t going into the high-leverage situation Hill was faced with — preserving a one-run lead against the top of the order — as he would be facing 5-6-7 with a four-run lead. Cousins pitched around two baserunners to keep it a four-run game. Nine outs to go.

How would Boone get those nine outs? You would have to think both Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver would be unavailable after having pitched in every postseason game to date and after having been lit up the night before. You would think Tommy Kahnle would be asked to pitch at least the ninth, and if only given the ninth, who would get the other six outs?

Boone sent Cousins back out for the seventh and it was immediately first and third with no outs. A jam, sure, but with a four-run lead, the lead couldn’t be blown with one swing of the bat. With two on, no one out and the Guardians’ 2-3-4 hitters due up, Boone called on Holmes.

4. Why Holmes against the heart of the order? It must have been because Weaver was unavailable. Except he wasn’t. Weaver ended up warming up in the ninth. So if Weaver was actually available, why not Weaver or Kahnle in that spot against 2-3-4 than Holmes?

Aside from Holmes’ strong ALDS and his appearances in Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS, he had been a disaster for months, culminating in his removal from the closer role right before Labor Day. He had unraveled just over 24 hours earlier when he took the loss in Game 3, throwing middle-middle sinkers, whether because of the reversion to his regular-season self or exhaustion from his postseason workload. Cousins had thrown 27 pitches in the game, typically a lot for a three-to-four-out reliever, but he also had pitched once in three weeks. He would never be more rested.

Again, in a vacuum, it made sense to take Cousins out, but a vacuum doesn’t account for the options remaining: an exhausted Holmes and Weaver, a pitcher who wasn’t on the ALDS roster and was just added to the postseason roster that morning in Mark Leiter Jr. and a pitcher who also wasn’t on the ALDS roster and hasn’t been good since May in Marcus Stroman. And those seemed to be the only options because Boone was married to Kahnle in the ninth, idiotically managing for set innings rather than the situation at hand. This is why Gil should have stayed and/or Hill should have thrown more than one inning.

If Boone was willing to use Holmes in the seventh, why didn’t he just start the seventh, clean with no one on? Was Boone trying to steal outs yet again? You bet he was. He said as much after the game, saying he wanted to see if he could “steal a couple of outs” with Cousins. We’re in the seventh year of Boone managing this way.

Holmes looked every bit as bad as he did the night before and really since mid-May. He allowed back-to-back doubles to Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor and walked Lane Thomas. He faced four batters and three reached. He allowed both of his inherited runners from Cousins to score and gave up a run of his own. A truly remarkable performance. When he left the mound, the 6-2 lead had become a 6-5 lead.

Leiter Jr. relieved Holmes. Brian Cashman’s prized pitching deadline pickup pitched to a 4.98 ERA in 21 appearances with the Yankees, allowing six home runs and 39 baserunners in 21 2/3 innings. He was left off of both the ALDS and ALCS rosters, and had just been added hours earlier due to a calf injury for Ian Hamilton.

Leiter Jr. entered with the Yankees clinging to a one-run lead with runners on first and second and one out and Game 3 hero Jhonkensy Noel due up. Noel hit a ball off Leiter Jr. that the camera led you to believe was going to clear Progressive Field and Lake Erie and land in Canada. Instead, it was caught at the wall by Alex Verdugo. Leiter Jr. got the two remaining outs of the inning to hold the lead at 6-5.

The lead was still 6-5 when Boone sent Leiter Jr. back out for the eighth. After a leadoff double to the light-hitting Bo Naylor, Leiter Jr. got two outs before allowing the tying run to score on a defensive disaster between he and Rizzo on a ball back to the mound.

5. At the time, the game felt over. The Guardians were going to pitch Emmanuel Clase in the ninth, and likely the 10th as well and the Yankees had no one left to turn to except for Kahnle. How would they prevent the Guardians from scoring for multiple innings until Clase was removed because certainly after his Game 3 meltdown, there was no way he was going to be anything other than unhittable like he was for six months.

As expected, Vogt went to Clase, and Rizzo, one of the goats from the eighth-inning defensive miscue, greeted him with a single. Jon Berti pinch ran for Rizzo and raced to third on a line-drive single by Anthony Volpe. (Volpe also had a big hit off Clase in Cleveland in April. Volpe has a knack for getting hits off some of the game’s best relievers. In this postseason, he has looked as good as he did for the first two weeks of the regular season before becoming an automatic out for the next six months. Where has this version of Volpe been since the second week of April?) Berti scored on a Guardians-like infield roller from Verdugo and Volpe scored after Gleyber Torres lined another base hit off of Clase. The Yankees had gotten to Clase on back-to-back nights and had built a two-run lead off of him. But they still needed to get three outs.

6. Boone went to Kahnle for the ninth. Kahnle had finished his work in Game 2 of the series with four straight changeups. In Game 3, he threw 26 pitches, all changeups. He had thrown 30 straight changeups to Guardians hitters and they had nothing to show for it. They would be hunting the pitch in the ninth inning of Game 4.

Kahnle got a favorable strike 3 call to sit down Thomas on six straight changeups, but walked Noel on six more changeups. Andres Gimenez floated the second straight changeup he saw from Kahnle into the outfield to put runners on and first and second with one out. Bo Naylor flew out on the first pitch — a changeup — he saw and Kahnle got Brayan Rocchio to hit a ground ball to second on the third pitch of his at-bat (which featured only changeups). Berti, now playing second, booted the ball initially, but recovered to throw out Rocchio and end the game. Kahnle threw 18 pitches, all changeups. Adding to his Games 2 and 3 totals, he has now thrown 44 straight changeups to the Guardians and they have failed to score.

7. “Obviously last night was a really though loss,” Boone said. “Whatever happened today — win, lose or draw — there’s no doubt in my mind we’d come out ready to roll.”

(Boone does know you can’t “draw” in baseball, right? What are you talking about?)

The Yankees came out ready to roll thanks to Juan Soto who gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead before an out was recorded with a first-inning home run. Each win this postseason means another game of Soto in pinstripes. I’m not ready for his time as a Yankee to end. I never want it to end. Like I have written many times in these Thoughts this season, if he’s not a Yankee in 2025, I will have to retire from the game. A clean break. It’s been a good three-plus decades. If he’s not a Yankee in 2025 and beyond though, I won’t be around to watch. I will learn an instrument or a new language or do whatever people who don’t watch baseball daily from late-March through October do.

8. The Yankees are one win away from the World Series. It’s the furthest any team during Boone’s tenure has gone, surpassing their previous-best of being two wins away in the 2019 ALCS.

“As far as I’m concerned, we haven’t done nothing,” Stanton said. “We’ve got to get it done tomorrow and on to the next.”

Stanton has always said the right thing as a Yankee. His Yankees career has been frustrating due to the unbelievable amount of injuries and missed games, only made more frustrating by seeing what he’s capable of when healthy, like we have seen this October. He’s right, the Yankees haven’t done anything. Being up 3-1 doesn’t guarantee you anything. Just ask Ramirez, whose Guardians were up 3-1 in the 2016 World Series and held a lead in Game 5 before losing that game and the next two and the World Series.

Stanton needs to be batting cleanup for the rest of the postseason. I don’t care who is starting for the opposition and what arm they throw with. Stop forcing lefties into the lineup to separate Judge and Stanton. It was bad enough when Boone was doing it for years with Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks, and it was equally bad when he stuck with Wells in that spot for all of September and the first seven postseason games. It’s inexplicable that now Jazz Chisholm is there.

9. Carlos Rodon needs to be great in Game 5, the way he was in Game 1. End the series in five and get five days off. Don’t send it to a Game 6 and don’t send it back to New York. A Game 6 takes Gerrit Cole out of the equation for Game 1 of the World Series on Friday.

I don’t know what Boone’s plan is for the non-Rodon outs in Game 5. Weaver is the only non-Stroman reliever not named Tim Mayza who didn’t pitch in Game 4. I would think he would be available for six outs, especially if the Yankees lead and a win allows them five days off. I think at best Rodon can give six innings since he has pitched seven innings once (July 22) since mid-June. Maybe he will surprise us. Maybe he will earn some more of that $162 million and go seven and hand it off to Weaver for the last two.

10. “This team always bounces back and answers the right way,” Judge said. “This was definitely a big win.”

Of course it was a big win. It’s the difference between now needing to win one of three games to go to the World Series or having Rodon start with the possibility of trailing in the series with a Game 5 loss. As for Judge’s comment about the team “always bouncing back,” umm, do you not remember mid-June to early September?

With one more win, we can all forget about mid-June to early September. With five more wins, we can all finally heal from the Boone era. We can somewhat forgive Boone for the last six years of ineptitude and Cashman for the billions of dollars and thousands of games and hours wasted over the last 15 years.

Six down, five to go.

The Yankees dropped their first game of the ALCS in a 7-5, 10-inning loss to the Guardians.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. One out away. One out away from a 3-0 series lead in the ALCS. That’s what the Yankees were until they weren’t.

After staging an improbable comeback off the so-called best closer in baseball with an Aaron Judge two-run home run, the Yankees then took the lead off that closer when Giancarlo Stanton followed with a home run of his own. The Yankees were six outs away from being a win away from the World Series.

Those six outs became one when Luke Weaver turned a 1-4-3 double play in the ninth. But after a long double high off the tall left-center wall from Lane Thomas, the 23-year-old pinch-hitting rookie Jhonkensy Noel destroyed a 1-0 changeup, sending it deep into the Cleveland night to tie the game. Up two with two outs and no one on in the bottom of the ninth turned into a tie game.

It was a stunning moment. A true moment of disbelief. But the Yankees still had a chance to put the Guardians on the brink of elimination. They would just have to do something they have never done in the Aaron Boone era: win an extra-inning postseason game.

2. They had their chance. They put two on in the 10th, but stranded them both. And once that happened every Yankees fan knew they were in trouble. The only arms left in the bullpen were Clay Holmes, Jake Cousins and Marcus Stroman. And if the bullpen was able to send it to the 11th, Alex Verdugo and Austin Wells would be due up. After failing to win in the 10th, the Yankees’ next best chance of winning would be if the game would last until a 12th inning.

It didn’t.

Holmes got the ball for the 10th and allowed a leadoff single. After retiring the next two batters he threw a sinker that sunk in the middle of the strike zone and David Fry hit it a mile for a two-run, walk-off home run. Like Weaver, Holmes had been so good in the postseason. But unfortunately for the duo, the clock struck midnight on their impressive run over the last two weeks.

“A loss is a loss,” Stanton said. “An L is an L. By one, two, eight, whatever.”

3. Game 3 was a game of reversion. Weaver reverted into the guy from late June to mid-August who was bitten by the long ball. Holmes reverted into the guy who led the league in blown saves and spent the summer creating spectacular meltdowns. Wells continued his reversion into the early-season version of himself striking out on high fastballs yet again in his only two plate appearances. Anthony Volpe, who has looked so shockingly good this October, reverted back into his regular-season self in his 10th-inning plate appearance, chasing pitches out of the zone (something he hadn’t done all postseason until then) with a chance to give the Yankees an extra-inning lead. Anthony Rizzo reverted back into the untrustworthy glove he was from Opening Day through mid-June when he got hurt. Clarke Schmidt reverted back into the pitcher who can’t get lefties out and can’t provide any length. Aaron Judge reverted back into his MVP self with his two-run home run off Clase. Stanton reverted back into his old self by hitting that home run off Clase and by being able to foul off 100-mph fastballs to extend the at-bat to hit the home run. And for all the praise Boone has received this postseason for “pushing the right buttons,” he managed the game like it was the 13th game in 13 day in the middle of June, reverting back into the manager we have grown to know over seven years.

4. To an outsider, Boone’s bullpen decisions were as stunning as Noel’s home run. To Yankees fans who have watched his every move since Opening Day 2018, they were the norm. Going to Tim Mayza in the sixth inning of a one-run game in the postseason? Alarming, but not shocking. Staying with for a second inning after he allowed a run to score? Appalling, but unsurprising. Allowing Mayza to put the leadoff guy on in that second before going to Tommy Kahnle? Irresponsible, but expected. If Boone was willing to use Kahnle in the seventh inning, why didn’t he just let him start the inning clean? Why did he try to steal an out and steal it with Mayza of all pitchers? Thankfully, Kahnle did his job and then some, getting five outs across the seventh and eighth innings by throwing 26 pitches, all of which were changeups.

5. At some point Weaver and Holmes were going to get dinged up. The duo has appeared in all seven postseason games. It’s unsustainable and also unfair to ask them to get stressful, high-leverage outs every single game against the same most feared bats of a series opponent over and over. At some point the Yankees need to win a game that doesn’t have everyone on the edge of their seat up until the final out. But with the offense being so inconsistent and so top heavy and so incapable of hitting with runners in scoring position, there won’t be any easy wins.

6. The Yankees don’t make anything easy with their baserunning either. After taking an early 1-0 lead in the second inning in Game 3 on an unlikely RBI single from Jose Trevino, Trevino’s big hit was undone by his foolish mistake of getting picked off of first base. It didn’t even take two full innings for the Yankees’ idiotic baserunning to rear its ugly head. I think I’ll let the call from John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman on the play take it from here:

John: “The throw … and they picked off the runner. How do you like that?

Suzyn: “Again.”

John: “Shortstop runs him back … first baseman makes the tag … Where was Trevino going? I’m amazed. I said they had to play a clean game, already it’s dirty.”

Suzyn: “This has been a problem for the Yankees. Someone’s just not paying attention.”

John: “Oh that’s awful and also because Trevino is really slow. Where is he running to?”

No one makes outs on the bases like the Yankees. In the ninth, Volpe was on first and Alex Verdugo hit a ball into the second-base hole. Volpe rounded second thinking he was going to go first to third with ease, but not thinking that the Gold Glover Andres Gimenez was playing second. Gimenez had kept the ball in the infield and the Guardians had Volpe in a rundown between second and third. Fortunately, Jose Ramirez dropped the ball in the rundown when trying to tag Volpe at third and he ended up being safe. Verdugo was able to reach second on the play and Gleyber Torres followed by sacrifice flying Volpe in to give the Yankees a much-needed insurance run. Or so we thought.

7. The Yankees are going to need more than relying on late-game home run heroics to win. If they are going to be so sloppy on the bases and so sloppy on defense then they are going to need to start getting hits with runners in scoring position. In Game 3, they were another abysmal 1-for-8.

So far in October, the Yankees’ wins have been aided by bases-loaded walks (ALDS Game 1), Stanton heroics (ALDS Game 3), the Kansas City wind (ALDS Game 4), wild pitches (ALCS Game 1) and errors (ALCS Game 2). When their crappy AL Central opponents aren’t booting balls, throwing 57-foot pitches and the Midwest wind isn’t swirling, it hasn’t been enough. The offense hasn’t been good and the starting rotation has been a debacle with just two good starts (ALDS Game 4 and ALCS Game 1) through seven games.

The Yankees still control the series. They are still in a much better place than the Guardians. They have the series lead. They have the better offense. They have the better rotation. If Weaver is compromised then so is Clase. The Yankees have the starting pitching advantage in Game 4.

8. Luis Gil hasn’t started since September 28. He has pitched 11 innings since September 17. Hopefully, the layoff has given him time to rest and improve on the fatigue he was experiencing down the stretch. But on the other end of that hope is the fact that Gil hasn’t done well when pitching after extended layoffs. There’s also the fear he will be so amped up to make his postseason debut that he will overthrow early, miss his spots and issue free passes the way Luis Severino did in the 2017 wild-card game. Even still, Gil is a much better Game 4 option than the Guardians’ Gavin Williams, who also hasn’t pitched since September 22 and has thrown 10 2/3 innings since September 17.

9. The Yankees had created their moment in Game 3 and it slipped away. The type of moment that propels a team to a pennant. The last time the Yankees won the pennant, they had that moment in Game 2 of the ALDS when Alex Rodriguez tied the game in the bottom of the ninth against Joe Nathan before winning on a Mark Teixeira walk-off home run in the 11th. They had a second moment in Game 2 of that season’s ALCS when Rodriguez again came through, hitting a game-tying home run off Brian Fuentes. Let’s hope their moment ends up being Game 4 and that Game 3 doesn’t end up being the Guardians’ moment.

“Thankfully, this wasn’t Game 7,” Rizzo said. “This is a series.”

10. The Yankees can put an end to the Guardians’ and city of Cleveland’s season-saving celebration that is taking place as you’re reading this and will continue all the way until the first pitch of Game 4. The celebration needs to end before the series is tied. Game 4 is the difference between putting the Guardians on the brink and turning the ALCS into a best-of-3. It’s the difference between needing to win one of three to advance to the World Series and needing Carlos Rodon to come up big to avoid leaving Cleveland trailing in the series.

The Yankees were oh so close to being six down with five to go. Instead, it’s still five down with six to go.

1. The same situation. That’s what the Yankees had and Aaron Judge faced in the first inning of Game 2 of the ALCS. Gleyber Torres on second, Juan Soto on first and no outs. A chance to break open a game as soon as it started.

The same situation took place in Game 1 of the ALDS, Game 2 of the ALDS and Game 1 of the ALCS and each time the Yankees failed to capitalize. Between Judge, Austin Wells and Giancarlo Stanton, Torres and Soto were stranded all three times. In Game 2 of the ALCS, Judge failed to get the job done again, but Gold Glove finalist Brayan Rocchio did it for him.

2. Judge popped up the second pitch he saw from Tanner Bibee and as I looked up in the Bronx sky to track it, it was so high it looked like it may leave the atmosphere. I glanced back to the field to watch Rocchio try to position himself to catch it, battling the wind and shuffling his feet toward second base. The crowd’s roar began to ascend as the ball began to descend and after what felt like minutes of hang time, the ball hit the side of Rocchio’s glove and Torres raced home, Soto ran to second and Judge stood on first. The Yankees had a 1-0 lead, still had two on with no outs and Bibee had already thrown 11 pitches.

Would this be the game the Yankees broke the game open in the first inning and coasted to their first lopsided victory of the postseason? It would not. Wells struck out and Stanton flew out to right.

Leaving baserunners on has become a staple of the Yankees’ postseason. They seemingly have multiple baserunners in every inning of every game and fail to cash in unless runs are walked in or there are wild pitches and errors. They’re still waiting for that big hit. That big hit that can create separation on the scoreboard and take some of the pressure off of their starting pitcher.

3. The Yankees didn’t necessarily get the big hit for Gerrit Cole in Game 2, but they did stake him to a 3-0 lead and he couldn’t make it through the fifth inning. Cole unraveled in the fifth inning, loaded the bases without recording an out, allowed a run on a sacrifice fly and reloaded the bases. Four of the five batters he reached in the fifth reached as he allowed 10 baserunners in 4 1/3 innings.

“I lost a little bit of the zone,” Cole said, “a few too many walks again.”

It was a putrid performance from the Yankees’ “ace” and his second performance like that in the postseason. A three-run lead against the Guardians offense should be enough for Cole to give his team at least six innings. Leaving in the fifth after being unable to get an out in the sixth in Game 1 of the ALDS doesn’t exactly exude confidence in Cole if the Yankees reach the World Series to face the Dodgers’ or Mets’ offense. Thankfully, for Cole, that Kyle Isbel ball died on the track in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the ALDS in Kansas City, or the Yankees may not still be playing and the conversation around being unable to perform in the playoffs would be focused on Cole and not Judge.

4. Judge finally hit a ball over the wall in his sixth game of the 2024 playoffs, sending a two-run shot to Monument Park in the seventh inning off of Pedro Avila.

“I was excited it went out,” Judge said. “You never know on these windy, chilly nights what the ball is going to do when you hit it to center here. The ghosts were pulling it out there to Monument Park, that’s for sure.”

The two runs were two much-needed insurance runs as the Yankees’ lead had dwindled from three to one and back up to two before that home run.

“It’s always a matter of time with Aaron,” said Boone. “It’s definitely good to see him put one in the seats and really give us a cushion there.”

It was the first “game-opening” hit of the postseason for the Yankees as it put them up four with six outs to go.

5. Those six outs came from Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver. Kahnle got seven outs in the game in relief of Tim Hill, who got five. Hill was the unsung hero of the game, getting his five crucial outs across the sixth and seventh innings. When he entered the game, the Guardians had cut their deficit to one run and Hill kept it right there, allowing the Yankees to increase that deficit to two in the sixth and four in the seventh. The White Sox release the 34-year-old, left-handed Hill on June 18 and the Yankees signed him on June 20. He pitched to a 2.05 ERA across 35 games in the regular season for the Yankees and has gotten nine big outs in the playoffs so far.

6. The bullpen as a whole has been outstanding in October, especially Clay Holmes, and obviously, Luke Weaver. Holmes has been pitching like the guy Aaron Boone and the Yankees didn’t want to remove from the closer role all season despite the mounting blown saves. Weaver has pitched like Mariano Rivera 2.0. The only blemish from either has been the solo home run that Jose Ramirez hit off of Weaver in the ninth inning in Game 2, which served as a harmless, meaningless run. Well, unless that’s the swing Ramirez needed to get going. But if it is, hopefully Judge’s home run was the swing needed to get him going, which would negate Ramirez starting hit like he’s capable of.

7. Jazz Chisholm picked up his first hit since his “lucky” comments following Game 2 of the ALDS. Anthony Volpe added a pair of hits and also walked as he has looked like the player of the first two weeks of the regular season that then disappeared for the rest of the regular season. Torres had three hits, Anthony Rizzo had two and Alex Verdugo had an RBI double. Only two Yankees failed to get a hit: Stanton, who is more than excused, and Wells, who again, needs to be removed from the cleanup spot.

8. I understand Aaron Boone is superstitious in not wanting to change the batting order while the team is winning, but Wells batting cleanup isn’t why they are winning. Hopefully, Wells is moved down in the lineup in Game 3 (if he plays) and until further notice, considering he has been abysmal since the end of August.

9. Clarke Schmidt gets the ball in Game 3 against veteran left-hander Matthew Boyd. Boyd didn’t allow a run in 6 2/3 innings over two starts against the Tigers in the ALDS and racked up 10 strikeouts. But that was the Tigers. Judge has a home run off Boyd in six plate appearances, Soto has one off of him in two and Volpe has a double off of him in two plate appearances, so the Yankees have had success against him in limited opportunities.

10. “We’ll got there and try to play like we didn’t do anything here,” Torres said, “just the same mentality.”

The Yankees have yet to play to the best of their abilities in the postseason, and they’re 5-1. They haven’t been hitting the ball out of the park with any frequency, leave nearly every baserunner on, have gotten two good starts from the rotation in six games and are running into outs on the bases. It would be welcoming to see what they’re capable of when they’re hitting with runners on, getting strong starting pitching and not making foolish baserunning mistakes.

After living through and attending the 2004 ALCS, I would never say a win in Game 3 in Cleveland would mean the series is over, but the 2024 Guardians aren’t the 2004 Red Sox, and a win in Game 3 would put the Yankees one win away from winning the pennant. The last time they were that close to winning the pennant was in 2017. The last time they won the pennant was 2009. Two down, two to go in the ALCS. Five down, six to go overall.

1. The Yankees gave Carlos Rodon a six-year, $162 million deal to pitch the way he did in Game 1 of the ALCS. (They also gave him all of that money to pitch well in the ALDS, but we can forget about that for now.) Rodon completely stifled the Guardians for five innings and left the game after allowing just one run on three hits over six innings.

“The goal was to just stay in control of what I can do, physically and emotionally,” Rodon said. “I thought I executed that well tonight.”

Rodon sounded like a completely different person from the pitcher who last week talked about his upcoming Yankees postseason debut and how he will control his emotions by saying, “It can propel me to very high highs and super low lows” and then followed that comment by acting maniacal on the mound.

Game 1 of the ALCS was the kind of performance every Yankees fan hoped to see in Rodon’s start in Game 2 of the ALDS, but Rodon was so emotionally, physically and mentally unstable in that outing that he let his stuff he described as “electric” fade once the slightest bit of adversity hit. In Game 1 of the ALCS, he kept his composure, didn’t walk around the infield after each strikeout with the demeanor and attitude of a professional wrestler, got 25 swings and misses and pitched the Yankees to a 1-0 series lead.

“He was very aware of what the last outing ended up being, how the emotions got away from him early,” Matt Blake said. “You could tell he was trying to stay steady and be neutral about it and just keep collecting outs.”

2. Rodon collected 18 outs and the Yankees’ offense clogged the base paths to score three of their five runs. No one loves traffic more than Aaron Boone and the Yankees’ offense made the bases look like the West Side Highway at 5:00 on a Friday against Alex Cobb and the Guardians’ bullpen. The Yankees put two on in the first, two on in the second, five on in the third and two on in the fourth. But the same way the Yankees failed to hit with runners in scoring position in the ALDS (and the same way they have failed to hit with runners in scoring position in every postseason of the last 15 years), they failed to do so again in Game 1.

Thank God for Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton and wild pitches. Soto gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a solo home run to lead off the third. It was the most predictable home run of all time as Soto entered the game 7-for-11 in his career against Cobb and then proceeded to single and homer off the righty.

“I was just locked in on that pitch,” Soto said of his home run. “He showed me the pitch three times, so I thought he wanted to get that pitch and land it, and I was ready for it.”

The Yankees managed to score two runs on wild pitches in the third as well, plated a fourth run on an Aaron Judge sacrifice fly in the fourth and added a fifth when Stanton hit a long home run off the back wall of the Guardians’ bullpen in the seventh.

Through five postseason games, the Yankees are still searching for that big hit that blows open a game. In Game 1 of the ALDS, they used bases-loaded walks to beat the Royals, lost Game 2 when they left a small village on base, won Game 3 on the back of Stanton and won Game 4 with only three runs. On Monday, they needed two wild pitches in the same inning to increase their one-run lead to three. I don’t know how much longer they can rely on odd and unusual ways to score runs and win games and I don’t want to find out.

3. Game 1 never felt in doubt. Not when Judge, Austin Wells and Stanton left Gleyber Torres and Soto on in the first. Not when the Yankees stranded two more in the second. Certainly not after the Yankees jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the third, made it 4-0 in the fourth and 5-1 after seven. But after all of the missed opportunities throughout the game (the Yankees were 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position), there was something in the back of my mind telling me they may regret it. Because through seven innings, it felt easy. A little too easy.

4. Boone made sure it wouldn’t be easy. After Rodon gave him six innings of one-run ball and Clay Holmes mowed down the middle of the order on 14 pitches in the seventh, the pitching formula and plan was unfolding exactly as desired: Rodon for six then Holmes, Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver each for one. Unfortunately, Boone deviated from the plan.

With a four-run lead and six outs to go, Boone decided to not go to Kahnle for the eighth, opting instead for Tim Hill. Why? I wish I knew. Actually, I’m glad I don’t know since I don’t want to know what goes on in the head of Boone when he makes decisions like that. It could have been because the Yankees had a four-run lead instead of a three-run lead. It could have been because Boone wanted to try to steal outs with Hill in Game 1, so he could have an even-more-rested Kahnle in Game 2. Whatever the reason, it was foolish, and for the first time all night, the Guardians had life.

5. Hill allowed three consecutive one-out singles and a run to score before being pulled. When he left the mound, the Guardians had runners at first and third and one out. They would have the chance to cut their now three-run deficit even more, and barring a double play, would have two cracks at tying the game with one swing with one of those cracks going to Jose Ramirez.

Boone’s plan blew up because he couldn’t then go to Kahnle to relieve Hill. Not with the Guardians threatening with the tying run at the plate. Now he had to go to his best arm in Weaver to get six outs instead of the planned three. Weaver stranded the two baserunners, retired Ramirez and pitched around a leadoff walk in the ninth to close out the game and save Boone from what could have been a disastrous loss to open the series. Boone needs to be better. He was able to get away with that decision because it’s the Guardians. If the Yankees are to advance, a decision like that against the Dodgers or Mets could be the season. Boone needs to change his thinking quickly.

6. He also needs to change the lineup for Game 2. Austin Wells can’t bat cleanup anymore. Wells was awesome from the end of April through the end of August, but he hasn’t been a cleanup-worthy hitter for six weeks now. He can’t serve as Judge’s protection. He can’t keep coming up in important spots and not coming through. He’s likely tired from his first first full major-league season and the fact he played nearly every day once Jose Trevino went down during the season and then had to play nearly every day once Trevino returned because the Yankees were battling the Orioles in September for the division. Take some of the pressure off of him, let him focus on catching and move him down. Move Stanton to fourth, Jazz Chisholm to fifth and Wells to sixth. It’s time. It’s more than time.

7. It’s also time for Chisholm to start hitting. Chisholm has reached base once (via a walk) since his “lucky” comments after Game 2 of the ALDS. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in Game 1.

8. Anthony Rizzo looked better than expected at the plate in his return and postseason debut (singling in his first at-bat and later walking), however, his misplay of a ground ball in the eighth inning can’t happen. (Oswaldo Cabrera and Jon Berti make that play.) Rizzo was oddly pulled from the game for the ninth with Cabrera taking over first base. Boone said Rizzo was “physically and emotionally spent,” but I have no idea what that means. How is Boone measuring someone being emotionally spent? Did Rizzo ask to come out of the game? Were his fingers bothering him? Boone said Rizzo is expected to start Game 2, but who knows. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Rizzo out of the lineup given Boone’s history of saying one thing and having the complete opposite thing happen the following day.

9. With the Game 1 win, the Yankees need to just play at least .500 baseball over the six remaining games of the series against a team they’re 5-2 against this season to advance to the World Series for the first time since 2009. It’s hard not to get excited about that realization and think ahead, but the Guardians have been a pesky problem in the past. The Yankees needed a full series of games to eliminate them in 2022 despite being the superior team then as well. And in that 2022 ALDS matchup, the Yankees won Game 1 with similar ease and had an early lead in Game 2 before dropping that game and Game 3. For as easy as Game 1 felt, I doubt the Guardians will make it that easy each game.

10. “There’s still three to get,” Stanton said. “We know this is good, but in our eyes, we haven’t done nothing yet.”

They’re three wins away from doing something, something this group has never done and with Gerrit Cole pitching at home in Game 2 on Tuesday, they’re in a great position to be two wins away.

Four down, seven to go.

1. I had an uneasy feeling going into Game 4. I feared the Yankees offense may not show up or Gerrit Cole would lay an egg or Bobby Witt would finally start hitting and Aaron Judge wouldn’t or regular-season Clay Holmes would his rear his ugly head at the most inopportune time, or some combination of all. A loss in Game 4 would mean a winner-take-all Game 5 on Saturday in the Bronx with Carlos Rodon starting against strikeout lead Cole Ragans. Thankfully, that game won’t take place.

It won’t take place because Gleyber Torres doubled on the first pitch of the game from Michael Wacha, Juan Soto singled him in two pitches later, the Yankees took a 1-0 lead and never looked back.

2. I haven’t liked Michael Wacha since he was a 22-year-old rookie pitching in the 2013 World Series for the Cardinals. That postseason, after allowing one earned runs in 21 innings across three starts in the NLDS and NLCS, he pooped his pants against the Red Sox in the World Series and essentially served as the commissioner in handing them the Commissioner’s Trophy. Wacha got blasted for nine baserunners and six runs in 3 2/3 innings in the clinching Game 6. I will never forgive him for that performance and because of that, clinching the ALDS against the Royals with him taking the loss made it that much sweeter.

3. Like Wacha against the Red Sox in that World Series, I pooped my pants a little in the seventh inning when Kyle Isbel sent that 1-0 pitch from Cole to the right-field wall in what resulted in the third out of the inning rather than a game-tying home run. The ball would have been out on just about any other night in Kansas City if not for the wind, and it would have been out in 24 parks in the league. At Yankee Stadium, that ball is in the second deck into Section 205.

For such an important postseason game with the opportunity to clinch and advance on the line, once the Yankees got that early lead, the remainder of the game seemed like a formality. Cole was dialed in, the offense did just enough (their motto) and the combination of Holmes and the unhittable Luke Weaver was perfect in the eighth and ninth innings. Outside of that one swing from Isbel, the Royals were never really in it, as they only had two runners reach second base all game.

4. The Yankees did just enough to beat the Royals in four games. They got one great start (Game 4) and three lousy ones from their rotation. After Game 1, they never scored more than three runs in a game. They hit three home runs in the entire series. Their two superstars finished with OPS of .746 and .620. They drew 27 walks in four games and barely did anything with them. It was as if the Yankees knew they could coast in a class they were overqualified for and do just enough to get by and pass and advance to the next grade.

“Even though we didn’t score a ton of runs, I felt like we had a lot of tough, heavy at-bats that we like to have,” Aaron Boone said. “Hopefully we break through with some more runs next series.”

The same type of performance may have worked against the Royals and may work against the Guardians or Tigers in the ALCS since the Guardians and Tigers are no better than the Royals, but if the Yankees want to do something this group never has, at some point they are going to have to play to their best of their abilities. At some point, Judge is going to have to hit like the player that spent the year being compared to Barry Bonds, Soto is going to have to start hitting the ball out of the park the way he did for the Nationals and Padres in the postseason, Austin Wells is going to have to stop hitting like Jose Trevino, Jazz Chisholm is going to have to get back on track and the rotation is going to have to do much better than turning in a strong effort once every four games.

5. As for the bottom of the lineup, they did their job in the series. Alex Verdugo was the MVP of the Game 1 win (before immediately reverting back to his usual self with a groundout to right side in nearly every at-bat since), Anthony Volpe reached base in seven of 16 plate appearances, Oswaldo Cabrera played a fine first base for being not a first baseman and reached base in four of eight plate appearances and Jon Berti looked like a natural first baseman in playing the position for the first time ever and also reached base in three of eight plate appearances.

6. The bullpen also did its job.

Yankees rotation in ALDS: 20.1 IP, 24 H, 11 R, 10 ER, 3 BB, 19 K, 2 HR, 4.43 ERA, 1.328 WHIP.
Yankees bullpen in ALDS: 15.2 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 15 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.766 WHIP.

7. Chisholm was wrong in his assertion that the Royals “got lucky” in their Game 2 win. They weren’t lucky, they just weren’t good enough. They were as sloppy as the Yankees in Game 1 and scored three runs total between Games 3 and 4. It’s a good thing the Yankees eliminated the Royals because having another foolish trash talk thrown back in the Yankees’ and their fans’ faces forever would have been tough to stomach. If anyone is “lucky” it’s Chisholm who did nothing offensively to help eliminate the Royals following his comments as he went 0-for-7 with a walk in Games 3 and 4.

8. Boone had a pretty good series. There were only three decisions he made or didn’t make that I had issues with: He shouldn’t have let Cole start the sixth inning in Game 1, he should have challenged the play at first with Volpe to lead off the third inning in Game 3, he shouldn’t have pinch run for Giancarlo Stanton with two outs in Game 4. Outside of that, the decisions Boone made worked out, especially starting Verdugo in left field (at least for Game 1) and using Holmes as his second most important reliever in the series.

9. The next choice Boone will have to make on Monday when he fills out the ALCS Game 1 lineup card will be what to do at the cleanup spot. I think Boone will keep Wells in that spot because he seems to be superstitious about the lineup when the Yankees win, even if Wells has been extremely bad since the start of September. Wells did come through with a huge walk and a game-tying hit in Game 1, but since then he has been an automatic out (and even an automatic two outs like he was in Game 4 with a double play). It will depend on if the Yankees play the Guardians or the Tigers and if a lefty or righty starts, but if Wells remains between Judge and Stanton, he will be expected to hit.

10. Expectations haven’t worked out well for these Yankees. Ever since their unexpected run to Game 7 of the ALCS when they were expected to miss out on the postseason, they haven’t lived up to expectations over the last six seasons. After their 3-1 win over the Royals in Game 4 of the ALDS, for the first time in a long time they met an expectation: reach the ALCS.

Advancing to the ALCS was the minimum requirement for the 2024 Yankees. An ALDS loss may have led to wholesale changes within the organization in the offseason (but likely not since no one lost their job when the team missed out on the postseason completely in 2023). That minimum requirement was elevated to winning the AL pennant for the first time in 15 years once the Astros and Orioles went out in the wild-card round.

The Yankees are now four wins away from reaching the World Series. Four wins against an AL Central team from reaching the World Series. It’s something this Yankees core under this Yankees manager has never done. It’s something they may never have a better path and opportunity to accomplish. Three down, eight to go.

1. The Yankees blew their opportunity to take a commanding lead thanks to a disastrous start and a lackluster offensive effort. They can’t afford to have either of those on Wednesday. If they do, they’ll be playing for their season on Thursday.

That’s what I wrote prior to Game 3 of the ALDS. Somehow, the Yankees had both a third straight disastrous start and a lackluster offensive effort, and yet, they won and are one win away from advancing to the ALCS.

2. Clarke Schmidt was good until he wasn’t, similar to Carlos Rodon’s performance in Game 2. I wrote after Game 2 that I didn’t trust Schmidt because I don’t trust any Yankees starter and Schmidt proved my lack of trust to be warranted: 4.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K.

Three starters and three stinkers from Yankees starters in the series. Gerrit Cole couldn’t get an out in the sixth inning in Game 1, Rodon couldn’t get through the fourth inning in Game 2 and Schmidt unraveled and was pulled in the fifth inning in Game 3. If not for all of the scheduled off days in this series, with the way the Yankees’ elite relievers have been used, I’m not sure where the Yankees would be.

Cole, Rodon and Schmidt this series: 13.1 IP, 18 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 3 BB, 15 K, 2 HR.
Yankees bullpen this series: 13.2 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 12 K.

It’s never good when your bullpen has recorded more outs than your starters in a postseason series, and again, if not for the days off, all of this, and the Yankees 2-1 series lead may not be possible.

3. The Yankees’ offense was also putrid for the third straight game in the series. The eight Yankees not named Giancarlo Stanton went 1-for-25. Thankfully, Stanton went 3-for-5 with an RBI double and a go-ahead solo home run in the eighth inning. Not only that, but the slow-footed (to put it kindly) Stanton stole his first base in four years.

The Stanton home run off Kris Bubic that gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead came on a third consecutive slider from the Royals’ left-hander. Bubic started the seventh and with two lefties (Austin Wells and Jazz Chisholm) sandwiched around Stanton, and the need to pitch to three batters, Royals manager Matt Quatraro decided he would rather have a lefty face Stanton than a righty face the struggling Wells and the he’s-not-Stanton Chisholm. Whoops.

The home run was the first Yankees go-ahead home run in the eighth inning or later in the postseason since Raul Ibanez’s walk-off home run in Game 3 of the 2012 ALDS. One, that was such a memorable, fun night at the Stadium back in 2012. Two, that’s ridiculous. That’s a span of 12 years and nine postseason appearances. Now you know why the Yankees haven’t reached the World Series in 15 years.

4. Prior to Game 3, I wrote that I would sit Stanton in favor of Jasson Dominguez to start the game because of Seth Lugo’s ability to keep the ball in park. (Lugo faced the most batters of any pitcher in the league this season and only 1.9 percent of them hit home runs.) I was partially right in that Lugo didn’t allow a Yankee to homer (he held the Yankees homer-less for 19 innings this year), but wrong since Stanton did pick up two hits against Lugo, including an RBI double to open the scoring in the fourth. I never thought Aaron Boone would actually not play Stanton in a playoff game, but his performance in Game 3 confirmed that. (The same way Alex Verdugo’s performance in Game 1 will now keep him in the starting lineup for the rest of the postseason despite him reverting back to his usual self.)

5. “When it’s the playoffs, he takes it to another level,” Schmidt said of Stanton. “I think there’s something to be said about players that can do that.”

I agree, Clarke. I think there is something to be said about players that can do that … and players that can’t. A lot of the Yankees lineup can’t.

If not for Stanton, the Yankees would be playing for their season in Game 4. The rest of the lineup’s 1-for-25 was disturbing, and to make matters worse, they racked up nine walks and only one of them scored (Juan Soto on the Stanton RBI double). The Yankees have 22 walks in the three games played so far and somehow they have won two one-run games and lost the other, scoring two runs in that loss. Twenty-two walks in three games! That should equate to double-digit run outputs every game and blowouts. Not nail-biting, eked-out wins.

6. It was another miserable night for Aaron Judge who went 0-for-4 with a walk. He’s now 1-for-11 with three walks and five strikeouts in the series. A nice, shiny 2-for-27 since the start of the 2022 ALCS. Austin Wells has barely been better than Judge at 2-for-12 with two walks and five strikeouts. At least Wells had the game-tying hit in Game 1 that he can hang his hat on. I’m not sure how the Yankees plan on continuing to win this month with their 3- and 4-hitters being their two worst hitters, but I guess we’re going to find out.

7. The combination of Anthony Volpe and Oswaldo Cabrera in the 7- and 8-spots had a big night. The duo went 1-for-3 with five walks. Volpe at-bats have been better than anyone could have expected in the series, and he has been on base in six of his 12 plate appearances. Cabrera bats at the bottom of the order, hasn’t even played in every game of the series, and he has as many hits (1) and as many walks (3) as Judge does in the series. (And one more extra-base hit, since Judge doesn’t have any.)

8. It was a rough night for Chisholm, who famously called the Royals “lucky” after their Game 2 win. Chisholm went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in the game. If you’re going to openly trash talk, please back it up. Yankees fans have had to endure enough backfired trash talk during the Boone era. Here’s to Chisholm having a big Game 4 and helping eliminate the Royals on their own field, so “They just got lucky” doesn’t become the 2024 version of Judge blaring “New York, New York” from a boom box at Fenway Park in 2018, which became the Red Sox’ victory song for their World Series run.

9. I thought it was a mistake for Boone to not challenge the play at first on Volpe’s groundout to lead off the third. I think it may have been overturned and the Yankees could have had the leadoff man on in that inning against Lugo. I also think the Yankees got screwed on the Gleyber Torres ball down the right-field line that was called foul, and stood as called after a challenge. It sure look like it hit part of the line.

10. “We need to wrap it up [Thursday],” Stanton said. “No wiggle room. We’ve got to get it done.”

Cole gets the ball in Game 4 with a chance to redeem himself from Game 1. I would have started Luis Gil in Game 4. If Gil starts and the Yankees win, Cole would be able to start Game 1 of the ALCS. If Gil starts and the Yankees lose, Cole would be ready to go for Game 5. Instead, if the Yankees advance, Cole will be starting Game 2 of the ALCS, and if the Yankees lose, they will be playing for their season on Saturday with Rodon starting. Please don’t let it get to that. Listen to Stanton: Wrap it up in Game 4.

1. Two years ago the Yankees were in this position. They had won Game 1 of the ALDS over the Guardians at the Stadium then after an off day and a rainout, they lost to the Guardians three days later in 10 innings. They went on the road for Game 3 with the ALDS tied at 1.

In Game 3 in Cleveland, the Yankees held a 5-3 lead entering the ninth. Aaron Boone made Clay Holmes unavailable despite Homes telling the media after the game he had told Boone before the game he was available, so Boone let Wandy Peralta begin the ninth after having pitched in the seventh and eighth.

Peralta allowed a one-out double followed by a single and Boone called on Clarke Schmidt to get the final two outs. Schmidt allowed back-to-back singles, which brought the Guardians within a run before getting a huge three-pitch strikeout for the second out. Schmidt got ahead of Oscar Gonzalez 1-2 and was a strike away from giving the Yankees a 2-1 series lead, but instead allowed his third single of the inning, a two-run, walk-off single and the Yankees lost.

2. It was Schmidt’s second career postseason appearance. His first had been the day before in Game 2 when he relieved Jameson Taillon after Taillon gave up the go-ahead run in the 10th. In typical Boone fashion, Schmidt was below Taillon in the manager’s level of trust rankings for Game 2, but then surpassed him for Game 3 and was used to close out a game he failed to close out.

Schmidt is a different pitcher in 2024 than he was in 2022. In 2022, he made only three starts, and through 2022, he had only five career starts to his name. Schmidt became part of the rotation for 2023 and everything clicked for him in the middle of May that season.

Schmidt is a good starting pitcher. He will likely need to be better than “good” in Game 3 with Seth Lugo going for the Royals. He can’t have the type of start Gerrit Cole or Carlos Rodon turned in in Games 1 and 2, as that many runs will unlikely be overcome.

3. Do I trust Schmidt? No, not really. But I don’t trust any Yankees starter. How could you? Neither of their two supposed best starters could get an out in the sixth inning in Games 1 or 2 and their No. 2 starter couldn’t get through four innings. The Yankees already gave the Royals their supposed best and the Royals had no problem creating traffic on the bases and scoring runs.

Despite my lack of trust in Schmidt, I do think he will be fine. His last start of the season in Game 161 against the Pirates was the first time in 16 starts in 2024 he allowed more than three earned runs in a game. It was just the third time in 40 starts he allowed more than three runs in a game. If the Yankees are to lose Game 3 of the ALDS like they did two years ago, I doubt it will be because of Schmidt.

4. If the Yankees lose Game 3, it will be because of the offense. Every October with these Yankees I go in thinking it’s going to be different, and every October it’s not. I want to be optimistic about the offense each postseason, thinking there’s no way they can no-show again, and yet each postseason they no-show again. Through two games they’re running it back and playing all of the old hits: poor situational hitting, a lack of power, running into outs on the bases and failing to hit with runners in scoring position. Every fear I had about these Yankees for the postseason is coming to fruition.

5. Aaron Judge is getting all of the attention for the Yankees’ offensive shortcomings and he should. He’s the highest-paid player on the team. He’s the captain of the team. He’s the one who broke the AL home run record in 2022 and won MVP only to go 1-for-16 with a single in the sweep by the Astros in that season’s ALCS. He’s the one whose name was said in the same breath as Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds this season when he outperformed his own 2022 MVP season, nearly won the Triple Crown and will win the 2024 AL MVP. But he’s the one who came up in Game 1 with runners on second and third and no outs and struck out. He’s the one who came up in Game 2 with runners on first and second and no outs and struck out. He’s the one who is 1-for-7 with an infield single through two games in this series.

6. Going back to that miserable performance of his in the 2022 ALCS, Judge is now 2-for-23 with three walks and eight strikeouts. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees are 1-5 in those games.

If you want to call 23 at-bats and 26 plate appearances a small sample size, go ahead. But that’s what the postseason is: short series and small sample sizes. And for his postseason career, a sample size that is now 207 plate appearances, Judge has a .760 OPS, a number that is 250 points below his career regular-season OPS of 1.010.

7. Prior to the start of the postseason, I wrote:

The dynastic Yankees of the late-‘90s and 2000s won in the postseason because their stars remained stars in October. When the 163rd game came, there was no drop-off in production despite only facing the top teams and elite pitching each game. Look at these regular season vs. postseason career numbers.

Derek Jeter regular season: .310/.377/.440
Derek Jeter postseason: .308/.374/.465

Bernie Williams regular season: .297/.381/.477
Bernie Williams postseason: .275/.371/.480

Paul O’Neill regular season: .288/.363/.470
Paul O’Neill postseason: .284/.363/.465

That hasn’t happened with this Yankees core. When October comes, these Yankees have always disappeared, and Aaron Judge has been as big of a problem as anyone.

Aaron Judge regular season: .288/.406/.604
Aaron Judge postseason: .211/.310/.462

Judge’s postseason slash line has grown worse, now at .208/.311/.449.

The Yankees offense goes as Judge goes. In Yankees wins this season, Judge hit .402/.527/.887 for a 1.415 OPS. In Yankees losses this season, Judge hit .208/.356/.46 for a .793 OPS. When Judge hits, the Yankees win. When Judge doesn’t hit the Yankees lose.

8. As expected the rest of the Yankees aren’t really doing their part to not make it all about Judge, and no one more than Giancarlo Stanton.

I would sit Stanton in Game 3. Stanton is 1-for-8 with a walk in the series and has cost the Yankees two runs with his jogging (at best) on the bases. After Game 1, I wrote about why Stanton’s supposed postseason greatness isn’t so great (unless you remove from the fans from the stands and play the games at a neutral site). The only reason to play him is because you think he can get into a mistake and hit it over the fence. The problem is the level of pitcher he is seeing each at-bat isn’t making mistakes. Stanton assumes every 2-0 or 3-1 pitch is going to be a fastball down the middle and swings like it. That hasn’t happened for him this postseason and likely won’t with Lugo on the mound.

9. Lugo didn’t allow a home run in 14 innings against the Yankees this season. He only allowed 16 for the year, including just one to the 105 batters he faced in September. He faced a league-high 836 batters for the season and gave up 16 home runs, equating to 1.9 percent of the batters he faced hit a home run.

It’s extremely unlikely Lugo is going to allow a home run at Kauffman Stadium in Game 3. (He’s only allowed two home runs there since July.) And because Stanton’s only value to the team is to hit home runs, there’s no reason to use him as the designated hitter. Start Jasson Dominguez there. At least if Dominguez gets on base, he’s capable of stealing a base, running harder than a light jog and isn’t a risk to ruin a rally.

10. Joe Torre always called Game 2 of any series the most important game. In Game 2 you have the opportunity to take a commanding lead or an opportunity to tie the series up. (It’s why Andy Pettitte was always tabbed with starting Game 2 during the glory days.) The Yankees blew their opportunity to take a commanding lead thanks to a disastrous start and a lackluster offensive effort. They can’t afford to have either of those on Wednesday. If they do, they’ll be playing for their season on Thursday.

1. I knew the Yankees were potentially in trouble for Game 2 long before it began on Monday night. I knew as much because Carlos Rodon said as much when discussing his emotions leading into his first Yankees postseason start: “It can propel me to very high highs and super low lows.”

The last thing any fan wants is the starting pitcher of their favorite baseball team having the mindset of a touring member of Guns N’ Roses during their heyday. You’re hoping your team’s starting pitcher is composed and of a sound mind. You want to be confident he’s going to keep it together and not wear his emotions on his sleeve with each pitch in such a pressurized, high-stakes environment. A Joba Chamberlain 360 twirl into a fist pump after stranding a pair in a big spot? Sure. But going wild after striking out the leadoff hitter of the game? Walking around the infield yelling after striking out the second batter of the game? Roaring like a lion marking his pride’s territory after retiring the side in order IN THE FIRST INNING?

Rodon was maniacal on the mound in the first inning on Monday night. He was experiencing the “very high high” he spoke about before the start. The Stadium was buzzing, he was locating his fastball and everyone was biting on his slider. He was experiencing the moment he dreamed he would get to experience when he signed a $162 million contract with the Yankees. The moment he talked about when he got hurt in spring training last year and said: “I’m not here to pitch until the All-Star break. I’m here to pitch well into October. If this was down the stretch, yeah, I would be going for sure. If it’s October 5 or the ALDS, I’m taking the ball.”

2. The “very high high” slowly wore off. While Rodon kept the Royals off the board in the second and third, he couldn’t produce a shutdown inning in the fourth after the Yankees opened the scoring. Instead, he got beat by Salvador Perez, unraveled and never recovered, falling into the “super low low” stupor he warned could take place. The kind of stupor Yankees fans have grown accustomed to their so-called “No. 2” starter having when the slightest adversity hits him. The kind of adversity that led to him blowing a kiss to heckling fans in Anaheim last year. The kind of adversity that led to him turning his back on his pitching coach during a mound visit at the end of last season. The kind of adversity that led to him crying in the dugout this season. The kind of meltdown that led to him allowing eight earned runs without recording an out against these Royals in his final start of last season.

After Perez homered to tie the game, Rodon couldn’t put Yuli Gurriel (who is still hitting against the Yankees in the postseason like he did as an Astro) away with two strikes and allowed a single. He threw a wild pitch with Gurriel on first and allowed an RBI single to Tommy Pham on a 1-2 pitch. He followed that by giving up an RBI single to Garrett Hampson (owner of a career 72 OPS+) and eventually got charged with a fourth earned run when Ian Hamilton allowed Hampson to score. Rodon took his clean slate for the postseason and took a dump on it. Rather than rewrite his Yankees tenure with a dominant postseason, he crumbled under the pressure of the postseason. His final line: 3.2 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 HR.

3. “It’s just unfortunate,” Rodon said. “I wanted to be better than that.”

But he wasn’t. Rodon couldn’t get out of the fourth inning. It was progress from his only other postseason start, when as a White Sox in 2022 he couldn’t get out of the third inning (2.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 3 K). The Yankees signed the guy capable of striking out the Royals’ 1-2-3 hitters on 12 pitches in the first. They feared the guy who allowed the bottom of the order put the game out of reach could show up. And he did. Following Gerrit Cole’s miserable effort in Game 1, Rodon’s postseason debut as a Yankee was a disaster.

4. It was a disaster made worse by an offense that is conducting its annual October disappearing act. (Well, annual minus last October when they couldn’t make the postseason in a six-team format.) The Yankees failed to produce an extra-base hit in the game until Jazz Chisholm’s home run in the ninth inning. The Yankees’ 1-2-3 hitters combined for an infield single by Aaron Judge, who has decided to bring fuel to the fire to combat the argument he can’t hit in the postseason. Giancarlo Stanton continues to run like he has two torn hamstrings and unless the Royals are going to walk in runs like they did in Game 1, it seems like the Yankees are never going to score. The Yankees went 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position in Game 1. In Game 2, they went 1-for-6. They’re now 3-for-19 in the series.

5. “That’s playoff baseball,” Aaron Boone said. “The heat is turned up, and you’ve got to be able to slow it things down.”

The Boone Yankees have never been able to “slow things down” with “the heat turned up.” The performance you have seen from the 2024 Yankees through two postseason games is the performance the 2018-2022 Yankees produced in the postseason.

6. “We had a lot of opportunities tonight,” Chisholm said. “They just got lucky.”

Chisholm’s comments were so delusional I thought Boone or Nestor Cortes said them. Chisholm’s comments were every bit as foolish as Rodon acting like he was three outs away from pitching the Yankees to a championship in the first inning only to be removed in the fourth. Every bit as foolish as Judge walking through Fenway Park blaring “New York, New York” on a boom box after the team’s Game 2 win in the 2018 ALDS only to then lose the next two games of the series at home by a combined score of 20-4. Every bit as foolish as Boone saying, “The league has closed the gap” on the Yankees after the team’s 2021 wild-card game loss. Every bit as foolish as Luis Severino saying Alex Bregman “got lucky” because he hit his game-winning home run only 91 mph in Game 2 of the 2022 ALCS. Every bit as foolish as Boone admitting he used video from the 2004 ALCS to motivate his team in the 2022 ALCS. Every bit as foolish as Harrison Bader saying, “No concern,” when asked about being 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot in 2023. If the Yankees don’t win two of the next three games, Chisholm’s comments will be the latest in a long list of delusional line coming from this era’s clubhouse.

The Royals didn’t get lucky. They were the better team. They drove in runs, got extra-base hits, stifled Juan Soto and enhanced the idea that Judge is Mr. May. The Yankees lost a game started by a lefty that gladly walked the top of the order and challenged the rest of the order to beat him, and they couldn’t. Then the left-handed relievers of the Royals did the same. The Royals weren’t lucky. They were smart and they executed their game plan.

7. “If I’m not hitting 1.000,” Judge said, “I’m not feeling good.”

How about you start with hitting .250? Something you haven’t done since the 2019 ALDS.

“I just gotta keep getting on base for the guys behind me.”

Well, that’s not working.

“If they get on [in front of me],” Judge said, “I gotta drive them in.”

They are getting on in front of you. In both Games 1 and 2, you came up with runners on first and second and no outs in the first inning and struck out both times.

“We haven’t been able to come through,” Judge said. “We’ll do it next time.”

Just like you did in the other seven postseasons you have been a part of?

8. The only truly bright spot for the Yankees in the first two games has been the bullpen, which has had to get 28 of 54 outs.

Cole and Rodon this series: 8.2 IP, 14 H, 8 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 11 K , 2 HR.
Yankees bullpen this series: 9.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 11 K.

Other than that, everything I feared about this Yankees team in the postseason is coming to fruition. All of their flaws I worried about showing up in October have. The offense has been putrid led by Judge, their big-name starting pitching has been abysmal, the infield defense has been shaky and their manager hasn’t done anything to elevate their chances.

9. Now the supposed inferior Royals (who clinched a postseason berth in Game 161) control the series. They have Seth Lugo going in Game 3. The same Seth Lugo who turned in seven shutout innings with 10 strikeouts against the Yankees four weeks ago in the Bronx. The Yankees will counter with Clarke Schmidt, a starter they didn’t feel confident in announcing until the day of Game 2. A starter who has never made a postseason start and whose three career postseason appearances in 2022 (in relief) were horrendous. I think Schmidt will be fine. I’m worried about what the offense will or won’t do against Lugo.

10. Things can change so quickly in the best-of-5 division series. A day ago, Yankees fans were harping on the fact the Yankees played like shit, but still came away with an ugly Game 1 win. After Game 2, the mood is different.

The Royals’ win in Game 2 guaranteed Cole a second start in this series to redeem himself. It made possible the petrifying idea Rodon could go again in a winner-take-all Game 5 at the Stadium on Saturday night. If the high-paid and overpaid names on the Yankees play and pitch to their abilities it won’t get to that terrifying Game 5 scenario. If the offense would show up for the first time in this core’s history it won’t get to that. I pray it doesn’t get to that. But if the Yankees lose Game 3 in Kansas City, I will be praying it gets to that.

1. “Tear down the empire from the inside out.” That’s what Bob Costas said as he read a promo for the HBO show The Penguin as the third inning of Game 1 began on Saturday night. At the time, the promotional ad read for that show sounded like a good idea for the empire that is the Yankees.

Because at the time, Gerrit Cole was coming up small in a big game once again and the Yankees’ offense looked like every postseason version of itself since their last World Series appearance 15 years ago.

2. After a 1-2-3 first in which Cole allowed three rockets to the top of the Royals’ order, the Yankees began their offensive postseason with second and third and no outs after Gleyber Torres walked and Juan Soto doubled. With Aaron Judge, Austin Wells and Giancarlo Stanton coming up, the Yankees would have a chance to put up a crooked number and potentially end the game in the first inning. They didn’t. They didn’t score a single run.

Judge struck out, which is all he seems to do in the postseason. Wells hit a first-pitch grounder to first and with the Yankees idiotically having the contact play on (a staple of the Aaron Boone Yankees), Torres ran home and was thrown out by 10 feet. Stanton followed with a strikeout of his own and the Yankees wasted their second-and-third-with-no-outs situation.

Immediately after that, Cole allowed allow a single, walk, single and sacrifice fly and the Royals had a 1-0 lead. It would have likely been more if not for Salvador Perez inexplicably being sent home with no outs, resulting in Juan Soto throwing him out. Suddenly, the first game of the 2024 postseason was playing out like a game from every other postseason of the Boone era.

Cole was horrible. He pitched four-plus innings, needed 80 pitches to get 12 outs, allowed nine baserunners and three earned runs. Of his 80 pitches, he recorded only six swings-and-misses. Forty-three percent of the 21 batters he faced reached base and 11 of those 21 batters produced a “hard-hit ball” (an exit velocity of at least 95 mph), a season-high for the 2023 Cy Young winner.

For as good as Cole was over his final 10 starts, I didn’t expect him to pitch well in this one because I never expect him to pitch well in big games. I gave up on those expectations a long time ago.

After the game on YES, Michael Kay believed the layoff to be the reason why Cole wasn’t any good. There’s always some excuse for Cole. A layoff, a delayed start, a national anthem rendition running too long, a ceremonial first pitch not being on time. It’s never on Cole. Kay opined that Cole would be better the next time out. Will he? If the series goes to Game 4, he will be pitching on five days rest. If he’s not needed until Game 1 of the ALCS, he will be pitching on eight days rest, which is another extended layoff. How about he just pitches well in the postseason and the excuses stop? There was no excuse in Game 1. He sucked.

3. The other star of this Yankees core also sucked. After going 1-for-16 with a single in the last postseason series the Yankees played in the 2022 ALCS, Aaron Judge went 0-for-4 with a walk and three strikeouts in Game 1.

On Friday, I wrote: I am worried about Judge. For being as worried about Judge as I am, I do expect him to finally have that big postseason and carry the Yankees to the World Series. If not now, when?

My concern for Judge flopping in October again was warranted and after watching him leave runners on second and third with no outs in the first inning and fail to put the ball in play the entire night, those concerns are now heightened with Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo starting Games 2 and 3 for the Royals. At some point Judge has to do something, right? Right?!

4. Also on Friday, I wrote: I’m not worried about Soto. He has proven capable of handling October in his two postseason appearances, especially in 2019 when as a 20-year-old he hit three home runs and posted a 1.178 OPS against the Astros in the World Series.

Soto shined in his first postseason game as a Yankee the way he shined for the entire regular season. He went 3-for-5 in the series opener and threw Perez out at home in the second inning. Soto was his usual awesome self in the postseason and the win extends his time in pinstripes by at least one more game.

5. Austin Wells reverted back to being the awesome version of himself that he was from the end of April through the end of August. Wells went 1-for-3 with two walks. The first of his two walks forced in a run to tie the game at 3 in the fifth. His hit tied the game at 5 in the sixth. But for as awesome as Soto and Wells were, it was Alex Verdugo, yes Alex Verdugo, who was the best of all.

6. I don’t like Alex Verdugo. I think anyone who reads these thoughts with regularity knows that. I was against the trade for him and was against him continuing to receive everyday playing time all season as arguably the worst everyday offensive player in the league. But everyone gets a clean slate for the postseason, even Verdugo, and through one game, he is making the most of it.

“You can make up for a lot of things in the playoffs,” Verdugo said after the Game 1 win.

Verdugo walked in his first plate appearance and scored on Torres’ two-run home run. In the fourth, he made a sliding catch down the left-field line to end the inning and prevent a blooper from falling in and causing more damage on the scoreboard. In his third plate appearance, he drew a walk to lead off the sixth and scored the tying run on Wells’ RBI single. In the seventh, he singled to left field to drive in Jazz Chisholm, giving the Yankees a 6-5 lead, a lead they would hold on to for the Game 1 win.

Verdugo was the hero of Game 1. An unlikely hero, but a hero nonetheless. He was the type of hero that is born in October: a regular-season poor performer or afterthought who gets hot at the right time for a couple of weeks. The Yankees need a hero like that, especially because of the letdown performances from so many others.

7. Like Cole and Judge, Giancarlo Stanton was a zero in the game. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and a walk. On that walk, any other player in the league would have been able to score when Oswaldo Cabrera doubled to center field, but not Stanton. Later in the game, Stanton was also thrown out on a ball to third that most players also would have been able to beat out. Stanton’s lack of speed on the bases was nearly a huge factor in deciding the game. He provides no value when he isn’t hitting home runs. And he doesn’t hit them frequently enough.

There’s this narrative that Stanton is some legendary postseason player. I don’t know how that started. Maybe because he hit six home runs in seven games in the 2020 playoffs … when there were no fans in the stands? Here are his other postseason home runs:

2018 Wild-Card Game: Solo home run with the Yankees up four in the bottom of the eighth.
2019 ALCS Game 1: Solo home run with the Yankees up two in the top of the sixth.
2021 Wild-Card Game: Solo home run with the Yankees down five in the top of the ninth.
2022 ALDS Game 2: Two-run home run with 0-0 score in the bottom of the first.
2022 ALDS Game 5: Three-run home run with 0-0 score in the bottom of the first.

The two home runs against the Guardians in the 2022 ALDS were important. The rest? Not so much.

Stanton is going to play. At least the next game with the left-handed Ragans starting. It would be nice if he could contribute in some way with the bat (and not assume every 2-0 and 3-1 pitch he gets is going to be a middle-middle fastball) since he doesn’t contribute in the field or on the bases.

8. Anthony Volpe was able to contribute a bases-loaded walk in the fifth, and thankfully he was able to at least provide that because the rest of his game was abysmal. The Golden Boy went 0-for-3 with that walk, struck out on a pitch in the other batter’s box with Chisholm running in the seventh and also made a disastrous error in the sixth that gave the Royals a lead. The Yankees had nine hits, eight walks and 11 strikeouts. Judge, Stanton and Volpe combined for no hits, three walks and six strikeouts. That needs to be cleaned up.

9. I wish I could say the in-game managerial decisions need to be cleaned up as well, but now in a sixth postseason of watching Boone, I think it’s safe to say it’s never going to be cleaned up.

It was a bad night for Aaron Boone fans who thought the manager would manage differently in October than he did from March through September. In the very first game of this postseason, Boone tried to steal outs with Cole in the fifth inning, when it was clear Cole was finished long before then, and when Boone had Clay Holmes warming and ready to go the inning before for Cole. Boone’s decision to let Cole start the fifth backfired as he allowed a ball off the left-field wall to begin the inning and the Royals eventually scored two runs when Volpe couldn’t make a throw to second base and when Boone called the infield in. The Yankees had a week off and have Sunday off and Boone managed as if he had a tired bullpen.

Holmes eventually did come in and got five important outs, followed by Tommy Kahnle getting two outs and Luke Weaver recording the four-out save. The bullpen was outstanding and for one night put to rest the fears most Yankees fans had about the relievers going into the playoffs.

10. Cole was bad, Judge and Stanton no-showed, the Gold Glove shortstop’s defense was sloppy and the Yankees still won. That’s both promising and frightening. But a win is a win, and for now, the “teardown of the empire from the inside out” can be put on hold. One win down and 10 to go.

1. The Astros went 12-5 against the Yankees in the 2017, 2019 and 2022 ALCS. They’re out. The Orioles went 8-5 against the Yankees in the regular season this year. They’re out. The Tigers and Royals did the job I feared the Yankees may not be able to do if they faced the Astros or Orioles this October. Now they don’t have to.

Three teams from the AL Central remain. Again, that’s three teams from the AL Central standing between the Yankees and their first pennant in 15 years.

The Yankees destroyed the AL Central in the regular season. They won the AL East and avoided the dangerous best-of-3 series because of the number they did on the AL Central in the regular season, including going 12-6 against the three Central teams remaining.

They went 4-2 against the Guardians. Both losses were in extra innings.

They went 4-2 against the Royals. One loss was a Clay Holmes blown save.

They went 4-2 against the Tigers. One loss was another Holmes blown save.

None of those three have any offense. They finished sixth, seventh and eighth in the AL in runs scored. Their entire success centers around their pitching and the Yankees’ bats will have to get to some combination of Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Tarik Skubal, Tanner Bibee and other quality starters to end their AL pennant drought.

2. Those bats producing in October is what keeps me up at night. No matter what happens during the regular season, the entirety of the Yankees’ season each year hinges on whether or not the bats will be there in October. The bats haven’t shown up in a long time.

The dynastic Yankees of the late-‘90s and 2000s won in the postseason because their stars remained stars in October. When the 163rd game came, there was no drop-off in production despite only facing the top teams and elite pitching each game. Look at these regular season vs. postseason career numbers.

Derek Jeter regular season: .310/.377/.440
Derek Jeter postseason: .308/.374/.465

Bernie Williams regular season: .297/.381/.477
Bernie Williams postseason: .275/.371/.480

Paul O’Neill regular season: .288/.363/.470
Paul O’Neill postseason: .284/.363/.465

That hasn’t happened with this Yankees core. When October comes, these Yankees have always disappeared, and Aaron Judge has been as big of a problem as anyone.

Aaron Judge regular season: .288/.406/.604
Aaron Judge postseason: .211/.310/.462

3. Judge hasn’t had a postseason series OPS above .738 since the 2019 ALDS when the Yankees beat the shit out of the Twins. Since then he’s posted OPS of .681, .717, .637,. 500, .738 and .180 across a wild-card game, a wild-card series, two ALDS and two ALCS. He’s supposed to be the best hitter in the game, but he hasn’t even been the best hitter on the Yankees in a postseason series since the 2017 ALCS.

Judge has the home run record. He has the captaincy. He has the long-term contract and life-changing, generational wealth. The only thing missing is a championship, and this is his best chance to date to win one, and he may never get a chance as good as this again.

4. The Yankees have far and away the best roster of the remaining four AL teams. It’s not even close. And for as concerend as I am with the Yankees’ offense, their offense is in another stratosphere compared to the light-hitting Royals, Guardians and Tigers. But like the other three teams, the Yankees’ bottom of their order won’t do them any favors.

Gleyber Torres, Juan Soto, Judge, Austin Wells, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm are going to be the 1 through 6 hitters. After that’s, it’s likely to be Anthony Volpe, Alex Verdugo and Ben Rice in some order.

Volpe has been an offensive disappointment since his first major-league plate appearance. Verdugo was benched over the last two weeks of the season for being arguably the worst everyday hitter in the majors for six months and is only going to be playing because Jasson Dominguez can’t be trusted to catch fly balls. Rice was sent to the minors at the end of August after posting a .624 OPS over two months and is only on the team because the Yankees’ first and second options at first base (Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu are both injured). It’s bleak at 7 through 9.

One-third of the Yankees lineup is as close to being three automatic outs as there are in the postseason. So either the trio is going to have to provide some unexpected offense or a few big hits with runners on, or the top two-thirds of the lineup is going to have to carry all of the weight with the Yankees essentially giving away three innings worth of outs each game.

5. If the Yankees are going to willingly give away three innings worth of outs each game, Judge and Juan Soto are going to have to hit like they did in the regular season when they were being mentioned alongside Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth daily. I’m not worried about Soto. He has proven capable of handling October in his two postseason appearances, especially in 2019 when as a 20-year-old he hit three home runs and posted a 1.178 OPS against the Astros in the World Series. I am worried about Judge. For being as worried about Judge as I am, I do expect him to finally have that big postseason and carry the Yankees to the World Series. If not now, when?

6. When is centered around the future, and if the Yankees can’t get to the World Series against this field, I don’t know that there will be a future for Aaron Boone with the Yankees. Even though he was able to retain his position after the Yankees missed the postseason last year and finished with the club’s worst record in three decades, falling short with this team against those teams would have to mean the end for him, given that his contract expires this season.

With each previous failed postseason run, Boone has always talked about how close his teams have been and how sweet it will be once they finally win, only to never get close and never finally win. That has to change this October.

7. In-game management in close games isn’t exactly Boone’s forte. Well, neither is being transparent about injuries or accurate in player evaluations. Then again, communication — the trait he was sold to Yankees fans on — is a problem as well. OK, I don’t really know what Boone’s strong suit is. He’s a nice guy? That must be it. He’s a nice guy, loyal and someone you would want to grab some beers with. When it comes to being a capable, major-league manager though, to put it nicely, he has been a disaster to this point.

8. Boone has been exceptionally bad in the bad postseason. In his first postseason in 2018, in the pivotal Game 3 at home, his starting pitcher didn’t know the start time of the game. In that same game, he let that starting pitcher go back out for a third inning despite giving up piss missiles all over the place in the first two innings. By the time he decided to make a pitching change, the Yankees were down 3-0 and the bases were loaded with no outs. Despite having a stable of strikeout arms in his bullpen, he went to a starter with mediocre strikeout ability at the time and it ended in the Yankees suffering their most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history.

The following night, facing elimination, he let CC Sabathia face the entire Red Sox lineup a second time because he liked the matchup of Sabathia against Jackie Bradley Jr., who was batting ninth. The Yankees were eliminated.

The next October, he used JA Happ in relief in extra innings in Game 2 of the ALCS. Carlos Correa walked off the Yankees and the Yankees went 1-4 over the final five games of the series.

In 2020, there was the Deivi Garcia-Happ debacle in the ALDS. In 2021, he led the odds-on favorite in the AL to a third-place finish in the division and a fifth-place finish in the AL. Their postseason lasted nine innings (and really just a half-inning of those nine thanks to Gerrit Cole).

In 2022, he changed his starting shortstop daily, somehow made Clarke Schmidt the first guy out of the bullpen in Game 1 of the ALCS, kept batting Josh Donaldson fifth and eventually used video from the 2004 Yankees’ ALCS collapse to motivate his own Yankees team.

9. The Boone Yankees are 14-17 in the postseason. A lot of it is because of the offense’s annual disappearing act, but Boone hasn’t done anything to elevate the game or the chances of his previous five postseason teams. If anything, he has been detrimental to their success.

I like to say that the Yankees need to outhit their own manager to win games to prevent him from having an impact on close games. That’s not possible in the playoffs where games are low scoring and close. Every decision Boone makes from the moment he starts to fill out his lineup card until the final out of each postseason game is crucial, and he has been incapable of handling the pressure that comes with making correct decision after correct decision, which is what it takes in October.

I want nothing more than for the Yankees to win and for Boone to win. I don’t want to sit through another end-of-the-season press conference with him telling everyone how close the team is and how sweet it’s going to be once they do win it all.

10. Boone’s decision-making shouldn’t be able to deter the Yankees from winning the AL this year. It shouldn’t matter in the AL playoffs if Verdugo plays or Dominguez plays. It shouldn’t matter if Wells bats cleanup or Chisholm does. It shouldn’t matter if Schmidt starts Game 3 or Luis Gil does. The Yankees are that much better than the three remaining AL opponents. The 50/50 choices and decisions around the margins shouldn’t be the difference between this team advancing or being shockingly eliminated. The Yankees were the best team in the AL in the regular season and are the best team remaining in the AL postseason. It’s time they played like it in October.

1. Aaron Boone was right. He knew back in July when he regurgitated (for a third straight season) his popular phrase “It’s right in front of us” in regards to the Yankees’ postseason and division chances. He knew playing .500 baseball for the final three months of the season would lead the Yankees to an AL East title.

2. The season goals are to reach the postseason, win the division, receive a bye to the ALDS, win home-field advantage through the ALCS, win the ALDS, win the ALCS and win the World Series. The first three have been accomplished. Next up is to win home-field advantage through the ALCS.

3. “We’d love to get it,” Boone said. “That said, I’m going to make sure I get guys a day here. I feel like we gotta do it, but we’ll be playing to win.”

I believe being the 1-seed in the AL playoffs is important. The Yankees don’t. They never have. Boone said as much on Thursday. The Yankees have always operated under the idea of “just get in” and that hasn’t exactly worked out for them. They haven’t been the 1-seed in any of Boone’s six previous years managing the team. That could change in the seventh.

The Yankees currently have a one-game lead over the Guardians for the 1-seed. Because the Yankees won the head-to-head season series (4-2), finishing with the same record as the Guardians is all they need. The odds are in their favor.

4. But no matter what happens this weekend, the Yankees returned home on Sunday, got to sleep in their own beds for the Orioles series, will sleep in their own beds this weekend, get to sleep in their own beds all of next week and won’t need to travel until after Game 2 of the ALDS, which is scheduled for October 7. They will have been able to be in their own homes, playing in their own stadium and not traveling for 16 days from when they returned from Oakland until they have to leave for Game 3 of the ALDS.

5. That’s just one of the many advantages the Yankees have heading into the postseason. On top of that, they will be able to set their rotation as they please and open their postseason playing in front of what will be a raucous Stadium crowd on a Saturday night in the Bronx.

6. “I feel like we’ve been through a lot as a team already this year,” Boone said. “So I’d like to think we’re battle-tested for what’s ahead.”

The Yankees haven’t been through that much. Most of what they have been through was self-inflicted. But hey, if coming up with a fictional narrative is what Boone needs to motivate his team in the postseason, I’m all for it. It’s better than using video from the 2004 ALCS as motivation like he did the last time the Yankees were in the playoffs two years ago.

7. “We’re going to celebrate tonight,” Judge said, “and then look forward to October.”

I’m confident about the Yankees heading into the postseason. I know it can all change in an instant. A loss in Game 1 of the ALDS can make it feel like the season is ending. I know the bats can just not show up in a way they haven’t in October for a while now. I know the most trusted arms in the rotation could lay eggs, the bullpen could implode or Boone could manage his team to elimination.

8. Every fan knows their own teams flaws, watching them unfold nearly daily for six months. But for as critical as I am of the Yankees (and rightfully so given their performance and internal decisions over the last 14 years), they boast the best roster of any of the six AL teams that will be in the field.

9. “We’re in a good spot,” Stanton said, “but there’s a lot of work to do.”

Everything is in their favor heading into this October in a way it hasn’t been in a long, long time. There is no dominant team in the field. If anything they are the team to beat in the field. Their rotation is healthy (outside of Nestor Cortes, but he may not have been part of the rotation anyway) and they have the best two hitters in the league in the same lineup. The only potential AL opponent that scares me is the Astros, but that’s more about the past than the present, as this Astros team isn’t the 2017, 2019 or 2022 teams. (Thankfully, as long as the Yankees win the 1-seed they won’t have to face the Astros until the best-of-7 ALCS format.) If the Yankees can’t win the World Series with the setup they have this year, I don’t know when they will.

10. This weekend will now be relaxing and stress-free. Next week will be the same. But come next Saturday when Yankees fans wake up, the second season begins. The good and bad of the previous 162 games is erased. Every Yankee gets a clean slate full of opportunity. No opportunity greater than the chance to be a part of something no Yankees team has been a part of in 15 years.

1. 0-for-2. That’s what the Yankees are in opportunities to clinch and win the AL East. Add two more missed opportunities and it will read like an Alex Verdugo batting line. But if the Yankees miss two more opportunities they could possibly be in a world of shit.

One Yankees win or one Orioles loss over the next four days will give the Yankees the division. It would be nice if they could get it out of the way with a win on Thursday, rendering the three remaining games of the regular season against the Pirates rather meaningless. But given the way the Yankees have played in the first two games of this three-game series against the Orioles, it wouldn’t surprise me (and shouldn’t surprise anyone) if the division is not over by the end of play on Thursday.

2. Prior to Wednesday’s 9-7 loss to the Orioles (to drop the Yankees to 4-8 on the season against the Orioles), Nestor Cortes was placed on the 15-day injured list, taking him out of the equation for the ALDS. In his place, Marcus Stroman made his first start in 15 days and second in 21 days. The Yankees have done everything they can to avoid giving Stroman the ball in September and rightfully so.

Stroman was awful once again, needing 66 pitches to get 10 outs, while giving up six earned runs on 10 hits. Since July 4, Stroman has started 64 innings and only nine of them have been 1-2-3 innings, which is outrageous. Every seven-plus innings Stroman will give you a clean frame. He didn’t have one on Wednesday.

3. “It’s frustrating,” Stroman said. “I didn’t execute and do my job out there to keep my team in position to win.”

The last pitch Stroman threw should be the last pitch he throws in 2024 outside of maybe some innings eating this weekend against the Pirates (as long as the division is wrapped up). Stroman can’t be trusted to nibble in October and he can’t be trusted out of the bullpen either without swing-and-miss stuff. Balls in play (even ones on the ground) lead to bad things (just ask Clay Holmes) and Stroman relies on balls in play more than anyone in baseball.

4. In a game in which Juan Soto and Aaron Judge both hit multi-run home runs and the Yankees scored seven runs, they lost. That’s how bad Stroman was and then how bad Clayton Beeter was in relief of Stroman (1.1 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2 K).

Soto and Judge combined to go 4-for-8 with three runs, two home runs, six RBIs and two walks. The rest of the lineup went 6-for-28 with no extra-base hits. It was the type of offensive performance the Yankees have to have in October to succeed since no one in the lineup outside of those two can be trusted with any regularity. Despite Gleyber Torres’ last month, he’s only now a league-average hitter for the season. Austin Wells has a .410 OPS in September and looks like the April version of himself. Giancarlo Stanton is either extremely hot or extremely cold with no in between and there’s no knowing what he will be in October. Jazz Chisholm has a .446 OPS over the last three weeks. Any plate appearance for Anthony Rizzo or Anthony Volpe resulting in them getting on base is a magnificent surprise. Alex Verdugo is a lost cause and Jasson Dominguez plays too infrequently to get into an extended groove.

5. Dominguez was back in the lineup after an unnecessary day off on Tuesday. He misplayed a ball in left field in the first inning that looked to be tailing away from him in the corner and then came back into the field of play.

“I have no excuse,” Dominguez said. “That ball needs to be caught, 100 percent of the time.”

Almost 100 percent of the time since it had a catch probability of 95 percent.

6. “He’s missed some plays that he should make,” Aaron Boone said of Dominguez. I can count on one hand (I may need a finger or two from my other hand) to count the times Boone has been somewhat critical of one of his players in seven seasons and this is one of those instances. Boone defended Torres’ game-altering baserunning gaffe just 24 hours earlier (when Torres himself couldn’t defend it), but there was Boone not having the same type of defense for Dominguez, who is playing a position he has little experience playing. Dominguez has played 20 total games in left field this season between the majors and minors.

“I haven’t played a ton of games in left field,” Dominguez said, “but I feel I can do it.”

Unfortunately, for Dominguez, the Yankees only have four games remaining, so there’s not much time to learn in actual games. Boone wants to play Verdugo over Dominguez and Dominguez is giving him a reason to.

7. “You try to take it all in, what gives you the best chance to win on a given night,” Boone said of his ongoing left-field competition. “We’re trying to give a good look to Jasson here down the stretch.”

That second part is telling. “We’re trying” is Boone foreshadowing him telling the media “they tried” when Dominguez is on the bench or not on the postseason roster next Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.

On Wednesday, Dominguez hit balls 109.3 mph, 106.5 mph and 109.2 mph. Verdugo has hit one ball over 100 mph in the last two weeks. It doesn’t matter to the Yankees that Dominguez is the far superior hitter to Verdugo. Boone wants to play Verdugo and Dominguez’s defense is going to be what Boone uses to play one of his favorites.

8. I fear Verdugo will be the Yankees’ starting left fielder to begin the postseason. Then if the team is having trouble scoring in the postseason the way they do every October, they will insert Dominguez into the lineup in place of Verdugo to try to get a jolt out of his bat after he has been sitting cold and not playing. When that doesn’t work out, everyone will say Dominguez sucks. It’s almost too easy to predict.

9. I pray that doesn’t happen. I pray if Verdugo plays over Dominguez that he hits, and that if it’s Dominguez over Verdugo that he catches fly balls. You can’t afford to play with automatic outs in the lineup (like Verdugo) in October and the Yankees will already be playing Rizzo and Volpe since they are immune to losing playing time for their lack of offense. And you can’t afford to be misplaying easy outs and giving the opposition extra outs to work with in October either.

10. For now, the Yankees need to worry about getting to October with a bye. That can be resolved with one more win. It wasn’t resolved on Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday will be their third chance at it. I don’t want to have to write about them going for it for a fourth time tomorrow.

1. The Yankees entered Tuesday’s series opener against the Orioles with a magic number of 1 to clinch the division. Win one of the remaining six games and the goal of winning the AL East would be complete. Their first crack at it was unsuccessful.

Aaron Boone decided he would try to clinch the division title in the first of six possible attempts without the best possible lineup. There was Alex Verdugo, some way, somehow starting over Jasson Dominguez on Tuesday.

“It’s still declaring itself,” Boone recently said of the starting left field role. Tuesday was Game 157 of the season. Wednesday is Game 158. In all likelihood (barring a monumental collapse over the five remaining games), the Yankees will be playing a postseason game next Saturday night at Yankee Stadium. There’s no time for left field to still be declaring itself. IT’S DECLARED ITSELF! We have a full season of Verdugo being one of the very worst everyday players in the league. The Yankees can’t go into the postseason with a daily lineup shuffle the way they did two years ago. That’s not going to work. Play the best available nine players. This isn’t hard.

2. But for Boone it is hard. It’s hard for him to not play veterans and players and pitchers he has relationships with. It’s why Verdugo is still playing. It’s why Clay Holmes is still pitching in high-leverage and save situations. It’s why Brett Gardner was batting third in the 2019 ALCS. It’s why CC Sabathia was allowed to face the Red Sox’ lineup a second time in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. It’s why Boone couldn’t completely pull the plug on Isiah Kiner-Falefa as the team’s shortstop in the 2022 postseason and why he kept batting Josh Donaldson fifth and sixth that same postseason despite him having no better chance than a fan from the stands at putting the ball in play.

3. Nothing will stop Boone from playing Verdugo at this point. He would rather lose with his favorites playing than win without them. He so desperately wants Verdugo to be the team’s starting left fielder and small “wins” like Verdugo reaching first via an infield single that had a .180 expected batting average are the types of nonsense Boone will refer to when telling the media Verdugo has been “swinging the bat well lately.”

4. Verdugo has one extra-base hit in September. Dominguez has three times as many in 17 less plate appearances. Verdugo has two home runs since July 6. Dominguez has two home runs in the last six days. Since being called up, Dominguez has more walks, steals, doubles and home runs, and a higher on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS than Verdugo.

If you want to talk about Dominguez’s outfield mishaps in left field in Seattle, well, other veteran outfielders had trouble with the sun in those games as well, not to mention Dominguez still adjusting and learning left field. At least he has an excuse. Verdugo overthrew the cutoff man over the weekend. And no one should ever forget his play to end the games against the Orioles in the last game before the All-Star break.

5. With the Yankees trailing 2-1 in the fifth on Wednesday, Anthony Rizzo and Anthony Volpe drew back-to-back walks to begin the inning, bringing Verdugo to the plate. He hit into a double play to destroy the rally. Representing the tying run at the plate with two outs in the ninth, he made the final out of a game he shouldn’t be playing in, a game the Yankees could clinch the division in. How can you not be romantic about baseball? Verdugo is now for 1-for-his last-17 with the one being the slow roller to the right side that he beat out on Tuesday. Keep playing him!

The Yankees have five games over the next five days to get it right, play Dominguez every day and get him as acclimated as he can be to the Yankee Stadium outfield before they begin to play for all the marbles next Saturday. Every inning Dominguez spends on the bench and Verdugo spends in the field is detrimental to the Yankees’ chances at winning the division and then winning in October.

6. The Yankees’ best chance to tie or take the lead in a game they never led in came in the same inning as Verdugo’s monster 82-mph infield single that traveled three feet in the air. Trailing 4-1 with runners on first and third with two outs in the seventh, Gleyber Torres hit a ground-rule double to right field to make it 4-2. Juan Soto followed with a single to pull the Yankees within a run. Anthony Santander threw home on Soto’s single to try to prevent the run from scoring and as the ball traveled toward the plate, Soto took off for the second, barely beating the throw. Torres had initially held up on the base hit, but when Adley Rutschman threw down to second to try to get Soto, Torres inexplicably broke for home, ended up in a rundown and was eventually tagged out.

“I think he thought Soto was going to be out,” is the nonsensical, bullshit reasoning Boone gave to defend Torres’ decision.

When told Torres leads the majors in outs at home plate, Boone barked back at the questioner, “I mean do you have the context on all of the outs at home plate?” as if Torres has a history of smart decisions on the basepaths.

You’re right, Boone. Torres is an intelligent baseball player with good baserunning instincts, who has a seven-year career full of aggressive, smart baserunning choices. Everyone else is just wrong and dumb.

Jack Curry on YES called Torres’ decision “inexplicable” and “reckless.” Aaron Judge said, “Stuff like that can’t happen.” Even Torres himself said, “If I’m going to make that decision, go straight for the run.” Everyone including the baserunner realized it was a losing mistake. Everyone except the manager who couldn’t just flat-out say it was a foolish error.

7. Playing Verdugo and Torres’ baserunning gaffe weren’t the only reasons the Yankees lost. Clarke Schmidt needed 100 pitches to get 16 outs and gave up three earned run in 5 1/3 innings and Boone’s choices to relieve Schmidt in a close game following an off day were Tim Mayza and Mark Leiter Jr. The duo got five outs, but not before allowing five baserunners and a run to score.

8. The loss dropped the Yankees to 4-7 on the season against their division rival. The head-to-head record won’t mean anything if the Yankees can win one of their five remaining games or if the Orioles lose one of their five remaining games, but it doesn’t make me feel comfortable or confident about the Yankees’ chances against the Orioles if the two teams meet in the ALDS. And as of Wednesday morning, the Yankees will face the winner of a potential Orioles-Tigers best-of-3.

9. The Yankees released some bad news on Wednesday morning, announcing Nestor Cortes would not make his scheduled start in the second game of this series and instead would have an MRI on his left elbow. Cortes has allowed just one earned run in his previous 15 1/3 innings since calling out the Yankees for sending him to the bullpen in Chicago and has pitched to a 1.58 ERA over his last 40 innings. He is/was likely to be in the postseason rotation, and if not, would have been a left-handed weapon out of the bullpen, but now could have his season cut short (and possibly miss all of next season as an impending free agent). Rarely does a pitcher in need of a throwing elbow MRI receive good news. And even if they do, rarely is it a few days without throwing before returning to action. It’s hard to envision Cortes being a part of the postseason.

10. John Sterling will be a part of the postseason. The 86-year-old legend returned to the broadcast booth on Tuesday and it was like he never left. It’s almost as if the last five-plus months didn’t happen. As a Sterling fan, it was hard to not be able to listen to him anymore when he retired in April. While I’m elated he’s back for the remainder of the regular season and the postseason, overall, it’s just a tease, knowing we will have to say goodbye all again. Hopefully, the last out of the season and of his career he calls isn’t the same as the last out of the last 14 seasons he has had to call: with the Yankees’ season ending without a championship. The next Yankees win (or Orioles loss) will increase the Yankees’ odds at preventing a 15th straight disappointing final out call from Sterling. It would be enjoyable if that win came on Wednesday night to get it out of the way.

1. Aaron Boone was willing to go to Luke Weaver in the eighth inning on Wednesday night against the Mariners, but first he wanted to find the answer to the question of how many outs he could steal with Clay Holmes. The answer: one.

One out is what Holmes recorded in the eighth inning before giving up a game-tying home run to Justin Turner. Why was Holmes in a one-run game to begin with? Why was he once again pitching in a high-leverage situation after being removed from the closer role and demoted in the bullpen pecking order just two weeks ago? And why wasn’t a better, more trusted reliever not pitching after the Yankees had Monday off and won a nine-run blowout on Tuesday in which they didn’t use any of their best relievers?

But there was Holmes getting the call for the third out of the seventh inning in relief of Tommy Kahnle with the tying run on base and and the go-ahead run at the plate. (It took him 12 pitches to get the last out of the seventh.) And there he was again going back out to the mound to begin the eighth. Not only was Boone willing to use his least trusted reliever for multiple innings in a one-run game, he had decided the lane for his least trusted reliever was the Marniners’ 1- and 2- hitters in the seventh and then the heart of the order in the eighth.

2. The home run allowed to Turner resulted in Holmes’ 13th blown save of the season, five more than anyone else. On a night when a Yankees win would clinch them a postseason berth, Boone did everything he could to prevent it from happening.

If you’re upset with Holmes following the Turner home run and his latest blown save, you’re upset with the wrong person. Holmes sucks. Everyone knows he sucks except for his manager. I’m not upset with Holmes. He didn’t make himself a Yankee. He didn’t make himself the closer. He didn’t keep himself in the closer role until his 11th blown save earlier this month. He didn’t put himself in a position to blow his 12th save last week or his 13th on Wednesday.

Boone so desperately wants Holmes to be his closer that he will stop at nothing to continue to give him opportunities in crucial spots. After being removed as the closer following his blown save in Texas two-and-a-half weeks, it took one scoreless outing in his next appearance for Holmes to then be given a one-run lead to protect the following outing: he blew that lead. Then after getting four outs without allowing a run across two games over the weekend, he was thrust right back into a one-run spot on Wednesday, and of course, he blew it.

Boone would rather have Holmes standing on the mound as Jose Altuve races home as the pennant-winning run next month or have Yordan Alvarez trotting around the bases with Holmes hanging his head as a response to the team’s elimination than ruin his friendship or relationship with Holmes by removing him completely from high-leverage situations. Boone is willing to risk it all and ruin the Yankees’ season on the right arm of Holmes. We saw it all season when he wouldn’t remove him from the closer’s role until that 11th blown save, and we have seen it continue over the last two weeks as he allowed him to blow two more.

3. The only way to ensure Boone doesn’t use Holmes in the postseason is to exclude him from the roster, which we know isn’t going to happen. Boone will use anyone and everyone at his disposal on the postseason roster. It’s how you get Neil Walker hitting instead of Miguel Andujar in the ninth inning of an elimination game in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS. It’s how you get JA Happ pitching in relief in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. It’s how you get Happ being used a bulk reliever in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, or how you get Mike Ford pinch hitting in 2020 playoff games after he wasn’t good enough to be on the roster in the weeks leading up to the playoffs. It’s how you get Aaron Hicks starting games in the 2022 postseason and Boone’s shortstop shuffle between Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza that same year. If you’re on the postseason roster, Boone will find playing time for you. Holmes will pitch in a high-leverage situation in October and the Yankees will either blow a lead or lose a game (or both) because of it.

4. Holmes’ work on Wednesday erased the impressive six shutout innings Nestor Cortes provided. Since being removed from the rotation and being inexplicably passed over for a start instead of Marcus Stroman and voicing his opinion on the matter, Cortes has been dominant: 15.1 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 7 BB, 18K. If anything, Cortes was a little too comfortable taking the ball every five days as a Yankee, tweeting delusional thoughts about how great the team has been and turning in crap performances most starts. The brief demotion has certainly motivated him to be better than he had been for stretches this season.

5. Weaver should have been the pitcher relieving Kahnle in the seventh with the lineup turning over, and if not, then Jake Cousins. Allowing Holmes to face the 1 through 4 hitters was irresponsible. That should always be Weaver’s “lane” in any late-game situation. The best reliever should be facing the best hitters. Weaver blew away the Mariners, retiring five of the six batters he faced and striking out four of them. His line since Boone’s admission through usage that Weaver is the best reliever in the team: 7.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 16 K and a .083/.185/.083 slash line against.

6. My current bullpen trust rankings are as follows:

Luke Weaver
Ian Hamilton
Jake Cousins
Tommy Kahnle

Hamilton was outstanding again on Wednesday against the Mariners, but the gap, for me, between Weaver and Hamilton remains massive. Overall, trust falls off completely after Kahnle. No one other than those four should be getting big outs next month unless Clarke Schmidt or Luis Gil joins them in the bullpen.

7. It’s a relief the Yankees are back in the postseason in a format that accepts 40 percent of the league. When the league moved to this format for the 2022 season, I figured the Yankees would never miss the postseason again. I didn’t envision them missing it in the second year of the format. Being in the Top 40 percent of the league with the Yankees’ resources should be a given, and yet, just a year ago they finished in eighth in the AL and were seven games out from being in sixtth.

It’s comical now to hear Boone say last year’s team wasn’t good (which he has now said twice in the last few days), considering last summer he kept telling everyone how the Yankees had the guys in the room capable of turning the season around and getting the job done. They didn’t and never did. Now they are back in the postseason for the first time in two years, and because of the way the 2022 postseason ended (in humiliating fashion against the Astros), it feels like they haven’t been in the postseason in a much longer time. Now that they’re headed back, the season will hinge on the offense not performing its annual October disappearing act. I’m not worried about the pitching. Pitching hasn’t eliminated the Yankees from the postseason since Joe Torre was manager. The offense is what has prevented the Yankees from reaching and winning the World Series over the last 14 years.

8. The offense was essentially a no-show for the first nine innings on Wednesday, picking up just two hits and striking out 15 times. Home plate umpire Jim Wolf didn’t do them any favors with one of the worst strike zones we have seen all season, but it was an ugly offensive effort. The lone run the Yankees scored before getting the automatic runner in in the 10th was when Jasson Dominguez walked in the second, stole second and moved to third on an error, and then scored on an Anthony Rizzo single.

Rizzo drove in both Yankees runs and prevented the bottom third of the order from being a complete non-factor as Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo combined to go 0-for-8. Volpe was particularly awful in this one as he hit into an inning-ending double play first time up, struck out in his next two at-bats and then popped up a first-pitch sacrifice bunt for an easy out in the 10th with Rizzo on second and no outs. For as bad as Volpe was last year (and he was extremely bad), his OPS this year in now seven points worse.

9. Giancarlo Stanton was held out of the lineup for a second straight game, supposedly due to the matchup and not an injury. On Tuesday, the Yankees faced the hard-throwing righty Bryan Woo, and then on Wednesday, the Yankees faced the hard-throwing righty Bryce Miller and Stanton sat for both games. On Thursday, the Yankees will face the hard-throwing righty Logan Gilbert, who is the best of three, and yet, Stanton has been told he will play against Gilbert. Holding out Stanton against hard-throwing righties, but saying he will be playing in October doesn’t add up since all October has is hard-throwing righties. When Stanton sits, it moves Judge to designated hitter, and forces Verdugo in the lineup. How about waiting until the division is clinched before continuing that lineup construction so often?

10. The magic number to clinch the division is down to 6. Any combination of Yankees wins and Orioles losses totaling 6 and the AL East is the Yankees’ for just the third time in Boone’s tenure. The Yankees also have a two-game loss column lead on being the 1-seed in the American League playoffs, something they have never been during Boone’s tenure. By clinching a postseason berth, the Yankees have completed the first goal in doing something else they haven’t done during Boone’s tenure. If Boone stops using Holmes in high-leverage situations he just may accomplish that goal in his seventh year.

1. That’s how a late-night West Coast game should go. The Yankees scored two in the first inning, two in the second, two in the fourth, one in the fifth, three in the sixth and one in the ninth. They led 2-0 after one, 4-1 after two, 6-1 after four, 7-1 after five and 10-1 after six. Eleven runs on 12 hits, including six for extra bases. That will do.

2. Three batters into the game the Yankees had a 2-0 lead after Gleyber Torres singled and Juan Soto and Aaron Judge hit back-to-back doubles. When Soto and Judge hit, the Yankees win, and it’s no surprise the Yankees have been winning a lot lately (8-3 since September 6) because the duo has been hitting.

Soto went 2-for-2 with a double, home run, two walks, three runs and two RBIs. Judge went 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, a run and four RBIs. The home run for Soto was his 40th of the season as the two became just the third pair of Yankees teammates to both hit 40-plus home runs in a season, joining Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (1927, 1930, 1931) and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (1961).

3. Soto’s home run was his 200th career home run. Having 200 home runs at age 25 is ridiculous. (Judge hit his 200th home run during his MVP season in 2022 at age 30.) It was the last active stadium he needed to homer in to have homered in every stadium.

“What a great way to go into free agency,” Soto said, “with all 30 ballparks checked on my list.”

What a quote from Soto. It’s obvious he’s going to the highest bidder this winter whether it’s the Yankees or Mets or Giants or some crappy last-place team looking to make a splash. He’s not going to leave a dollar on the table, and the dollars he does accept better come from the Yankees.

4. The Yankees are so top heavy and reliant on Soto and Judge that the offense can’t function without both. We saw what happened last year with only Judge as the Yankees missed the playoffs and we saw what happened when he was out for an extended period of time following the Dodger Stadium injury: their season collapsed. With only Judge, the Yankees haven’t been able to reach the World Series. With Soto and Judge, their ceiling is a championship. Remove Soto from the equation and their best-case scenario falls back to being embarrassed by the Astros every October.

5. “In a lot of ways, he’s not necessarily even entered his prime,” Aaron Boone said of Soto. “Maybe he’s entering it now.”

The idea Soto is this good and hasn’t entered his prime is what makes signing him a must. This isn’t paying a 30-something-year-old star for what he already accomplished knowing you may get one or two seasons of their prime and then will be living with an albatross contract until it expires. This is paying for a soon-to-be-26-year-old generational star to get the entirety of their prime, like what the Yankees missed out on with Bryce Harper. They can’t make that mistake again.

The Yankees had a young, inexpensive core when they decided to not even meet with Harper, let alone sign him, and they have a similar setup now. Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jasson Dominguez make nothing and Jazz Chisholm is under contract at inexpensive rates for the next two years. If you add in potentially Ben Rice at first base for next season and either Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera or Caleb Durbin at second base, and operate under the idea Soto will be re-signed, the Yankees will have a player 26 or under at catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field and right field. The only outliers would be Judge in center or a corner spot and Giancarlo Stanton at designated hitter. That’s an extremely young everyday lineup. Everyone in the lineup would be making seven figures or less except for Judge, Soto and Stanton. But that lineup and plan only works if Soto is re-signed.

6. As of now, the Yankees have 11 guaranteed games with Soto remaining. Once they clinch a postseason berth, they will get at least two more games with him (if they are a wild-card team) or at least three more games (if they win the division). Every win from Game 163 on will guarantee them another game with Soto in pinstripes.

I’m not ready for Soto’s time in pinstripes to be over. Watching him this season has been like sitting in first class on an international flight with a cabin, personal bathroom and all-you-can-eat-and-drink options. I don’t want to go back to sitting in the last row of economy in a middle seat next to the bathroom. That’s where Yankees fans were while being forced to watch Jake Bauers, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero and Greg Allen as outfielders last season before the trade for Soto. I’m not going back to that. I will retire as a Yankees fan and baseball fan if I have to go back to that.

7. Soto wasn’t the only Yankee to homer on Tuesday night. Dominguez hit his first home run of the season and finished the game reaching base in two of five plate appearances. Dominguez is starting to get on track. In his last four games, he has as many strikeouts (4) as walks, a .412 OBP and .873 OPS. Verdugo has one extra-base hit in 12 September games, presents no speed on the basepaths and is playing a questionable left field. The season is 151 games old. I’m running out of ways and stats to say he sucks.

8. Oswaldo Cabrera got the start at short over Volpe and picked up two hits. For comparison, Volpe has one multi-hit game in September. Cabrera is hitting .303 with a .361 on-base percentage over the last month. The power hasn’t been there (just one extra-base in that time), but at least he’s getting on base. Volpe hasn’t homered since August 3, has one double since August 22 and one walk since August 30. Give me more Cabrera, whether it’s in place of Volpe or Anthony Rizzo, who went 0-for-5 with a strikeout on Tuesday and has a .484 OPS since returning on September 1.

9. The Yankees’ early 2-0 lead was nearly erased in the bottom of the first when the Mariners loaded the bases with two outs. Luis Gil was in trouble and behind Justin Turner with a 3-0 count. One pitch away from walking in a row or potentially allowing multiple runs, Gil was saved when Victor Robles inexplicably tried to steal home and was easily thrown out. It was possibly the dumbest thing I have seen in a game, surpassing Nick Swisher sacrifice bunting a runner from second to third with already one out in an inning. It made the Yankees’ decision to intentionally walk Rafael Devers on Saturday look brilliant. It looked like something Gleyber Torres or Alex Verdugo would do. After that Gil settled in and gave the Yankees five innings and one-run ball yet again without his best stuff. It seems like Gil is either lights out with his best stuff or gives the Yankees five innings of one-run ball without it. He’s been awesome.

10. The Yankees can clinch a postseason berth with a win on Wednesday night in Seattle.

“That’s what we came into the season to do, get into the postseason and give ourselves an opportunity to go out there and win a World Series,” Judge said. “So that will be step one, but we’ve got to get there first.”

The Yankees’ division lead is up to four games with 11 to play. The goal should be to keep it to at least four games going into the series with the Orioles next week, so even if they were to shockingly get swept, they would still be in first with three to go. Or they can keep winning all the way until that series and make the series that meaningless. That would be preferable.

The Yankees extended their division lead to three games and essentially ended the Red Sox’ season by taking three out of four from their rival.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have a three-game lead with 12 games to play. Their magic number to clinch a postseason berth is 3, but the goal is to win the division and avoid the best-of-3, wild-card series, which likely won’t be decided until next week against the Orioles at Yankee Stadium. It may not be decided until after that series when the two teams will each have three games remaining.

The four-game series win over the Red Sox has increased the Yankees’ odds of winning the division to 88.1 percent. (They currently have the highest odds of winning the World Series at 18 percent. It’s been a long time since they were the league leader for that math.)

The four-game series win over the Red Sox also essentially ended the Red Sox’ season, dropping their odds of reaching the playoffs to 2.5 percent. That’s too bad.

2. After eking out a 2-1 win in the series opener thanks to a Juan Soto walk-off single, the Yankees won the second game on an Aaron Judge grand slam. It had been a few weeks of Judge not doing much, but he seems to be back on track. Since September 6, Judge is hitting .303/.452/.546 and has as many walks (9) as strikeouts.

Judge’s entire season will be evaluated and remembered based on what he does in October and not what his home run total finishes at after these 12 remaining games. Judge needs to have a postseason similar to his regular season. He has to have it. Two years ago, he set the single-season home run record in the American League and then went 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS against the Astros and the Yankees were swept. I expect Juan Soto to be his usual self in October because he was that for the Nationals and Padres in postseasons past. Judge has to join him. The rest of the Yankees offense is too bad, too weak, too untrustworthy to not have both Judge and Soto hitting in the playoffs.

3. Giancarlo Stanton is quietly coming out of his latest funk, as he reached base in half of his plate appearances (12) against the Red Sox. Austin Wells had his first bad series in months (1-for-11 with four strikeouts), which I’m more than OK with. Gleyber Torres hit a couple of Yankee Stadium home runs and is extremely close to getting his OPS (.697) above .700.

Anthony Volpe went 1-for-the Red Sox series and struck out three times in the series finale and left about 92 runners on base. Volpe has looked bad offensively for the entirety of his two-year career and this current slump he’s in is the worst he has looked overall. (I guess it’s not really a “slump” since he’s just always bad?) Volpe hasn’t homered since August 3. He has one double since August 22. He has one walk since August 30. In September, he’s hitting .163/.177/.163. A .177 on-base percentage! A .163 slugging percentage! A .340 OPS! These are horrific numbers. Unplayable numbers. But because he’s the Golden Boy, he will continue to play every day for the rest of the regular season and every game in the postseason. I have come to accept there is no level of offensive production that is bad enough for the Yankees to not play him. Unfortunately, Volpe isn’t the only automatic out in the lineup.

Anthony Rizzo returned on September 1 and is hitting .191/.277/.262 since then. He’s been every bit as bad as he was from Opening Day until he got hut in mid-June. He’s as washed as washed gets, and yet, he will be playing every day through the Yankees’ final game of the season, whenever that may be.

Alex Verdugo had a hit in one of the two games he played in, but of course negated the hit by getting thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double. Jasson Dominguez had a pair of hits in the three games he played in, drew three walks, scored two runs, produced lengthy at-bats and looked comfortable in the box.

4. Here is what Aaron Boone said about Dominguez on September 1:

“When he comes up here, you’re going to want to play him every day.”

Here is how Dominguez’s call-up has gone:

September 9: Played
September 10: Played
September 11: Bench
September 12: Played
September 13: Bench
September 14: Played
September 15: Played

Seven games on the team, five starts. That’s not being an everyday player.

Dominguez has always played every day. He needs to play every day. He’s not an every-other-day player. Look at Wells. When he was getting 50 percent (at best) of the playing time at catcher he wasn’t hitting. When he became the “everyday” catcher (or as everyday as a catcher can be), he took off, becoming the best-hitting catcher in the league, outside of maybe Salvador Perez. The Yankees have taken this foolish approach with every prospect to get called up except for Volpe, who has been given two years of everyday playing time and has done nothing to prove he deserves it. Maybe if Dominguez was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey a Yankees fan, and if the team had passed over every available star free agent at Dominguez’s position he would be playing every day in actuality and not in just some fictional world Boone speaks of.

5. After winning the first two games of the series, the Yankees led the third game 1-0 in the top of the fourth with one out, no one on base and Rafael Devers coming to the plate against Gerrit Cole. Devers stepped in the box and Cole threw up four fingers on the mound, signaling an intentional walk.

It was a foolish move, a dumb decision and a cowardly choice by Cole. He’s the reigning AL Cy Young winner, a likely future Hall of Famer. He’s not Marcus Stroman. And even if he were, I wouldn’t want Stroman walking Devers in that spot either. Can you imagine Roger Clemens or David Cone or Justin Verlander or any true “ace” putting up four fingers on their own there? Cole and the Yankees got what they deserved for trying to outsmart and outthink the opposition. Devers stole second and Cole mentally was gone, allowing seven runs to score after the walk between the fourth and fifth innings. Unless he pitches lights-out in the playoffs and finally leads this team to a championship in his fifth season, the lasting image of his season will be him holding up those four fingers.

6. While the walk was ill-advised, it was the unfolding of the walk that I have a problem with, as it was yet another communication breakdown on Boone’s watch.

Cole said the decision to walk Devers in the game had been discussed with Boone and Matt Blake.

“I think that I bought into the plan going into it,” Cole said, “but afterward, it was the wrong move.”

“Once we scored the run, my preference would have been, ‘Let’s attack him,'” Boone said. “But obviously, I didn’t communicate that well enough. I think Gerrit was a little indecisive out there and rolled with it.”

Obviously.

“We were in the tunnel before the inning and had discussed that if Duran was retired, were we going to stick to it aggressively and intentionally walk him?” Cole said. “That was the plan.”

“I was not in that conversation,” Wells said. “I didn’t know that was in the plans.”

“During the inning, I looked to the dugout and stuck to the plan,” Cole said. “If i make the pitches after that and I continue to execute at a high level, then the plan works. Evidently, the plan didn’t work.”

Evidently.

The plan was idiotic and none of the Yankees’ versions of what transpired adding up goes to show how disastrous it was.

7. Boone was hired, and likely solely hired, because of his so-called great communication skills. The issue with that is Boone was hired with no coaching or managerial experience at any level anywhere, so there were no recommendations or references for the Yankees to refer to in the interview process. There was no body of work for them to base the idea of Boone being a great communicator off of. The Yankees executives in the room who hired Boone based the theory that he’s a great communicator off of whatever he said to them in the interview room and nothing else. Unfortunately, the body of work Boone has created in now nearly seven seasons as a major league manager suggest otherwise.

Not even a month into the job in his first spring training he tried to bring Dellin Betances into a game even though he hadn’t yet called on Betances to warm up yet. That year in the postseason, with the ALDS tied at 1, his starting pitcher didn’t know what time Game 3 started. He didn’t let JA Happ know about the decision to use Deivi Garcia as a secret opener in the 2020 ALDS. He never told Gary Sanchez he wasn’t going to play every day during his final two seasons with the Yankees. He said he didn’t think Domingo German needed to apologize to the team to begin 2021, but after Zack Britton voiced a different opinion to the media about German, Boone had him apologize. After the Yankees lost Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS following an odd decision to not use Clay Holmes in relief, Boone said Holmes wasn’t available. When Holmes was asked about his availability after the loss, he said he told Boone he was available and “good to go” prior to the game. When the Yankees went down 3-0 in the ALCS, Boone used video from the Yankees’ 2004 ALCS loss to motivate his team. When Rizzo suffered a concussion in May of 2023, he continued to play. When Rizzo told Boone about his symptoms in a series in Baltimore, he then went on to play that entire series and two games after it before being shut down for the season. There have been endless lies about injuries, the extent of injuries and timetables for injuries. There has been disinformation about the intended use and playing time of every prospect other than Volpe. There have been countless exaggerations of performance and production. There has been widespread delusion about washed-up players turning their seasons and careers around only for those players to be designated for assignment, released or placed on the injured list.

8. Over the last two years, rarely does a week go by without a bizarre story emerging from the Yankees clubhouse. Whether it’s injury-related nonsense (like recently saying the results of DJ LeMahieu’s supposed hip MRI were unclear), the crazy timeline of the game from 2023 when German wasn’t able to start then pitched in relief then showed up drunk to the Stadium, saying Dominguez would only be called up if he is to play every day and then calling him up and not playing him every day or the conversations that led to the intentional walk of Devers, there’s always something with the Boone Yankees.

Joe Girardi had his faults and many of them were bullpen related. But there wasn’t this level of internal chaos with any of Girardi’s teams outside of the 2011 situation between he and Jorge Posada during a Red Sox series, and from 2013-2016, Girardi had four poorly constructed rosters that should have created internal chaos and losing records and never did.

9. Boone can’t properly fill out a lineup card. He doesn’t put his players in the best possible position to succeed. He rarely makes a correct in-game decision and infrequently gives his relievers clean innings to work with. He’s never upfront about injuries or the severity of them and is never honest in evaluating his players. Each year, the teams he manage make unacceptable outs on the bases, mental mistakes in the field and go into lengthy and sometimes irreversible slides. The one thing that was supposed to separate him from others was his communication skills, and yet, I was able to write an inordinate amount of words just now of communication breakdowns of his off the top of my head from memory, likely forgetting some egregious ones from the last nearly seven years.. Boone is not a good communicator. He’s a horrible one.

10. Luckily for Boone, and for players like Volpe, Rizzo, Verdugo, Cole, Holmes, Carlos Rodon and others, the postseason is just two weeks away. Then everyone gets a clean slate. The poor production of the last six months is thrown out the window and every wrong can be righted with a championship. But for now, it’s off to the West Coast for one last time in 2024 for six games against the Mariners and A’s.

A night after walking off the Royals, the Yankees walked off the Red Sox with a 2-1 win in 10 innings.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Juan Soto ended his recent slump on Wednesday with a dramatic, much-needed, two-run home run. On Thursday, he confirmed the end of his slump with a walk-off single in the 10th inning.

“We never give up,” Soto said about the Yankees’ 2-1 win. “We keep going. We keep our heads up and try to finish the game.”

2. Soto has a .729 OPS over the last month as his once-1.052 OPS dipped below the 1.000 mark this week and sits at .996, which is still second-best in the majors. But he’s not the only Yankee that has been struggling. Aaron Judge hasn’t homered since August 25, Giancarlo Stanton is in a 2-for-29 slide, Jazz Chisholm has cooled off since his David Justice-like start to his Yankees career, Anthony Rizzo has a .517 OPS since coming off the injured list, Anthony Volpe hasn’t had an extra-base hit in three weeks and Jasson Dominguez has only been up for three games. If not for Austin Wells, and shockingly, Gleyber Torres of late, who knows where the Yankees would be in the standings.

3. I wrote this about Oswaldo Cabrera on Tuesday:

I wish we would see more of Oswaldo Cabrera, who is now the backup for both Volpe at shortstop and Rizzo at first base, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Volpe hasn’t been benched since his first day in the majors and Rizzo is being paid $17 million, so he’s going to play whether he can still hit (which he apparently can’t) or pick a ball out of the dirt (which he apparently can’t) or not.

Unfortunately, Cabrera wasn’t in the lineup on Thursday, and even with another poor showing from Volpe and Rizzo, Cabrera is no closer to taking playing time from either.

4. Volpe left eight runners on base in his first three at-bats on Thursday. It’s stunning when Rizzo hits a ball on a line. The two of them are a blackhole in the lineup, hitting back-to-back at the bottom of the order. I don’t see how Volpe is going to suddenly figure out the majors over the next 15 games after not having figured it out over his first 305 games, and I don’t know how anyone can expect Rizzo to tap into even an ounce of being the player he once was. After these next 15 games, the Yankees are only going to see front-end starters and elite relievers. I can’t imagine either of those two having success in October, and when you’re playing with two automatic outs in the lineup and also Stanton whose entire success is based around unpredictable hot streaks, the other six hitters can’t afford to be cold or off, as they need to carry those three.

5. “We haven’t had a lot offense the last few nights,” Aaron Boone said. “But we’re doing enough.”

The Yankees haven’t had offense for the last week outside of the first game of the Royals series. In their other six most recent games, they have scored 10 runs total. The last two nights have been fun, and thankfully, the starting pitching was as good as it was from Luis Gil and Nestor Cortes, and amazingly, the bullpen outside of Clay Holmes on Wednesday has been outstanding, but they can’t survive like this for the rest of the month.

6. I wish I could say I couldn’t believe Holmes was warming up in the eighth inning of a 1-1 game on Thursday night, but I wasn’t. And I wish I could say I was shocked when he entered in the ninth inning of a 1-1 game, but I wasn’t. After blowing his league-leading 12th save the night before, there was Holmes once again coming into a high-leverage situation as if nothing he had done this season had happened.

7. Boone desperately wants Holmes to be his closer. He feels like he owes it to Boone to be his closer. The same way he feels the need to play Volpe every day and kept batting Alex Verdugo cleanup for a large part of the season even though Verdugo was proving to be one of the worst hitters in the league, if not the worst hitter. It took one clean inning in Chicago for Holmes to regain Boone’s trust after his disaster in Texas, and even though he blew the save on Wednesday, he still went to him the very next game.

8. “Really, when I’m on the field,” Holmes said, “I want to do my best for those guys.”

Thanks, Holmes. Before that insightful comment, I thought you wanted to do you worst for your career and your team.

9. Over the last two games, the only blemish from the bullpen has been from the former closer. Over the last two nights, Tim Hill, Tommy Kahnle, Jake Cousins, Luke Weaver and Ian Hamilton combined for this line: 9.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 10 K. Hamilton was filthy on Thursday, getting five outs and striking out three. (I still would never trust him in a postseason spot, but I may not have a choice.)

10. Even with another lackluster offensive effort against the starter in the majors who gets less swings and misses than any other starter in the majors, it was a good night. The Yankees increased their division lead a half-game from 1 1/2 to 2 with 15 to play. The idea of the Yankees increasing their odds of winning the division, while also ruining the Red Sox’ season this weekend is off to a good start.

The Yankees beat the Royals 4-3 in 11 innings on Wednesday to win the series with Juan Soto breaking out of his slump.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After the Yankees’ offensive performance on Tuesday looked like an October foreshadowing, the first five-plus innings on Wednesday looked the same.

On Tuesday, the Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts and didn’t have a single runner reach second base. On Wednesday, through the first 5 1/3 innings, the Yankees were 2-for-17 with six strikeouts and a walk. They still hadn’t had a runner reach second base. No runner in scoring position for 14 1/3 innings.

After Gleyber Torres put the bat on his shoulder for an entire six-pitch walk (including taking back-to-back curves on 2-2 and 3-2), Juan Soto came to the plate.

Soto fouled off a 2-2 pitch into his ankle and hobbled around before needing to stay on the ground for a couple of minutes. It was a scary moment with visions of Soto missing the rest of the season playing out in my head. Thankfully, Soto was able to walk it off and get back in the box, fouling away another pitch after the scare. Two pitches after looking like he may be seriously hurt, Soto sat back on a hanging curve from the league leader in strikeouts per nine innings Cole Ragans and crushed it into the right-field bleachers to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. (Why Ragans went changeup-curve after Soto fouled a slider off into his ankle, I don’t know, but I’m grateful he did.)

2. “Sometimes when you hit yourself like that, you go away a little bit,” Soto said. “I tried to just focus, take my time and go in there and make good contact.”

On Wednesday, I wrote: I thought Soto would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar. The two-run home run was the kind of at-bat and moment I envisioned from Soto when the Yankees traded for him. When the rest of the team is slumping and not performing, I figured he would carry them. When the rest of the offense disappears in October, I know he will be there given his postseason success with the Nationals and Padres.

The runs were the first the Yankees had scored since Monday. After not homering in the entire series at Wrigley Field and being shut out on Tuesday, it was just the second of the last six games the Yankees hit a home run in.

3. The lead didn’t last long. The very next inning Aaron Boone went to Clay Holmes, knowing very well he would have to face the top of the Royals’ lineup. A single, single, lineup and sacrifice fly later, and the Royals had tied the game and Holmes had his 12th blown save of the season.

Using Holmes in the seventh inning of a one-run game against the top of the Royals’ order is the same as using him as the closer. Boone still hasn’t learned his lesson despite eight of Holmes’ 12 blown saves turning into losses for the team. One of those losses came against these same Royals back on June 13. It was that loss in Kansas City that sent the Yankees’ season into a free fall. If Holmes only half-sucked and only four of those eight had turned into losses, the Yankees would have a six-game loss-column lead on the Orioles. He has single-handedly put the Yankees in the current standings battle they are in to avoid playing in the best-of-3, wild-card series.

But like I have written and said many times, I’m never mad at the player or pitcher in a situation like this, and I’m not mad at Holmes. He didn’t let himself stay in the closer role after blowing 11 saves. He doesn’t keep deciding to bring himself into games. And he didn’t bring himself into a one-run game on Wednesday. You would think a “closer” with a 5.14 ERA over three-and-a-half months would need more than one clean inning in a loss to the Cubs after being demoted before being thrown back into high-leverage situations. Not for Boone. Holmes had five days off after his disastrous performance in Texas, threw a 1-2-3, 12-pitch inning in Chicago, and Boone decided he was ready to get back into a crucial role. The Yankees used five relievers in the game and all of them did their job except for Holmes.

4. The Yankees had a chance to take the lead back in the bottom of the seventh. With one out, Anthony Volpe singled and Anthony Rizzo walked, bringing up Jose Trevino. If you were going to have a draft for the worst hitter in the majors to be up with runners on first and second and one out and the threat of a double play looming, Trevino would be the first overall pick. He’s slow, he makes weak contact, and typically hits the ball on the ground right to the shortstop. He has hit into 11 double plays this season in just 68 games. Trevino is better at hitting double plays than anything else.

Knowing that and knowing that Trevino is a miserable hitter aside from his knack for rally-ruining double plays and knowing he’s hitting .083 with a .366 OPS since coming off the injured list in mid-August, he’s not just the last player on the Yankees you want up in that spot, he may be the last player in the entire sport.

5. Fortunately, Boone had options. With a lefty on the mound, he could take his chances with the left-handed Austin Wells, or if he wanted to stick with the righty vs. lefty matchup, he could use the switch-hitting Jasson Dominguez or the switch-hitting Oswaldo Cabrera or Jon Berti. Any of those four options would have been better a choice than Trevino. Unfortunately, Boone didn’t do anything.

Instead, Boone used Cabrera as a pinch runner at first for Rizzo and then let Trevino bat for himself. Trevino hit the ball on the ground to first, was tagged out running to first, and Volpe idiotically tried to score from second on the ground ball and was tagged out at home. An unconventional double play to end the inning.

To compound Boone’s stupidity, when Trevino’s spot in the order came up with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th inning, he used Wells as a pinch hitter … against a lefty! So he was willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th, but he wasn’t willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the go-ahead run on second and one out in the seventh. Please make it make sense.

6. Between the decision to use Holmes in a one-run game and against the top of the Royals’ order, and the decision to let Trevino hit for himself with four better pinch-hit options available, Boone had quite the seventh inning. The atmosphere and intensity of the game was playoff-like with a division pennant and first-round bye hanging in the balance, and Boone was at his worst. The bigger the game and the closer the score, every decision Boone makes will have an enormous impact on the outcome and how this season ends, and once again, he seems incapable of making logical in-game choices.

7. So much for Dominguez playing every day. Two days after arriving, he was on the bench so Verdugo could play. Rather than let the switch-hitting Dominguez start against a lefty, Boone went with the left-handed Verdugo against the left. Verdugo hit two ground balls to the right side in the game, and with that, he tied the record for the most groundouts to the right side in a single season with 111 in the Statcast Era (since 2015). Verdugo has 16 games remaining to break the record and once he does, I think it’s a record that will last forever, like Wayne Gretzky’s points record or Cy Young’s wins record. Because no one that bad and hitting that many ground balls to the right side would be given as many plate appearances as Verdugo has been given this season.

8. Luis Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still only allowed one run (a solo home run) over five innings. There have been so many games this season Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still put together a performance like he did on Wednesday. He should be the Yankees’ Game 2 starter in the postseason, but we all know it’s going to be Carlos Rodon. Owed money always wins over actual performance.

9. I can never believe Giancarlo Stanton’s batting average when the graphic displays it with him at the plate. He’s hitting .230 this season, which may as well be .330 since I feel like he’s hitting .130. In his last seven games, Stanton is 1-for-26 with 10 strikeouts.

10. Soto came out of his slump, and maybe Judge is close to coming out of his? He had a line-drive single and two walks in the game. It would be glorious if Judge got his power stroke back in time for this four-game Red Sox series. It would go a long way to helping the Yankees win the division and a long way to keeping the Red Sox out of the postseason for the fifth time in six years.

The Yankees lost to the Royals 5-0 and no Yankee reached scoring position in the game.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I finished Tuesday’s Thoughts with this:

I can’t see Boone giving Giancarlo Stanton a second consecutive day off. If he doesn’t, someone has to sit. We’re about to see just how much Dominguez is going to play and if Verdugo isn’t.

We found out the answer to the question of will Jasson Dominguez really take away playing time from Alex Verdugo when Tuesday’s lineup was posted and Dominguez was in it batting seventh and Verdugo was on the bench.

2. “He and I spoke, yeah,” Aaron Boone said about talking with Verdugo about losing his everyday spot. “That role is a little bit fluid. Certainly, Jasson being here impacts him some.”

Dominguez being in the majors doesn’t just impact Verdugo “some” it turns him from an everyday player into a bench player. Boone said when Aaron Judge is playing the outfield, he will play center field, and when Judge is playing center field, Dominguez will play left field. That’s a very complicated way of saying Verdugo isn’t playing anymore. With Giancarlo Stanton as the designated hitter, Judge has to play the outfield. And if Boone says when Judge is in the outfield, he will play center field and Dominguez will play left field, well that’s every game that Stanton plays. And with only 17 games remaining and the division on the line, Stanton is going to be playing a lot. And in the rare instance when he doesn’t play, I’m assuming Judge will be the DH, Dominguez will play center and Verdugo will play left.

3. For Tuesday’s game, Boone put together the best possible lineup he is capable of putting together with the current roster.

Gleyber Torres, 2B
Juan Soto, RF
Aaron Judge, CF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Anthony Volpe, SS

(I say the best possible he is capable of putting together since I would move Torres from first to after Chisholm and move Soto, Judge, Wells, Stanton and Chisholm all up one spot.)

Unfortunately, the best, most optimized version of the Yankees offense couldn’t do anything against Seth Lugo for seven innings (7 IP, 10 K), Kris Bubic for an inning (1 IP, 2 K) or John Schreiber for an inning (1 IP, 2 K). The Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts. They didn’t draw a walk and no one reached second base. It was the first game in Yankees history in which they had the combination of no walks, no extra-base hits and struck out at least 14 times. Add another line to the impressive managerial resume of Boone as there’s yet another embarrassing historical performance he has overseen.

4. “That was probably as good a performance [as there’s been] against us this year,” Boone said. “We were silent.”

It may have been the best starting effort and total-game effort against the Yankees in 2024, but it’s not like similar performances from the offense are rare. They scored one run on Sunday at Wrigley Field and six runs total in three games against the Cubs, and didn’t hit a home run in that entire series. Last month, they struggled mightily to score against the Tigers and Nationals. In July, they had trouble scoring against everyone until the final days of that month.

The type of “effort” the Yankees bats gave on Tuesday is what worries me every Yankees season, envisioning yet another no-show in October. A lack of offense is why the Boone Yankees have always bowed out of October early. In the 2018 ALDS, they scored four runs in Games 3 and 4, lost both and went home. In the 2019 ALCS, they scored 14 runs from Games 2 through 6, went 1-4 in those games and were eliminated. In the 2020 ALDS, they were held to one run (on three hits) in the decisive Game 5 and lost. In the 2021 wild-card game, they were shut out for the first five innings, scored two runs in the game and their season ended. In the 2022 ALCS, they scored nine runs in four games (and five of those runs came in one game) and they were embarrassingly swept. Last season, of course, they missed the postseason because their offense was so bad for the entirety of the regular season.

5. Lugo is the exact type of pitcher the Yankees will face every game in October and he had his way with them by getting ahead in counts, throwing strikes and changing speeds. The Yankees were swinging through high-80s and low-90s pitches like Mason Miller was on the mound because of Lugo’s impeccable control and wide array of pitches.

“That was a pitching clinic,” Royals manager Matt Quataro said of Lugo’s outing.

At one point, Lugo retired 17 straight. It was, and it was the exact type of start that keeps me up at night. It was the exact type of game this Yankees lineup is prone to.

“The playoffs are different animal,” Torres said. “We face [Lugo] again, we for sure have to have a different plan.”

6. The troubling postseason past of Judge is well known (.211/.310/.462 in 44 games) and his most recent postseason performance in the 2022 ALCS sweep by the Astros (1-for-16 with a single) after setting the American League home run record during the regular season is still bothersome. Over the last two weeks, Judge is hitting .196/.339/.255 without a home run and with 20 strikeouts in 61 plate appearances. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees are 6-8 during that stretch.

It’s also unsurprising the Yankees have struggled over the last two weeks against the Nationals, Cardinals, Rangers, Cubs and now Royals because Juan Soto is also not hitting. The Yankees offense goes as those two go, and Soto is hitting .212/.339/.327 over the last two weeks. I thought he would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar.

The Yankees are good enough to deal with one of the two being cold, but they can’t overcome both of them not hitting. The rest of the lineup relies on them to get on base and to drive the rest of the lineup in in the rare moments other members of the lineup are on base. If those two hit this way (which is not at all) for even two days in a row in October, the season will end disappointingly.

7. With the Dominguez-Verdugo situation, the emergence of Austin Wells, the demotion of Clay Holmes, Nestor Cortes voicing his opinions on the way the Yankees handled his demotion and Judge and Soto not hitting, there has been enough going on that it taken the attention away from the fact that Anthony Volpe is hitting as poorly as he ever has and that Anthony Rizzo has been a complete dud (as expected) since returning.

After homering in back-to-back games on August 2 and August 3 to get his OPS back above .700, Volpe is hitting .210/.256/.261 over the last five weeks. In September, he has a .394 OPS and 13 strikeouts in 31 plate appearances. He hasn’t homered since August 3 and has walked once in the last three weeks. But he keeps on playing, keeps on starting at shortstop every day.

Rizzo was atrocious before getting hurt in mid-June (.630 OPS) and has been atrocious since (.452 OPS). I would love for this to be Rizzo getting back to playing every day and knocking the rust off, but it’s not like he’s coming back during a season in which he was playing well and had a great season interrupted by an injury. He was bad before the injury and has been worse since coming back from the injury.

I wish we would see more of Oswaldo Cabrera, who is now the backup for both Volpe at shortstop and Rizzo at first base, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Volpe hasn’t been benched since his first day in the majors and Rizzo is being paid $17 million, so he’s going to play whether he can still hit (which he apparently can’t) or pick a ball out of the dirt (which he apparently can’t) or not.

8. Cortes openly voiced his opinion on the Yankees’ decision to remove him from the rotation over the weekend. It’s hard to feel sorry for Cortes after he got beat up by the Cardinals over Labor Day Weekend, couldn’t get through five innings against the Angels in August and let the Rays knock him around in back-to-back starts in mid-July after his wildly delusional tweet about everyone wanting to be the Yankees and how they are contenders every year, even though they missed the playoffs entirely last year. It’s easier to feel sorry for him when you realize he was removed from the rotation instead of Marcus Stroman.

Unfortunately, for Cortes, he’s only on the books for $3.95 million this season, while Stroman is making $18.5 million, is owed $18.5 million next season and has an $18 million option for 2026 that will kick in if he throws 140 innings in 2025. Stroman isn’t better than Cortes, but owed money is the initial deciding factor in roster decisions and playing time with the Yankees. With Cortes’ name swirling around trade rumors in July and with him being a free agent at the end of next season, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him traded during this offseason. But for now, the Yankees need to win games and he gives them a better chance to than Stroman.

9. Stroman was once against awful on Tuesday against the Royals. It didn’t matter that he was bad since the game could still be being played at this moment and the Yankees still wouldn’t have scored, but Stroman was painful to watch yet again: nine baserunners in 5 1/3 innings. Since July 4, Stroman has started 57 innings and only nine of them have been 1-2-3 innings, which is outrageous. Every six-plus innings Stroman will give you a clean frame. He didn’t have one on Tuesday, so he’s due for one in his next start!

If Stroman is to make his next start, it will come on Sunday against the Red Sox. Stroman has made two starts against the Red Sox this season, and in 8 1/3 innings, he has allowed 21 baserunners. I don’t know how you could possibly let him face them again, but I’m excited to see the bullshit the Yankees tell us about why they are going to let him face them.

10. Before the Yankees get to their four-game series against the Red Sox this week, they still have one more game against the Royals. Another rubber match. It will be the 10th time in the Yankees’ last 11 series they have played a rubber match. It will come against the left-handed Cole Ragans. The All-Star is a lefty, which the Yankees can’t seem to hit, and he has ridiculous strikeouts numbers with 204 in 167 1/3 innings this season as he leads the league in strikeouts per nine innings (11.1). Lugo doesn’t even average eight strikeouts per nine innings and he struck out 10 in seven innings on Tuesday. If the Yankees are to win the game, win the series and avoid possibly being tied with the Orioles in the loss column again, the offense is going to need to show up. After their night off on Tuesday, they should be well rested.

The Yankees’ offense came alive for the first time in four games in a 10-4 win over the Royals on the day Jasson Dominguez was called up.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Four days ago, Brian Cashman said Alex Verdugo gave the Yankees the “best chance to win” as the team’s everyday left fielder instead of their top-ranked, untouchable-in-trades prospect Jasson Dominguez. Three days after making that wildly idiotic assertion, Dominguez had a locker in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse to begin a three-game series with the Royals.

“Jasson’s going to play a lot,” Aaron Boone said before Monday’s game.

In 72 hours, Dominguez went from not having “a lane” to everyday playing time on the Yankees to batting sixth in their lineup — three places higher in the batting order than the player who was said to give the Yankees a better chance to win with than Dominguez.

2. “Like I said on September 1, when we didn’t initially recall Jasson, he’s [been] in the conversation every single day,” Boone said. “As much as anything, it’s just continuing to build the momentum he’s built here over the last few weeks.”

Nothing changed for Dominguez since September 1. He was destroying Triple-A pitching then and was as recently as his last Triple-A game. He didn’t magically go from not being ready for the majors to being ready to hit in the middle of the lineup in eight days.

“We feel like [he’s been] stringing together some of his best baseball here over the last couple of weeks,” Boone said, “and has earned this opportunity.”

And nothing changed for Verdugo over that time either. He had a .654 OPS on September 1 and a .651 OPS at the end of play on September 8. He has sucked all season and he has sucked just as bad since rosters expanded.

3. In order for a roster spot to open to play Dominguez, the Yankees had to designate someone for assignment or put someone on the injured list. They went with the injured list and that someone was DJ LeMahieu.

Rather than move on from LeMahieu and pay him more than $30 million to not play baseball for them through 2026, they decided to put him on the IL with a made-up injury. LeMahieu has no more of a hip impingement than you or I do. Boone said LeMahieu has been dealing with “it” for a “few weeks.” So either the Yankees are putting LeMahieu on the IL with a made-up injury or they have been playing an injured 36-year-old with a .527 OPS for a few weeks. I pray it’s the former, but knowing the Yankees, it’s very possible it’s the latter.

4. LeMahieu’s 2021 season ended early due to injury and he missed the one-game playoff. His 2022 season ended early due to injury and he missed the postseason. Last season, he made it to the end of the year, but there was no postseason for the Yankees. This season, he’ll miss the postseason again.

“I don’t know,” Boone said about LeMahieu returning this year. “We’ll see.”

That’s the same kind of “We’ll see” I tell my kids (ages 2 and 4) when they ask if they can stay up all night. LeMahieu isn’t coming back this year. He will be back in spring training with a chance to redeem himself and avoid being paid by the Yankees to not play for the Yankees.

5. In his first game at Yankee Stadium this season and with the Yankees trailing 2-0 in the fourth inning, Dominguez singled, stole third and scored on an error when the throw from Salvador Perez to get him went into the outfield. It was more production than Verdugo had provided in more than two months with the team. That same inning, with a runner on, Verdugo hit a go-ahead, two-run home run to right field. It’s almost as if tying playing time to production and consequences motivates players to perform better. I’m sure the Verdugo home run put a smile on the faces of Cashman and Boone. You know those two want Verdugo to outplay Dominguez over the final 18 games of the season.

6. “He’s gonna play, Verdugo said of Dominguez. “Whatever that means, that means, right? If I lose a little bit of playing time, I lose a little bit of playing time. At the end of the day, I want to win. The only thing that matters is getting to the playoffs and winning there.”

I was surprised with those comments from Verdugo. He said exactly what someone in his position should say. He didn’t respond like Gleyber Torres, who said “I play second” after the team traded for Jazz Chisholm. He didn’t respond like Nestor Cortes did on Saturday.:

7. “Obviously, I was upset,” Cortes said of being removed from the rotation. “I feel like amongst all the starters, I’ve been the workhorse here,” Cortes said. “Once [Gerrit] Cole went down, they picked me to be the Opening Day starter, not necessarily the No. 1, but the Opening Day starter. I had to switch my routine there, and now they do this.”

Of course, Cortes is delusional to think he has had a better season than he has. After each one of his crappy starts, his manager talks about how well he pitched and how “good” his stuff was, and Cortes, himself, says the same. However, to Cortes’ credit, he shouldn’t be the one out of the rotation, Marcus Stroman should be.

8. While Dominguez’s arrival was the story before the game and through the the top of the seventh with the Yankees then trailing 4-3 and the Orioles on their way to a loss, Austin Wells stole the spotlight with a mammoth, go-ahead three-run home run.

“He’s been a middle-of-the-order hitter for two to three months now,” Boone said. “We’ve all seen that, witnessed that.”

It’s been more than two or three months. It’s been more than four months. Wells has an .837 OPS since April 24. He has become the best all-around catcher in the majors and should be the favorite to win American League Rookie of the Year, considering he leads AL catchers in wRC+ at 121 and is statistically the second-best defensive catcher in the AL as well.

9. Carlos Rodon pitched good enough to win (6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 2 HR), but left the game on the hook for the loss thanks to some more sloppy defense with Chisholm bouncing a throw to first, Anthony Rizzo being unable to pick that throw and Torres dropping a popup. As of now, the four postseason starters seem to be Rodon, Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt in some order. (My order would be Cole, Gil, Schmidt, Rodon, but we all know owed money outranks performance.)

10. Stroman, thankfully, won’t be part of the rotation. I don’t even know how you would put him on the postseason roster since he can’t be trusted out of the bullpen with his stuff. Unfortunately, Stroman goes for the Yankees on Tuesday against the tough Seth Lugo. Even though Lugo is a second straight hard-throwing, sinker-focused righty, I can’t see Boone giving Giancarlo Stanton a second consecutive day off. If he doesn’t, someone has to sit. We’re about to see just how much Dominguez is going to play and if Verdugo isn’t.

Another game, another loss for the Yankees. Another series, another series loss for the Yankees.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After losing a series to the 25th-ranked Nationals, the Yankees helped the Cardinals get above .500 by losing a series at home to them. And then over the last three nights in Texas, the Yankees dropped their third straight series to a Rangers team that hasn’t seen the .500 mark since May 19. Three straight series losses and a 3-6 record against three teams that won’t be playing in October.

2. Since August 1, the Yankees are 15-15. In those 30 games, three came against a team that started their series with the Yankees above .500. They were gifted an incredible five-week stretch to play mediocre-to-historically-bad teams and they squandered it. They completely wasted it.

3. Wednesday was much of the same from the Yankees. Bad starting pitching, horrific relief pitching and an offense that didn’t show up until garbage time. After getting shut down by ex-Yankee Andrew Heaney on Tuesday, ex-Yankee Nathan Eovaldi did the honor on Wednesday. It wasn’t until the game was out of hand and the Yankees trailed by eight runs in the ninth inning that they added to their anemic run total in the 10-6 loss.

Their four runs in the ninth came from a Trent Grisham grand slam. In one swing, Grisham matched Alex Verdugo’s home run total since July 6. In that one swing, he equaled Verdugo’s RBI output from the last three weeks. If Jasson Dominguez is going to waste away in Triple-A, maybe Grisham can be given a turn playing every day instead of Verdugo? Grisham has the better on-base percentage and the better slugging percentage, and better power and walk numbers relative to plate appearances. At worst, he provides actual Gold Glove defense — having won the award twice — and not the kind of fake, made-up strong defense Verdugo is perceived to have by some (including the front office).

4. Verdugo went 1-for-3 in the game, hitting three ground balls in all of his plate appearances. One of three reached the outfield for a single, and on the other two, they were easily turned into outs as Verdugo power walked down the first-base line, forcing Michael Kay to ask on the broadcast, “Is there something wrong with his legs?”

“He’s beat up,” Aaron Boone said of Verdugo not running to first. “He’s playing his ass off … I don’t have any issue with how hard he’s playing the game.”

One loser talking about another loser. If Verdugo is “beat up” then why is he playing? That’s even more reason to sit him.

5. Verdugo dogs it in a way that makes Gleyber Torres seem like Charlie Hustle, but nothing ever happens to Verdugo. Just more playing time, more at-bats and no threat of consequence for dogging it. (Or is it “dawging it” for Verdugo?) Why would there be? When there’s no consequence for being the worst everyday hitter in the majors, there can’t be any consequence for jogging (and jogging is putting generously).

As long as Verdugo is a Yankee and continues to play everyday, the idea that he is part of the backup “plan” is Juan Soto leaves via free agency grows in probability.

6. “We’ve been in this tight AL race all year long,” Verdugo said after the loss. “It’s just a couple of series, we’re right there.”

Oh it’s been “just a couple of series?” The Yankees are 3-6 in their last nine. They’re 15-15 since August 1. They’re 31-39 since June 13. That’s not a couple of series.

7. “A couple of games not going our way,” Aaron Judge said. “Stuff like that is going to happen.”

Delusion runs deep in the Yankees clubhouse. The captain thinks it’s been just a couple of games not going their way, even though they have been under .500 for three months. But like his manager likes to say, “That’s baseball!”

Judge had another no-show game, which has been the case for the last 10 days. It’s easy to excuse him when he’s having a Barry Bonds-type season, but it’s hard not to think about how Judge has played in his postseason career and not think he’s getting a headstart on his all-too-familiar October disappearing acts.

He was part of the problem on Wednesday as the Yankees’ 3 through 8 hitters went 1-for-21 with the one being a Jazz Chisholm single. The offense didn’t show up until the fifth when Juan Soto hit a two-run home run, and by then, Marcus Stroman had already put them in a 5-0 hole.

8. “Just don’t think I executed when I needed to,” Stroman said. “Got in some long counts and they were able to put the barrel on balls.”

Oh you don’t think you executed when you needed to? No shit. It’s concerning that Stroman is staying in the rotation over Nestor Cortes because Stroman had a few good starts in a row against the Rangers, Tigers, Rockies and Cardinals. Stroman’s entire game is based around living on the edge and getting ground balls. He can’t win in the strike zone because he can’t throw quality strikes or getting swings and misses in the zone. If Stroman isn’t painting the black with every pitch or if the home plate umpire isn’t being favorable to him, he has no chance.

9. The Yankees are a mess. For outsiders who only view the standings, they see a team with an 80-60 record that is a 1/2 game out of the division. For Yankees fans who watch them play every day, they see a team that is eight games under .500 over their last 69 games. They haven’t been the team that once had a 49-21 record in nearly three months.

10. John Sterling announced he will come out of retirement to call all of the Yankees playoff games this October before going back into retirement. It’s welcome news and hopefully Sterling’s return will last more than a couple of nights in a best-of-3, wild-card series. Right now, it’s hard to believe it will.

The Yankees had a 4-1 lead in the eighth inning against a team counting down the games, innings, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season ends. They lost 7-4.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I think I need to change the way I watch and consume the Yankees. I desperately wish I could be the type of fan who watches the team play if I happen to come across them playing while channel surfing, and if the game isn’t on a commercial break. The type of fan who can only name Aaron Judge as a player on the roster, doesn’t know what place they are in the standings or what time their game is that day, or if there even is a game. The type of fan who goes to one or two games a year because a friend had an extra ticket. I want to be that fan. Unfortunately, I’m not.

2. Unfortunately, for me, my daily or nightly mood is attached to the final score of their games. My blood pressure hinges on that day’s lineup and my mental health is connected to late-inning bullpen decisions. It made me physically sick when Jasson Dominguez wasn’t called up three days ago, and each day that passes with Alex Verdugo being the team’s everyday fielder will eventually catch up to me health-wise.

3. I wish I didn’t care so much about the Yankees winning because the Yankees — the actual organization — don’t care about the Yankees winning. The organization’s level of interest in the team is a lot like the casual fan I desire to be: If the Yankees win, great. If they don’t, so be it.

If the Yankees truly cared about winning, they would field the best possible 26-man roster from Opening Day through August 31 and then the best possible 28-man roster from September 1 through Game 162. Roster decisions, the rotation of the order, places in the batting order and bullpen titles and usage wouldn’t be tied to name, reputation, friendships, relationships, service time manipulation or money owed. They would all strictly be based on production, performance, talent and ability.

4. The 7-4 walk-off loss to the Rangers on Tuesday night was all too familiar. The offense left an extraordinary amount of runners on and the bullpen was a disaster, yet again. Yankees fans (and I am one of them) can keep telling themselves that this team can win it all because the field is as wide open as it’s been in years, but the Yankees will enter the postseason with the worst bullpen of any of the 12 teams. Aaron Boone isn’t smart enough, isn’t creative enough, isn’t capable of using his starting pitchers as relievers to compensate for his weak bullpen, and because of that, the team’s demise will likely come because of its relievers. (Either that or because Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have a bad week at the same time, which then would make the bullpen issues a moot point.)

There isn’t a single reliever who can be trusted on the Yankees. They traded for Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez before the year and then got rid of both. They traded for Enyel De Los Santos and he’s gone. They brought in Nick Burti and he has done what he’s always done best: be hurt. Tommy Kahnle seems to think only throwing 86-mph changeups that change up from nothing is a sound strategy. Luke Weaver is immensely prone to home runs. Jake Cousins is OK. Mark Leiter Jr. sucks. Tim Hill can’t get a swing-and-miss. Tim Mayza? Scott Effross? No.

5. That leaves Clay Holmes, who blew his league-leading 11th save on Tuesday. He has three more blown saves than anyone in the league, which is remarkable. He’s as far ahead of the pack in blowing saves as Judge is in terms of home runs and RBIs. He’s that good at blowing saves.

This wasn’t a soft-contact blown save. This wasn’t a five-ground-balls-found-holes blown save. This was line-drive single, stolen base, walk, walk, grand slam. It would be the equivalent to you showing up to your job at lunch time, then taking a two-hour lunch with cocktails, returning to watch two hours of YouTube before leaving an hour early.

6. Boone loves to say “That’s baseball” when the Yankees lose a game or are shut down by a mediocre-to-bad starting pitcher, like Andrew Heaney or Kyle Gibson or Patrick Corbin, a trio that has shut them down over the last week. It’s hard to say “That’s baseball” when it happens every other day, or in the Yankees’ case, more frequently than that. Since the Yankees are 31-38 since June 13, it’s happened more frequently than every other day.

Every poor outcome for the Yankees is chalked up to being bad luck, misfortune or a tough break. It’s never because the players sucked or that they were put in a position to fail. It’s always just a game of luck when the Yankees lose. And when they lose in the postseason, it’s because the postseason is a crapshoot. Oddly enough, the postseason wasn’t a crapshoot in the late-‘90s or 2000s.

7. That’s why I want to be that casual fan. I don’t want to be awake at midnight because Holmes is still the Yankees closer despite being worse at that role than any other pitcher in the majors. I don’t want to be aggravated that Boone keeps preaching how well Verdugo has hit of late, when his last two hits were a ground ball to third that he beat out because the third baseman was playing near shortstop and a 61-mph bloop that only fell in for a hit because the infield was drawn in with a runner on third. I don’t want to be told Nestor Cortes will make his next start (which Boone said on Sunday) only for Boone to say on Tuesday that Cortes will not make his next start, and have no one in the media ask him why he said differently 48 hours prior.

8. I want to be the fan that just accepts what the team is and goes on with their life. If Hal Steinbrenner tells me Boone is a “great manager” and deserving of an eighth season without having won a championship, awesome. If Brian Cashman tells me there’s no lane for the team’s top prospect who is untouchable in every trade request to play every day because the worst-hitting left fielder in the league needs to play, great. If Boone tells me Holmes is “the guy” for the closer role despite being the worst closer in the majors, fantastic. My life as a Yankees fan would be so much easier, so much more enjoyable if I could react that way. Or the Yankees could just operate in a way that made sense, and my life as a Yankees fan would also be much easier, much more enjoyable.

9. Life as a Yankees fan shouldn’t be so stressful, so aggravating, so disappointing. It’s unbelievably easy to create the best 26-man roster possible and then play the nine best available position players from that roster nearly every day, bat them in an order that makes sense using simple logic, pull starting pitchers when they are fatigued, give relievers clean innings to come into, occasionally call for a bunt, steal or hit-and-run, never use the contact play with a runner on third and less than two outs, be honest about player performances and injuries and hold players accountable for their performances. And yet, the Yankees make it so unbelievably difficult.

10. The Yankees are once again out of first place. They trail the Orioles by a 1/2 game and because the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, it’s as if they trail them by 1 1/2 games.

The Orioles will play the White Sox again on Wednesday. The Yankees will play the Rangers. If the Yankees don’t win, they will fall another game behind in the division with 22 games left. If they lose, it will be because of bad luck or soft contact or a ball that didn’t fall in or some other bullshit to hide the fact the best 28 players in the organization weren’t available or on the roster for the game. I guess nothing can be done about that. That’s baseball.

The Yankees lost another game and another series and didn’t call up Jasson Dominguez with rosters expanding. A banner day in the Bronx.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On July 10, Brian Cashman showed up for the Yankees series in Tampa because he saw his team spiraling out of control for a third straight season.

“Thankfully, we got out of the gates really strong,” Cashman said that day. “Hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this. Hopefully sooner than later because it’s gone on long enough.”

At the time, I wrote: Whenever you’re using the word “hopefully” to discuss your baseball season, you’re screwed, and Cashman used the word twice in 11 words. You would think more than $300 million in salaries could buy you more than hope, but that’s all it has gotten Cashman. It’s all he has gotten after incorrectly spending more than $3 billion in salaries since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance.

2. Well, the Yankees are still clinging on to hope to lead them to a division title. Following Sunday’s embarrassing 14-7 loss to the Cardinals to drop yet another series, Aaron Boone followed his boss’ lead from mid-July.

“We have to play our best, and we have to put our best foot forward to win these games,” Boone said on Sunday. “And we hope we start that tomorrow night.”

With 25 games left in the season, the Yankees are still hoping, still praying, still waiting to turn around their season that that began to fall apart in mid-June and still hasn’t recovered. The Yankees are 30-37 since June 13.

3. “As bad as people think we are playing … we are still in first place,” Nestor Cortes said after his latest stinker on Sunday. “It’s there for us to take.”

If Boone sounds like his boss in Cashman, then Cortes (along with many other Yankees) sounds like his boss in Boone. “It’s there for us to take” is no different than “It’s right in front of us.” And the only reason it (being the division title) is still there is because the Orioles’ rotation and lineup is decimated by injuries.

4. It’s both good and bad for the Yankees that the Orioles have been equally as bad for as long as the Yankees have. It’s good because the Yankees still lead the division by a 1/2 game with 25 games to go. It’s bad because it has the Yankees thinking they are a true first-place team when they have played like a last-place team for half of the season.

5. “We know how important these games are,” Boone said after the Cardinals’ posted a season-high in hits and runs against his team, two weeks after the White Sox — the worst team in the history of baseball — scored a season-high in runs against his team. If the Yankees know “how important these games are” then why was Jasson Dominguez batting second for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders on the day MLB rosters expanded?

“When he comes up here, you’re going to want to play him every day,” Boone said about the team’s decision to not call up Dominguez. “It doesn’t mean that won’t change in a couple of days, a week, two weeks, whatever it is.”

Recently, Cashman said there was “no lane” for Dominguez to play every day for these Yankees. On Sunday, Boone implied Dominguez wouldn’t be an everyday player for these Yankees, which is why he wasn’t called up. And yet, Boone said that could change in as early as a couple of days.

What could possibly change in a couple of days? It’s uncertain the decision is tied to the at-bat limit which is tied to rookie status which is tied to winning the 2025 Rookie of the Year and netting the Yankees a draft pick at the end of the first round due to Dominguez’s service time accumulated on the injured list for Tommy John. If the thing that could change is Alex Verdugo continuing to be among the worst everyday players in the majors then that’s absurd. Verdugo has been given 137 games to prove he’s anything other than the best in the world at hitting ground balls to the right side and he hasn’t. Even if Verdugo went from worst hitter in the league to just a truly awful hitter, would anyone feel good about him facing elite pitching every day in the postseason? Here is Verdugo’s OPS this season against the other five American League teams currently holding a playoff spot.

Astros: .580
Guardians: .503
Orioles: .337
Royals: .513
Twins: .583

Despite hitting .235/.292/.378 in the first half, Boone said this about Verdugo in mid-July:

“I feel like he’s getting really close … A lot of confidence he’s going on a heater in this second half.”

The second-half heater: .232/.298/.317 with one home run in 162 plate appearances. Somehow, Verdugo has been worse in the second half than he was in the first half.

6. When Dominguez was called up for a single game two weeks ago, the Yankees believed him to be good enough to bat fifth against the favorite to win the AL Cy Young. On Sunday, facing a right-handed starter with a 5.23 ERA, Verdugo batted ninth, not good enough to bat ahead of Anthony Rizzo playing in his first game in nearly three months (and who sucked when he last played) or Anthony Volpe, who is 14 percent below league average in 1,203 career plate appearances. Verdugo has been either OK or abysmal depending on which defensive metric you want to cite, and on Sunday he misplayed a fly ball into a two-run double.

7. With Aaron Judge having either the best or second-best season of his career and the Yankees down to 25 guaranteed games left with Juan Soto on the team, you would think they would be doing everything in their power every day to field the best possible team. And yet, their top prospect, the one who proved capable of hitting major-league pitching a year ago, who batted fifth against the AL Cy Young frontrunner two weeks ago and who continues to destroy Triple-A pitching daily remains in the minor leagues, so the Yankees can roster and play the worst everyday hitter in the league, a player they owe nothing to financially at the end of this month.

8. The only reason the Yankees are continuing to treat Verdugo like an all-time great who helped the team to multiple championships is because they don’t want to ruin their relationship with him. And the only reason they wouldn’t want to ruin their relationship with a player who isn’t part of their future after 2024 is if that player may actually be part of their future after 2024.

If Soto leaves this winter, the Yankees don’t have a back-up plan, the same way they didn’t 14 years ago when Cliff Lee chose the Phillies over the Yankees in free agency, which led to 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation being Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. There’s a reason Verdugo and Gleyber Torres survived the trade deadline when it made sense for one or both of them to go, and that’s because the Yankees’ back-up “plan” if Soto leaves will be to re-sign both Verdugo and Torres. If Soto leaves, this is likely the Yankees’ planned 2025 Opening Day lineup:

Gleyber Torres, 2B
Jasson Dominguez, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Alex Verdugo, LF
DJ LeMahieu, 1B

9. If the Yankees were to lose Soto and then re-sign Torres and Verdugo, they would be saving money. Even if you want to be overly generous in your calculations and say the duo will each make $20 million a year moving forward (Torres is at $14.2 million this season and Verdugo is at $8.7 million), the Yankees would be saving money. This is Hal Steinbrenner’s preferred free-agency outcome. Either way, if Soto returns or doesn’t, Dominguez will be starting in center field or left field for the Yankees on Opening Day 2025. He may not be good enough to be a Yankee in September, but with no further experience, he will be good enough to be one in March. Similar to Volpe attending the postseason as a fan in October 2022 and then magically being good enough to be the Opening Day shortstop in March 2023 over Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza, who all started playoff games at shortstop in 2022.

10. While Dominguez was busy playing meaningless baseball in Scranton-Wilkes/Barre on Sunday, the Yankees were busy losing another meaningful series to a mediocre team. Since August 1, the Yankees have played 27 games, with three of them coming against a postseason team (Cleveland), and they are 14-13. The soft, cupcake schedule that was going to allow the Yankees to stack wins, create separation from the Orioles and allow them to coast to a division title in September is over and the Yankees irresponsibly and inexplicably wasted it.

“Another opportunity to win a series that we aren’t able to finish,” Boone said on Sunday. “That sucks, but it’s onward.”

Onward to another series against a reeling team counting down the games, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season is over. Onward to another series the Yankees can’t be trusted to win. Indeed, that sucks.

The Yankees lost another series to one of the worst teams in the league.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees were supposed to stack wins in August. While the Orioles were playing the Guardians, Red Sox, Mets, Astros and Dodgers, the Yankees were going playing the Angels, White Sox, Rockies and Nationals. It would be the Yankees’ chance to beat up on the worst teams in the league, take first place in the AL East and never give it back by finally creating separation in the standings going into September. While the Orioles’ tough opponents did their job, handing the Orioles an 8-9 record, the Yankees couldn’t do their job, going 6-6 against against the 25th-, 27th-, 28th- and 30th-ranked teams.

The Yankees may be in first place as of Friday morning, two games up on the Orioles in the loss column and 1 1/2 games up overall, but it could be and should be much more.

2. It has been hard to truly care about the Yankees over the last few weeks with their sloppy, frustrating, inconsistent and lackadaisical play. It’s been hard to truly care with a front office that is keeping better everyday options in the minors because of the idea of potential, non-guaranteed draft picks that may or may never help the Yankees at the major-league level, and if they do, likely wouldn’t help until 2030 or 2031 at best. It’s been hard to truly care with a manager that continues to make befuddling in-game decision seven years into his job. It’s been hard to truly care with a lineup that is reliant on two of nine hitters and a lineup that no longer features the team’s third-best hitter every day. It’s been hard to truly care with a pitching staff that is mediocre at best, and many days much less than that.

3. The Yankees could win a championship with this team, given the wide-open field this year with no clear-cut favorite in the league and no team in the majors on pace to win 100 games, but it’s unlikely. At best, the Yankees are a slightly-above-average team in a crowded field of slightly-above-average teams. And they haven’t played like the slightly-above-average version of themselves in a long, long time. Through the first 67 games of the season, they were 46-21. Through the last 67 games, they are 32-35. Their .478 winning percentage over the last 67 games makes them the Reds, who have a .478 winning percentage for the season. Since June 10, the Yankees have been the New York Reds.

4. For this team to win a championship, they will have to hit a massive parlay in October, starting with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto being at the best of their abilities for the entire month. The duo won’t be able to have a bad game, let alone a bad series. They will need Gerrit Cole to be better than he has been this season and better than he has been in his three postseasons as a Yankee. They will need Carlos Rodon to not be the high-priced bust he has been since being given $162 million. They will need a bullpen that can’t be trusted to tell you what day of the week it is to be trusted to get season-defining outs in the highest of leverage situations against hitters like Jose Altuve or Yordan Alvarez or Gunnar Henderson or Bobby Witt Jr. They will need a manager who manages like he was introduced to the game of baseball minutes before the game he’s actively managing began to make the right decision nearly every time for an entire month. They will need nearly every single thing to go to their at every moment for an entire month.

5. It could happen. Worse teams than them have reached and won the World Series. But for too long the Yankees have operated under the idea “It could happen” as if they’re a McDonald’s commercial tag line from the ’90s. Rather than operate like the Yankees and construct the best possible roster and have it run by the best possible manager to give themselves the best chance to win on the field, they are being run like a team where the manager’s son gets to play shortstop and play every inning of every game, the best player on the team decides who should be on the team and a bunch of players who should no longer be on the team or possibly in the league continue to play over more deserving players because of past accomplishments, reputations, friendships and relationships.

6. The Yankees like to sell everyone on this prestigious brand of winning and excellence, but they haven’t won a championship in going on 15 years, haven’t even won a pennant in that same amount of time and haven’t been excellent in anything other than disappointment for nearly that same amount of time as well. George Steinbrenner is known for having said, “Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next.” We’ll find out just how much his son prioritizes winning on Sunday when rosters expand. We know winning doesn’t come after breathing for Hal. For Hal, it’s likely breathing then creating revenue for his shareholders then paying back the banks he references publicly then whining about payroll and the luxury tax any chance he gets then trying to implement a salary cap in the sport even though it would hurt his team’s odds of winning a championship then eating and drinking water then actual hobbies he loves and then somewhere a few dozen more places down the list is caring about the baseball team he inherited winning.

8. If winning were the priority for the Yankees, I wouldn’t be watching Gleyber Torres batting leadoff every day. (I love the faction of fans thinking Torres is now playing well because he hit a couple home runs against the Rockies and Nationals.) I wouldn’t be forced to watch Alex Verdugo put every ball in play on the ground to the right side of the infield. There would be some consequence and accountability to Anthony Volpe being a .231/.293/.385 hitter in 1,192 career plate appearances, other than the manager of the team yelling at fans about how good Volpe while ironically citing him as a “below league-average hitter” and saying others can bench Volpe when they manage the team. I wouldn’t have to watch Jose Trevino steal playing time from Austin Wells, the best-hitting catcher in the majors, and the team’s only consistent offensive threat after Judge and Soto. I wouldn’t have to hear about how unlucky Clay Holmes is each time he blows a save and continues to stay in the closer role. I wouldn’t have to be told how gutsy Rodon is every five days after he gives up five runs in two innings, but stays in to pitch five innings in an eventual loss. I wouldn’t have to watch DJ LeMahieu continue to play every day when he’s clearly either injured or washed up. I wouldn’t have to watch daily highlights on social media of Dominguez extra-base hits while Verdugo continues to be the worst everyday hitter in the majors.

9. Life as a Yankees fan shouldn’t be so stressful, so aggravating, so disappointing. It’s unbelievably easy to create the best 26-man roster possible and then play the nine best available position players from that roster nearly every day, bat them in an order that makes sense using simple logic, pull starting pitchers when they are fatigued, give relievers clean innings to come into, occasionally call for a bunt, steal or hit-and-run, never use the contact play with a runner on third and less than two outs, be honest about player performances and injuries and hold players accountable for their performances. And yet, the Yankees make it so unbelievably difficult.

10. The stress, the aggravation and the disappointment is about to be taken to another level with rosters expanding and Dominguez potentially not being called up, 28 games left and a division title on the line with a bye to the ALDS to play for, and then the actual postseason. Summer is over. Vacation is over. The stretch run is here, and so is the best, but most trying part of the year.

1. I didn’t feel good seeing Clay Holmes warming up on the Williamsport mound on Sunday night with the Yankees only holding a one-run lead. I don’t think any Yankees fan did. Because for all the times John Sterling told us “You can’t predict baseball” over 30-plus years, sometimes you can.

Holmes let a sub-.700 OPS hitter (Colt Keith) smoke a one-out double to left field, and when one out away from maintaining a one-game division lead on the Orioles, he let Jace Jung and his 11 career plate appearance single in Keith for his first career RBI.

2. The blown save was Holmes’ league-leading 10th of the year. Emmanuel Clase (3), Ryan Hensley (3), Kenley Jansen (3) and Josh Hader (1) have 10 combined. If Holmes just sucked as a closer and had say seven blown saves, the Yankees would have a three-game division lead. Instead, he has been impossibly bad with 10.

Since June 13, Holmes has as many saves as blown saves with seven. The Yankees are 11-10 in the 21 games he has appeared in in that time. The Yankees are now 4-7 in extra innings this season because they have a great manager and a great bullpen.

3. “I thought the sinker was good tonight,” Aaron Boone said of Holmes. “The slider was good.”

You know who else thought the sinker and slider were good? Colt Keith and Jace Jung.

“I felt pretty good,” Holmes said, “just two pitches there got me.”

It can’t be “just two pitches” getting you when you’re the closer. The margin for error is zero or close to it when you’re getting the final three outs of a one-run game.

Boone was asked if he is committed to Holmes as his closer for the rest of the season despite him having 10 blown saves.

“Yeah, yeah,” Boone said. “He’s had some tough breaks back there that have led to that.”

Poor Holmes. He’s just had some tough breaks and is really unlucky. I can think of a lot of miraculous breaks he has been on the right end of this season that has prevented his blown save total from being 12 or 13. Holmes is the first Yankees pitcher with 10 blown saves in a season in 37 years.

If you think Holmes is going to lose his job due to poor performance, look no further than Boone himself who is in his seventh year as Yankees manager despite owning zero pennants, but rather a CVS receipt-length list of embarrassing franchise records and moments. Look no further than how Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo or Anthony Volpe have been treated this year. Being bad at your job as a Yankee doesn’t lead to losing your job. It doesn’t even lead to diminished playing time or a lesser role.

4. The Yankees’ season is likely to end in disappointment with Holmes on the mound. He has spent nearly five months foreshadowing the ending that is coming for the 2024 Yankees and no one has done or is doing anything about it.

Brian Cashman didn’t do anything about it. He knew he gave up four arms in the deal for Juan Soto and knew Wendy Peralta was leaving in free agency and didn’t replace them in the offseason. Instead he counted on the always-injured Jonathan Loaisiga to stay healthy. He watched his bullpen blow countless games in the first half of the season and added two mediocre arms at the deadline. One of those arms has put 22 baserunners on in 8 1/3 innings with a 6.48 ERA and the other was already designated for assignment and is now on the White Sox.

Boone isn’t doing anything about it, still supporting Holmes, making excuses for him and talking about bad breaks, rather than a solution or a change in the role.

For any of the other 29 teams in the league, the general manager and manager would have urgency to stop using a closer who can’t close for fear of their job. But there’s no fear for either. Cashman told the world the team “is pretty fucking good” after they went 82-80 and missed the playoffs in a format in which 40 percent of the league makes it despite having the highest payroll in the American League. He’s an adopted member of the Steinbrenner family and not even a last-place finish would end his run with the organization. Boone managed the team to its worst season in 30 years a year after he oversaw a second-half collapse and sweep in the ALCS in which he tried to motivate his team by using the darkest four-game period in the franchise’s history with 2004 ALCS “highlights.”

5. Boone would rather have Holmes standing on the mound as Jose Altuve races home as the pennant-winning or have Yordan Alvarez trotting around the bases with Holmes hanging his head than ruin his friendship or relationship with Holmes by removing him from the closer role.

Maybe Luke Weaver or Jake Cousins or anyone else would be as big of a disaster as Holmes has been as the closer. It’s unlikely, but I guess it’s possible that they also would be the worst closer in the league. But we’ll never know because the next time the Yankees need to close out a game leading by three runs or less in the ninth inning, Boone will go to his guy. If he does his job, great for Boone. If he doesn’t do his job, still great for Boone. There are no consequences for not performing.

6. If there were consequences for not performing, Torres and his .660 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against lefties and Verdugo and his .657 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against righties. Volpe and his .673 OPS over 1,156 plate appearances would have spent at least some time in the minors since Opening Day 2023. Instead, Volpe leads the majors in games played (124) and is one off the major-league lead in at-bats with 514.

7. Volpe went 2-for-12 against the Tigers. One of the two was an infield hit that needed replay review to confirm if he was safe. In the last two weeks, he’s 4-for-42 with three walks, and he’s only that because he went 2-for-10 with three walks against the White Sox. Aside from his three walks against the worst team in the history of baseball, Volpe has one walk in the month. A month! Since August 4, he’s 6-for-51 with 18 strikeouts and a .339 OPS, hitting .118/.182/.157. But every day, there he is, starting at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh. And there he is striking out or hitting the weakest ground ball you have ever seen to the shortstop.

“You can’t tell when things are going good or when he’s going through a rough stretch,” Boone said of Volpe’s demeanor.

You can’t tell because he has only been going through a rough stretch since his first major-league plate appearance.

Oswald Peraza got called up last week. The first day of his call up he didn’t play. The second day, he played and hit a home run, so naturally, the next day he didn’t play again. The next day he got face to the favorite for AL Cy Young this season. If Volpe hit a home run like Peraza did on Friday, they would already be promoting another bobblehead night for him. Unfortunately, for Peraza, he wasn’t born in New York City and didn’t grow up in New Jersey as a Yankees fan.

8. Playing infrequently when you have only ever played every day is hard. Just ask Austin Wells. You know what else is hard? Getting called up for a spot start in the outfield when the favorite for AL Cy Young is starting like Jasson Dominguez did. Boone said Dominguez would be sent down again after Sunday’s game, so even if Dominguez had hit a pair of home runs off Tarik Skubal it wouldn’t have mattered. “There’s no lane” for Dominguez and playing time on the Yankees Cashman said last week. His lane is blocked by Verdugo. Verdugo is hitting .233/.294/.363. He last hit a home run on July 6, which is his only home run since June 14. He hasn’t homered against a team not named the Red Sox since May 29. So he last homered against not the Red Sox on Memorial Day Weekend and last homered period on Fourth of July Weekend. Labor Day Weekend is only two weeks away, so I guess we know when his next home run will be.

Dominguez was good enough to bat fifth against the best pitcher in the AL, but not good enough to be on the team after the game. Boone decided he would use all right-handed hitters except Juan Soto against Skubal, no matter how weak (Torres, Volpe, Jose Trevino) most of his hitters are. The thing about great pitchers like Skubal is that they don’t care what hand the opposition swings with or what nonsensical platoon you think you are going to employ. Skubal pitched six innings and only allowed one run on a wild pitch.

“9. I thought we made him work hard,” Boone said of his offense. “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously, but I thought we made it challenging for him.”

I don’t know how you can say you “made him work hard” and then in your very next thought say “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously,” and then in the thought after that say “We made it challenging for him.”

“We had a little bit of a down weekend offensively, which is going to happen,” Boone said. “But credit to them.”

Yes, credit to the fourth-place, under-.500 Tigers. The Yankees’ offense remains two hitters Soto and Aaron Judge and Wells when he’s allowed to play, which has been just one of three games since Trevino and his noodle arm and noodle bat have returned. The Yankees’ run total for the season is built on infrequent blowouts like the one against the White Sox or the random one against the Phillies or the 30 runs over two days against the Brewers back in April. Getting blanked by a starter with a 5.28 ERA like they did on Saturday or getting shut down by an elite pitcher like Skubal like they did on Sunday is more of who they are. Over the last 19 innings against the Tigers, the Yankees scored two runs: one on a wild pitch and one from the automatic runner.

10. The Yankees are now 8-7 in August against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. None of those five teams are even .500, let alone playing with postseason aspirations. Next up is a three-game series at home against the Guardians, a first-place team that’s 20 games over .500.

I don’t know how the Yankees will play against a team with a winning record given how they played over the last two weeks against some of the league’s worst. I do know Dominguez will remain in Triple-A, Peraza will remain on the bench, Volpe will play every day, Trevino will take at-bats from Wells, Torres and Verdugo will alternate hitting leadoff and in the middle of the order and Holmes will be closing.

The Yankees had a day off after taking two out of three from the historically-bad White Sox. Next up, a series against a fifth straight opponent headed home in October.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ 10-2 drubbing of the White Sox on Wednesday was a welcome sight and result, even if those who watched the game didn’t find it completely enjoyable as the White Sox led 2-1 in the seventh inning.

After going home run, home run, home run, walk on Tuesday, Juan Soto homered in his first at-bat of the game on Wednesday, and later on, Aaron Judge became the fastest player to 300 home runs in terms of at-bats in history (it was really his 301st home run as he had a home run incorrectly ruled a triple back in 2017). Everyone in the heart of the order homered as Austin Wells went back-to-back with Judge in the eighth inning.

2. Wells has been so good this season. His OPS is up to .773 and it’s .845 since April 23. He has a .938 OPS since July 13, which is the first day he became the everyday catcher with Jose Trevino going on the injured list. It turns out giving a player who has had regular, everyday at-bats his entire life those regular, everyday at-bats leads to improved performance. Who could have known?

3. Wells has solidified the cleanup spot (at least against right-handed starters, as Aaron Boone continues to use Giancarlo Stanton as the cleanup hitter against left-handed starters), but the Yankees still have a leadoff problem. It would be wise to give Wells a run as the leadoff hitter, but wise and Boone don’t exactly go together, so I’m sure we will see more of the Alex Verdugo/Gleyber Torres leadoff platoon, because why wouldn’t you want to give the most possible plate appearances to your two worst hitters?

4. The series win over the White Sox was the minimum acceptable result against a team that is on pace to be the worst in history, but I don’t think any Yankees fan feels any better about the team than they did before they went to Chicago and beat a team everyone beats (the White Sox are 2-26 in their last 28 games). The free fall was put on hold after the five straight wins over the Red Sox and Phillies and the all-out collapse seems to be over for good, but the Yankees have a lot of work to do between now and the 163rd game they will play this season, which brings us to some reader questions …

5. When does “It’s right in front of us!” change to “Where did it go?” – Floyd

I always view “It’s right in front of us” as the Yankees making the postseason since it seems that is what Boone is referring to when he says it. We know the Yankees’ organization goal has fallen from winning a championship to simply reaching the postseason, so it makes sense to think that’s what “It’s right in front of us” is tied to. Boone first used the phrase in 2022 when the team’s 14 1/2-game division lead dwindled down to a single game in the loss column. The Yankees rebounded to hold on to the division, but were thoroughly embarrassed in the ALCS that season. Last season, the phrase made a return, but it quickly went from “It’s right in front of us” to “Where did it go?” The Yankees’ season was over in mid-July after Clay Holmes had the biggest ninth-inning meltdown of his career in Miami and the team never recovered.

When the league went to the six-team format two years I figured the Yankees would never miss the postseason again. I didn’t think they would miss it in the second season of the format. The Yankees aren’t going to miss the postseason this season like they did last season. Their five-game winning streak against the Red Sox and Phillies at the end of July made sure of it. Barring a monumental collapse, we won’t have to hear “It’s right in front of us” again this season, so it will never turn into “Where did it go?” this year, in terms of making the playoffs.

6. Why does Aaron Boone try so hard to be positive about everything, when we, the fans that watch the games see otherwise? – Jim

Boone’s positivity stems from him thinking he is protecting his players, even if his ridiculous quotes and inaccurate evaluations of their performances does more harm overall than good. For instance, Boone thinks if he tells the media Nestor Cortes had “good stuff” after he got pulled in the fourth inning of a start that it’s better for the media, Yankees fans and public to think he’s a delusional clown than it is for everyone to think he’s being hard on his starting pitcher. I don’t know why Boone can’t simply tell everyone that what he saw is what they saw. It’s not like his be-positive-no-matter what persona has worked. The team hasn’t reached the World Series during his tenure, has failed to meet every expectation during that time and is coming off the franchise’s worst season in three decades. Boone hasn’t changed, evolved or improved as a manager in now his seventh season. It’s both worrisome and scary that he thinks what he’s doing is working. He has two division titles in six years, had to play in two wild-card games, lost in the ALDS twice and the ALCS twice and missed the postseason once. He is solely judged by the fanbase on how the team performs in October, which brings us to …

7. Brian Cashman will always be in the Yankees organization, what will it take for Boone to be terminated? – Dave

I had this exact conversation over text message with friend John Jastremski (formerly of WFAN and now of The Ringer) two days ago. To me, I think all Boone has to do is win the division and his option for 2025 will be picked up. You would like to think he would have to at least reach the World Series in his seventh try at it to be the Yankees manager in 2025, but obviously the bar for success is much lower than that for his boss (Brian Cashman) and his boss’ boss (Hal Steinbrenner). Boone’s contract was up after the 2021 season, a season in which the Yankees were favored to win the World Series and instead finished third in the AL East and fifth in the AL and their postseason was one game, and he was given a new contract. Since getting that new contract, Boone endured a second-half free fall in 2022 and was swept in the ALCS after using “highlights” from the 2004 ALCS as motivation from his team. The next year the team had their worst season in 30 years and missed the postseason. This season, the team has played poorly since mid-June and may not win the division and would end up in the best-of-3 wild-card series. If the Yankees don’t win the division and lose in that best-of-3 series, I don’t think his option gets picked up. But if the Yankees win the division or just reach the ALDS (even if they lose in the ALDS), I think it’s a guarantee his option gets picked up for as sad as that is.

8. Why do the Yankees play down to their competition? – Michael

Over the last two weeks, the Yankees went 7-5 against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers and White Sox. All four of those teams are counting down the days until Game 162, so their miserable seasons can end. The Yankees should have done much better than they did against those four opponents. August was supposed to be their chance to create separation from the Orioles and give themselves better than a 50/50 chance to win the division. August is now half over and the Yankees have the same record as the Orioles. They have failed to take advantage of their weak schedule.

The Yankees are poor at situational hitting, have an inconsistent and top-heavy lineup, a bad bullpen and a mediocre rotation. They make sloppy mistakes in the field and on the bases and have a manager who puts the team at a disadvantage in late-and-close games. Add all of that together and talent and payroll don’t matter when you’re playing inferior teams.

There is still time for the Yankees to pad the win column this month with the Tigers, Rockies and Nationals on the schedule, it just won’t be what it could have been. “It just won’t be what it could have been” is a good way to summarize the Boone Yankees era.

9. How do we reconcile all the flaws we KNOW this Yankee team has with the reality that it’s also in first place with one of the best records in MLB?  – Chris

There is no great team in the majors this season with no clear favorite to win it all. There’s usually one or two teams that are inarguably better than every other team, but not this season. Since June 14, the Yankees are 23-29. For one-third of the season they have played .442 baseball and are still tied for the most wins in the majors with 72. That shouldn’t be possible given how bad they have been for so long.

It’s both good and bad the Yankees are in their position. It’s good because despite their poor play for two months they have the same record as the Orioles and can win the division. It’s bad because while they have played poorly, so have the Orioles, and the entire team, coaching staff, front office and ownership have shown a lack of urgency in their play and management because their standing hasn’t changed. After every loss, Boone and at least one player of his will mention how the team is still in a great position, and it’s because the Orioles have been as a big of a mess as the Yankees. That doesn’t make it OK. The Yankees shouldn’t feel good about themselves and their record because the Orioles failed to run away with the division over the last two months. The Yankees should feel that they failed to run away with the division over the last two months.

10. The Orioles played on Thursday and beat the Red Sox 5-1. The win puts the Orioles at 72-50 on the season, just like the Yankees. But because the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker (6-4), if the season ended today, they would have a bye to the ALDS and the Yankees would play in the best-of-3 wild-card series. (It turns out the ninth-inning meltdown loss in Baltimore in the last game before the All-Star break was a big deal.)

The Yankees have a much easier schedule from here on out than the Orioles, but with the Yankees going 7-5 against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers and White Sox over the last two weeks, it doesn’t matter who the Yankees play, no win is easy to come by for this team, and that holds true for this weekend against the Tigers.

The Yankees bounced back from their disgraceful loss to the White Sox by beating the worst team in baseball history 4-1 on Tuesday.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. For every game that comes off the schedule, Yankees fans are one day closer to not having to watch Gleyber Torres or Alex Verdugo play for the team. But for every game that comes off the schedule, it also means Yankees fans are one day closer to Juan Soto possibly no longer being a Yankee.

It’s a thought I don’t even like to think. It’s a world I don’t want to envision: one without Soto on the Yankees. But it’s a very real possibility and given Hal Steinbrenner’s knack for crying poor in every opportunity he gets despite the Yankees generating more revenue than any other team in the game, it’s a world Yankees fans must be prepared to live in.

2. On Tuesday in Chicago, Soto single-handedly beat the White Sox, hitting three home runs and driving in all four of the Yankees runs in their 4-1 win. Without him, the Yankees would have suffered a second straight defeat to the worst team in the history of baseball, a team that has won two games in a month. It was the first three home run game of Soto’s career, but it was already his sixth multi-home run game as a Yankee, having had one two days earlier as well.

3. “I feel like in watching Juan, I’m watching one of the best seasons I’ve ever seen,” Aaron Boone said. “I try not to take it for granted. I just know that is one tough at-bat, every single day.”

Boone is watching one of the best seasons he has seen, or anyone has seen. And he’s smart to not take it for granted since as of now there are only 41 guaranteed games remaining with Soto in a Yankees uniform.

4. Aaron Judge called Soto “the greatest hitter in the game” despite Judge having a season rivaling his historic 2022 campaign. Soto, in turn, called Judge “the greatest one” on Tuesday.

Judge may be the AL MVP frontrunner, but he’s right that Soto is “the greatest hitter in the game.” Soto, at age 25, already has 193 home runs and 739 walks. When Judge was Soto’s age, he had played in 45 major-league games.

5. Soto is just four months older than “kids” Oswaldo Cabrera and Ben Rice and only nine months older than Austin Wells. He will be 26 years old on Opening Day 2025, coming off the best season of his career and having not yet entered his prime. He’s the guy you open the checkbook for and give him whatever he wants.

6. “Look, we went and got him and paid a big price to bring him here, because we know what a special player he is,” Boone said. “We’ve seen every bit of that and probably more.”

The first part of what Boone said is why I feel the Yankees will re-sign Soto in that the Yankees “paid a big price to bring him here.” I don’t think they went into this thinking it would only be a one-year thing. But once he hits free agency, it’s out of their control, unless they are the highest bidder.

7. The Yankees are set up to be able to pay Soto with Torres’ $14.2 million and Verdugo’s $8.7 million coming off the books. That’s $22.9 million right there. Add it to Soto’s current $31 million, and there’s the roughly $50 million per year it’s going to take to keep him. Factor in Wells, Cabrera, Rice, Anthony Volpe, Luis Gil and Jasson Dominguez all making nothing in terms of major-league salaries and the Yankees are set up to meet Scott Boras’ demands for Soto.

8. Re-signing Soto isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Without him and with him signing elsewhere, the countdown for the end of Torres and Verdugo may have been for nothing with the Yankees potentially re-signing one or both with the funds put aside for Soto. Losing Soto would be disastrous because the Yankees wouldn’t have him making them worse, another team would making that team better and the available free agents not named Juan Soto aren’t once-in-a-lifetime talents.

9. We know what the Yankees are without Soto, even with Judge at his best. I don’t want to relive that over and over until Judge exits his prime. At 32, who knows how long Judge has left of his prime. I don’t buy the idea Judge would be upset by being the second-highest paid player on the team behind Soto, who will undoubtedly sign for more than the $40 million salary Judge receives. With salaries rising each year, are the Yankees supposed to not sign anyone until Judge retires and is no longer the highest paid player on the team? I think Judge wants to win to erase being the face of these Yankees, a group that hasn’t won in his first seven seasons, and Soto helps his chances at winning.

10. With Soto (25), Wells (25), Volpe (23), Rice (25), Dominguez (21) and Jazz Chisholm (26), the Yankees would set up for the foreseeable future with a strong, young core to potentially have the kind of future the last core could have had, but didn’t. It all hinges on re-signing Soto. If the Yankees don’t re-sign Soto then none of it matters. If they don’t re-sign him, being a Yankees fan won’t matter.

The Yankees were blown out by the White Sox 12-2 on Monday. The team on pace for the most losses in a season in the modern era of baseball routed a team that believes it can win a championship.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Embarrassing. Disturbing. Upsetting. Humiliating. The Yankees’ 12-2 loss to the White Sox on Monday was all that and more.

Here is what I wrote in the Yankees Thoughts on Monday:

The next three games are the easiest the Yankees will play as an organization for a long time. It may be the easiest three games they ever play for the rest of time. Three games against the 28-91 White Sox, a team that is on pace to win 38 games and finishes with the most losses (124) since the modern era dating back to the start of the 1900s. The White Sox have won one of their last 25 games and anything less than a sweep over the next three days won’t just be a disappointment, it will be a disgraceful failure.

Nine innings into the series and the series is already a disgraceful failure for the Yankees. Sadly, the series was a disgraceful failure long before nine innings were completed.

2. The first three batters of the game for the Yankees reached, and only one of them scored. In the second inning the bases were left loaded. In the third inning they stranded two. In the fourth inning the bases were left loaded for a third time. They left one on in each of the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, and in the eighth, for a fourth time, the bases were left loaded. In the ninth, they stranded two more.

3. The Yankees had nine hits and 11 walks, totaling 20 baserunners and two of them scored. It was just the second time in franchise history the team had 20-plus baserunners and scored two or fewer runs with the last time being 112 years ago before the team’s name became the Yankees.

4. “That wasn’t the issue,” Aaron Boone said in defense of his offense. “We couldn’t keep them off the board.”

Well, the offense was an issue, and keeping them off the board was also an issue. It’s hard to win a game when you score two runs, even against the White Sox.

5. “Offensively, we had the right at-bats,” Boone said. “Offensively, the at-bats were fine.”

Boone’s level of delusion is unlike any other in the game, but these two statements from him are flat-out crazy.

When the Yankees’ first three batters of the game reached, the next three popped up. Right at-bats?

When they had runners on the corners with one out in the second, Juan Soto popped one up in the infield. Right at-bat?

When they had first and second with one out in the third, Jazz Chisholm hit into an inning-ending double play (his first double play of the season). Right at-bat?

When the first two hitters walked in the fourth with the Yankees trailing by one run in a game against the worst pitching staff in the league, Alex Verdugo inexplicably tried to lay down a bunt and popped out to the pitcher. Right at-bat?

The Yankees left a runner in scoring position in the fifth and again in the sixth. They left a runner on in the seventh and couldn’t score with the bases loaded in the eighth. In the ninth, the first two hitters walked and neither of them reached third, let alone score. Right at-bats in all of those innings?

The Yankees went 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position and stranded 18 baserunners on the night. Right at-bats!

6. “We pressed,” Boone said. “Could have been one of those nights we threw a lot of crooked numbers up there.”

Could have, should have, would have. Spoken like a true loser, which Boone is. And being the loser he is, he added another line to his resume of memorable moments as Yankees manager:

• Only Yankees manager to get a fifth season on the job without a championship (and now a sixth and seventh season)
• Manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS)
• Manager for the worst single-month record in 33 years
• Manager for the worst season record in 31 years
• Manager for the most steals allowed in a single game by franchise in 109 years
• Manager for the first three-plus-game-series sweep by NL team at Yankee Stadium in franchise history
• Manager for the first Yankees team to lose five straight home series in 34 years
• Manager for the first time in Yankees history the team allowed 35-plus home runs and had a losing record over any 16-game span
• Manager for the first Yankees team to not steal a base over 20 consecutive games in 61 years
• Manager of the first team in the organization to have 20-plus baserunners in a game and score two or fewer runs since the franchise name became Yankees 113 years ago

7. For as bad as the offense was, Luis Gil was just as bad and the bullpen was worse.

Gil got rocked over four innings, allowing seven hits, two walks and four earned runs to a team that came into the game barely averaging three runs per game for the season.

After Gil needed 98 pitches to get 12 outs, former White Sox Tim Hill showed why arguably the worst team in baseball history released him, allowing a run of his own. Enyel De Los Santos pitched the final 1 2/3 innings and allowed seven earned runs on eight hits.

8. The White Sox’ 12 runs were the most they have scored all season and just the second time they reached double digits. Their 18 hits were also a season high with nine of the 18 hits going for extra bases. Not a single White Sox hitter entered the game with an OPS of .700, and yet, they lit up the Yankees’ best starter, got to one of the Yankees’ reclamation projects and then ruined one of the two relief arms they acquired at the deadline (likely ending De Los Santos’ Yankees tenure).

9. The Orioles didn’t play on Monday, so the Yankees lost a half-game in the standings, putting them a half-game behind for the AL East. Really, the Yankees are now 1 1/2 games back since the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.

10. Losing one of these three games has already made this series a disgraceful failure. Losing one of the next two, or possibly both? I don’t know how one could even describe such a result. But with Nestor Cortes and his 6.08 road ERA on Tuesday and then a bullpen game on Wednesday with this miserable bullpen, I may have to start thinking about how to describe it.

The Yankees won the three-game series against the Rangers to finish their nine-game homestand 5-4. It may have been a winning homestand, but given the opponents it was a disappointment.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. If you had told me 10 days ago I could sign up for a 5-4 homestand for the Yankees against the Blue Jays, Angels and Rangers, I wouldn’t have. Despite the Yankees posting a winning record over the nine games, finishing one game above .500 against three teams counting down the days until their miserable seasons end, it was a disappointment.

The Yankees were supposed to get fat in the win column in August. They were supposed to make up for their poor play that lasted from mid-June through the end of July. They were supposed to try to create separation from the Orioles with the Orioles playing a harder schedule during this month. It could still happen. The Yankees could rip off a long winning streak (especially with their next six games against the White Sox and Tigers), but they wasted a nine-game homestand against three teams that are currently a combined 32 games under .500.

2. It’s always hard to sweep a doubleheader, but you had to like the Yankees’ chances to do so on Saturday, especially after they walloped the Rangers 8-0 in the first game with Carlos Rodon outpitching my most hated ex-Yankee in the league Nathan Eovaldi.

For Rodon, even though he walked five in 5 2/3 innings, it was his fourth straight solid start, as the Yankees have won four of those starts with him pitching to a 2.22 ERA against the Rays, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rangers. It’s not exactly who the Yankees will be facing in October, but at least Rodon is somewhat earning his salary these days, something he didn’t do from mid-June to mid-July.

3. The second game of the doubleheader was tied at 1 when Gerrit Cole was pulled after getting the leadoff hitter out in the sixth. Cole had struck out 10 of the 23 batters he faced and was dealing, but at 90 pitches and needing his start pushed back due to fatigue, you knew he wasn’t going to be allowed to go as long as he would have liked. Aaron Boone removed Cole for Luke Weaver and Weaver did his best to keep the old adage “it’s hard to sweep a doubleheader” alive.

Against Weaver, the Rangers went single, single, single, bases-loaded walk, sacrifice fly, three-run home run. Weaver got one out, allowed four hits, a walk and five earned runs. He entered a 1-1 game and left losing 6-1. It was a disastrous performance.

“He has been so good for us,” Boone said. “It wasn’t his day. I don’t think he had the right feel for the changeup.”

Boone didn’t think Weaver had “the right feel for the changeup” as Weaver couldn’t throw it for a strike in the zone and couldn’t get anyone to bite on it out of the zone, but that didn’t stop Boone from sticking with him when he clearly didn’t have it. The worst part about the inning was the four-pitch, bases-loaded walk. It’s hard to ever have trust in a pitcher who can walk a batter on four pitches with the bases loaded, let alone walk the 9-hitter in that situation. It will be a while until I trust Weaver again.

The game was over when Weaver began his walk back to the dugout, but for anyone who had an inkling of hope the Yankees may come back against the Rangers’ bullpen, Michael Tonkin made sure that didn’t happen by allowing five hits and three earned runs of his own in 1 1/3 innings in an eventual 9-4 loss.

4. Sunday was the rubber game for the series and the homestand. Knowing the law of ex-Yankees, I didn’t feel good about Andrew Heaney getting the ball for the Rangers, envisioning eight dominant innings from him with fellow ex-Yankee David Robertson coming in to close out the game. Add in Marcus Stroman and his 6.32 ERA since the start of June, and I was worried the Yankees may lose a second straight series to a struggling AL West team.

The Yankees took a 1-0 lead in the first, added a run in the third and three more in the fifth. A 5-0 lead with 12 outs to go at home. A nice, easy, relaxing Sunday win, right? Wrong.

A friend texted me to ask me how many runs the bullpen needed for me to feel comfortable. I responded, “Six.”

With a five-run to start the sixth, Boone decided he would put my answer of six to the test by allowing Stroman to face the Rangers’ lineup for a third time. Josh Smith worked an eight-pitch walk against Stroman to lead off the inning and Corey Seager ripped an RBI double to right. Boone decided he wasn’t going to try to steal another out with Stroman against Semien and went to Jake Cousins. Cousins came in to strike out the side.

The Yankees got the run back in the bottom half of the inning, but after Adolis Garcia led off the seventh with a single, Boone pulled Cousins for Tommyy Kahnle. A couple of singles and a fielder’s choice mess between Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe later, and the Yankees’ lead was down to 6-3.

Boone has admitted there would be “growing pains” with Chisholm at third and the first time we saw a growing pain was when he cut in front of Volpe to field the ball in the seventh. He’s learning a new position at the major-league level, so he gets every pass in the book.

You would think after seven years of Gleyber Torres playing second base there wouldn’t be any “growing pains” with him, but there somehow still are. I guess they aren’t growing pains at this point, but rather stupidity, as the play after Chisholm cut in front of Volpe, Torres cut in front of Volpe to field a ball on the shortstop side of the bag. Thankfully, Torres made the play and ended the inning, because had he not, it would have been the worst play/decision of Torres’ career, which seems impossible given all of the fuck-ups he has had in the field, at the plate and on the bases.

Juan Soto and Aaron Judge went back-to-back in the bottom half of the seventh and the offense got the runs back the bullpen gave up for a second straight inning. And they needed all of them.

In the eighth, Mark Leiter Jr. gave up two solo home runs and a double, forcing Boone to go to Clay Holmes for a four-out save. With the Yankees clinging to an 8-6 lead in the ninth, Holmes quickly struck out Semien and Josh Jung to begin the inning and then the wheels came off.

Holmes walked Wyatt Langford and then walked Nathaniel Lowe. Garcia followed with an RBI single to make it an 8-7 game, and the Rangers had runners on the corners with two outs. That turned into second and third when Garcia stole second without a throw. Holmes had thrown 39 pitches, still needed to get an out, and was a single away from the Yankees trailing. Fortunately, he got a ground ball from Leody Tavares. Unfortunately, Tavares hit the ball to Torres. Torres went to field it with his glove and fell over momentarily before regaining his balance and throwing to first to end the game. Holmes finished with 46 pitches which are the most he has thrown in four seasons with the Yankees and the most he had thrown in a game since 2019.

5. “It was a win,” Judge said. “It was another good one. I’m happy to win the series and get back [to] the winning ways.”

It was a too-close-for-comfort win, which happen all too often with this Yankees bullpen. Weaver had his worst game of the season on Saturday, Leiter Jr. followed with his worst on Sunday after Kahnle was his usual untrustworthy self, and Holmes did the best he could to add to his league-leading blown save total. This bullpen is a problem and it seems unfixable between now and the end of the season.

6. Here are season slash lines for three different players:

Player A: .239/.298/.372 (10 home runs, 50 RBIs)
Player B: .238/.310/.354 (10 home runs, 45 RBIs)
Player C: .255/.326/.443 (20 home runs, 61 RBIs)

Here are the slash lines for those same players since July 28:

Player A: .265/.351/.367 (0 home runs, 2 RBIs)
Player B: .250/.309/.250 (0 home runs, 6 RBIs)
Player C: .296/.345/.704 (7 home runs, 11 RBIs)

Here are where those three players have hit in the order since July 28:

Player A: 1, 1, 1, 7, 1, 1, 1, 4, 9, 1, 1, 1
Player B: 6, 7, 6, 1, 7, 5, 1, 1, 1, 5, 6, 6
Player C: 5, 6, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 7

Player A is Verdugo, Player B is Torres and Player C is Chisholm. July 28 is when Chisholm played his first game as a Yankee.

We keep hearing from Boone how well Verdugo and Torres have swung the bat of late, even though it’s untrue, but how come we never hear from him about how well Chisholm is swinging the bat?

Verdugo and Torres are free agents after this season. The Yankees owe them nothing once this season ends and neither are a part of the team’s future plan. The Yankees traded for the younger Chisholm, who they have under control for 2025 and 2026. He’s not only part of their future and expected to be a better player than both, he’s already a better player than both. And yet, he’s the one who was forced to change his position upon arrival, and he’s the one who keeps hitting in the bottom third of the order, while the other two are given unlimited opportunities to hit in the most important places in the order.

7. There is nothing Boone wants more than for his Verdugo to be his everyday leadoff hitter. Even though Verdugo’s team-worst .298 on-base percentage and sad .669 OPS suggest he should hit at the bottom of the lineup (or not even be in the lineup), Boone continues to force Verdugo into the top of the order. Verdugo played in eight of the nine games on the homestand, batted first in six of them and hit .235/.297/.294 in 37 plate appearances. Verdugo doesn’t walk (again, a .298 OBP), doesn’t hit for average (.239 batting average) and doesn’t hit for power (.372 slugging percentage). His last home run came in the Ben Rice three-home run game against the Red Sox on July 6 (37 days ago) and that’s his only home run since June 14 at Fenway Park (59 days ago). Verdugo is great when the Yankees are playing the Red Sox, and he sucks against everyone else.

Torres posted a .676 OPS on the homestand, appearing in eight games like Verdugo. Torres batted first three times and never batted lower than seventh. He had no extra-base hits in the eight games, and is hitting .241/.295/.259 over the last two weeks. But hey, keep playing him everyday!

8. Austin Wells is the man. Well, the man on a normal player level, not the Soto/Judge level that only those two play on. Wells’ slash line is up to .251/.344/.417, which may not seem like anything to someone who doesn’t watch him or the team every day, but that line was at .086/.261/.086 near the end of April. Since April 24, Wells is hitting .280/.361/.475, becoming the best-hitting catcher in the majors. If Boone isn’t going to give LeMahieu an extended look at leadoff then Wells is deserving of one. Knowing Boone, he loves having Wells there to break up Judge and Giancarlo Stanton against a right-handed starter, and won’t move him from the cleanup spot for anything.

9. Golden Boy Anthony Volpe is 0-for-23 with 10 strikeouts going back to the first game of the doubleheader against the Angels last week. After Volpe briefly got hot following the All-Star break and told Meredith Marakovits he didn’t change anything or his approach during the time off, he wasn’t kidding. His on-base percentage is back below .300 (.297) and his slugging percentage is back under .700 (.687). Luckily for Volpe, he will never be sat because Oswald Peraza is red hot at Triple-A and would deserve a look at some point if not for Volpe’s never-ending immunity.

10. The next three games are the easiest the Yankees will play as an organization for a long time. It may be the easiest three games they ever play for the rest of time. Three games against the 28-91 White Sox, a team that is on pace to win 38 games and finishes with the most losses (124) since the modern era dating back to the start of the 1900s. The White Sox have won one of their last 25 games and anything less than a sweep over the next three days won’t just be a disappointment, it will be a disgraceful failure.

The Yankees lost 9-4 to the Angels. They are now 8-16 in games started by Nestor Cortes and 60-32 in all other games.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Does any Yankees fan feel confident in the starting rotation? I don’t know how you could. Aaron Boone said after Thursday’s second straight loss to the Angels that he feels confident about the rotation, but he’s the same person who continued to play Anthony Rizzo after Rizzo told him about his fogginess and head injury last summer.

Between Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman, 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation is not worthy of being on the postseason roster. On days Carlos Rodon pitches, you pray the version of Rodon that pitched himself into a $162 million contract shows up, and on days Gerrit Cole pitches, you pray his elbow doesn’t tear and that he can be even a shell of his Cy Young self. And once every five days Luis Gil pitches, and even when he doesn’t have his best stuff (like he didn’t on Wednesday against the Angels and still pitched five scoreless innings), he’s still great. So one day every time through the rotation Yankees fans can feel confident in that day’s starting pitcher.

2. It’s been a long time since any Yankees fan could feel confident with Cortes getting the ball. After losing on Thursday, the Yankees are now 8-16 in games Cortes starts and 60-32 in all other games. Cortes has given the Yankees one quality start over the last seven weeks and has failed to get through five innings in four of his last five starts. Against the Angels, for the fourth time in his last five starts he put at least 10 baserunners on.

“To their credit they fought off a lot of good pitches that I threw tonight,” the delusional Cortes said after giving up six earned runs on nine hits and a walk in 4 2/3 innings.

Over Cortes’ last five starts, he has pitched 23 1/3 innings and put 56 runners on base with a 9.26 ERA and 1.082 OPS. So he has turned every hitter over his last five starts into somewhere between Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.

3. During the All-Star break, Cortes tweeted the following:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

I don’t know who wants to be Cortes with his 9.26 ERA over his last five starts and one quality start since mid-June. But if wearing the pinstripes is such a privilege, you would think Cortes would do more to try to ensure he keeps wearing pinstripes, rather than just talking about how good he was despite his pitching line and the scoreboard suggesting otherwise.

4. It’s not entirely Cortes’ fault that he has trouble giving an honest evaluation of his starts since his manager continues to blow smoke up the left-hander’s ass.

“I actually thought Nestor threw the ball OK,” Boone said after his starter put 10 runners on in 4 2/3 innings and allowed six earned runs. “He wasn’t giving up a ton of hard contact.”

Just hard enough for the Angels to hang six runs on him.

5. After Cortes’ July 11 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings, Boone said, “He pitched well.”

After Cortes’ July 20 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings again, Boone said, “I thought the profile of the stuff was there.”

The start after that Cortes put 12 baserunners on in a loss to the Red Sox and the start after that he gave up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings to the Phillies.

Despite all of that positivity from Boone after each failed outing, here is what Boone said after Thursday’s loss to the Angels about Cortes’ run of poor performances.

“There were a few starts there where it wasn’t great.”

What? You told everyone how well Cortes was pitching and good the profile of his stuff looked. Now it wasn’t great?

“A couple where he didn’t have that extra gear on his heater,” Boone said. “Felt like he got that last time in Philly.”

Cortes gave up three earned runs on 5 1/3 innings in Philadelphia. That’s a 5.09 ERA. That is Cortes having an extra gear on his heater?

6. “Felt like today, you look at the profile was good,” Boone said after Cortes lost to the Angels.

The Angels have the third-worst offense in the American League and scored six runs off Cortes in 4 2/3 innings and Boone thought the “profile” of his pitches was “good.” How can that be? What would a Cortes start look like if the profile of his pitches was bad?

The offense was also a problem over the last two-and-a-half games against the Angels. Over the last 23 innings of the series, the Yankees scored six runs. They didn’t score in the last five innings of the first game of the series, were held to two in the second game and scored three meaningless, garbage-time runs at the end of the third game, while the Angels blasted them for 17 runs in the second and third games.

7. Boone keeps mentioning “guys coming back from injury.” Who is coming back from injury? Clarke Schmidt is a ways away. Anthony Rizzo is swinging a bat. Jon Berti keeps getting hurt while hurt. The only potential difference-maker that could return is Schmidt because he pushes Cortes and Stroman out of the equation, but he’s not close to returning. Boone kept talking about Stanton returning before he returned and how that would seemingly fix everything and Stanton has been the bad version of himself and has fixed nothing as Judge keeps getting intentionally walked.

Boone loves to speak under the assumption that players will return from injury, but that no one will leave the roster to injury. He thinks the roster is what it is and will add pieces, forgetting that he could very well lose pieces. No team is ever at 100 percent, and the Yankees haven’t been at 100 percent late in the season or in the postseason in a long time.

8. With the loss the Yankees are now 9-18 in their last 27 home games, having won one of their last nine home series. That seems impossible for an organization that always puts up gaudy numbers at home and always has one of the best home records in the league, but it is.

The Orioles lost too so no ground was lost by the Yankees in the division. That’s both good and bad. It’s good because no ground was lost. It’s bad because the Orioles’ lack of winning continues to give the Yankees an excuse for a lack of urgency. The manager and players of the Yankees have preached about the great position they remain in since mid-June despite their wildly inconsistent play, even though the only reason they are in that position is because the Orioles have been equally as bad.

9. With the soft, cupcake schedule the Yankees have in August, I expected them to get fat in the win column and possibly even create separation from the Orioles. Through six August games, all at home, against a Blue Jays team that gave up and traded pieces off their major-league roster at the deadline and an Angels team that hasn’t been good since Opening Day, the Yankees are 3-3. It’s unacceptable for a team that has World Series aspirations.

10. An organization that has actually won the World Series within the last 14 years (and appeared in three of those 14) comes to town in the Rangers. The Rangers have been desperately trying to save their season and avoid missing out on the postseason a year after winning it all. It’s a team the Yankees should beat, It’s a series the Yankees should win. But I thought the same thing about the Angels series. This weekend would be a good time for the Yankees to begin to manage and play with urgency. If they know how to.

The Yankees split Wednesday’s doubleheader with the Angels, winning the first game 5-2 and losing the second game 8-2.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I don’t know how you bat a player with an OPS of .650 or .668 leadoff and consider your team to be a championship contender, but that’s what Aaron Boone did on Wednesday in the doubleheader against the Angels.

Alex Verdugo and his .660 OPS got the leadoff spot for the first game of the day. Facing the Angels’ Davis Daniel and his 34 1/3 career innings, Verdugo did hit a pair of doubles in the Yankees’ 5-2 win, but no matter how much Boone likely thinks it’s a sign of things to come for Verdugo, it isn’t. It was one game in the rain against a pitcher with rookie status. There won’t be a Davis Daniel in October.

Gleyber Torres and his .668 OPS got the leadoff spot for the second game of the day (with Verdugo inexplicably getting the cleanup spot). Torres went 1-for-4 with a sacrifice fly to drop his OPS to .522 over the last two weeks. As expected, Torres did enough after his benching a few weeks ago and leading up to the trade deadline to make the organization believe he was figuring things out. Since the deadline he was benched for a lack of hustle and continues his season-long trend of being a zero at the plate.

2. Neither of these players deserves to lead off for the New York Yankees. The Yankees’ best leadoff options are Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, but it seems as though Boone would rather tell you one of his starting pitchers sucked before he would move them out of their 2- and 3-spots in the order. If Boone isn’t going to use Juan Soto or Aaron Judge as the leadoff hitter then there’s only one option right now … DJ LeMahieu.

3. Ten days ago, if Hal Steinbrenner was willing to eat the roughly $40 million owed to LeMahieu and the Yankees released him, no one would have criticized the move. After four injury-plagued seasons and this miserable season, the idea the 36-year-old LeMahieu would regain his old form and become even an average hitter again seemed like a thought only Boone could believe. But a lot has changed since July 31 in Philadelphia for LeMahieu and all of it good.

Here are the exit velocities of LeMahieu’s batted balls since July 31.

103.7 mph
98.3 mph
100.1 mph
98.4 mph
95.5 mph
94.9 mph
101.5 mph
101.4 mph
96.2 mph
108.4 mph
102.7 mph
69.7 mph

4. LeMahieu is hitting the ball and hitting it hard. The problem is he is rarely playing.

July 31: 2-for-4, double, home run, 6 RBIs
August 1: No game
August 2: Didn’t play
August 3: Defensive replacement with no plate appearances
August 4: 1-for-4, two RBIs (walk-off single)
August 5: No game
August 6: No game
August 7 first game: Defensive replacement with no plate appearances
August 8 second game: 2-for-4, double, RBI

LeMahieu has only played three games (not including his two defensive replacement appearances without a plate appearance) in the last eight days. If Verdugo or Torres had those exit velocities and LeMahieu’s recent production, they would be given contract extensions.

LeMahieu isn’t playing every day because of how bad he was up until recently, which was fair, but now that he is hitting, he deserves to play. Torres certainly isn’t enough to keep LeMahieu out of the lineup.

5. The Yankees need offense. Recent winning way aside, they are struggling to score runs consistently. On Wednesday afternoon, they got out to a 5-0 lead and then sat on it, but thankfully the Angels couldn’t get the big hit late with runners on to close the gap more than they did. On Wednesday night, they scored two runs against weak Angels pitching. On Sunday, they struggled against Yariel Rodriguez and a mediocre-at-best Blue Jays bullpen. The offense is still very top heavy, and the Yankees should be looking to get as many hots bats into the lineup each day as possible (even if they still don’t believe in the theory of being “hot”). LeMahieu is that bat.

6. Maybe these last few games from LeMahieu are serving as the latest Yankees version of the aging family dog that mostly wanders around aimlessly, goes to the bathroom all over the place, lies around and sleeps nearly the entire day, but every once in a while does something they did when they were younger to make you think for a moment that maybe they are coming around. That could be what’s happening with LeMahieu. It happened at the end with Jorge Posada and CC Sabathia and many others.

The Yankees owe it to themselves to find out. Boone was willing to bat LeMahieu recently when LeMahieu was going as badly as anyone in the majors, and yet, he’s not hitting him there now when LeMahieu is finally hitting. It’s possible (and even likely) LeMahieu is no better a solution at the top of the order than Verdugo or Torres have been, but it’s time to find out. LeMahieu was once one of the best in the league in that spot, which is more than Verdugo or Torres can say, and maybe he can be that again over these next two-plus months. Right now, LeMahieu should be playing every day , and he should be leading off when he plays (until Boone comes to realization that moving Soto and Judge up one spot each is the actual play). Let him play himself out of the lineup again.

“It would be huge if we can keep him going like this,” Boone said, “because obviously that role is there, an important one for us.”

What “role” is Boone talking about? Does he mean a utility/role player role where he plays sparingly at first, second and third and is a late-game defensive replacement? Or does he mean a role where he becomes an everyday player and the team’s leadoff hitter? Unfortunately, I think he meant the former.

7. My dream is that by the postseason LeMahieu has been so good that he is either the everyday second baseman or third baseman with Jazz Chisholm being the other and Torres is on the bench. There would be nothing better than Torres ending his Yankees tenure out of the starting lineup as an impending free agent.

The second part of my dream is for Jasson Dominguez to continue mashing Triple-A pitching, getting a call-up either this month (unlikely) or next month (likely) and hitting major-league pitching the way he did for those eight magical games last summer. That would set up Dominguez to be one of the Yankees’ three starting outfielders, forcing Verdugo to the bench and creating this postseason lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Juan Soto
Aaron Judge
Austin Wells
Giancarlo Stanton
Jazz Chisholm
Anthony Volpe
Jasson Dominguez
Ben Rice

(Now that’s not the lineup I would create, but it’s the best possible lineup Boone is capable of creating with those nine names.)

8. It will take a lot for this dream to come true. LeMahieu will have to stay healthy and be outstanding. Not just good or great, he will need to be something close to his 2019-20 self for the Yankees to bench Torres permanently. Seven years of moronic mistakes, loafing it, a low Baseball IQ, and lack of hustle every day got Torres benched for not even a full game last week. The Yankees have catered to Torres his entire career (moving LeMahieu off second when Torres couldn’t play short, moving Gio Urshela off third when Torres couldn’t play short, making Chisholm play a position he never had to keep Torres at second) and that’s not going to change now with two months to go as a Yankee. He survived every trade deadline and offseason as a Yankee to this point, has been defended to no end by Brian Cashman and Boone, and was even defended and supported after last week’s half-assed benching.

The same goes for Verdugo. For more than a month he was the worst hitter in the majors and he kept on playing every day. No lack of production was enough to sit Verdugo down, and for a large part of that he hit cleanup. He’s having the worst season of his career as a Yankee and as an impending free agent and that didn’t stop him from batting first and fourth on Wednesday. Like LeMahieu, Dominguez is going to have to be otherworldly for Verdugo to not be hitting in the top half of the lineup come October.

9. I don’t expect my dream to come true. I expect Verdugo to bat leadoff against righties in the postseason and Torres to do the same against lefties. The Yankees would rather not field the best team possible than cause friction in relationships with two players they owe nothing to after this season. (Like these two Clay Holmes will be the closer in October because Boone would rather lose a game than sour his relationship with the impending free agent.)

10. I hope I’m wrong. I hope for the Yankees’ 163rd game of the season, the best nine baseball players are on the field and the best possible lineup using those nine players is what is used. But everything I know about the Yankees, how they operate and how they are currently using players leading up to that 163rd game suggests otherwise.

The Yankees finished off a three-game sweep of the Phillies, have won five straight and head home to begin the easiest schedule in the majors over the next month.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I thought the Phillies were supposed to be good? The Yankees went into Citizens Bank Park and swept a three-games series from the team with the best record in the majors. They beat up on Cy Young candidate Zack Wheeler on Monday, got to the Phillies’ bullpen on Tuesday and then got a career-high, six-RBI game from DJ LeMahieu on Wednesday, as he drove in every Yankees run. The Yankees won in a 10-run blowout and then won back-to-back one-run games after having just one one-run win since May 29.

2. Not only did the Phillies get swept at home, but they allowed the Yankees to win a game started by Nestor Cortes for the first time since June 18. Wednesday’s 6-5 win was also the Yankees’ first road win started by Cortes since June 2.

“I was just ready to make my start today, and that’s what I worked for,” Cortes said about his name being involved in trade speculation. “Hopefully, I can put up a string of good starts going forward.”

Cortes will have a great opportunity to put together that string as the Yankees’ schedule is about to get as easy as a major-league schedule can get with three-game series against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox, Guardians, Rockies and Nationals. Outside of the series with the Guardians, August is full of wins.

3. The Yankees were finally able to win a game started by Cortes because of LeMahieu. LeMahieu hit a grand slam in the second inning for his second home run of the season to give the Yankees a 4-0 laed, and then with the Yankees clinging to a 4-3 lead in the sixth, he smoked a two-run double to the gap in right-center

“It’s been tough for me, but today felt good,” LeMahieu said. “My teammates have my back in supporting me. To come through and see how excited they are, it’s a good feeling for sure.”

Back on July 21, LeMahieu said, “It hasn’t given me much hope the last month or so. As long as I’ve played this game, whatever challenges have presented itself, I’ve always come out of it one way or another.” Since then, LeMahieu is only 4-for-19, but two of those four were home runs and another was a double. Maybe this is him coming out of it? I sure hope so, as on July 22, I wrote:

I love LeMahieu. I was all for re-signing him after 2020 for what he did in 2019 and 2020. He deserved to be re-signed. After posting a .922 OPS in his first two seasons with the Yankees, he has a .702 since. He suffered season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022, played through injuries last year and missed a large portion of this season because of injuries. It fell apart quickly for LeMahieu after 2022 and while there have been moments over the last three-plus years where he looks like himself, they are only moments, nothing consistent or frequent. On a team full of unplayable names, he is the most unplayable of them all. But because of all of those other unplayable names and because he’s owed about $41 million through 2026, he’s going to keep getting opportunities to prove his career isn’t over.

I want nothing more than for LeMahieu to return to his old self, regain the starting second base role and send Gleyber Torres to the bench. That’s the dream.

4. After re-signing LeMahieu to be their second baseman for the next six years, he was forced off the position when Torres couldn’t handle shortstop. The Yankees catered to Torres and LeMahieu started being a third baseman and first baseman regularly. Then when the Yankees traded for Jazz Chisholm Jr., they played him in center field for a game and then third base the last three games — a position he has never played before. Why? To cater to Torres.

On Wednesday, Torres batted leadoff. He went 0-for-5 with a strikeout. In his first chance at being a leadoff hitter this season (March 28-April 9), he went 10-for-50 with a 11 strikeouts, hitting .200/.281/.240. His slash line for the season is down to .231/.306/.357. For his career, he’s a .237/.282/.356 hitter in the leadoff spot. Please stop trying to make him a leadoff hitter. (Please also stop using Alex Verdugo and his .298 on-base percentage as the leadoff hitter.)

5. After Cortes was removed, Luke Weaver pitched an inning and gave up a run. Tommy Kahnle got two outs and Mark Leiter Jr. allowed his first run since June 19. The only reason Leiter allowed a run was because Torres couldn’t handle ball hit at him that every major-league second baseman should be able to handle.

6. Then it was time for Clay Holmes. A day after blowing his eighth save opportunity of the season, Holmes allowed a leadoff single to Kyle Schwarber and it looked like Here we go again. Instead, Holmes was able to get Austin Hays on a flyout (he narrowly missed hitting a walkoff home run) and got a double play off the bat of the struggling Bryce Harper. A seven-pitch save from Holmes? Add another humiliating moment to the series for the Phillies.

7. Brian Cashman spoke to the media about the trade deadline and the roster for the rest of the season.

“I liked what we had before we made the moves, and I know we’ve improved since these moves,” Cashman said.

There’s no one in the world who liked what the Yankees had before the moves. Before acquiring Chisholm, the team had lost 24 of 35 games. If Cashman liked the team so much, he wouldn’t have made any moves.

8. “I think we have a really good team already, and it’ll get better over the course of time when certain guys come back from the IL,” Cashman said. “With the imports, we’ve made it better.”

The team is really good now. (That’s also because they have won five straight games, so the feeling and perception around them has changed drastically since Trent Grisham had an 0-2 count against Kenley Jansen on Saturday night.)

The only player I’m excited about “returning” is Jasson Dominguez. Dominguez would make the lineup deeper and better and would mean the bench for Verdugo. Unfortunately, barring injury, I don’t think Dominguez will be called up until rosters expand on September 1.

9. “He’s a legitimate force when he’s healthy and all the rust is knocked off,” Cashman said of Dominguez. “It’s exciting to know that’s an opportunity that’s there, but I have no idea past that. We like what we have currently, and it’d be nice to know that’s sitting there if we need it.”

Cashman definitely has an idea, and that idea is September 1. That gives Dominguez more time at Triple-A to get healthy from his oblique and develop, and it gives more time for Verdugo to play himself out of the starting lineup. A Yankees lineup with Dominguez over Verdugo (if Dominguez stays healthy and hits at Triple-A) and LeMahieu over Torres (if LeMahieu can continue to hit the ball in the air) is a real possibility.

10. The Yankees have Thursday off before hosting a Blue Jays team that has given up and traded away pieces off of their 26-man roster within the last week. The Blue Jays are counting down the days until Game 162 with a focus on next year and are the perfect team for the new-look Yankees to beat up on over the weekend. The dog days of summer and the stretch run is here, and so is the easiest schedule in the majors over the next month.

The Yankees won their fourth straight game since acquiring Jazz Chisholm Jr., and it was his home run that propelled the Yankees to a 7-6, 12-inning win over the Phillies.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I love Jazz Chisholm Jr. How could you not? The Yankees are 4-0 since acquiring him and 3-0 with him in the lineup. All he’s done since putting on a Yankees uniform is hit, going 6-for-15 with four home runs, eight RBIs, a walk, a stolen base and a .400/.438/1.200 slash line.

“This is what I live for,” Chisholm said. “I love the lights. I love the big crowds. I love everything like that. It’s super exciting and I’m enjoying it.”

2. When Chisholm was a Marlin, the large crowds were few and far between. Now he’s playing in front of full stadiums every night and he’s putting on a show. His three-run home run on Tuesday night turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead. The blast was so effortless and led to him becoming the first player in Yankees history with four-plus home runs in his first three games with the team.

“That’s sick, to be part of the history of the New York Yankees,” Chisholm said. “It’s one of the sickest things anybody in baseball could hear.”

Not only has he been exceptional at the plate, he has played third base the last two games, a position he has never played before, and has flawlessly fielded everything hit to him.

“It looks like he’s been playing there his whole life,” Aaron Judge said. “He brings great energy.”

For the fourth straight day, Chisholm was the story as the Yankees won their fourth straight game for the first time since June 9-12. The game almost didn’t end with a win, though, following another blown save from Clay Holmes.

3. The Yankees held their 5-4 lead from the Chisholm home run until Holmes entered in the bottom of the ninth. It was never going to be an easy ninth with just a one-run lead for Holmes and his 5.16 ERA since May 20 since it’s never easy with Holmes because he relies on balls in play to consistently record outs and struggles to put away hitters with two strikes. When you rely on balls in play, bad things can happen, and bad things happened yet again with Holmes on the mound.

Holmes couldn’t put away JT Realmuto with an 0-2 count and he was able to roll a slow grounder to third to lead off the inning with a single. Nick Castellanos hit a double play ball to third, but the Yankees couldn’t turn it fast enough to erase the baserunner. Bryson Stott followed with a single on the ground to right field to move the runner to third before a wild pitch from Holmes allowed the tying run to score. Holmes got another ground ball to end the inning, but Gleyber Torres (who unfortunately survived another trade deadline as a Yankee) dropped the transfer to turn a double play for the second straight day. Eventually after an intentional walk, another single on the ground and finally a groundout, Holmes ended the inning.

4. “He threw the ball great,” Aaron Boone said. “I know that’s not a popular thing … but that’s tough luck right there.”

No, it’s not a popular thing, considering Holmes allowed the game to be tied on a wild pitch and has blown seven of 28 save opportunities this season. But it is and it isn’t tough luck. Holmes’ goal is to get ground balls. Again, when the ball is put into play bad things happen, and relying on those ground balls to both be hit hard enough to field and also be hit right at fielders is a parlay that Holmes keeps losing.

Here is what I wrote on Monday:

Is it too early to start a Jake Cousins for Closer petition? Cousins is the only Yankees reliever capable of consistently getting strikeouts and given Clay Holmes’ performance since mid-May, it’s completely acceptable to want someone else in that role. I don’t think the Yankees should have a set closer, but since they are going to, it should be someone other than Holmes, even if he did his job on Saturday night.

5. If not Cousins, maybe Mark Leiter Jr. will unseat Holmes. Leiter arrived to the game after its start and found himself making his Yankees debut in the 10th with the automatic runner on. He pitched a scoreless frame as the third member of his family to pitch for the Yankees.

“It’s a great legacy for my family,” Leiter said. “To get a chance to put on the pinstripes is pretty awesome.”

6. Will Warren also got his chance to wear a Yankees uniform for the first time as he was thrust into making his major-league debut against the majors’ best record after Gerrit Cole was scratched. Warren looked overmatched early, allowing a run in the first and three more in the second, but settled down to pitch 5 2/3 with no runs allowed over his final 4 1/3 innings.

7. Cole was scratched late with what the Yankees initially called “general body fatigue” as Cole said he wasn’t able to bounce back from his most recent start the way he normally does.

“Look, I’m still [seven] starts into this season for me,” Cole said. “Everyone else is in the middle of it all. I feel different than other people.”

I would think Cole would be more rested and have less fatigue considering he’s only seven starts into the season and it’s the end of July. He would typically make the seventh start of his season in early May. (In true Yankees fashion, Boone later said Cole has been dealing with a stomach bug recently, which didn’t match up with what the Yankees announced and Cole said.)

8. Whatever it is, fatigue, stomach bug, hangover, I don’t care as long as it’s not related to his elbow. If Cole needs more time to get ready for his next start, that’s fine. The free fall and collapse has momentarily stalled and the Yankees have a little room to breathe now with a five-game lead in the loss column on a playoff spot. The Yankees need Cole to be healthy and himself in October. Right now, he may not be healthy and clearly wasn’t himself against the Mets last week.

9. But knowing Luis Gil is at a point in terms of innings he’s never been at and knowing Cole has been shaky and now experiencing this odd general fatigue, wouldn’t you think the Yankees should have made a move for a starting pitcher at the trade deadline? The team is dangerously close to praying Clarke Schmidt returns and pitches the way he did before getting hurt and even more close to having to start both of their two inconsistent lefties in playoff games.

10. Before this six-game road trip against the Red Sox and Phillies I wondered if the Yankees could go winless, be out of a playoff spot and fire Boone by the end of day on Wednesday. That didn’t happen, but that’s dark things were for the Yankees less than a week ago. It’s wild what a few wins will do. It’s also wild to think about where the team may be if Trent Grisham didn’t come through down 0-2 against Kenley Jansen on Saturday night. Thankfully, he did, and thankfully the Yankees are back on track for the first time in six weeks with the schedule about to soften for all of August.

The Yankees won back-to-back games and a series for just the second time since mid-June. After beating the Red Sox 11-8 on Saturday and 8-2 on Sunday, the Yankees have stabilized their collapse for the time being.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. With two outs, trailing by one run and Trent Grisham in an 0-2 count against Kenley Jansen on Saturday night, it was hard to like the Yankees’ chances of tying the game, even with the tying run on second base. Down to their last strike, the Yankees were on the verge of losing a fourth straight game and watching what was a 13-game lead in loss column for a playoff spot on June 14 fall to just one game. But Grisham battled back, fouling off a pitch and taking back-to-back cutters that nearly grazed the bottom of the zone before hitting a game-tying double off the Green Monster. The Yankees went on to win the game 11-8 in 10 innings for their best and most important win of the season.

2. Eight innings before Grisham improbably tied the game, the Yankees had staked Marcus Stroman to a three-run, first inning-lead. Alex Verdugo singled (it should have been a double, but he didn’t run out of the box thinking he hit a home run) and Juan Soto and Aaron Judge followed with back-to-back home runs. Five batters into the bottom of the first, Stroman had erased the early 3-0 lead. He ended up putting together his worst start of the season (3.1 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 1 HR), allowing 10 baserunners in just 3 1/3 innings and not getting a single swing-and-miss on any of his 60 pitches.

Stroman has given the Yankees one quality start (June 22 against the Braves) in his last nine starts going back to May 31. In that time he has pitched to a 5.28 ERA with opponents hitting .291/.373/.514 off him.

3. A few hours before Stroman laid an egg at Fenway Park, the Yankees traded for Jazz Chisholm. The slightly-above-league-average career hitter (102 OPS+) wasn’t going to come and single-handedly save the Yankees’ sinking ship, but he was going to make them better, faster and more versatile, something that the old, slow, station-to-station team desperately needs. The shortstop-turned-second baseman-turned center fielder is still only 26 and is under contract through 2026.

The trade for Chisholm was both a trade for now as well as 2025 and 2026. Gleyber Torres is a free agent after this season as is Alex Verdugo, and DJ LeMahieu is now unplayable. Chisholm makes the 2024 Yankees better and gives the roster some stability going into next season and the one after.

Since Torres’ benching at the beginning of July and with the trade deadline approaching, the impending free agent having a miserable season is hitting .321/.410/.509 in his last 14 games and 62 plate appearances. It’s almost as if having consequences for poor play and needing to be accountable for your performance work as motivational tools.

The same goes for Verdugo. With talks he would go to the bench for Chisholm or Jasson Dominguez or be traded, Verdugo went 7-for-15 with five runs and three doubles over the weekend. Maybe Verdugo is finally going to get back being the league-average hitter he has been for his career, or maybe he’s just a great Fenway Park hitter. (Likely the latter.)

“Get a couple of guys at the trade deadline that are going to freshen it up in here,” Verdugo said, “and we’re excited man.”

I hate to break it to Verdugo, but there’s a very good chance he will be traded for one of the “freshen”-it-up guys. Because even with the recent upticks in performance from Torres or Verdugo, I do think one or both of them should be traded before Tuesday’s deadline. The Yankees are going to need to replace names on the major-league roster to create roster space for the return of Giancarlo Stanton, eventual call-up of Dominguez and potential returns for Anthony Rizzo and Jon Berti.

4. Brian Cashman has opened admittedly to trying to trade Torres at past deadlines and that was before Torres had 55 games left in his contract. However, the Yankees will likely buy into Torres’ recent rebound, thinking he will finish the season strong and play well in the postseason, when in all likelihood, the moment the deadline passes he will revert back to being an absolute nothing at the plate and a disaster on the field and on the bases. (Just two weeks ago, Cashman sat in the visitors’ dugout at Tropicana Field and said Torres was the Yankees’ second-best hitter last season and they are “waiting for him” to be that player again.) On Sunday night, it was Torres’ two-run single in the first inning that extended the Yankees’ early lead from 1-0 to 3-0, but of course he had to get thrown out trying to advance to second to end the inning. He always has to negate a positive in some way.

I have long said Torres is a losing player, and he is. On Sunday, Aaron Boone said he would like both Torres and Chisholm to take balls at third base to get acclimated with the position since the Yankees don’t have an everyday third baseman.

Here is how the newly-acquired Chisholm responded:

“I went out there and played center field for the first time last year. It was pretty difficult at first, but I feel like I can go and play anywhere and help my team win. Especially a winning team, if they’re asking me to go somewhere and help them win, I’m definitely going to do it.”

Here is how Torres responded:

“I don’t like it. I’m a second baseman. I play second.”

The Yankees reportedly had concerns about Chisholm’s personality before trading for him, and yet, they continue to roster and play Torres, who they apparently have no personality issues with. Again, Torres is a losing player.

5. Torres came up as a shortstop. He started playing third base in 2017 to set himself up for an eventual call-up because Chase Headley was so bad, but then Torres blew out his arm at home plate and missed the rest of the season. He made his major-league debut as a second baseman in 2018, and played the position through 2019. Then in 2020 he was moved to shortstop through mid-September 2021 until the Yankees finally gave up on him there and moved him back to second. He only plays second because he couldn’t handle short, and he’s barely capable of playing second. I would like for nothing more than for him to no longer be a Yankee by 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

6. The Yankees haven’t lost since trading for Chisholm, sitting at a perfect 2-0. To make room for Chisholm on the roster, the Yankees designated J.D. Davis for assignment. To continue with the tradition of Yankees who provided little-to-no value getting released or designated for assignment, here is Old Timers’ Day 2034:

Michael Kay: “This next Yankee was only in pinstripes for a short time. After being released by the Giants in March 2024, the last-place A’s gave up on him in June of that year, but the Yankees were waiting with open arms. He appeared in seven games as a Yankee, at times serving as the cleanup hitter and protection for Aaron Judge. He went 2-for-19 in those seven games with nine strikeouts, grounded into two double plays and posted a .385 OPS. Please welcome back, J.D. Davis!” (Stadium organ plays.)

Five days ago, Boone was asked about using Davis as protection for Judge and benching Ben Rice. Boone said, “This is a guy that recently has had a good amount of success.” Boone also gave this nonsensical, ridiculous answer when asked about playing Davis over Rice for a second straight day:

“Yeah, I mean, also want to get where you’re trying to leverage situations. I think you look at Manaea too, pretty small sample like you look at his career, it’s pretty stark the other way. So you kind of peel the onion back a little bit and is that what he’s going to be moving forward? We’re not trying to predict what happened yesterday. We’re trying to what happened moving forward, and the reality is we brought J.D. Davis, especially when Rizz went down, to be this kind of, and this is a guy that recently has had a good amount of success. So, but also trying to get young players in positions to where they can be successful as well. And to have, you know, leverage situations as the game unfolds too.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Boone and the Yankees thought Davis was worthy of hitting cleanup and being a starter. By Saturday afternoon, he was no longer worthy of being on the team. It makes complete sense.

7. After taking a month off from earning his $800,000-per-start paychecks, Carlos Rodon shut down the Rays last Monday (7 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 10 K, 1 HR) and then held down the Red Sox on Sunday (6.1 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 2 HR). Rodon is still giving up way too many home runs, having give up at least one in each of his last seven starts and 12 overall in that time, but it’s nice to see him stop his season ERA from climbing with each consecutive start.

8. Is it too early to start a Jake Cousins for Closer petition? Cousins is the only Yankees reliever capable of consistently getting strikeouts and given Clay Holmes’ performance since mid-May, it’s completely acceptable to want someone else in that role. I don’t think the Yankees should have a set closer, but since they are going to, it should be someone other than Holmes, even if he did his job on Saturday night.

9. Judge and Soto continue to do their jobs (a combined 8-for-23 with eight runs, a double, three home runs, nine RBIs and nine walks over the weekend), as does Austin Wells. Wells is hitting .269/.354/.487 since April 27. An .841 OPS with great defense for a catcher for three months? Take your time healing, Jose Trevino. Take all the time you need.

10. The mood as a Yankees fan today is much different than it would have been had Grisham not battled back to save the game on Saturday night against Jansen. Two straight wins and just the second series in in more than six weeks has me feeling like the Yankees are on a 12-game run. It’s a dangerous feeling because the roster still needs vast upgrades by Tuesday at 6 p.m. and because three games with the Phillies over the next three days await. Momentarily stopping the free fall that began on June 14 is enjoyable, but stopping it completely is what’s needed.

The Yankees played a game, which means the Yankees’ season loss total increased by one.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On Friday afternoon, I found myself wondering if the Yankees were to lose all six games against the Red Sox and Phillies over the next six days, would Aaron Boone still be the manager next Friday? The Yankees’ season has free fallen to the point where losing six straight to those two teams is a realistic result. Six straight losses would mean an eight-game losing streak, and it would mean the Yankees no longer hold a playoff spot.

2. The opposing starters for those six games would be Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Christopher Sanchez. The worst of the six starters the Yankees would face would be Bello, who is having a down year after a breakout season a year ago. If the Yankees couldn’t win the series opener at Fenway Park against Bello, the six-game road trip could unravel into an unfixable disaster.

3. The Yankees didn’t win that game. They lost 9-7 despite holding a three-run lead with eight outs to go. Their two “most trusted” relievers in Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes imploded and allowed five runs between the seventh and eighth inning and the Yankees lost another game and lost another game to the Red Sox.

4. The loss dropped the Yankees to 2-5 against the Red Sox this season. It was their third straight loss overall. It was their fifth loss in seven games since the All-Star break. It was their 13th loss in 19 games in July. It was their 24th loss in 35 games since June 13. On June 14, the Yankees held a 13-game lead in the loss column for a playoff spot. After Friday’s loss, it’s down to two games.

5. Nestor Cortes was awful again. He couldn’t make it through five innings (4.2 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K) for the third straight start and fourth time in his last five starts. He put 12 runners on base in 4 2/3 innings, and yet, he didn’t think he pitched poorly, saying, “I threw a lot of good pitches.” He then went on to blame “soft contact” for the loss. He sounded a lot like Luis Severino talking about exit velocity after Alex Bregman’s home run in Game 2 of the 2022 ALCS. Why aren’t any of the Yankees accountable for their performances? Why are they always making excuses based on soft contact, exit velocity, catch probability and domed stadiums having the roof open? Maybe it has something to do with the way they hear their manager speak?

6. Two starts ago, Cortes put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings. Boone said, “He pitched well.”

Last start, Cortes put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings again, and Boone said, “I thought the profile of the stuff was there.”

On Friday, Cortes put 11 baserunners on in 4 2/3 innings, and Boone again said, “I thought he threw the ball well.” Cortes thought he pitched well. Boone thought he pitched well. I guess a 7.71 ERA and 2.355 WHIP is pitching well. Who am I to argue?

During the All-Star break, Cortes tweeted the following:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

I hoped and prayed a Red Sox fan had hacked his account and posted that message, but no, it was Cortes himself. And when you hear him speak after each miserable start it’s obvious he’s as delusional as anyone in the Yankees clubhouse, including his manager. Since that tweet, here is Cortes’ line: 9 IP, 17 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 4 BB, 6 K, 3 HR, 1 HBP, 10.00 ERA, 2.333 WHIP. Yes, everyone wants to be the Yankees.

7. Weaver is slowly turning back into the Luke Weaver the Royals waived, the Mariners let go, the Reds released and the Mariners let go again. The Luke Weaver who has a 4.93 career ERA.

After pitching to a 0.00 ERA from Opening Day through May 19 thanks to impeccable control (four walks in 20 innings), good fortune (line drives turning into double plays) and exceptional defense behind him, Holmes has been atrocious since. Since May 20, he has put 35 baserunners on in 20 2/3 innings and has pitched to a 5.66 ERA and 1.645 WHIP. Opposing batters are hitting .315/.361/.461 against him.

8. “It’s hard obviously, but I’m not going to keep talking about how hard it is and tough,” Boone said, apparently unwilling to discuss his team’s collapse.” “We’ve gotta close out games, and I’m absolutely confident we will.”

“This is when you find out a lot about your team, a lot about your individual players when you go through it,” Boone said, “who’s tough enough to withstand it.”

Well, this is the third straight season the Yankees have endured a mid-June-on collapse, and considering the roster is virtually the same, we know no one who was on the team the last two years is tough enough to withstand it.

9. “We’re in compete mode,” Boone said, “and I thought we competed really well tonight.”

I need to know what “compete mode” is. And if the Yankees are in “compete mode” now, what mode were they in prior to being in this mode? Were games before Friday’s not important? Did they not count the same? What was different about Friday than Wednesday or last week or last month that the Yankees entered “compete mode” on Friday?

If the Yankees “competed really well” and still allowed nine runs and lost by two runs then I think it’s time to pack up the bats and balls for the year. If “competing really well” is only good enough to get the Yankees their latest late-game collapse and latest season-crushing loss then how can anyone possibly think the season is going to turn around?

10. Boone refrained from saying, “It’s right in front of us,” after his team’s latest loss. He used the phrase on Wednesday, had Thursday off and then didn’t use it on Friday, so if the Yankees lose on Saturday, get ready to hear it again.

Instead, Boone went with a new one: “There’s definitely an end in sight and we’re gonna get there.”

Yes, there is. It’s looking like the end for the 2024 Yankees will be Game 162 of the regular season with no postseason baseball for a second straight year. That’s what in front of the Yankees right now if they keep playing the way they have since mid-June.

The Yankees were embarrassed by the Mets in a 12-3 loss and finished this season’s Subway Series without a win. They have lost four of six since the All-Star break and 23 of 34 dating back to June 13.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Another game, another loss. At this point I expect the Yankees to lose every game the way a Rockies fan expects their team to lose every game. (Ironically, the worst team in the National League scored 20 runs against the Red Sox on Wednesday and won a series against them, something the Yankees have been unable to do.) The Yankees are 11-23 over their last 34 games, a .324 winning percentage over 21 percent of the season. In their last 40 games, they have a slightly better .375 winning percentage over a period of time equal to 25 percent of the season. Whether you want to look at it from a standpoint of one-fifth of the season or a quarter of the season, the Yankees have been a bad team for a long time.

2. That’s because collectively, the team is a group of losers led by the biggest loser of all in their manager. Outside of Juan Soto, of course. The generational superstar continues to produce in all situations and boasts a .306/.414/.571 slash line in late-and-close situations. (For comparison, Aaron Judge is batting .216/.322/.431 in late-and-close situations). Soto is a proven winner, having helped lead the Nationals to a World Series win over the Astros in 2019, a series in which he hit .333/.438/.741 with three home runs. (The Yankees as a team hit three home runs against the Astros in the 2022 ALCS.) He’s the only Yankee excused from criticism for this season.

3. On Wednesday night, having lost 22 of 33 since June 13, having lost three of five since the All-Star break and having lost every game to the Mets this season, you would think the Yankees, behind their so-called ace, would play, pitch and manage with urgency. They didn’t.

A day after Boone posted the worst lineup imaginable because of a left-handed opposing starter, he abandoned that lineup despite facing another left-hander. If the lineup he posted on Tuesday was what he thought was the best possible lineup to beat a lefty, why didn’t he go back to that same lineup on Wednesday?

4. Jahmai Jones was on the bench, J.D. Davis was oddly bumped down from cleanup to seventh, and Austin Wells and Oswaldo Cabrera were back in. Boone made sure to keep Ben Rice out though. He can start against Chris Sale or take the last plate appearance of a game against Jake Diekman, but he can’t face Jose Quintana or Sean Manaea.

5. Boone decided to use Davis as his designated hitter for this one. Most teams use a slugger in that role, the Yankees use Jones and Davis. Why did Boone choose Davis over Rice? Here is his answer:

“Yeah, I mean, also want to get where you’re trying to leverage situations. I think you look at Manaea too, pretty small sample like you look at his career, it’s pretty stark the other way. So you kind of peel the onion back a little bit and is that what he’s going to be moving forward? We’re not trying to predict what happened yesterday. We’re trying to what happened moving forward, and the reality is we brought J.D. Davis, especially when Rizz went down, to be this kind of, and this is a guy that recently has had a good amount of success. So, but also trying to get young players in positions to where they can be successful as well. And to have, you know, leverage situations as the game unfolds too.”

You may think I made a few typos or forgot to include some words in there. Nope. That’s exactly how Boone answered the question of “What made Davis the call over Rice today?” The person with that thought process is in charge of the culture, clubhouse, lineup card and in-game decisions for the New York Yankees.

6. Gerrit Cole melted down in a big game on a big stage in spectacular fashion, which is what he does best. Cole started two of the four Subway Series games this season, lost both and allowed seven home runs. On Wednesday, he gave up three of those home runs and six earned runs in total, yet his manager had the balls to say, “I thought stuff-wise and fastball profile [were] good.”

7. The offense took another night off. It was the eighth time in July (18 games) the Yankees scored three runs or fewer. When the Yankees score four runs this season they are 53-13, an .803 winning percentage. Four runs. That’s all. Four measly runs and they have an 80 percent chance to win. And yet, in more than one-third of their games to date they weren’t able to do that.

8. Soto went 2-for-3 with a double, home run and walk and Gleyber Torres hit a home run and produced just his second multi-hit game of July. The rest of the offense went 2-for-25.

9. The two AVs — the Golden Boy Anthony Volpe and the unbenchable Alex Verdugo — combined to go 0-for-9 with four strikeouts. I keep hearing about how good Volpe has been since the All-Star break as if there isn’t 1,060 plate appearances worth of data of his suggesting a few good games isn’t him suddenly figuring out. And it was just last week Boone said Verdugo would “go on a heater” after the All-Star break. He’s 2-for-25 since the break.

10. Boone is a dreamer. A dreamer, a believer, a bullshitter and a delusional, happy-go-lucky, comfortable-with-losing moron all rolled into one. As the losses mount, the more agitated he gets that he has to answer questions about the losses. It’s as if he should only have to meet with the media when the team wins.

Following Wednesday’s humiliating 12-3 loss, Boone was as annoyed, frustrated and angry as he’s ever been as Yankees manager. He followed the lead of his general manager’s expletive-filled tirade over the winter by dropping expletives of his own, using “shit” twice in different tenses. Boone refrained from dropping an F-bomb, but did manage to throw in “frickin” two times in his response to a question about the team’s 11-23 collapse.

“We’ve got to play better. OK?”

Yes, yes you do.

“We have it right in front of us.”

Ah, the old “right in front of us.” Boone dropped his favorite phrase for the first time in 2024 on July 7. He used it for the first time last season on July 15, and in 2022, he used it on August 20. Once Boone resorts to telling everyone the season is still in their control, the season never recovers.

“We’re a really good team that has played shitty of late.”

A really good team? I wonder where he got that idea from? Maybe from his boss, the team’s general manager who told the media in the offseason the Yankees “are pretty fucking good” despite posting an 82-80 record, missing the postseason and being the worst Yankees team in more than three decades. Really good teams don’t go 11-23 during any part of the season.

“Of late” means this has only been a recent thing. The Yankees’ collapse dates back to June 13. That’s 21 percent of the season.

“We need to be better.”

We know. You keep saying that. Your captain keeps saying that. Your players keep saying that. Your pitchers keep saying that. And yet, no one is playing better.

“I’m not going to define stretch, this or that.”

I will define it. The Yankees have been a bad team since mid-June. Whether you want to go back 34 games or 40 games, they haven’t been good for at least one-fifth of the season.

“We gotta go win, right?”

That is the objective of the sport.

“And we’re right there. We’re watching other teams struggle around us.”

And there it is! The excuse! The Yankees think because the Orioles haven’t been playing well and because they are only three games behind them in the loss column that it excuses their own play since mid-June.

“We know we’ve got to be better. OK?”

Please stop saying this.

“We’re pissed off in there.”

Yes, I’m sure you’re really pissed. You told us the 2022 and 2023 teams were pissed too. Where did that lead to? In the first instance it led to you using “highlights” from the 2024 ALCS as motivation for your team in its own ALCS, and in the second instance, it led to you managing a team to a playoff-less season, despite 40 percent of the league making the playoffs.

“We got a lot of pride in there.”

That’s nice.

“We have a lot of expectations in there.”

No you don’t. Listen to yourself. Listen to any of your players talk after losses. All you and they talk about is tomorrow and the next game until there aren’t any tomorrows or games left. There’s no urgency and there certainly aren’t any expectations.

“So stretch, slump, recent. I don’t give a shit.”

Clearly, you don’t give a shit, considering you used a guy with a career 48 OPS+ as your designated hitter and leadoff hitter on Tuesday, and used a player released by both the Giants and A’s this season (who is 1-for-16 with eight strikeouts as a Yankee) as your cleanup hitter on Tuesday and then played him again on Wednesday.

“It’s, we’ve got to play better the rest of the way.“

For the last six weeks you have been saying you need to play better and you have only played worse.

“And it’s right there. I’ve said it’s right in front of us. It is.”

Yes, a third straight season collapse is right there.

“It’s right in front of us. Right?”

Yes, you just said that.

“For as bad as it’s been, we’re also in a great position.”

A great position? On June 14, you had a 13-game lead in the loss column on a postseason spot. It’s down to three games.

“And we’ve got to go play baseball the way we’re capable of playing.“

I think you’re playing baseball the way you’re capable of playing.

The Yankees lost another game and lost another game to the Mets. But they didn’t really have a chance in the 3-2 loss thanks to their manager.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. “You can’t predict baseball,” John Sterling famously said on the radio for decades. Unfortunately, John, sometimes you can.

The Yankees lost to the Mets four hours before the game started on Tuesday when they posted their lineup for Game 103 of the season at 3:05 p.m.

Jahmai Jones, DH
Juan Soto, RF
Aaron Judge, CF
J.D. Davis, 1B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Alex Verdugo, LF
Carlos Narvaez, C
DJ LeMahieu, 3B

There were some dark lineups during the 2013 season when Eduardo Nunez, Ben Francisco, Kevin Youkilis, Travis Hefner, Lyle Overbay, Vernon Wells, Jayson Nix, Chris Stewart, Reid Brignac, Brendan Ryan, Brent Lillibridge and David Adams were Yankees, but Tuesday’s lineup would go toe-to-toe with any of those.

Boone thought loading up with seven right-handed hitters against the left-handed Jose Quintana would throw off the 35-year-old veteran, completely disregarding that every right-handed Yankees hitter other than Judge sucks.

And yes, this was Boone’s lineup. After the 2020 ALDS loss to the Rays, when asked if he’s a puppet for the front office, Boone said, “Ultimately, I’m writing out the lineup and I’m making these decisions.” Prior to the 2022 season, on CC Sabathia’s podcast, Boone said, “No one’s ever made a lineup for me. I make the lineup.” Any Yankees fan who has watched Boone mismanage and ruin countless games in his six-plus years as Yankees manager knows this was his lineup. There’s no Ivy League graduate, analytics guru or data scientist who would ever come up with, support or defend a lineup like Tuesday’s. 

2. After going 4-for-8 on Sunday and Monday, Oswaldo Cabrera was on the bench. The Yankees’ third-best hitter in Austin Wells (.844 OPS over the last two months) was also on the bench. Trent Grisham and his Gold Glove defense and ability to run into one was next to Cabrera and Wells on the bench (earlier this season Boone justified using Grisham against a lefty because he said Grisham is a reverse splits guy). Ben Rice, who was allowed to start against Chris Sale, would have apparently been overmatched by Quintana, so he too was on the bench.

A day after the Yankees plated their most runs (nine) in more than half a month, Boone couldn’t just let things stay as they were. If used, I didn’t expect the lineup from Monday to put up nine runs again since Monday’s game was likely just the type of random outburst the 2024 Yankees provide and nothing more, but couldn’t we at least find out?

3. Boone penciled in Jones as his leadoff hitter. The 26-year-old with a career .535 OPS and 48 OPS+ who entered the game with just 44 plate appearances in 102 games this season was going to set the table for Soto and Judge. He hit a weak ground ball to third in his first at-bat, struck out on four pitches in his second and struck out again in his third. When his spot came up a fourth time, Boone had seen enough and removed him for a pinch hitter.

4. Protecting Judge, Boone decided the best man for the job would be Davis. Davis was released by the Giants in spring training. He then signed with the A’s and was released by them on June 23 after hitting .236/.304/.366. The A’s are on pace to lose right around 100 games again. Do you know how bad you have to suck to get released by them? Davis entered the game 1-for-13 with six strikeouts as a Yankee and hadn’t started a game since July 3. He struck out in his first at-bat, hit into an inning-ending double play in his second and struck out in his third. Guess what happened in his fourth trip to the plate? Boone removed him for a pinch hitter.

5. Carlos Narvaez got his first major-league start behind the plate. After singling in his first major-league at-bat over the weekend, he went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts. He was also pinch-hit for.

All three of Jones, Davis and Narvaez were removed early for pinch hitters. The trio went a combined 0-for-8 with six strikeouts and one double play.

6. “We’ll get the middle of the order settled here in the comings days,” Boone said. “It changes the equation a little bit.”

Certainly having Giancarlo Stanton bat behind Judge is a better option than Davis, but Stanton isn’t going to come save the season. The Yankees aren’t getting 2018 Stanton. And while Stanton has been good this season, it’s already been more than a month since he last played, so who knows how he will be for the remainder of the season, and if he will even be healthy for the rest of the year.

7. Soto and Judge were held down, and when that happens the Yankees don’t have a chance when the players who should be playing are playing, let alone when Boone gives away a game with an early-March, spring training lineup. Soto went 0-for-4 with a walk and the Mets walked Judge four times. In the one plate appearance in which they pitched to Judge he didn’t do anything.

That one plate appearance came in the ninth inning. Soto walked with one out against the wild lefty Jake Diekman and with Soto on first, the Mets couldn’t walk Judge and put Soto into scoring position as the tying run. Diekman’s first pitch to Judge was a 96-mph fastball in the zone and Judge took it, likely surprised that the Mets were pitching to him and that Diekman was able to throw a first-pitch strike after walking Soto on four pitches. Judge took a changeup for a ball, fouled off a changeup, took a fastball for a ball, and then at 2-2, took a second 96-mph fastball for strike 3 on the inner half.

Judge is a .216/.322/.431 in late-and-close situations this season (plate appearances in the seventh inning or later with the Yankees tied, ahead by one or with the tying run at least on deck). He’s a .325/.447/.662 hitter when the Yankees lead by more than four runs.

8. Was Boone surprised the Mets pitched around Judge in his first four plate appearances with Davis as his protection?

“Different teams, different approaches,” Boone said in an annoyed manner.

Yes, different teams, different approaches, indeed. While the Mets are willing to put Judge on first base and make someone else beat them, the Yankees are more than happy to continue to pitch to Rafael Devers and let him single-handedly beat them. In all four of Judge’s walks, he never reached second base.

9. The problems the Yankees went in to the All-Star break with thinking they would be magically resolved after a four-day layoff are still present. After splitting a home series against the willing-to-sell Rays, the Yankees remain winless against the Mets (0-3) in the 2024 Subway Series. The Orioles and Royals lost, but the Red Sox won, so the Yankees’ loss-column lead on a postseason spot is three games. It was 13 games on June 14.

10. After Wednesday’s season series finale against the Mets, the Yankees have Thursday off before heading out on the road for six games against the Red Sox and Phillies. The Yankees are 11-22 since June 13, and for as bad as things have been since then, they could get a lot worse if the offense doesn’t show up over the next seven games, or if the manager doesn’t allow it to.

The Yankees failed to win a four-game home series against a .500 Rays team looking to sell.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On Friday, I wrote:

For better or worse, Yankees baseball is back. The break is over. The vacation is often. The physical, mental and emotional escape is over. When Gerrit Cole throws the first pitch of Friday night’s game against the Rays, the stretch run will be under way. The last 64 games with Juan Soto under contract as a Yankee will be under way. The glaring issues and problems from the first “half” and from the last four seasons will still be there. We’ll find out is this group handles them differently.

Well, we found out this group doesn’t handle them differently, because it’s the same group. The Yankees faced a .500 Rays team for four games at home after four days off and continued to play the uninspiring baseball they began to play in mid-June.

After winning the series opener 6-1 on Friday behind Gerrit Cole’s best start of the season (6 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR), the Yankees fell right back into being the team that crawled to the All-Star break.

Over the All-Star break, the delusional Nestor Cortes tweeted this:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

Then in his first start since that tone-deaf tweet, Cortes turned in his worst start of the season: 4.1 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 3 HR. A bottom 5 team in runs scored and home runs, the Rays had no problem teeing off on Cortes 

“When you walk … the bottom of the lineup, you give it the chance to turn over, “Cortes said. “That’s not ideal. I just have to be better.”

The Rays’ 9-hitter Alex Jackson entered the game 7-for-85 on the season. He walked and hit a three-run home run off Cortes. 

“It’s tough to pitch in the big leagues when you don’t have your good stuff” Corted said. Early on, it was pretty good and I lost a little bit … and I was behind in the count a lot.’

Aaron Boone knew he couldn’t tell the media Cortes had “good stuff” and not sound like a complete asshole considering Cortes himself said he didn’t have good stuff. So Boone went to his thesaurus for “good stuff” with his evaluation of Cortes.

“I thought the profile of the stuff was there,” Boone said.

In Cortes’ previous start, he put 10 runners on in 4 1/3 innings in Tampa and Boone said he thought Cortes “pitched well” that day. On Saturday, Cortes had the same outing (10 baserunners in 4 1/3 innings), but this time Boone was only willing to say “the profile of the stuff was there.” That’s 20 baserunners, 11 earned runs and four home runs for Cortes in his last two starts, both against the anemic Rays offense.

Cortes didn’t give the offense a chance, but they weren’t going to do anything anyway. Ben Rice led off the game with a double and was stranded and the Yankees didn’t pick up another hit until the eighth inning. Their lone run came on a meaningless RBI groundout down nine in the ninth. Taj Bradley stifled them, pitching seven one-hit, scoreless innings.

2. On Sunday, Boone sat DJ LeMahieu in favor of Oswaldo Cabrera. When you make $15 million per year and are getting benched for the .638 OPS utility man, you know things are bad, and things are bad for LeMahieu.

“It hasn’t given me much hope the last month or so,” LeMahieu said. “As long as I’ve played this game, whatever challenges have presented itself, I’ve always come out of it one way or another.”

I love LeMahieu. I was all for re-signing him after 2020 for what he did in 2019 and 2020. He deserved to be re-signed. After posting a .922 OPS in his first two seasons with the Yankees, he has a .702 since. He suffered season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022, played through injuries last year and missed a large portion of this season because of injuries. It fell apart quickly for LeMahieu after 2022 and while there have been moments over the last three-plus years where he looks like himself, they are only moments, nothing consistent or frequent. On a team full of unplayable names, he is the most unplayable of them all. But because of all of those other unplayable names and because he’s owed about $41 million through 2026, he’s going to keep getting opportunities to prove his career isn’t over.

While last Sunday’s loss in Baltimore was the worst loss of the season, and Saturday’s loss was disappointing, Sunday’s loss was disturbing.

Marcus Stroman allowed a leadoff home run to begin the game as the Rays clubbed their fifth home run of the series with the Yankees still yet to hit one.

Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the first, the Yankees loaded the bases with one out for Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo. Torres swung on the first pitch he saw with the swing of someone behind 0-2 in the count and just trying to put the ball in play and hit a shallow fly ball that wasn’t deep enough to score a a run. Alex Verdugo followed with a lineout to first. Three runners left on.

In the second, still trailing 1-0, the Yankees loaded the bases again with one out, but this time Soto was due up. Rice walked on four pitches to bring Soto up and Shane Baz got behind Soto 3-0. Seven straight balls. Knowing Soto’s eye I was confident the Yankees would at least tie the game in his plate appearance and possibly break it wide open. Soto got a fastball away and rather than go with it to the opposite field like he loves to do or take the borderline pitch and continue his plate appearance, he pulled it to second base for an inning-ending, 4-6-3 double play. The Yankees had gone from bases loaded with one out and Soto and Aaron Judge due up to leaving three more runners on.

In the third, Judge walked to lead off the inning and never moved. Seven runners left on.

In the fourth, with two outs, Stroman hung a slider on 1-2 slider to Randy Arozarena and he hit his third home run of the series as the Rays increased their series home run lead to 6-0. Torres booted a ground ball that would have ended the inning, and a stolen base and a line-drive single on an 0-2 hanging slider later and the Rays had a 3-0 lead.

In the bottom of the fourth, the Yankees drew two walks to begin the inning. Neither scored. Nine runners left on.

In the seventh, Jake Cousins got tagged for a two-run home run by Jose Siri who stared at it for about 15 seconds and then essentially walked around the bases at an even slower pace than Arozarena “trotted” on any of his three home runs in the series.

The Yankees finally got on the board in the seventh when Judge hit his 35th home run a mile into the left-field bleachers. In response to Arozarena and Siri’s long trips around the bases, Judge did the same. The problem is the Yankees were still losing after Judge’s home run in what was the latest failed attempt at trash talking from the captain, a trait that started six Octobers ago when he unfortunately played “New York, New York” on a boombox while leaving Fenway Park after Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS. The Yankees would leave their 10th runner of the day on when Torres hit into an inning-ending double play.

In the ninth, Jose Caballero hit the Rays’ seventh home run of the series to extend their lead to 6-3. The Yankees scored a run on a Soto double in the bottom of the ninth, but that was all they would get as they would leave an 11th runner on in the 6-4 loss.

To summarize: The Yankees failed to score a run despite loading the bases with one out in both the first and second inning. The seven hitters not named Soto and Judge went 4-for-25 with seven strikeouts. Stroman got ahead of Richie Palacios 1-2 before eventually giving up a home run to him, gave up a home run to Arozarena on a 1-2 pitch and allowed an RBI single to Caballero in an 0-2 count. The combination of Jake Cousins and Luke Weaver gave up three earned runs and only recorded seven outs. The Yankees left 11 runners on base.

3. One day closer to Torres no longer being a Yankee is what I told myself after he halfheartedly swung at the first pitch he saw with the bases loaded in the first inning. One day closer. Torres committed an error that led to the Rays’ third run, hit into an inning-ending double play representing the tying run in the eighth and finished the day 0-for-4 with a strikeout. It was the latest spectacular performance in a season full of them for Torres.

4. Since June 15, for hitters with a minimum of 90 plate appearances, Verdugo is last in the majors in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS. He has been the worst everyday player in the entire league for five weeks.

Prior to Sunday’s game, when asked about Verdugo sucking, Boone said, “I think there’s really good out in front of him. Nothing’s changed.” Boone was right: nothing changed. Verdugo went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. 

Boone was ejected in the sixth inning for arguing a called strike against Verdugo for his fifth ejection of the season.

“My hips have been flying toward the first-base side,” Verdugo said. “We’re not trying to hit ground balls.”

It certainly looks like Verdugo is trying to hit ground balls since he has hit more balls on the ground to first base and second base than any other player in the majors this season.

5. Boone spewed his typical bullshit after the loss. He implied that bad luck was the reason the Yankees didn’t score in the first and second innings and that bad luck has been the reason the team has lost more than two-thirds of its game since the middle of June.

“Dugie hits one 103 [for a] line-drive out, Soto has the right at-bat,” Boone said. “We just gotta get one to fall.”

A franchise and brand built on winning has resorted to praying a ball with runners in scoring position drops in. I can see the YES in-game promo now:

(Paul Olden’s voice) Fans, come on out to the Stadium on Sunday, Aug. 11 as the Yankees host the defending-champion Rangers for Anthony Volpe Gold Glove Bobblehead Day, and see if the Yankees can get one to fall. The first 18,000 guests will receive an Anthony Volpe bobblehead presented by T-Mobile.

But with the bases loaded, praying to plate even a single run is all the Yankees can do. Pray for a hit by pitch or wild pitch or passed ball or catcher’s interference or an error or that a ground ball finds a hole. That’s the only way this team is capable of scoring outside of Soto and Judge extra-base hits.

6. Torres isn’t suddenly going to hit like a true middle-of-the-order bat. Verdugo for his career has a 102 OPS+ in 2,968 plate appearances, so the absolute best version of him is slightly above league average. The two of them along with LeMahieu, Cabrera, Trent Grisham, Volpe and Austin Wells are all below league average.

If the non-Soto and Judge bats were just league average, the Yankees would have run away with the division. But they can’t even be that. Average. That’s all anyone is asking. Just be average. And yet, they aren’t even close to being that.

The other day Luis Severino told reporters he is in a group chat with his former Yankees teammates and they have been chirping him about not starting against them in the Subway Series. “They talk trash about me, they say, ‘Oh, you’re afraid of us.’ I’m not afraid. Right now, you only have two good hitters. I can walk those two guys.” I always liked Severino.

7. On Sunday, Boone benched Torres. I’m sure it was only for a day and Torres will be right back in the lineup and batting in the middle of the order on Tuesday against the Mets since was only 10 days ago that Brian Cashman sat in the visitors’ dugout at Tropicana Field and told the media how good Torres was last year and how he’s waiting for him to return to being that player again.

In the series finale, the Yankees won a game started by Carlos Rodon for the first time since June 10. Sicne then Rodon has made roughly $5 million to provide the Yankees with zero wins in six starts, zero quality starts, a 9.67 ERA and a 1.963 WHIP.

After allowing four first-inning runs to the Rays two weeks ago, Rodon only allowed one earned run over seven innings in this one with a season-high 10 strikeouts. A $162 million pitcher shutting down the third-worst offense in the American League? What a concept.

8. The Yankees shockingly scored first in the bottom of the second with back-to-back home runs from Wells and Volpe. Yes, Volpe homered. It was his first home run since May 16. It was the first time he pulled the ball in the air to left field since June 20, which is simply outrageous.

In talking about Volpe, Meredith Marakovits reported he recently said, “If I believe in the process … I know the power is going to come.” Ah, the process. The old more-than-two-months-between-home runs process.

The Yankees added two more runs in the fourth when a Cabrera ground ball when off the glove of a sliding Brandon Lowe at second base. We just gotta get one to fall! (Cabrera went 4-for-8 over the last two games of the series, so there’s no way he should be out of the lineup come Tuesday since those two multi-hit games gives him more multi-hit games than Torres has in July.)

After another Siri home run for the Rays in the top of the fifth, LeMahieu answered in the bottom half with his first home run of the season, ending an 0-for-18 slump.

The Yankees added a run in the seventh on a Soto solo home run and added three more in the eighth on a Soto three-run home run in an eventual 9-1 win. They finished the season series 7-6 against the Rays.

9. The Yankees scored eight runs against the Braves on June 22 and then lost four straight. They scored 16 runs against the Blue Jays on June 28 and then lost the next day. They scored eight runs on June 30 against the Blue Jays and then lost four straight at home. They scored 14 runs against the Red Sox on July 6 and then got shut out the next day, losing the next two. The nine runs on Monday is the most the Yankees have scored since those 14 on July 6. Will it actually be the start of something or just another random outburst that leads to nothing?

I so badly want Sunday to be the start of something, but it’s hard to be optimistic that it was anything other than an anomaly given how the last nearly six weeks have gone. The Yankees spent the four games against the Rays running in place. I guess that’s better than how they spent the previous 28 games.

10. The Yankees are 11-21 since June 13. Their lead on a postseason spot is down to three games in the loss column. On June 14, that number was 13 games in the loss column.

It was a wasted four-game home series against a Rays team reportedly willing to sell and call it a season. Four more games off a schedule that is down to just 60.

The Yankees finished the first “half” of the season by blowing a late lead and losing the last game before the All-Star break for the third time in the last four seasons.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The last four nights have been enjoyable. Four calm, relaxing, peaceful nights free of frustration, anger, depression, elevated blood pressure and the urge to heavily drink. That’s because there was no Yankees baseball. Well, Yankees baseball is back this weekend.

2. I’m still not over the loss from Sunday to the Orioles in Baltimore. A win would have given the Yankees a three-game winning streak going into the break, a 5-5 record against the Orioles for the season and a one-game lead in the division for as bad as the last month has been. Instead, they suffered another inexcusable, catastrophic, ninth-inning loss, negated the positivity of the previous two games, dropped to 4-6 against the Orioles (now needing to sweep the three remaining games against them to win the head-to-head tiebreaker) and trail the Orioles by one game for the division.

3. If you want to view what has gone on through 98 games as the Yankees are only one game back despite being the worst team in the league for a month, go for it. In actuality, the loss on Sunday was a trend of big-moment blowups this team has made a habit of as they had similar losses to the Mariners, Royals and Red Sox. Only once this year have the Yankees had an improbable ninth-inning comeback that led to an unexpected win (the series finals against the Giants). Their other two unexpected ninth-inning comebacks in Cleveland and Kansas City ended in losses.

4. Sunday was a really bad loss. As bad of a loss as you can have in the regular season. It was the worst loss of the season and the only way it will be topped is if the Yankees lose a regular-season game down the stretch that eliminates them from the postseason. Thankfully, for their sake, the “cushion” they built up that Brian Cashman refers to should be more than enough to get them into a postseason in which 40 percent of the teams make it.

5. Unfortunately, the four-day break likely didn’t change the Yankees’ offense from a three-batter lineup with six bel0w-league-average bats. It likely didn’t flip a switch for the rotation to pitch like they did in April and May. It didn’t turn their mediocre-at-best bullpen into a stable of strikeout arms. It didn’t magically make their manager someone capable of using basic logic and reasoning for in-game decisions in close games.

It’s like the opening scene in Mrs. Doubtfire, where Robin Williams’ character, with his marriage falling apart, tells Sally Field’s character, “Come on, Miranda. We’ve got problems, but who doesn’t? We could work them out.”

Field responds, “We’ve been trying to work them out for years.”

Williams answers, “Well, let’s take a vacation with the kids …”

Field rebuts, “Our problems would be waiting for us when we got back.”

The Yankees’ problems from mid-June through Sunday in Baltimore will be waiting for them on Friday night at 7:05 in the Bronx. How they handle those problems and if they’re able to overcome them in the second “half” will be evident before the end of the night on Friday.

6. The Yankees’ upcoming schedule is brutal. Four against the Rays, two against the Mets, three against the Red Sox and three against the Phillies. You may think they finally have a soft landing on August 2 against the Blue Jays, but the Yankees are .500 against the Blue Jays this season, while the Blue Jays are eight games under .500 against the rest of the league.

7. Ideally, the Yankees’ roster will look a lot different on July 31 after the trade deadline than it does now, but we don’t live in an ideal world. (If we did, Anthony Volpe would be able to cleanly field game-ending ground balls hit right at him and Alex Verdugo would be able to catch game-ending fly balls with a catch probability of 99 percent). It’s hard to envision the Yankees making a move (or moves) to become drastically better, and minor upgrades will be costly with 21 of the league’s 30 teams within 5 1/2 games out a postseason spot. The American League is wide open (even though the Astros are now in a position to pass the Mariners for first in the West this weekend), and the Yankees will likely operate over the next 11 days with the idea the path to the World Series isn’t difficult as is, and will refrain from making themselves the clear-cut team to beat.

8. The Yankees are “in contention” and that’s good enough for them. “Just get in” has been their mantra for the last 15 years, and after they get in and get eliminated, they refer to the playoffs as a crapshoot and talk about small sample sizes and short series. Oddly enough, they talk didn’t like that from 1996-2009 when they went all out to field the best possible team and did everything in their power to put themselves in the best possible position to win.

Just look at Nestor Cortes’ tweet from Tuesday.

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

Cortes is delusional, like the rest of the organization, but his perception of the Yankees in 2024 is understandable since all he has known as a Yankee is a front office that claims they’re “pretty fucking” good after going 82-80 and a manager who lets sloppy play slide and only cares to speak about tomorrow until the season runs out of tomorrows. The Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi in part because they thought his tense nature would rub off on their young roster. The roster under Boone has hasn’t just had Boone’s tendencies wear off on them, they have become him. From Aaron Judge walking through Fenway Park carrying a boombox playing “New York, New York” after winning Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS to Boone saying “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees after losing the one-game playoff in that same venue three years later to Boone continuously saying “it’s right in front of us” for the last three years and his players using that same phrase over the same time, the Yankees believe they are still the Yankees when they haven’t been in a long time and have never been with this core under this manager.

9. The replies to Cortes’ tweet were alarming with Yankees fans calling him out and opposing fans laughing at his and the Yankees’ expense. Cortes was a Yankee in 2019 and again in 2021, 2022, 2023 and this season. In that time, the team has lost four of the last five games of the ALCS, finished third in the division and fifth in the AL and lost the one-game playoff, were swept in the ALCS and missed the postseason completely. This season’s team has the worst record in the majors since the middle of June and coupled with Sunday’s humiliating loss, the timing of Cortes’ message couldn’t have been worse. I have been hoping all week Cortes would delete the tweet and claim his account was hacked by a Red Sox fan.

10. For better or worse, Yankees baseball is back. The break is over. The vacation is often. The physical, mental and emotional escape is over. When Gerrit Cole throws the first pitch of Friday night’s game against the Rays, the stretch run will be under way. The last 64 games with Juan Soto under contract as a Yankee will be under way. The glaring issues and problems from the first “half” and from the last four seasons will still be there. We’ll find out if this group handles them differently.

1. “Spirited comeback.” That’s what Michael Kay labeled the Yankees’ ninth-inning rally that came up short. A “spirited comeback.”

The bottom of the ninth inning in Games 4 and 5 of the 2001 were spirited comebacks. The eighth inning of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS was a spirited comeback (and also the reason the Yankees are currently managed by the manager they are). What happened on Thursday night at Tropicana Field was just a collapsing team coming up short yet again and losing for the 18th time in 25 games.

2. The Yankees wouldn’t have needed to have a comeback of any sort if they could just situationally hit. Alex Verdugo singled to lead off the game and Juan Soto followed with a double. The Yankees had runners on second and third with no outs and Aaron Judge due up.

Shane Baz was making his second start of the season and his second start since 2022 due to injury. The Yankees had him on the ropes with a chance to win the game in the first inning. Instead, Judge hit a shallow fly ball, Ben Rice struck out on three pitches and Gleyber Torres struck out on four.

2. Two batters into the Rays’ offensive night they had a 2-0 lead. Yandy Diaz doubled off the catwalk and Randy Arozarena clubbed a two-home run. Nestor Cortes was doing his can’t-pitch-on-the-road act yet again in an attempt to mimic Carlos Rodon’s start two nights before.

“I haven’t had success on the road this year,” Cortes said, “but I don’t think much of it when I’m out there.”

What exactly is he thinking about when he’s on a non-Yankee Stadium mound? How quickly can I put this game out of reach?

3. Cortes needed 97 pitches to get 13 outs and allowed five earned runs and 10 baserunners in just 4 1/3 innings of work. It was an abysmal start, but his manager didn’t think so.

“Stuff-wise he was good,” Aaron Boone said.

How could anyone have good stuff and give up five runs and 10 baserunners and only last 4 1/3 innings? You know who had good stuff on Thursday? Paul Skenes. He threw seven no-hit innings for the Pirates with 11 strikeouts. That’s good stuff.

4. Thankfully, Jeff Nelson on the postgame show didn’t sit by and listen to his former teammate in Boone spew bullshit.

“You’re throwing 97 pitches in 4 1/3 innings,” Nelson said. “I don’t know how you have ‘good stuff.'”

5. Boone then went on to talk about how the team is “in control” despite losing yet another series and losing the opportunity to win back-to-back games for the first time in exactly a month from today. (Happy One-Month Anniversary!)

“Missing opportunities, that’s what I think it comes down to,” Aaron Judge said. “There was a lot of fight out of the guys all the way to the end.”

No one fights and loses like the Yankees!

6. “We’re the Yankees,” Jose Trevino said. “If we win, [it’s], yeah, we should have won. If we lose, they like that.”

Does Trevino think it’s 15 years ago when being the Yankees meant something? When the Yankees were the Yankees, acted like it, played like it and won like it. That was a long time ago. I don’t think anyone still thinks the Yankees should win because they’re the Yankees. They have played worse than the White Sox and Rockies for the last month. They are coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs when 40 percent of the league makes the playoffs. They haven’t reached or won the World Series in 15 years and have lost five ALCS in that time.

7. “Nobody likes losing,” Judge said. “Nobody is happy about it.”

The Yankees may not like losing, but they’re accepting of it. They’re comfortable doing it, and they’re pretty good at it.

8. The Yankees are a three-home run game from Rice against the Red Sox and Grisham driving in both runs and making a game-saving catch against the Rays from being in the middle of a nine-game losing streak. That’s scary, but what’s even scarier is for how bad things are, they are set up to get a lot worse over the next three days in Baltimore.

9. The Orioles were just swept at home by the crappy Cubs. Not only were they swept, but they were outscored 21-2 and shut out on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s very realistic they break out and hang 30 runs on the Yankees this weekend.

The Yankees need to sweep the Orioles to have a winning road trip. Rodon is starting on Sunday, so that’s a loss, and the dream of a sweep is gone. They need to win two of three to at worst run in place and go .500 on this trip. I can’t envision a scenario in which the Yankees take two of three from the Orioles in Baltimore, but they need to.

10. “We’re going to play a first-place team right now,” Judge said. “We’ve got to take these good at-bats into Baltimore.”

They’re going to need to bring a lot more than good at-bats to Baltimore. They’re going to need to bring actual runs, quality starting pitching, bat-missing relief pitching, strong defense and a capable manager. Otherwise, the division will be over before the All-Star break and what was once a promising season will be closer to being over as well.

The Yankees played on Tuesday and that means their season loss total increased by one.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It takes a lot for Brian Cashman to join the Yankees on the road, and losing 16 of their last 22 games entering Tuesday certainly constitutes as a lot.

“Thankfully, we got out of the gates really strong,” Cashman said at Tropicana Field before Tuesday’s game. “Hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this. Hopefully sooner than later because it’s gone on long enough.”

Whenever you’re using the word “hopefully” to discuss your baseball season, you’re screwed, and Cashman used the word twice in 11 words. You would think more than $300 million in salaries could buy you more than hope, but that’s all it has gotten Cashman. It’s all he has gotten after incorrectly spending more than $3 billion in salaries since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance.

2. Cashman could do something other than “hope” the season will turn around. He could replace his manager and try to remove the comfortable-with-losing stench Aaron Boone has covered the Yankees’ winning tradition with. But he won’t. That would go against “the process” Cashman has frequently mentioned in recent years as an excuse for his team’s shortcomings. It would go against his belief that the process is more important than the results, which he said at his end-of-the-season press conference in 2022.

“It’s been a tough stretch for us,” Cashman added.

If by “stretch” Cashman means the entirety of the Boone era, then yes, it’s been a tough “stretch.” Unfortunately, that’s not what Cashman meant. He was referring to just the last month. In fact, he didn’t hesitate to praise the work Boone has done this season, saying his manager has navigated this collapse “as well as he possibly can.”

3. Not only did Cashman defend his handpicked manager’s leadership during a third straight disastrous mid-June collapse, he doesn’t think this season is any way like the last two.

“I think every year is different,” Cashman said. “I think those teams are different and some of the issues are different.”

What? WHAT? WHAT?! Like Mugatu yelling about Zoolander’s faces, THEY’RE THE SAME THING! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigre? 2022? 2023? 2024? THEY’RE THE SAME THING!

Each Yankees season is a continuation of the previous season. This season is a continuation of 2023 and 2023 was a continuation of 2022 and so on. The collapses have been the same. The offensive issues have been the same. The oft-injured players inevitably getting injured are the same. The underperforming players are the same. When you run it back with the same front office, same manager and essentially the same roster over and over, you get the same result. This collapse isn’t an anomaly. It’s not part of the ebb and flow of the baseball season like Boone likes to say. It’s expected. It’s part of who these Yankees are.

4. Cashman’s presence at the Trop on Tuesday did nothing to stop the Yankees from free falling into nothing as they lost again. After they scored a first-inning run on a Gleyber Torres RBI single, the thought the game may play out differently than nearly every game for the past month may have entered your mind. Then Carlos Rodon walked to the mound.

Two batters and seven pitches into Rodon’s night, the Yankees lead was gone and the game was tied at 1. Two batters and seven more pitches from Rodon, and the Yankees trailed by three runs and the remaining eight-plus innings were just a formality in leading the Yankees to their 17th loss in their last 23 games.

5. “It has not been fun, that’s for sure,” Rodon said. “I’m just not really giving my team a chance to win, giving up runs early.”

The Yankees have lost each of Rodon’s last four starts, and in those games, he has put 41 baserunners on in 19 innings, pitching to a 10.89 ERA and 2.053 WHIP. Opposing hitters are batting .356/.423/.713 against him for a 1.135 OPS. For reference, Aaron Judge has the highest OPS in the majors at 1.103, so opposing hitters are collectively the best hitter in the game against Rodon.

6. It was always going to be extremely difficult to like Rodon as a Yankee after his first season with the team when he came to spring training unfocused and possibly out of shape, got hurt before Opening Day and said he would be pitching if it were the playoffs then missed the first half of the season, pitched to a 6.85 ERA over 14 starts, blew a kiss to heckling fans, turned his back on the pitching coach and gave up eight runs without recording an out in his final start of the season. With what has gone on with him this season, I can’t envision ever being a fan of his as a Yankee.

7. Rodon allowed four runs on Tuesday before recording an out didn’t stop his manager from supporting the lefty (who makes roughly $800,000 per start).

“Once he gets settled he’s got a lot of ways of getting you out,” Boone said.

Rodon has a 9.00 ERA on the season in the first inning. He loses each game for the Yankees before they have a chance to bat at home or before they have a chance to bat for a second time on the road. But hey, once he gets settled, watch out!

8. Rodon’s next start will come on Sunday in Baltimore in the final game before the All-Star break. He faced the Orioles in Baltimore on May 2 and allowed six earned runs on eight hits, including three home runs and the Yankees lost 7-2. You can put the Yankees down for a loss this Sunday in Baltimore.

Since the Yankees already lost on Tuesday and are likely to lose on Sunday with Rodon pitching again, that means they would have to win the next four games to post a winning road trip. The last time the Yankees won two games in a row was June 11 and June 12. Today is July 10.

9. With “hope” being Cashman’s solution to the season, the best the Yankees can “hope” for on this six-game trip to Tampa and Baltimore is to go 3-3, and even then it’s not exactly promising. A 3-3 trip would keep them running in place while the Red Sox keep winning and the Orioles gradually increase their separation. On June 12, the Yankees had a 2 1/2-game lead over the Orioles and a 14-game lead over the Red Sox. Today, the Yankees trail the Orioles by four games in the loss column and their 14-game lead over the Red Sox is down to two games in the loss column.

10. The stuffing in the “cushion” Cashman spoke about is bursting at the seams. The Yankees are a bad rest of this road trip from being buried in the division race and from hanging on to a postseason berth. The team Cashman said is “pretty fucking good” during his unhinged tirade over the winter is anything but. For the last month, they’ve been pretty fucking bad, and the “hope” they will magically turn it around is fading by the day.

The Yankees lost another game and another series and their season is collapsing.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. “We had chances to grab that game, take that game. We didn’t,” Aaron Boone said. “And that’s where we are right now, and it’s really difficult right now.”

“We gotta play better period,” Boone continued. “And the great thing is it’s right in front of us. It’s right here and we can fix it. It’s right here. It’s there and we can run away with this thing. And we got the dudes in there to do it.”

“If we don’t score,” Boone added, “tough to win.”

Boone said none of that after Sunday night’s 3-0 loss to the Red Sox. He did say all of that on Aug. 20, 2022 with the Yankees’ season in the type of free fall Tom Petty sang about. But you wouldn’t know Boone said that nearly two years ago and not this weekend because his summarization of the Yankees’ situation is the same today as it was then.

2. What Boone did say after losing yet another series was, “It’s all right there in front of us.” It was the same line he used in that Aug. 20, 2022 meltdown when he slammed the table with his right hand while saying it. It’s not the only other time he said it.

Aug. 20, 2022: “It’s right in front of us.”

July 15, 2023: “It’s all there right in front of us.”

July 7, 2024: “It’s all right there in front of us.”

For three straight seasons the Yankees have endured a mid-June collapse, and for three straight seasons, the man leading the team has regurgitated the same tired line.

The 2022 Yankees were 61-23 and then went 38-40.

The 2023 Yankees were 36-25 and then went 46-55.

The 2024 Yankees were 50-22. They are now 55-37, having gone 5-15 in their last 20 games.

When Brian Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2018 and traded him away for nothing, he said, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results.” But when it comes to the person responsible for in-game management and creating a winning culture, Cashman is completely fine with living the same season over and over.

3. This week will be a month since the Yankees last won a series. It’s now been more than a month since they won a home series. And after this 1-5 homestand against the Reds and Red Sox, Boone has added some more glowing accomplishments to his impressive resume:

– Only Yankees manager to get a fifth season on the job without a championship (and now a sixth and seventh season)

– Manager for the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS)

– Manager for the worst single-month record in 33 years

– Manager for the worst season record in 31 years

– Manager for the most steals allowed in a single game by franchise in 109 years

– Manager for the first three-plus-game-series sweep by NL team at Yankee Stadium in franchise history

– Manager for the first Yankees team to lose five straight home series in 34 years

– Manager for the first time in Yankees history the team allowed 35-plus home runs and had a losing record over any 16-game span

– Manager for the first Yankees team to not steal a base over 20 consecutive games in 61 years

4. This can’t go on. It couldn’t go on after Boone’s decision-making in the 2018 ALDS, but it did. It couldn’t go on after his decision-making in the 2020 ALDS, but it did. It couldn’t go on after the disgraceful 2021 season, but it did. It couldn’t go on after the second-half collapse, use of the 2004 ALCS at motivation and embarrassment in the ALCS in 2022, but it did. It couldn’t go on after the worst Yankees season in 30 years with the team missing the postseason in a format in which 40 percent of the league makes the postseason in 2023, but it did. It can’t continue for the rest of 2024. But it will.

5. It will because Cashman is in charge, and he’s invincible as general manager of the Yankees. He’s as close to being a member of the Steinbrenner family as one could be without having their last name. Cashman built a roster in which the Yankees are heavily relying on a 25-year-old rookie to be the third-most important bat in the lineup after Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. He’s the one who thought Anthony Rizzo coming off a lost season would stay healthy at almost 35 years of age. He’s the one who thought relying on Giancarlo Stanton to be available all season despite a lost tenure as a Yankee would suffice. He’s the one who thought DJ LeMahieu would turn back the clock five years. He’s the one who has held on to Gleyber Torres to the point where he has no value and will leave the Yankees for nothing in return in three months. He’s the one who thought Alex Verdugo’s contact ability would help a strikeout-heavy lineup, despite all of his contact being ground balls to second base. He’s the one who hung his hat on Anthony Volpe as the shortstop of the future and passed over every big-name free-agent shortstop available. He’s the one who gave Carlos Rodon $162 million to be a fifth starter at best. He’s the one who built this bullpen that has one trustworthy option in it (Luke Weaver), and it’s a stretch to call that one option trustworthy.

6. Unfortunately, Cashman isn’t going anywhere. Despite being unable to build a core of his own since being named general manager 26 years ago, there’s a better chance the Yankees remove the interlocking NY from their hat and stop wearing pinstripes than there is Cashman is removed from his position. He will remain in his position for as long as he wants, and when he no longer wants to be in the position, he will handpick the next person to do the job so Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t have to.

Cashman created this mess of a roster, though he likely doesn’t see it as that considering over the winter he said his team coming off an 82-win season is “pretty fucking good.” But he also created this culture of losing by installing a manager who is accepting and comfortable with losing. A manager who calls extending losing streaks “bumps in the road” and refers to historic collapses as “the ebbs and flows of a baseball season” and considers catastrophic, avoidable losses to be “just part of 162” all while telling everyone at the end of each disappointing season how “sweet” it will be when the Yankees finally “climb the mountain” and win a championship under his watch.

7. It would take an incredible amount of good fortune and luck for the Yankees to win a championship with Boone as their manager. I’m not talking about a few bounces going their way or an unlikely bat getting hot in October. I’m talking about the kind of good fortune and luck needed to win the lottery and then win it again two days later.

If you’re one of the few lunatics who feels Boone is undeserving of losing his job, then you must be of the idea that no manager should ever lose their job because there’s no one more deserving of losing their managerial job than Boone. Boone isn’t the problem, but he is a problem, and he’s certainly not part of the solution.

8. If you listened to Anthony Volpe speak with the media after his lack of hustle led to the Yankees not scoring a run that would have won them the game on Friday night, it was as if Boone scripted Volpe’s responses for him. Judge frequently talks about “getting them tomorrow.” Last year, Rodon said, “It’s in front of us” as the season fell part, and a week after that, Harrison Bader responded, “No concern” when asked about the Yankees being 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot. One of the reasons Joe Girardi was let go was because Cashman feared the young core of players would take on the tense characteristics of their manager. That young core under Boone didn’t grow up by taking on the characteristics of their happy-go-lucky, Pollyanna manager, they have become him.

9. With Gray, Cashman eventually said enough is enough. With tens of millions of dollars owed to pitchers and players like A.J. Burnett, Alex Rodriguez, Jacoby Ellsbury and Aaron Hicks, he thought paying them to not play or to play against the Yankees was better than paying them to play for the Yankees. When it came to his belief that winning with an all-right-handed lineup was possible while completely disregarding lineup balance, he finally gave in and traded for and signed left-handed bats. But for some reason, when it comes to Boone, he can’t make a change. He won’t make a change.

10. There’s 70 games left in the season. Seventy games to try to save a season that is taking on water at a faster rate than the previous two. Seventy games to not waste another season of the primes of Judge and Gerrit Cole, and not waste possibly the only season of Soto as a Yankee.

Coming off a season in which the Yankees were one win away from the World Series, Cashman handed the team over to someone with no managerial or coaching experience at any level. There’s no fixing or making up the last six lost seasons, but by finally ending this experiment Cashman can do something his manager has rarely ever done: put the team in the best possible position to succeed.

The Yankees suffered their most lopsided loss of the season and it came in the most important game of the season to date.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees couldn’t have been set up better for their three-game series at home against the Orioles. They had Monday completely off. Their elite relievers were well rested after having not been needed on Saturday and Sunday in two losses against the Red Sox. They had the advantage in every starting pitching matchup with Nestor Cortes and his 1.57 ERA going against journeyman Albert Suarez (who hadn’t pitched in the majors in seven years before this season), Gerrit Cole making his season debut against Cade Povich in his third career start and American League Cy Young favorite Luis Gil against Cole Irvin and his weak 6.5 strikeouts per nine innings. The Yankees wasted all of their advantages and lost two of three to their direct competition for the division.

2. The Yankees held on to win the series opener 4-2, were managed to a 7-6 extra-inning loss in the middle game and then were humiliated in a 17-5 loss in the rubber game.

“They are a good club. We saw that last year,” Aaron Judge said. “They play hard. They play fast.”

3. Gil picked a bad day to have the worst start of his career (1.1 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 1 HR). After dominating the Orioles in Baltimore on May 1, Gil couldn’t get out of the second inning on Thursday and provided the Yankees with their first start of less than four innings of the season.

“It happens. That’s baseball,” Judge said. “You are going to have those outings like that.”

4. Gil had been so good overall before being embarrassed by the Orioles, but his disastrous start was kind of foreshadowed in his previous two starts. Two starts ago, the Dodgers tagged Gil for the most runs he allowed since April and it was the first time since April he didn’t complete six innings. Then in his last start, he gave the Yankees five innings of one-run ball, but walked four and put eight on in a grind-it-out effort.

5. The Orioles didn’t sit back and let Gil get ahead to blow them away with his riding fastball or low-‘90s changeup. They swung early in the count and attacked Gil before he could attack them. Gil faced 15 batters and 11 of them reached base.

“Today I missed pitches,” Gil said. “They took advantage of it, but it’s definitely a learning experience.”

6. The inconsistent Yankees offense can’t be trusted, but they have never had a chance on Thursday, considering they trailed 7-0 in the top of the second. Every Orioles starter had a hit in the game. The 4 through 7 hitters each had two hits and the 1 through 3 hitters each had three. The Orioles’ 17 runs were the most against the Yankees in five years.

“They came out swinging early on,” Judge said. “We really couldn’t answer back after that.”

7. Gleyber Torres hit his seventh home run of the season, a meaningless solo shot with the Yankees down seven, and Judge hit his league-leading 27th home run. (I’m glad Judge was healthy enough in the Yankees’ eyes to play on Thursday and hit a home run, but couldn’t have pinch hit 19 hours earlier in a game the Yankees could have won.)

8. The defense was sloppy with three errors, and the bullpen gave up 10 runs in 7 2/3 innings. Newest Yankee Tim Hill showed why the White Sox gave up on him as he allowed a three-run home run in his only inning of work. Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez provided their latest examples of why the Dodgers were willing to trade them, and Ron Marinaccio, who was good enough to relieve Cole in a tie game the previous day, is no longer good enough to be a Yankee and was sent down after the 12-run loss.

9. The Yankees are 6-7 in their last 13 games, dating back to the first game of the Dodgers series. They are 2-5 against the Orioles with six games left against them (and will need to win five of six to hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over them). They are 10-12 against the AL East. Their issues have been glaring over the last two weeks: lack of lineup depth, untrustworthy bullpen, a starting catcher who can’t throw, a pitching staff that can’t hold runners and a manager who continues to be a liability in close games.

10. It’s not going to get any easier. The Yankees were fortunate to get the Orioles’ worst three starters over the last three days, and now they will unfortunately get the Braves’ best three starters over the next three days: Chris Sale, Charlie Morton and Max Fried. The Braves have been playing much better of late (6-1 in their last seven games) after their slide following Ronald Acuna’s season-ending injury. They aren’t playing the way they played for all of last season, but the ability to is still in there (minus Acuna) and they are showing it. The next three days at the Stadium will be another tough three days.

The Yankees lost to the Orioles 7-6 in 10 innings in a game they had many opportunities to win.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Aaron Boone has managed 946 regular-season games for Yankees and Wednesday night against the Orioles was the worst of them all. (Emphasis on regular season since no regular-season game can top Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS or Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS or Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS or Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS or Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS.)

Every single decision Boone made on Wednesday was the wrong one. Every time a new player or pitcher was inserted into the game it put the team in a worse position to win the game, which is odd, considering Boone’s sole purpose as manager is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed.

2. Boone’s egregious decision making on Wednesday began before the game even started. It began when he held Aaron Judge out of the lineup. It was reported Judge wanted to play in the game, and he was still held out. Judge doesn’t have a broken hand. He doesn’t have ligament or muscle damage. If he did, he would be on the injured list. (Then again, it was said Anthony Rizzo would be out four to six weeks and then he was placed on the 60-day IL.) Judge was held out because the Yankees wanted to be “cautious.” Cautious of what? It’s not as if Judge’s hand is on the brink of breaking and playing baseball on Wednesday would have pushed his hand over the edge to breaking. His hand hurts. It’s going to hurt for some time. If he can play with it hurting (which he apparently can since he wanted to play) then he should be playing. He didn’t. (I’m sure he will be playing on Thursday afternoon with his hand magically healed 17 hours after Wednesday’s loss ended.)

3. Gerrit Cole made his season debut. In his last rehab start he threw 70 pitches, so going off of standard pitch count build-up history, he would be in line to throw about 85 pitches on Wednesday. Boone wanted to pull Cole after four innings and 61 pitches despite that being less pitches than he had thrown in his last start, and despite the Orioles’ 7-8-9 hitters due up, but YES showed Cole tell Boone in the dugout he wanted “one more.”

He got one more batter. Cole allowed a first-pitch single to start the fifth and Boone pulled him. Cole had only thrown 62 pitches or eight fewer than his most recent start. I don’t know how that’s building up his pitch count.

“We weren’t going to go over 65 tonight with the jump up,” Boone said.

The “jump up” from 70 to 65? Umm, 65 is less than 70.

“I thought he got a little tired there in the fourth,” Boone said of Cole.

Cole had a 1-2-3 fourth and struck out the last two batters of that inning. He had struck out five of the last seven batters he faced through the fourth. He wasn’t tired.

“I thought I held up well, Cole said. “I felt I could definitely keep making pitches.”

If Cole can’t be trusted to pitch to Ramon Urias and Jorge Mateo after 62 pitches then what was he doing starting a game of this magnitude? The Orioles are the Yankees’ only competition for the division. Each of their 13 head-to-head games is immensely important and Boone managed it as if it was a throwaway game in the final week of September with the division clinched.

4. If the plan was for Cole to get through four or five innings and then piece together the final 12 to 15 outs with the best relievers on the team, that would have been one thing. But when Boone took the ball from Cole with the game tied at 1 in the fifth, the first reliever he went to was Ron Marinaccio, the same reliever who wasn’t good enough to be on the team over Dennis Santana this season, and wasn’t on the team until the Yankees finally gave up on Santana and his 6.26 ERA. Because of the three-batter rule, unless everything went right and Marinaccio got a double play in the inning, he was going to have to face Gunnar Henderson. Boone was willing to let a reliever the organization liked less than Santana all season face the Henderson. Everything didn’t go right. Marinaccio needed 27 pitches to get the three outs in the fifth, allowed his inherited runner to score and gave up two runs of his own on a home run, double, single and walk.

5. In the sixth, the Yankees trailed 4-1. With two outs and no one on, the Orioles went to the bullpen for lefty Cionel Perez. DJ LeMahieu singled, Ben Rice and Jose Trevino walked and the Yankees had the bases loaded with two outs and Trent Grisham up. Grisham hits lefties better than righties. He’s not exactly Aaron Judge against lefties, but there’s great disparity in his numbers between the two. He’s a reverse-splits guy. We know this because Boone cited Grisham’s reverse splits as a reason for allowing Grisham to hit (and fail) against a lefty reliever earlier in the season. Apparently, the splits were no longer good enough for Boone to use in his decision making, like a Blackjack player hitting on 12 with the dealer showing a 6 sometimes, but not all the time. Boone called Grisham back and went with Jahmai Jones.

Tuesday will be the halfway point of the season. Jones entered Wednesday (Game 76 of the season) with 16 plate appearances. Sixteen times he has faced live, in-game pitching in nearly three months. Why wouldn’t he be the guy you would want up with the bases loaded and two outs in a crucial game? After Perez walked the previous two batters and had yet to record an out, showing little command of any pitch, Jones chose to swing at the first pitch he saw and flew out to end the inning.

Tommy Kahnle came in in the seventh and gave the Orioles their fifth run since giving up runs is what Kahnle does best now. In his last five appearances, he has only recorded eight outs, allowed eight baserunners, three earned runs and all three of his inherited runners to score.

The Yankees trailed 5-1 in the bottom of the seventh, before rallying to pull within one after a three-run home run from Giancarlo Stanton.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees still trailed 5-4. Rice led off with a single. Trevino was due up against the righty Bryan Baker. The spot called for Austin Wells, but Boone let Trevino hit for himself. Trevino hit the first pitch he saw into a double play. Pinch-hitter extraordinaire Jones ended the inning with a ground out to the catcher.

6. Down 5-4 headed to the ninth with shaky Orioles closer Craig Kimbrel looming and the top of the Yankees’ order due up, the Yankees had a real chance to tie or win the game in the bottom of the ninth if they could hold the deficit at one. Boone decided the best choice to hold that deficit would be recently called-up Anthony Misiewicz, the 29-year-old with a career 4.71 ERA in 114 2/3 innings. Misiewicz is so low on the organization relief depth chart that Jonathan Loaisiga had to go down for the year, Santana had to get released, Marinaccio called up and Nick Burdi and Ian Hamilton go on the IL for him to be given a chance. Misiewicz would be facing the 9-hitter and then the top of the Orioles lineup. Boone wasn’t just playing with fire, he was dousing himself in gasoline and holding lighter fluid-soaked rags while playing with it by going to Misiewicz.

Misiewicz loaded the bases, because of course he did. He miraculously got out of the inning unscathed when Alex Verdugo made a spectacular running catch on a ball Anthony Santander hit 395 feet with a 106.1 mph exit velocity. In using Misiewicz to hold the deficit and having him succeed, Boone had done the equivalent of drinking 17 beers and then driving home, but because he made it safely, he thinks he made the right choice.

7. In the bottom of the ninth, The Yankees came back to tie the game against Kimbrel, because as mentioned, Kimbrel sucks. Anthony Volpe led off the ninth with a double and Stanton singled him home. With Stanton on first, Boone replaced him with Wells as the pinch runner. So Wells could be used as a pinch runner, just not as a pinch hitter for Trevino in the eighth with the leadoff man on and a righty on the mound? Managerial masterclass.

8. In the 10th, Boone went to Clay Holmes with the automatic runner on second. Holmes has been very bad since May 20 (21 baserunners in 11 innings and only seven strikeouts), but Boone went to his closer with the score tied in extras at home. It’s now 23 baserunners in 12 innings with only seven strikeouts as Holmes allowed a single, a double and a pair of runs to score with some help from his awesome catcher Trevino. After the Red Sox stole nine bases off him on Sunday, the Orioles stole three bases off him in the first nine innings on Wednesday, and on their fourth attempt in the 10th, Trevino threw the ball into left field to allow a run to score.

Unless something gets dramatically fixed instantly, Trevino can’t catch another game. The Red Sox let the entire league see what the worst-ranked catching arm in the sport is incapable of when they went 9-for-10 in steals on Sunday and the Orioles followed that up by going 4-for-4 on Wednesday. It’s embarrassing, pathetic and not fitting of a major-league catcher. And it’s not going to end.

9. With the Yankees now down two runs in the bottom of the 10th, LeMahieu led off with a single to move automatic runner Gleyber Torres over to third. Runners on the corners with no outs. Rice hit a ball that needed a Santander diving catch to prevent from falling in, but Torres scored on the sacrifice fly to make it 7-6. The tying run was still on base in the form of Oswaldo Cabrera (who pinch ran for LeMahieu), but at the plate would be Trevino followed by Jones.

With Trevino at the plate, Boone chose to send Cabrera and his 13 career steals in three years. Cabrera was easily gunned down as the ball was waiting for him at second.

Trevino ended up walking, bringing up Jones as the game-winning run. Facing Dillon Tate, who only averages 5.8 strikeouts per nine innings, Tate had yet to strike out a batter in the inning and Jones would at least be able to put the ball in play against the righty. Or not. Jones struck out on three pitches. Game over.

“We could have grabbed that game,” Boone said.

Yeah, you could have if anyone else had been managing.

10. With the loss, the Yankees are now 1-5 in extra-inning games this season, the worst mark in the league. And with the loss, their division lead is back to just a 1 1/2 games as they are once again tied with the Orioles in the loss column.

Wednesday was a winnable game the Yankees lost thanks to their manager. There have been too many of those since the start of his tenure, but none in the regular season worse than this one.

The Yankees beat the Orioles 4-2 on Tuesday and avoided a potential disaster after Aaron Judge was hit by a pitch.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Nearly two weeks ago, while the Yankees were sweeping the season series from the Twins, all of the attention for Yankees fans turned to wondering why Juan Soto was removed from a game following a rain delay. It was later announced Soto had left with left forearm discomfort and would be sent for imaging and tests the following day. The next 18 hours were spent hoping and praying the tests would come back favorably for Soto and the Yankees. Without Soto, the 2024 Yankees would become the 2023 Yankees offensively. Thankfully, everything worked out and Soto only ended up missing three games with inflammation.

Similarly, the status of Aaron Judge’s left hand became the focal point of Tuesday’s immensely important game against the Orioles once the center fielder was removed from the game after being hit by a pitch. If Judge’s testing came back unfavorably, the offense would become a shell of itself, as it would without Soto. With the seven non-Soto and non-Judge hitters being inconsistent and unreliable, the Yankees can’t afford to lose either for an extended period of time. Thankfully, like Soto, Judge is fine.

2. “It’s a big relief,” Judge said. “Just being hit there before a couple of years ago and breaking my wrist, you never know what’s going to happen.”

Losing Judge for weeks or months would have put a damper on the Yankees’ 4-2 win, but everything worked out on the field and in the X-ray room.

“We just wanted to make sure to get it looked at,” Aaron Boone said of pulling Judge, “and see what we were dealing with.”

It doesn’t matter that Albert Suarez wasn’t trying to hit Judge, he still hit him. If you can’t pitch inside without hitting batters, don’t pitch inside.

3. “We all know that they didn’t try to hit Judge right there, but it’s a little frustrating,” Soto said. “It’s a little uncomfortable.”

It’s more than a little frustrating. It’s a lot frustrating. If Judge is forced to miss Wednesday’s game or Thursday’s game against the Orioles, the hit by pitch has enormous implications on the AL East and could be the difference between having to play in the best-of-3 wild-card round or having a bye to the best-of-5 ALDS.

4. “At the end of the day, we don’t take what happened lightly,” Alex Verdugo said. “But at the same time, I don’t believe it was intentional.”

Well, the Yankees do take it somewhat lightly since no Oriole was hit. Nestor Cortes threw inside to Gunnar Henderson, but didn’t hit him. If that was all the Yankees plan on doing in retaliation, that’s not enough. Whether or not Judge was hit on purpose, Henderson needs to be hit. That’s the way it goes. Henderson or Adley Rutschman. Take your pick. One of them needs to eat a fastball.

5. “I wouldn’t say I would expect anything to roll over,” Verdugo said. “But I do expect that there’s gonna be a little bit more edge.”

If any of these next two games gets out of hand, I do expect it to roll over. Unfortunately, four runs wasn’t enough of a lead on Tuesday to avenge Judge since the Yankees ended up needing every run they could get with Clay Holmes on the mound.

6. Holmes entered with the Yankees leading 4-0 in the ninth, allowed a leadoff single to Henderson and then promptly gave up a two-run home run to Anthony Santander. Holmes eventually got out of the inning, but not before making Yankees fans squirm again.

Since the disaster on May 20 against the Mariners (when Holmes entered with a 0.00 ERA on the season), he has allowed eight earned runs and 22 baserunners in 11 innings with only seven strikeouts. I can’t continue to stress enough how important it is the Yankees have a closer who doesn’t rely on balls in play to get outs.

Another reason for Holmes’ issues on Tuesday was another extended layoff. Holmes went four days between appearances last week against the Royals and lost the game in the ninth. Prior to Tuesday, he hadn’t pitched since that Royals game five days earlier and allowed two runs. Holmes needs to pitch somewhat consistently, save situation or not.

7. The Yankees’ offense had six hits in the game (just one extra-base hit), but did manage six walks (three from Soto). The Orioles’ offense only had one of their eight hits go for extra bases as well and had just one walk, against Michael Tonkin.

Tonkin’s role with the Yankees continues to grow in importance, and it seems that he has passed over both Tommy Kahnle and Ian Hamilton for Boone’s bullpen pecking order. Tonkin was given the seventh inning on Tuesday in a four-run game against the Yankees’ sole competition for the division title. There isn’t a person in the world who envisioned this for Tonkin when the Yankees picked him up off the scrap heap and inserted him into that April 26 game against the Brewers. From April 26 through the end of May, these are the games Tonkin pitched in as a Yankee:

April 26: Lost game in 11th with him on the mound
April 28: 10-run win
May 2: Five-run loss
May 7: Seven-run win
May 11: Five-run loss
May 19: Five-run win
May 22: Four-run win (would have been a six-run win, but he allowed two runs)
May 26: Three-run loss
May 30: Five-run win

Tonkin wasn’t allowed near a close game in his first month with the Yankees, and the only close game he appeared in was one he made close himself. But then everything changed for him on June 2 in San Francisco (the crazy ninth-inning comeback game) when he pitched two scoreless innings in that 7-5 win. Since that day, Tonkin’s stock has risen within the Yankees and based on Tuesday night, he’s going to be the guy bridging the gap from starter to Luke Weaver in close games, and he deserves it with his 0.00 ERA in 13 innings since May 22.

7. Ben Rice made his major-league debut and went 1-for-4 with a line-drive single. A nice debut for Rice, who was removed for defensive purposes in the eighth.

Rice is viewed as a kid getting his first call-up to the majors, and he is, but what’s crazy is Soto isn’t even four months older than him. I think people tend to forget how young Soto is because this is his sixth season in the majors. He’s 25! Give him $1 billion!

8. DJ LeMahieu will always be the man for his 2019 and 2020 seasons when he tried to single-handedly carry the Yankees at times when the rest of the names in the lineup were hurt or underperforming. I was all for re-signing LeMahieu because of this and because the Yankees’ lineup lacked depth prior to the 2021 season. (Aaron Hicks was the Opening Day 3-hitter.) But after season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022 that cost him postseason play both years and then his ongoing injuries in 2023 and this year, it’s difficult to believe LeMahieu will ever be even a shell of his former self. He used to be the guy I wanted up most in big spots, and now he’s the guy I want up least. Every ball is hit on the ground, and he has yet to pick up an extra-base hit in 56 plate appearances.

He has only played in 16 games and deserves a longer leash than that, considering Gleyber Torres and Anthony Rizzo have endless leashes, but the early results are not good. I’m holding out hope that this is him shaking off the rust, but I fear it’s not.

9. Nestor Cortes was awesome (6 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 6 K), but it was to be expected with him pitching at home. Cortes now has a 1.57 ERA and 0.818 WHIP in eight home starts and a 5.57 ERA and 1.452 WHIP in eight road starts.

Because of this, if the postseason started today and Gerrit Cole is his normal, healthy self the rest of the season, I would go Cole in Game 1, Cortes in Game 2 and Luis Gil in Game 3, and then pray for rain between Games 3 and 4 to get Cole back on the mound on normal rest in Game 4 to keep Carlos Rodon and Marcus Stroman away.

10. Cole will make his 2024 debut on Wednesday night against the Orioles. He’s not completely stretched out, so he’s likely to only give the Yankees four or five innings, unless he’s extremely economical (which he tends to not always be). His return comes at the perfect time with the Orioles on the schedule and Cody Poteet headed to the injured list.

After Tuesday’s win, the Yankees’ division lead is back up to 2 1/2 games. If the Yankees can win behind Cole’s debut on Wednesday then Luis Gil goes in the series finale on Thursday. This series with its pitching matchups heavily favoring the Yankees is set up for the Yankees to create some real separation in the standings. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it’s hard not to, especially if Judge is in the lineup.

After winning the first game of the three-game series at Fenway Park, the Yankees dropped the next two and were humiliated along the way.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was sitting down the first-base line at Fenway Park on Apr. 26, 2009 for Sunday Night Baseball. Andy Pettitte was on the mound and trying to end the Red Sox’ early-season dominance over the Yankees, but he couldn’t.

With the game tied at 1 in the fifth, he allowed a two-double to David Ortiz, which scored Jason Varitek and moved Jacoby Ellsbury to third. After intentionally walking Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew came to the plate with runners on the corners. With a 1-1 count on Drew, Pettitte came set on the mound and as he stared at Youkilis at first base, Ellsbury took off. With Pettitte’s back to Ellsbury, he couldn’t see him running for home and by the time Jorge Posada realized what was happening to alert Pettitte, Ellsbury was too far down the line. Ellsbury stole home to give the Red Sox a 3-1 lead. He popped up, clenched his fists in celebration and made his way to the dugout where Terry Francona was laughing. (The Red Sox would win eight straight games against the Yankees to open the year.) The Yankees got the last laugh that season when they went on their own run against their rival, won the division and won the World Series. But that night at Fenway Park was demoralizing. I had seen (and have since) a lot of awful Yankees moments at Fenway Park, and the Ellsbury steal of home remains up there.

Yes, things are much different now than they were 15 Aprils ago: the Yankees have the best record in baseball and are 12 games ahead of the Red Sox in the division. But the level of embarrassment of watching the Red Sox steal nine bases in a single game against the Yankees is every bit as bad as it was when Francona put his arm around Ellsbury and the two shared a laugh at the Yankees’ expense.

2. “I think it’s matchup-dictated,” Aaron Boone said of allowing nine steals. “They had the right matchups out there on the field, and they took advantage of it.”

What matchup? The Yankees used six different pitchers in the game and the Red Sox stole off three of them (Marcus Stroman, Ian Hamilton and Luke Weaver). They couldn’t steal against Tommy Kahnle because he pitched a perfect inning, they didn’t need to steal against Caleb Ferguson because he was busy giving up hits all over the place and there wasn’t enough time to steal off Michael Tonkin. So the matchup is the entire Yankees’ pitching staff and Jose Trevino? Every team in the league watched the Red Sox run wild on the Yankees, and they will all now being doing it.

3. “That was good baseball tonight,” Alex Cora said. “Expect that from us. We’re going to push the envelope.”

Ken Rosenthal reported this week that if the Yankees were to suffer an early postseason exit or not reach the World Series that they would possibly replace Boone with Cora. If failing to meet expectations the last six years, culminating in the worst Yankees season in 30 years last year wasn’t enough for Boone to be fired, he’s not going anywhere if the Yankees simply reach the postseason (which is all they truly care to do). But even with an injury-riddled, mediocre roster that has Rob Refsnyder batting second, Dominic Smith as a middle-of-the-order bat and a center fielder playing shortstop, Cora still managed to manage circles around his counterpart yet again.

4. The nine steals against the Yankees served as the latest embarrassing accomplishment for the Yankees under Boone. Here’s some highlights on his managerial resume:

• First Yankees manager to get a fifth season without having won a championship (and now a sixth and seventh season too)
• Oversaw most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS)
• Managed the Yankees to their worst full-season record in last 30 years in 2023
• Managed the Yankees to their worst month record-wise in 31 years in 2021
• Most steals allowed in a game by the franchise in 109 years

Boone wasn’t needed in Friday’s 8-1 Yankees rout and there was nothing he could on Saturday thanks to the $162 million man. But on Sunday, after the Yankees had turned a late three-run deficit into a one-run deficit, the Yankees needed their manager to put the team in the best possible position to succeed over the final two-plus innings and he couldn’t.

With the Yankees trailing 4-3 entering the bottom of the seventh, Boone’s elite relievers were rested in Weaver and Clay Holmes, having yet to pitch in the series, and with a day off scheduled for Monday, he could afford to use them in a game the Yankees were currently losing. Instead, Boone went to Caleb Ferguson for the seventh, and after Ferguson faced the minimum three batters, the Red Sox had runners on the corners with one out, threatening to add to their one-run lead.

The seventh inning screamed Luke Weaver’s name, with the righty having pitched just twice in the last seven days, but Boone figured he could try to steal an inning with Ferguson and then go to Weaver in the eighth. The plan backfired and Boone ended up calling on Weaver to clean up Ferguson’s mess. If Boone was willing to use Weaver in the game and willing to use him in that inning, why not just give Weaver a clean inning to start with? That exact situation has now been played out countless times per season for six-plus years under Boone.

5. The loss on Sunday wouldn’t have hurt so bad if Carlos Rodon showed up on Saturday. But he didn’t. A national TV game in a hostile environment against a divisional rival? It was foolish for anyone to think Rodon would be anything other than the worst version of himself.

Rodon needed 109 pitches to get through five innings and allowed five earned runs and 10 baserunners.

“It just looked like he was in the heart of the plate a lot,” Boone said. “I thought his stuff was good.”

Boone has yet to see a starting pitching performance in six-plus years in which his starter didn’t have “good stuff.” I don’t know how he can say Rodon “was in the heart of the plate a lot” and then in his next breath say he “thought his stuff was good.”

Rodon has now struggled against the Red Sox (5 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 7 K), Orioles (4 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 3 HR) and Blue Jays (4 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 5 K). Guess who the Yankees play the most games against each season? The Red Sox, Orioles and Blue Jays (and Rays who Rodon has yet to face this season).

If Rodon is healthy come October, he will undoubtedly get the ball for a playoff game because money owed is more important than performance or logic, and Rodon is owed a lot of money (he makes roughly $800,000 per start) and the Yankees’ postseason plans are rarely created with logic (like using an opener in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS or having Clarke Schmidt be the first guy out of the bullpen. Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS or a million other examples during the Boone era). Rodon has only made one playoff start in his career (2021 ALDS Game 4) and he didn’t get through three innings (2.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 3 K). Saturday night was a postseason-like atmosphere, just like it was in May in Baltimore, and unsurprisingly Rodon’s two worst starts of the season came in those two games. Thankfully, he won’t get to face the Orioles this week.

6. Thankfully, Luis Gil will face the Orioles this week. Gil couldn’t command his fastball or changeup on Friday night and still gave the Yankees five innings of one-run ball to lead them to their only win of the series. He’s so good.

7. Gleyber Torres isn’t good. In fact, he sucks. He flat-out sucks. When he isn’t dropping pop-ups, booting grounders, getting picked off or rushing throws, he’s putting together disgusting and disturbing at-bats.

Torres went 0-for-Fenway over the weekend and reached base once via a walk in 12 plate appearances. Between Friday and Saturday, he left 11 runners on base, and yet, he was somehow worse on Sunday.

In the series finale, the Yankees trailed 4-3 in the seventh. They were able to load the bases with no outs and Torres coming to the plate. Torres got ahead 3-0 because new reliever Zack Kelly wasn’t even close on any of his first three pitches. Then Torres took back-to-back fastballs down the middle on 3-0 and 3-1 to run the count full. The Red Sox knew Torres would be swinging at the 3-2 pitch unless it hit him in the head, so Connor Wong called for a sweeper away, Kelly threw it away and in the dirt and Torres struck out swinging to add three more runners left on base to his weekend tally of 14.

If you like Torres, you don’t like the Yankees. How could you when his very presence in the field, on the bases and in the batter’s box is detrimental to the success of the team. Torres doesn’t hit for average (.222 batting average) or power (.333 slugging percentage). He doesn’t provide speed (four steals) and doesn’t get on base often (.298 on-base percentage). He’s a horrific defender (leads all second baseman in errors) and has the worst Baseball IQ of any player I have ever watched (Nick Swisher is off the hook). Torres is a losing player who provides no value to the team, and yet, he’s the only Yankee Boone has decided needs no days off.

8. The offense is so bad outside of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge that when the Yankees don’t score when the duo is up, you immediately start to count how many innings it will be until they may get up again. Because the rest of the lineup is so blah, being average or the slightest bit above average has fooled the perception of the production of hitters like Alex Verdugo, Anthony Volpe and Giancarlo Stanton.

It’s a good thing Alex Verdugo had a big night on Friday in his return to Fenway because he didn’t do anything for the rest of the series. Verdugo’s home run was his first in June, and the Yankees’ “cleanup hitter” is hitting .260/.313/.426.

7. I nicknamed Brett Gardner “The Streak” during his playing days because he was the streakiest player of all time. Well, it looks like the Yankees’ latest leadoff solution is ready to inherit that title. Here is Volpe’s season broken down into four parts:

March 28-April 14: .382/.477/1.041 (1.518 OPS)
April 15-May 5: .163/.247/.238 (.485 OPS)
May 7-June 5: .333/.368/.539 (.907 OPS)
June 6-16: .154/.154/.192 (.346 OPS)

He hasn’t walked in June., Volpe has one extra-base hit in June. He hasn’t walked in June. He has one home run since May 9.

8. Stanton leads the league in strikeouts and only has a .293 on-base percentage, but there’s nothing really to say about him. This (.776 OPS) is the best version of Stanton at this point, so he’s playing as well as he can play, unfortunately.

9. The Yankees need lineup depth. I thought they would get that in Jasson Dominguez, but now he’s on the injured list, so it’s back to hoping Verdugo can be better than he has been (unlikely since he has a 108 OPS+ and a 106 OPS+ for his career) and that Volpe can find some consistency. It’s back to praying some combination of Torres, Anthony Rizzo (if healthy) and DJ LeMahieu can hit even a little bit.

The rotation is fine and the bullpen is what it is until they either get healthier this summer or acquire help in the next six weeks.

The Yankees have the best record in baseball, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have glaring issues. Fortunately, their issues are masked a lot of games because they have the best two hitters in the world hitting back-to-back in their lineup. But the issues still exist. The Red Sox exposed the Yankees’ lineup with mediocre pitching, beat up a bullpen that has trouble generating strikeout and demoralized a staff that can’t hold runners on and a catcher with one of the weakest arms in the league at the position.

10. Don’t think the Orioles weren’t watching. The Yankees were an Oswaldo Cabrera two-run home run away from being swept in four games in Baltimore last month and over the next three days at the Stadium, the Yankees will try to avoid letting the Orioles overtake them in the division.

The Yankees are going to miss Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez and Corbin Burnes with Bradish now hurt and Rodriguez and Burnes having pitched on Saturday and Sunday. This is the most important series of the season to date and one of the four most important series of the season overall. If the Yankees play this week like they did over the weekend, the Orioles will be in first place.

The Yankees were one out away from a four-game sweep of the Royals in Kansas City, but bad defense and bad pitching led to a 4-3 loss.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. There wasn’t a Yankees fan who had confidence in Clay Homes closing out Thursday’s ninth inning. I don’t know many Yankees fans who have confidence in Holmes normally, so when you add in him having not pitched since Sunday, having only pitched once in six days and entering a one-run game, well, you have a recipe for disaster. And disaster it was as Holmes blew a 3-2 lead in the ninth and the Yankees lost 4-3 to the Royals.

2. Ever since Holmes’ mirage ERA of 0.00 vanished with his four-earned-run performance against the Mariners on May 20, he has been incapable of pitching clean innings. In his last 10 innings, he has put 20 runners on base with just six strikeouts. In eight of his last 14 appearances, he has no strikeouts. As I have written in these Thoughts many times, when you allow the ball to be put into play bad things can happen. And because Holmes relies on balls in play to get outs, bad things happen.

3. The bad thing on Thursday was a ground ball hit between Holmes and Anthony Rizzo that neither wanted to claim. Eventually Rizzo fielded it and shoveled it to Holmes, but not before the runner slid headfirst safely into first. Rizzo’s indecisiveness to take balls to the bag himself has been a constant this season and negated his first home run since May 10 in the loss.

“We’re down, not much going, and scored three runs there to give ourselves a chance to win,” Rizzo said. “Just didn’t work out today.”

Well, yeah, it didn’t work out because you didn’t pick up the ball and make a play.

4. “Stuff is going to happen here and there,” Nestor Cortes said. “[We hope he] keeps on pitching the way he’s been pitching.”

That makes one of us, Nestor (who finally had a good road start). If Holmes keeps pitching the way he has been pitching, the Yankees are going to blow a lot of close games in the ninth inning.

On Thursday, he struggled against the bottom of the Royals order (with two outs, he couldn’t retire hitters with OPS of .632 or .675). On Sunday, with two outs, he let Gavin Lux and Enrique Hernandez bring Mookie Betts to the plate as the go-ahead run in the ninth. He struggled against the Angels and got knocked around for four runs recording just two outs against the anemic Mariners. He had trouble with the Rays and Diamondbacks, and if not for defensive heroics in the season-opening series in Houston, his ERA would have been destroyed for the year before the Yankees played their first home game.

5. It’s always an adventure with Holmes and rarely a pleasant one. Easy 1-2-3 innings are infrequent as are innings in which he throws fewer than 20 pitches. There’s always traffic on the bases because he relies on contact on the ground to get his outs. The Yankees need a closer who can strike out hitters to get outs, not one who needs ground balls hit right at fielders to get them.

6. The loss was the first since Juan Soto returned to the lineup. In the series, he went 4-for-11 with five walks and ended the no-hitter on Thursday and also drove in the go-ahead run in the eighth in that game as well. He did what he could to keep the winning streak going and sweep the Royals on a day Anthony Volpe, Aaron Judge and Alex Verdugo went 0-for-12 with six strikeouts.

7. The 5 through 9 hitters was a who’s who of miserable seasons with Torres (.654 OPS) batting fifth, Rizzo (.626) sixth, DJ LeMahieu (.497) seventh, Austin Wells (.615) eighth and Trent Grisham (.520) ninth. The Yankees really need Stanton to be better than a .288 on-base guy who only hits the ball out of the park when the score is lopsided because it doesn’t seem like any of the other options are going to hit. Stanton had a pair of lopsided-score home runs on Wednesday with the Yankees up six runs and on Thursday with the Yankees up nine runs. No one hits the ball farther when the game is out of hand than Stanton. (Torres also added a stat-padding home run on Wednesday with the Yankees up six runs.)

8. As for Rizzo, it’s nice to think that his second hit of June on Wednesday and his first home run in over a month on Thursday could be what he needed to get going, but let’s be honest, Rizzo isn’t going to go anywhere, other than hopefully the bench with diminished playing time. All his home run on Thursday did was buy him more time (think Aaron Hicks and Josh Donaldson) and add more fuel to his manager’s fire of telling everyone his first baseman is going to get it going soon.

9. I look forward to the day Jasson Dominguez is back in the majors where he belongs. Dominguez has hit .358/.402/.630 with six home runs in 87 plate appearances in the minors. He’s the bat they need protecting Judge and extending the depth of the lineup. Not Verudgo (who’s hitting .259/.314/.418 and only bats fourth because he’s left-handed), not Stanton and certainly not Rizzo.

10. This weekend is the first Yankees-Red Sox series of the season despite the season being nearly halfway complete. The Red Sox are mediocre at 35-34, and have surrounded Rafael Devers with close to nothing. The Yankees have been letting Devers beat them since he entered the league seven years ago, so it won’t surprise me if they let him do the same this weekend, but there’s no reason to. He is the offense, the way Judge was the offense before Soto arrived. Put him on and make others beat you and have an enjoyable weekend before the Orioles come to the Bronx next week.

Juan Soto returned to the field, Aaron Judge returned to the lineup and the Yankees blew out the Royals 10-1.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Brady Singer owned the Yankees in his previous two starts against them in 2022 and 2023: 13 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 19 K. Singer hadn’t allowed a home run to the Yankees since his first of four career starts against them back on June 22, 2021 when Luke Vogt and Kyle Higashioka took him deep. With Singer and Marcus Stroman on the mound on Tuesday night in Kansas City, I expected a low-scoring game.

2. Stroman held up his end of my expectation (5.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 1 K), but Singer got rocked. Anthony Volpe led off the game with a triple, Juan Soto walked, Aaron Judge singled in Volpe and Soto eventually came around to score on a groundout. Five batters into the game, the Yankees had scored as many runs off Singer as they had in the previous 13 innings against him and had a 2-0 lead.

3. The Yankees scored four more runs off him in the fourth, which included an Austin Wells three-run home run. (What was the camera work on that home run? It was made to believe Wells had hit an infield pop-up, when instead it was a straightaway-center bomb.)

“I was comfortable with that pitch to lefties,” Singer said of the pitch Wells hit 417 feet. “Maybe he was looking for it, but I just got to execute better.”

The Yankees scored a seventh run (unearned) against Singer in the sixth and had a 10-0 lead before the Royals scored their first and only run. Stroman threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings and he didn’t need to with the way the offense attacked Singer.

4. “The way these guys are swinging, it just makes this game fun,” Stroman said. “I feel like everybody is in their element and riding off of one another.”

Well, everybody but Rizzo, who was the only starter to not reach base safely.

Rizzo hit into an inning-ending double play in the first. He grounded out to first in the fourth. He reached on an error by the second baseman on a ground ball in the sixth. He hit a slow roller right in front of the plate for a groundout in the seventh and popped out to third in in the ninth. It was an 0-for-5 night for Rizzo as he remains 1-for-June (1-for-34 with a walk).

5. I don’t know what else the Yankees are supposed to do with him. He was just given back-to-back games off to clear his head and work on mechanics and returned to not hit the ball out of the infield in five at-bats. He’s not even walking anymore. He has one walk in June and two walks since May 11. Today is June 12.

6. The 25-year-old first baseman Ben Rice had 12 home runs and an .894 OPS in Double-A before being promoted to Triple-A where he has three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.571 OPS in nine games. I would think the Yankees would want to get a look at him in the majors within the next six weeks to see what they have and if they will need to make a trade for a first baseman. (Or they know what they have and won’t call him up to keep his value high and use him in a trade.) Because they can’t have a complete zero at the plate from an offensive position.

7. Gleyber Torres needs to hit and then one of Rizzo or DJ LeMahieu has to as well. Torres has a .786 OPS over the last month (but just .661 in June), so he has been much better than he was in the first month of the season. LeMahieu has still only played in 11 games, so he’s owed some more time. But Rizzo seems more washed up by the day. I don’t see how he comes out of this.

8. Judge hit his 25th home run of the season in his 68th game. In 2022, he hit his 25th home run in his 60th game, so he’s not far off that pace. The 25th was a two-run shot off of Nick Anderson in the seventh inning. Giancarlo Stanton also tagged Anderson for a home run in the seventh. (In typical Stanton fashion, he hit a 446-foot blast with the Yankees already leading 9-0.)

Remember when Anderson was unhittable for the Rays against the Yankees? In his first two seasons with the Rays (2019-20), Anderson had 77 strikeouts in 37 2/3 innings. Then he got hurt in 2021, missed all of 2022, and between last season with the Braves and this season with the Royals, he has 54 strikeouts in 61 innings.

9. The Yankees have the starting pitching edge in the third game of the series on Wednesday with Cody Poteet going against Dan Altavilla, who will be used as an opener. Altavilla pitched a scoreless inning with two strikeouts in the series opener on Monday and it was his first major-league appearance in three years. He looked good against Alex Verdugo (strikeout), LeMahieu (strikeout) and Trent Grisham (groundout), but that’s a lot different than Volpe, Soto and Judge to open a game.

10. The Royals will be trying to piece together an entire game from their bullpen to avoid a fourth straight loss. Neither team has used its best relievers so far in the series, and I’m guessing the Yankees are hoping for five innings from Poteet before going to a combination of Caleb Ferguson, Tommy Kahnle, Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes for the final 12 outs. If the offense shows up on Wednesday like it did on Tuesday, it could be another night off for the elite relievers.

The Yankees used a spring training-esque lineup and a reliever with zero career ninth-inning saves to close out a game in Kansas City. It didn’t matter because Carlos Rodon was great again, and the Yankees beat the Royals 4-2.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. In Game 160 of the 2023 season, Carlos Rodon started for the Yankees against the Royals in Kansas City. He went into that game with a 5.74 ERA and .790 OPS against in 13 starts. He had missed about 60 percent of the first year of a six-year, $162 million deal, and the time he didn’t miss, he pitched horribly. In a season in which he was injured, bad and blew a kiss to heckling fans, nothing was worse than that start against the Royals.

Single
Walk
Double
Home run
Single
Single
Single
Walk

Rodon faced eight batters and retired none. The three that were on base when he exited in the bottom of the first all came around to score. He turned his back on Matt Blake during a mound visit. His final line: 0 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. His ERA ballooned to 6.85 and his WHIP to 1.446. Rodon made roughly $800,000 for a performance that any fan from the bleachers could have rivaled and any position player could have bested.

2. On Monday, Rodon took the mound in Kansas City for the first time since the worst start of his career and pitched the way someone owed $162 million over six years should pitch. Five days after taking a perfect game into the sixth inning in a win over the Twins, Rodon took a no-hitter into the fifth inning against the Royals.

“I definitely knew this game was coming,” Rodon said of his start on Monday. “It was circled on the calendar, and I wanted to show up and give my team the best chance to win after coming out of here last year with what happened and not pitching well. I definitely remembered that.”

Every Yankees fan remembers it. It was as low a point in the lowest Yankees season in 30 years. The star free-agent signing unable to record an out against a 106-loss team.

3. Rodon threw his seventh straight quality start (7 IP, 5 H 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3 K), picked up his league-leading ninth win and the Yankees improved to 11-3 when he takes the ball, which he has every turn through the rotation this year.

“I thought he threw the ball really well,” Aaron Boone said. “He made some big pitches the couple of times when they did pressure him there a little bit.”

4. It was a wildly managed game for Boone from the moment the lineup was posted right through the final out. Boone started the day by sitting Aaron Judge — the hottest hitter in baseball —despite his 20 home runs in the last 40 games.

“I never like him out of the lineup, of course,” Boone said, “but I feel like he needs a day.”

That’s a very ominous “I feel like he needs a day” from Boone. Is Judge hurt? Did Judge say he needs a day? Did Boone and training staff notice something? Unfortunately, these are the questions all Yankees fans are left to wonder whenever someone is held out of the lineup because of the lack of transparency with injuries in the six-plus seasons with Boone as manager.

5. “I had been marking this one down,” Boone said. “He had played every day and this time of the year … it’s important to get off.”

Either Judge is banged up or hurt, or when the schedule came out, Boone saw a Sunday Night Baseball game against the Dodgers followed by a night game in Kansas City and was going to sit Judge in it no matter what. Whether he hit four home runs the previous day or if he has been the hardest out in baseball over the last six weeks (which he has been), he was going to sit. (We’ll know on Tuesday afternoon if it was really just a day off or something more if Judge is held out again.)

6. Holding Judge out wasn’t the only oddity of the lineup. Giancarlo Stanton had to sit to get Juan Soto back in the lineup as the designated hitter since apparently it’s another season in which Stanton can’t play the field, and Anthony Rizzo was benched for a second straight game as he’s 1-for-June at the plate. (Boone said Rizzo’s absence with last “a couple of days.”) Gleyber Torres and his .640 OPS was promoted to third in the lineup and singles-only hitter DJ LeMahieu to fifth. Trent Grisham started again and batted sixth and Jahmai Jones got his first start in over a month. Jose Trevino and Oswaldo Cabrera rounded out the lineup at eight and nine.

Going against one of the season’s best starters in Seth Lugo with that lineup seemed like a bad idea, but Lugo had troubled locating his eight different pitches in the first inning and the Yankees jumped all over him for a pair of runs. They did the same in the fourth to extend their lead to 4-0.

7. The wildness continued once Rodon came out after the seventh. Boone went to the shaky Ian Hamilton for the eighth and Hamilton tried his hardest to blow a three-run lead, but only ended up allowing a run. Clinging to a two-run lead for the ninth and with Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver unavailable, and Boone trying his hardest to stay away from Tommy Kahnle, Michael Tonkin was called on to close out the game.

Tonkin went from the Mets to the Twins back to the Mets to the Yankees this season. In his first day as a Yankee he was asked to close out an extra-inning lead in Milwaukee and he failed miserably. After that he was relegated to blowout and mop-up duty, which he pitched admirably in with a 1.23 ERA over his next 10 games with the Yankees. On Friday, he pitched a scoreless 1 2/3 innings in a 0-0 game against the Dodgers before going back to mop-up duty in Saturday’s loss to the Dodgers. He had Sunday off and then was being asked to serve as the interim closer on Monday.

8. Tonkin worked around a one-out walk, struck out two and picked up the save to secure the win.

Tonkin had a 5.14 ERA in seven innings for the Mets and a 9.00 ERA in two innings for the Twins. He has a 0.89 ERA in 20 1/3 innings for the Yankees. He has gone from last man on the roster and the DFA bubble to being an important piece of the bullpen. It’s been a remarkable turnaround for an arm that looked like it was going to be a one-weekend pickup when signed.

9. The Yankees faced one of the best starting pitchers and league and sat the hottest hitter in baseball, started four hitters with OPS off .638 or lower, dropped down three sacrifice bunts, hit no home runs, used a 34-year-old journeyman reliever to attempt the first ninth-inning save of his career and still came away with a win. If that’s not a sign how well this season has gone to date, I don’t know what is.

10. I expect Judge to be back in the lineup for the second game of the series along with Stanton and Rizzo, and the trio of Kahnle, Weaver and Holmes should all be available. The Yankees will need another strong start on the mound with Brady Singer going for the Royals. It will be Marcus Stroman for the Yankees, coming off his worst start of the season (4.2 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 2 HR). Stroman has followed up each mediocre start with a good one this season and he’ll need to do that again on Tuesday.

The Yankees lost the first two games of the Dodgers series before bouncing back to salvage the series finale. The weekend served as a look into life without Juan Soto for the Yankees.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I spent every available second on Friday checking for the results of Juan Soto’s left forearm tests. Thankfully, the results came back with no structural damage to either his forearm or elbow. It was as good of news as possible given the ominous feeling around the Yankees on Thursday night, even if it meant he would go on to miss the entire weekend series against the Dodgers.

The weekend series against the Dodgers was the Yankees’ version of It’s a Wonderful Life starring Soto. Every Yankees fan was treated to a glimpse of life if the Yankees hadn’t traded for Soto and what life will be like without Soto if the Yankees don’t re-sign him. The result: the 2023 Yankees.

“It’s a big bat out for us right now,” Alex Verdugo said. “But we always know when one guy is down, the next guy has to step up.”

Except there’s no guy who can step up and be Soto. Pitching-wise? That’s a different story. Gerrit Cole goes down and Luis Gil becomes Cole. Things like that happen. But you don’t find or create a Soto replacement. There isn’t one.

2. The Yankees didn’t score for 10 innings on Friday, and only eventually plated a meaningless run in the 11th thanks to the automatic runner. They lost the series opener 2-1 and then got pummeled 11-3 in the second game. Through 20 innings without Soto, this was the Yankees offense:

First run: Aaron Judge singles in the automatic runner.

Second run: Scores on an RBI groundout (was initially called a double play).

Third run: Judge solo home run.

Fourth run: Judge solo home run.

Judge, the automatic runner and a groundout. Welcome back to 2023, indeed.

3. Not only did the Yankees look like their 2023 selves at the plate, but Aaron Boone reminded everyone that he still hasn’t figured out how manage the actual game on the field. His only redeeming quality as manager continues to be his relentless defense of his players’ performance. He defended Gleyber Torres’ defense on both Friday and Saturday. He defended Alex Verdugo’s misread on a line drive on Saturday. And after Dennis Santana got knocked around yet again on Saturday, he said the reliever threw ball well.

4. Despite his manager thinking he threw the ball well against the Dodgers, Santana was designated for assignment ahead of Sunday’s game. Unfortunately, with John Sterling’s retirement, Michael Kay will likely be the only emcee of Old Timers’ Day, and therefore these former Yankees bios moving forward will have to be read as if they are coming from Kay:

Old Timers’ Day 2041: “Our next Yankee signed as a free agent prior to the 2024 season. The previous year, he was put on waivers by the Braves and Twins and granted free agency by the Mets. No one wanted his career 5.17 ERA and 1.430 WHIP except for the Yankees. He made the Opening Day roster and spent more than two months on the team pitching to a career-worst 6.26 ERA. He was allowed to pitch in high-leverage situations despite recording only 6.3 strikeouts per nine innings and a 1.354 WHIP. Please welcome back, Dennis Santana!“

5. As long as bad relievers are on the team, Boone will find ways to get them into games. With Santana gone, Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez take over for Santana as being tied for the worst and least trustworthy relievers. Sure enough, despite having a rested bullpen for Sunday night’s game, Ferguson was the first guy out of Boone’s bullpen. After he got the final out of the sixth inning, he no longer needed to meet the three-batter requirement, but that didn’t stop Boone from trying to steal outs with Ferguson in the seventh. And sure enough, the first two batters reached, and Luke Weaver had to come in with two on and no outs rather than a clean inning.

6. The defense of Torres’ defense is indefensible. With a straight face, and being completely serious, Boone praised Torres’ defense over the weekend. His error on Friday was erased by a pickoff. But his error on Saturday led to a four-run Dodgers inning to effectively end that game. Torres leads all second baseman in errors. At the plate, Torres didn’t make up for his defensive miscues, going 2-for-11 with three strikeouts.

7. Since Boone won’t give an honest opinion of his players, like Torres or Anthony Rizzo, I will: The pre-concussion Rizzo isn’t coming back. Despite being 1-for-June, Boone still hit Rizzo fifth in the lineup on Saturday and Sunday before sitting him down. Rizzo has two doubles since May 12. He has two walks since May 11. He last homered on May 10. He’s hitting .224/.285/.339. Rizzo looks incapable of figuring it out, and he would have to go on a Judge-like tear to get his numbers back to respectability, which isn’t possible.

8. I thought DJ LeMahieu could come back and make up for the lack of production from Torres and Rizzo, but LeMahieu is hitting like a 35-year-old who has missed 31 percent of the team’s games since 2022.

LeMahieu had a season-ending injury in 2022 and 2023 and missed the first two months of 2024. He has seven singles in 39 plate appearances, and one of them was ruled a single despite being a ground ball that hit a runner. He is hitting everything on the ground, and because of that, he has already hit into four double plays in 10 games. LeMahieu deserves a longer leash than 10 games, especially since players like Torres and Rizzo have been given endless leashes, but the early results for LeMahieu aren’t good.

The Yankees’ lineup can’t be three guys (Soto, Judge and Anthony Volpe), even if two of the three are the two best hitters in baseball. One of Torres, Rizzo or LeMahieu has to hit like the best version of themself. Because without that, and with the streakiness of Giancarlo Stanton (who is 8-for-52 with 20 strikeouts), there is no depth to the offense.

9. The big pitching matchup of these big series always ends up being the offense game. Gil allowed three earned runs in 5 2/3 innings for the most runs he had allowed since April 26 and Tyler Glasnow gave up five earned runs, including home runs to Oswaldo Cabrera and Trent Grisham.

The “WE WANT SOTO” chants during Grisham’s three-run home run at-bat were warranted. If Soto was truly available (and why wouldn’t he be if he’s now going to be OK to play on Monday?) then that was going to be the spot to use him. Boone decided against it, Grisham got a middle-middle fastball and crushed it into the right-field seats.

“Yes, I heard them,” Grisham said of the chants. “I was just happy that I was able to stay present in the moment, worry about myself and put a good swing on one.”

“I wasn’t too happy with it,” Judge said about the Soto chants. “He got his point across with that homer.”

Settle down, Judge. The only point he made was don’t throw him a middle-middle fastball. Other than that, people want to see the best player in the league in a big spot rather than the guy with the .695 career OPS.

10. The best player is expected to be back in the lineup on Monday in Kansas City. If he’s not, there will need to be a lot of questions asked about his absence given everything the Yankees have said about him since Friday afternoon.

Seth Lugo goes for the Royals, and he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season. Carlos Rodon goes for the Yankees, and the last time he faced the Royals was his last start of last season when he allowed eight runs without getting an out. Over the last three days, I have had more 2023 flashbacks than I can handle. Rodon needs to keep his strong season going, Soto needs to return to the lineup and everything that was good about this season before Thursday’s rain delay needs to continue.

The Yankees won their eighth straight and swept the six-game season series against the Twins with an 8-5 win. But if Juan Soto’s forearm issue is season-ending, nothing else matters.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When the rain delay ended on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium, YES showed a zoomed out view of the field. You could clearly make out the four umpires standing around home plate conversing, and then a few pinstriped uniforms began to take the field.

I first spotted Alex Verdugo’s number 24. That’s odd, I thought, since Verdugo didn’t start the game and was being given a day off. He must be going in for Trent Grisham? But the Yankees are holding a three-run lead with four innings to go. If Grisham is going to play, wouldn’t now be the time you would want him in there for his defense?

I then spotted Aaron Judge’s number 99. OK, Judge is fine.

And then I saw Grisham.

2. My heart sank. Unless Juan Soto was clinging to a clubhouse toilet with diarrhea, him coming out of the game was never going to mean anything good. A guy who plays every inning of every game every day doesn’t come out of the lineup unless he’s sick … or injured. Before I could say anything, my wife turned to me and asked, “Where’s Soto?”

3. It wasn’t long after the game resumed the Yankees announced, “Juan Soto left tonight’s game due to left forearm discomfort.”

There has never been discomfort in a baseball player’s throwing arm that has led to something good. It’s highly unlikely Soto visits a doctor on Friday, has imaging and tests done and is in the lineup and batting second at night against the Dodgers. The odds of that happening are relatively the same as Anthony Rizzo barreling a ball this weekend.

4. What was taking place on the field over the remaining four innings of the Yankees’ 8-5 win over the Twins became meaningless. Sure, a win is a win, but every Yankee, Yankees employee and fan would gladly trade a slew of losses for the health of Soto. The postgame show became more important than the actual game, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Thursday’s postgame show was higher rated than any Yankees game this season.

In typical Aaron Boone fashion, the manager downplayed the absence of Soto for the final four innings and the idea that he could have a season-ending injury.

“It’s just something that’s been bothering him for the last week or so,” Boone said. “He’s been getting treatment on it. It hasn’t really affected him in his baseball stuff, throwing or swinging or anything.”

Yankees vice president of media relation Jason Zillo interrupted Boone to include information about Soto, including him needing to be evaluated by the team doctor and trainers — information that Boone conveniently left out.

5. So Soto has been dealing with forearm discomfort for a week and has been getting treatment, but now after a week of treatment he’s going for imaging on Friday? That means whatever the issue is, it hasn’t gotten better and has possibly gotten worse. The idea he came out after the rain delay as a precaution is the typical bullshit Boone and the Yankees have been spewing about injuries for his entire tenure.

Boone and Soto went on to say that with the rain delay, the team didn’t want to risk Soto’s arm being hot for the game then going cold during the delay then needing to be heated up again, as if his left arm is a 30 pack of beer the team is trying to avoid skunking.

6. “We all decided to not start getting warmed up again after an hour sitting down here,” Soto said. “We didn’t want to risk anything like that, so we just decided to stop.”

It doesn’t really matter that Soto says it doesn’t hurt when he throws or bats. Pitchers throw pitches at their normal velocity after tearing their elbow all the time. What matters is that Soto’s left arm hurts enough that at least a week ago he reported it to the training staff, for a week he has been receiving treatment on it, on Thursday the team doctor had to evaluate him and he eventually came out of a non-lopsided game for the first time all season, and is now going to have imaging and tests done on Friday.

7. “I actually just woke up one day, felt the tightness and discomfort in my forearm,” Soto said. “We’ve been working on it, and we’ve been trying to get away with it and it hasn’t gone out.”

There is absolutely no way what was said after the game by Soto or Boone or what we know about his arm at this moment can be viewed as positive. Because again, throwing arm discomfort is never a positive for a position player or pitcher. Until Soto or Boone or the Yankees announce that all testing came back negative and that he’s healthy, it’s impossible to think anything but the worst.

8. It will also be impossible to feel good about this season moving forward if Soto’s injury is worse than the Yankees are letting on (which has been a six-plus-year trend with Yankees injuries) and he’s done for the season. The Yankees are 45-19 with a 4 1/2-game lead in the AL East. But they did that with Soto. Without Soto, it’s the same core, the same group of guys that missed the playoffs last year, were embarrassed by the Astros the year before and have been chasing a championship drought for this entire era. I know how the story ends for these Yankees without Soto. If Soto ends up going down, the season unfortunately will go down with him. We have six years of games, performance and data that say as much.

9. In the middle of all the Soto-related questions, someone threw out a “What did you think of Stroman tonight?” to Boone. Unless Stroman discovered the cure for cancer in the clubhouse after throwing 4 2/3 miserable innings, no one gives a fuck about how the manager views Stroman’s lousy outing. The only current event about the 2024 Yankees that matters is what happens at whichever doctor’s office Soto is visiting on Friday.

10. Friday night is the first game of the first Yankees-Dodgers series at the Stadium in eight years, a potential World Series preview with the two must star-studded teams in the game. It was supposed to be an awesome, drama-packed weekend, including an at-home rivalry for me against my wife. Instead, I could care less about the games right now. All I care about is knowing the status of Soto and the state of his left forearm. Without him, there’s no season.

The Yankees won their seventh straight game and improved to 5-0 on the season against the Twins with a 9-5 win at the Stadium.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Carlos Rodon was a disaster in his first season with the Yankees. He got hurt in spring training, made comments about how if it were the postseason he would be pitching, missed the first half of the season, was horrible in nearly every start, blew a kiss to heckling fans in Anaheim, turned his back on Matt Blake during a mound visit, and in his last start of the season, allowed eight earned runs without recording an out.

The more and more Aaron Boone was asked about Rodon during this past winter and the more he has been asked about him this season, the more Boone lets on that Rodon was out of shape and not completely focused on his job despite signing a $162 million contract. He said as much again on Wednesday.

2. “It started in the winter, carried into spring training, carried into game day and the days he is not starting,” Boone said about Rodon’s focus this season. “And [he] focuses on getting ready to go out and pitch, and the results have been good.”

The results have been good, even great at times. Rodon carried a perfect game into the sixth inning on Wednesday against the Twins, and the Yankees won 9-5.

3. “I had a little feeling in my stomach from the start that he was on a roll,” Austin Wells said. “I didn’t think there were many hitters in baseball that could hit him tonight.”

Rodon has given the Yankees six straight quality starts dating back to May 8, and the Yankees are 6-0 in those games.

4. “All I want to do is win,” Rodon said. “I want to perform for my teammates. I don’t want to let my teammates down.”

All Rodon did last season was lose, not perform for his teammates and let everyone down. He has been a completely different pitcher in Year 2 with the Yankees, both with his performance and his comments.

5. I finished the Yankees Thoughts after the series opener by writing:

10. Tuesday was a relaxed, rather easy win, which is how Gil starts go. Wednesday has the potential to be the same if Carlos Rodon is as good against the Twins as he was three weeks ago (6.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 1 HR), or if the Yankees offense hits Chris Paddack the way they did in that same game Rodon started (5 IP, 12 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR). Fourteen baserunners in five innings? I’ll sign up for that again.

Rodon was just about as good again (6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 1 HR), and Paddack was just about as bad again (4 IP, 6 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 7 K). The Yankees tagged Paddack with four runs in the first, and another three in a four-run fifth.

“Not the outing that I wanted, especially at Yankee Stadium,” Paddack said. “These are big moments you dream about as a kid. I’ve come here twice now, and it hasn’t been great.”

It’s OK, Chris. It hasn’t been great for nearly every Twins pitcher who has come to Yankee Stadium over the last two-plus decades. Paddack’s final line in two starts against the 2024 Yankees: 9 IP, 18 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 11 K, 1 HR.

6. Aaron Judge led the offense with a five-RBI night thanks to a bases-loaded-turned-bases-clearing triple in the fifth. Anthony Volpe had three hits, Giancarlo Stanton had two and the Yankees scored nine runs without hitting a home run. Even Gleyber Torres and Anthony Rizzo had doubles in the game. (Torres thought the ball he hit for a double was going foul and didn’t initially run out of the box, and Rizzo’s double was his second since May 11.)

7. I expect the Yankees to announce Dennis Santana has been designated for assignment prior to Thursday’s game.

Here is what I wrote about Santana on Monday:

Michael Tonkin isn’t good, but Tonkin boasts a 4.24 ERA in 250 1/3 career innings and has a 3.00 ERA in 24 innings this season (and a 1.20 ERA in 15 innings for the Yankees). Tonkin can’t be trusted, and he’s treated as such, only pitching in games the Yankees are losing or winning by five-plus runs. Meanwhile, Santana, with a much worse career and in the middle of a much worse season is treated like a middle relief weapon, when he’s only a weapon for the opponent.

Santana serves no purpose on this team. He’s not good enough to pitch in high-leverage situations (again, he has a 5.68 ERA), he can’t get a strikeout in a big spot (5.7 strikeouts per nine innings), he can’t be asked to hold a small deficit (like Sunday against the Giants) and he can’t be trusted to close out a blowout (like Wednesday against the Twins). It’s rather crazy he has been able to pitch in the majors every year since 2018 for four different teams despite posting a 5.25 ERA and 1.400 WHIP over 175 innings. As long as he’s on the team, Boone will find ways to use him. And as long as he’s used, he will either be the reason for losses, ruin the odds of comebacks or force the “A” relievers into games because he can’t even mop up.

9. The Orioles got walked off in the bottom of the ninth in Toronto thanks to a Craig Kimbrel meltdown, so the Yankees’ lead in the AL East is now 3 1/2 games. It’s an oddly-constructed 3 1/2 games (five up in the win column and two up in the loss column) since the Yankees have played three more games than the Orioles. The Yankees have a 2 1/2-game lead over the Guardians for the best record in the American League.

10. The Yankees have an opportunity to win an eighth straight game on Thursday in the season finale against the Twins. Pablo Lopez gets the ball for the Twins as they try to avoid a season sweep, and in his last start against the Yankees on May 15, the Yankees knocked him around for 10 hits in a 4-0 win. Marcus Stroman opposes Lopez like he did on May 15, and in that one, Stroman pitched six shutout innings. The second Rodon-Paddack matchup played out the same way the first one did, so here’s to the second Stroman-Lopez matchup playing out the same way the first one did.

Luis Gil had another ho-hum, six-shutout-innings, one-hit start and the Yankees extended their winning streak to six straight with a 5-1 win over the Twins at the Stadium.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. At this point, it’s no longer stunning when Luis Gil gives up a run (which is crazy), it’s stunning when he gives up a hit. Gil dominated yet another lineup on Tuesday in the Twins and the Yankees won 5-1. One hit over six shutout innings from the best pitcher in baseball.

“He’s got good stuff,” Rocco Baldelli. “He’s better than most.”

Thanks for the evaluation, Rocco. But Gil isn’t better than most. He’s been better than every starting pitcher in the majors this season.

2. It was Gil’s seventh start in a row with at least six innings pitched and one run or fewer allowed, which is now a Yankees record. It seems like Gil is matching or setting a record every start. His ERA is down to 1.82 on the season with 85 strikeouts in 69 1/3 innings and just 30 hits allowed. His 3.9 hits allowed per nine innings is the best in baseball.

“I had to come back from a big injury,” Gil said, “a lot of dedication, a lot of hours to put myself in the situation where I could be here and compete.”

3. On day’s Gil pitches the offense doesn’t have to do much, and in the series opener against the Twins they didn’t do much: three runs on six hits and four walks.

Gleyber Torres got the Yankees on the board in the second by showing he still has power … well, Yankee-Stadium-right-field-porch power when the ball goes off the outfielder’s glove. (Hey, they all count the same!) Torres has been better of late, though that’s not saying much since the bar he set through his first six weeks of the season was as low as bars can be set (he had a .543 OPS through May 11). I think the reason the perception is that he’s still struggling is because of all the non-offense-related issues he has in the field and on the bases. But he has been better.

4. Anthony Rizzo hasn’t been. He’s getting worse. Rizzo had another 0-for against the Twins and is now hitting .236/.296/.354. Add in his shaky defense (both fielding balls and catching throws), his lack of speed and his inability to get on base and there’s nothing redeeming to say about Rizzo’s season. Rizzo has one walk since May 11. He has one double since May 12. He has one home run since May 10.

5. After taking a 1-0 lead in the second on Torres’ home run, the Yankees added two more runs in the third on an Aaron Judge opposite-field double. The 3-0 lead was more than enough, but after Royce Lewis hit a home run in the seventh to cut it to 3-1, Giancarlo Stanton added two insurance runs in the eighth.

Caleb Thielbar got Stanton to awkwardly swing and miss on a first-pitch curveball, so Thielbar went back to that same pitch in the same location on his very next offering and Stanton destroyed it into the second deck in left field.

6. Because of Judge and Juan Soto, Stanton is quietly having a good season … I think? Well, that’s what everyone on YES keeps saying. His OPS is nearly 100 points below his career mark, but his OPS+ suggests he’s 16 percent better than league average. This version of Stanton is the best version Yankees fans have seen since 2021, and before that, you have to go back to his first season with the Yankees in 2018. He’s only hitting .232 and has a .281 on-base percentage, but his 15 home runs, with a lot of them being timely, is carrying the narrative of his year.

7. Stanton, Soto and Judge are the first trio in Yankees history to each hit 15-plus home runs through the first 62 games of a season. Judge is first in the majors with 21. Soto is third with 17. Stanton is fifth with 15. The trio has 53 home runs combined. That’s more home runs than the Blue Jays (52), Rockies (50), Marlins (48), Rays (48), Nationals (48) and White Sox (45).

8. Tommy Kahnle gave up his first earned run of the season on the Lewis home run, but that was the only run the Twins would score. Ian Hamilton pitched a perfect eighth, and after being a disaster for the majority of the season with six scoreless appearances sandwiched around a 16-game run in which he put 34 baserunners on in 17 innings, Hamilton looks to have resolved his issues.

9. After pitching on Saturday and Sunday, Clay Holmes got a second day off and Luke Weaver was called on to close out the game in the ninth. (It wasn’t a save situation, but I think Holmes would have been in even with a four-run lead. Also, no one should be managing based on a made-up statistic.) Weaver pitched a perfect ninth on just 10 pitches to end the game.

10. Tuesday was a relaxed, rather easy win, which is how Gil starts go. Wednesday has the potential to be the same if Carlos Rodon is as good against the Twins as he was three weeks ago (6.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 1 HR), or if the Yankees offense hits Chris Paddack the way they did in that same game Rodon started (5 IP, 12 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR). Fourteen baserunners in five innings? I’ll sign up for that again.

After series wins over the Padres and Angels, the Yankees finished their nine-game West Coast road trip with a sweep of the Giants.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I find it hard to believe Aaron Judge was ever close to signing with the Giants. I think he and his agent played the Yankees perfectly from Opening Day 2022 when he turned down a fair contract extension right through the moment Hal Steinbrenner called Judge in a panic and gave him a ninth year on his contract offer. When you look at the state of the Giants, their anemic offense and puzzling roster, there’s just no way Judge was going really going to give up everything he had and had built with the Yankees to play for at best, the third-best team in the NL West for the rest of his career.

Judge gave his hometown a look at what could have been (but likely never was actually going to be) as he spent the weekend destroying the team he grew up rooting for: 6-for-10, three home runs, six RBIs, three walks and a .600/.692/1.500 slash line.

“I grew up a Giants fan and loved coming to games out here,” Judge said. “It’s pretty cool, being on the opposite side of the field.”

2. Judge wasn’t the only Yankee to have a big weekend. Juan Soto went 6-for-12, with a triple, two home runs, four RBIs and a .500/.462/1.1.67 slash line. No hit was bigger than Soto’s two-run, go-ahead home run in the ninth inning off Camilo Doval on Sunday.

“I can go back over the years, how many times we probably lost that game, facing the closer up two runs and go 1-2-3,” Judge said. “This team is different.”

This team is different because of the Soto-Judge, 2-3 combination. Judge (1.075) and Soto (1.031) have the two highest OPS in the majors. The Yankees have the ability to make the modern day Maris-Mantle combination a thing for a long time. If they don’t, and if Soto isn’t a Yankee in 2025, I will be forced to walk away from the Yankees and baseball. If the team that generates more revenue than any other team doesn’t agree to pay Soto whatever number he is looking for there will be point in rooting for or caring about said team.

3. “That’s what he does. We’ve seen it all year long,” Judge said of Soto. “He comes up in big moments. Against one of the best closers in the game, throwing up to 102 miles an hour … That was impressive.”

Everything about the 2024 Yankees that is different than the 2023 Yankees and other iterations of the roster during the Aaron Boone era is because of Soto. The wins, the big moments, the offensive outbursts can all be traced back to Soto’s presence. But nothing Soto has done has been more important than his penchant to play every day.

Last season, Soto played in all 162 games for the Padres, a feat that seemed impossible for any Yankee to accomplish because of the oft-injured issues of the roster and because the team’s manager and front office would see to it that no one played every game of an entire season. This season has been different. I no longer check on the lineup a few hours before the game under the assumption at least one everyday player won’t be playing. The Yankees have played 61 games and Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Gleyber Torres (unfortunately) have played in all of them. Anthony Volpe has missed one due to illness. Alex Verdugo missed three on paternity leave. Anthony Rizzo has had (only) two games off (unfortunately). Even Giancarlo Stanton has only had eight days off. It’s refreshing, and it has a lot to do with Soto.

4. “We’re having a great time,” Soto said. “We have great moments. We’re just having fun, that’s all I can tell you.”

They’re having fun, I’m having fun, all Yankees fans are having fun. But again, this fun better not end at the end of 2024.

5. “I know we’ve got something special in that room,” Boone said. “Where that takes us? We’ll see.”

Soto, Judge and the rotation can take the Yankees where they want to go, where they haven’t been in going on 15 years. But in order to do so, the Yankees are either going to need to outhit their own manager’s stupidity (like they did on Sunday), have their manager finally understand simple logic (unlikely) or get significant bullpen upgrades (very possible). The Yankees nearly dropped the series finale to the Giants because of the bullpen Brian Cashman built and because of the way Boone deploys it.

After overcoming a two-run deficit thanks to another road stinker from Nestor Cortes (4.1 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 2 HR), Boone decided to use Dennis Santana for a second inning of work in a 3-3 game in the sixth. It’s problematic that Santana was a Yankee to begin with this season, considering he has a career 5.15 ERA in 173 innings, but it’s even more problematic he’s still a Yankee with a 5.01 ERA this season. He can’t strike anyone out (just 15 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings), and yet, he’s frequently placed in situations where a strikeout is greatly needed. He was miraculously able to get the last two outs of the fifth unscathed, but why Boone went back to him for the sixth, I have no idea.

Santana allowed back-to-back singles to open the sixth before getting a pair of outs on a pop-up and flyball. But then he hit the light-hitting, 9-hitter to load the bases with two outs. That brought up Heliot Ramos, who is pretty much the only player in the Giants lineup capable of anything. Sure enough, Ramos smoked a two-run single to left field to give the Giants their second two-run lead of the game.

6. Michael Tonkin isn’t good, but Tonkin boasts a 4.24 ERA in 250 1/3 career innings and has a 3.00 ERA in 24 innings this season (and a 1.20 ERA in 15 innings for the Yankees). Tonkin can’t be trusted, and he’s treated as such, only pitching in games the Yankees are losing or winning by five-plus runs. Meanwhile, Santana, with a much worse career and in the middle of a much worse season is treated like a middle relief weapon, when he’s only a weapon for the opponent.

Neither Santana nor Tonkin can be trusted. But the same goes for Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez, or Nick Burdi before he got hurt yet again. The bullpen is a huge problem because there are very few capable arms in it. The more incapable arms, the more there is a chance for Boone to screw it all up. Even if you’re the 25th or 26th man on the roster, if you’re on the roster, he will use you and use you at an inopportune time.

7. What made Boone’s decision to go to Santana even more questionable is that the bullpen was extremely well rested and there is a day off on Monday. He could have gone with his elite relievers to go for the sweep and an enjoyable cross-country flight home to end the road trip, and he chose not to. Luckily for him, his offense outhit his decisions to save the day. With this bullpen and the amount of close games the Yankees play, the offense is going to have to outhit Boone a lot to get to where they want to be. And in October, when every decision is the season-defining, they are going to have to outhit him against the front-end starting pitching and elite relievers every game. They haven’t been able to do that in the five postseasons they have appeared in with him as manager, but unless he changes his thought process, they will have to outhit him to end the championship drought.

8. Cortes stunk on Sunday, but Marcus Stroman was really good on Friday (7.1 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K) and Cody Poteet was solid once again on Saturday (5 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 1 HR).

“I’m not looking too far ahead,” Poteet said. “I’m just taking it a day at a time, trying to get better each day and enjoying being around so many great players.”

Poteet’s line in two Yankees starts: 11 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 10 K, 2 HR. He throws strikes and doesn’t nibble. He’s everything you want from a fifth starter, and exactly what the Yankees need for the time being.

9. For the time being the right side of the infield in Torres and Rizzo will continue to get every chance to turn their seasons around. They are extremely fortunate the best two hitters in baseball are on their team and the team is winning or they would be the focal point of the team. Instead, they are being allowed to figure out their issues, both offensively and defensively in the bottom third of the lineup.

I think it would take the two of them continuing at their current underperforming paces for the Yankees to find other options come the end of July. Even then, I could see the Yankees playing them every day through the rest of the season no matter how bleak their production is. For Torres, he’s playing himself out of a big free-agent contract at the end of this season, and for Rizzo, he’s playing himself out of the majors when his contract ends at the end of this season.

10. There’s nothing like going 7-2 on a nine-game West Coast road trip over 10 days, completing a ninth-inning comeback for the most memorable win of the season and then boarding a cross-country flight, getting the day off on Monday. The Yankees don’t play on the West Coast again until September 17, and they don’t have a game scheduled to start later than 8:10 p.m. between now and then. I’m happy that normal, East Coast start times are back.

The Yankees’ offense finally broke out in Anaheim in the series finale, and a five-run seventh inning on Thursday led to an 8-3 win.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last July, Carlos Rodon made his third start as a Yankee against the Angels in Anaheim, and it was a disaster. Five days after getting beat up by the eventual 103-loss Rockies, Rodon got beat up by the Mike Trout-less Angels: 4.1 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 5 BB, 3 K, 2 HR.

Rodon walked off the mound after recording just one out in the fifth inning and responded to heckling fans behind the Yankees dugout by blowing them a kiss.

“A fan was angry as they should be,” Rodon said after that game. “I was just angry at myself and blew a kiss, unfortunately.”

In the least surprising moment of all time, his manager protected him by saying at least he didn’t do anything worse than blow a kiss. (That got me thinking about Jorge Lopez’s wild Wednesday for the Mets, and how Aaron Boone would undoubtedly have defended and supported Lopez’s on-field and postgame reactions if he were a Yankee.)

2. Rodon has been solid for the Yankees in his second season of his $162 million deal. Not as good as he should be for someone who signed a $162 million deal and makes more than $800,000 per start, but solid. He pitched much better in his second Yankees start against the Mike Trout-less Angels on Thursday (6 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR), didn’t blow any kisses to the crowd and the Yankees won 8-3.

3. Rodon put the Yankees in an early hole when he gave up a solo home run to Logan O’Hoppe in the second inning. The Yankees were held hitless through 3 1/3 innings by Patrick Sandoval (as I warned on Thursday, Sandoval hasn’t been good this year, but he has pitched decently well in three career starts against the Yankees), but that slump came to an end when Aaron Judge blasted his 18th home run of the season in the fourth inning with Juan Soto on first base to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead.

“He’s just a special player doing special things,” Boone said of Judge’s historic May. “I kind of felt like we needed a shot of energy. Judgie’s homer got the boys going a little bit.”

4. A few innings later, Sandoval finally came out of the game (6 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 1 HR), Adam Cimber came in and the Yankees opened the floodgates. Alex Verdugo walked to lead off the seventh and DJ LeMahieu singled, but Gleyber Torres took a lazy, halfhearted swing on the first pitch of his at-bat and popped it up. Jose Trevino walked to load the bases and Oswaldo Cabrera drew a bases-loaded walk to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead. Anthony Volpe followed with a second straight bases-loaded walk to increase the lead to 4-1 and Ron Washington finally removed Cimber from the game. (No idea what Washington was waiting for?) Jose Suarez came in in relief and Juan Soto greeted him by hitting a first-pitch, 89-mph cutter down the right-field line for a bases-clearing, three-run triple to give the Yankees a 7-1 lead.

5. A six-run lead with nine outs to get seemed like the remaining three innings would be a formality, but the combination of Rodon, Boone and the Yankees bullpen made sure it wasn’t.

Rodon opened the seventh by going walk, single, double. The Angels trailed 7-2 and had runners on second and third and no outs. Boone went to Ian Hamilton and he struck out O’Hoppe and Jo Adell before walking Zach Neto load the bases. The Angels sent ex-Yankee Willie Calhoun to the plate as a pinch hitter, so Boone countered by going to the bullpen for Caleb Ferguson for a lefty-on-lefty matchup. Of course, Ferguson fell behind Calhoun 3-1 and allowed a run-scoring single on a line drive to left. The Yankees’ lead had been cut to 7-3 and the Angels had the tying run at the plate in Karen Paris. Fortunately, Ferguson’s lack of command and overall sucking ended with Calhoun and he retired Paris to end the inning and the threat. The Yankees added another run in the eighth in the eventual 8-3 win.

6. The historic streak of having a starting pitcher pitch at least five innings and allow no more than two runs came to an end though I think everyone always thought it would come to an end in a Rodon start.

“Now it’s time to start another streak,” Judge said of the rotation. “They’re the best in the game right now. The news about Clarke [Schmidt] definitely hurts, but I know guys will definitely pick up the slack and keep it rolling.”

7. The news about Schmidt being down for at least the next two months with a lat strain does hurt. Just yesterday in writing about who would come out of the rotation when Gerrit Cole returns, I wrote:

Usually these things have a way of taking care of themselves (injuries, lack of production, etc.) and Cole isn’t coming back any time soon, and maybe by the time he does, the Yankees will be in dire need of rotation help (knock on all of the wood).

Now no one needs to come out of the rotation, and you just hope no one else goes down. The Yankees’ pitching has been healthier than any other staff and better than any other staff this season, so something like this was bound to happen.

“It stinks for him,” Boone said of Schmidt. “But hopefully we’ll have hm down and get him on the mend, and hopefully get him back at some point.”

8. Anthony Rizzo was finally given the night off with LeMahieu moving over from third base to first base. LeMahieu went 1-for-3 with a walk and two runs. At third base, Cabrera went hitless but drew that all-important, bases-loaded walk in the seventh to extend the Yankees’ lead at the time from one run to two. The offense had its best night in nearly a week and the infield defense was flawless without Rizzo in the lineup. Coincidence? No.

9. The Yankees avoided being the first team to lose a series to the Angels in Anaheim this season and have their bullpen in very good shape for the next series. Over the last six days entering Friday night’s game, Clay Holmes will have thrown just 22 pitches and Luke Weaver just 26, and Tommy Kahnle has thrown just 17 over the last nine days. Those three are the only relievers you have to worry about being available. Anyone else who comes out of the bullpen is going to be an adventure (and likely a disastrous one) no matter how rested they are.

10. Now it’s off to San Francisco where the Yankees will finish this 10-day, nine-game West Coast road trip with three games against the one-game-over-.500 Giants. Unfortunately, the Yankees are getting the worst part of the Giants’ rotation to face with Jordan Hicks on Friday, Logan Webb on Saturday and Blake Snell on Sunday. For as weak as the Giants’ offense is, I expect these games to go similarly to how the Angels and Padres series played out, which means a couple of more late-night close games.

“It’s been a good month with a lot of wins, so I’m happy about that,” Judge said. “We’ll keep it rolling in June.”

I like the sound of that.

Luis Gil was impressive again and the offense did just enough to squeak by the Angels with a 2-1 win on Wednesday.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last week I referred to Luis Gil as the “interim ace” of the Yankees, but maybe he’s just the actual ace of the team moving forward, no matter who’s in the rotation. On Wednesday night in Anaheim, Gil went a career-long eight innings and allowed just two hits and one earned run. The Yankees won 2-1 and finished May having won all six of Gil’s starts.

2. “Am I fully 100 percent surprised?” Gil asked of his dominance this season. “I’m not.”

Gil finished May with this ridiculous line: 38.2 IP, 14 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 12 BB, 44 K, 2 HR, 0.70 ERA, 0.672 WHIP. Batters hit .109/.184/.178 against him in the month.

3. “When you’re able to command pitches out there,” Gil said, “really good things happen.”

Gil leads the league in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (4.1), has struck out 79 in 63 1/3 innings and has only given up four home runs on the season (a 13-home run pace projected out over 200 innings). Of Gil’s 11 starts, the only time he gave up more than three earned runs was in Milwaukee, and the only time he really had no command was after the Yankees idiotically gave him eight days off between starts. He hasn’t just filled in for Gerrit Cole, he has been better than Gerrit Cole.

4. If the Yankees had to play one game for their season right now, I don’t know how you don’t pick Gil to start it. Certainly, he may be a little too amped (think Luis Severino in the 2017 wild-card game), but if he’s on, he’s as good as any starting pitcher in baseball.

“Having Gerrit Cole around and being able to listen to the points that he’s giving me,” Gil said, “it’s been great.”

5. Someone is leaving the rotation when Cole returns. I don’t envision the Yankees going with a six-man rotation, but maybe they will surprise us. If all five members of the current rotation are heathy, given the combination of production and money owed, I’m not sure who the odd man out will be. (I know who I would make it be, but again veteran status, reputation and money owed are more important than winning typically for the Yankees.) Usually these things have a way of taking care of themselves (injuries, lack of production, etc.) and Cole isn’t coming back any time soon, and maybe by the time he does, the Yankees will be in dire need of rotation help (knock on all of the wood). All I know is right now, Gil can’t lose his spot for any reason, including workload. He has been the team’s best starter. He’s been arguably the best starter in the majors.

6. Gil is only getting better too. He shut out the Orioles for 6 1/3 innings in Baltimore to lead the Yankees to their only win in that four-game series. Then in his next start, he allowed one hit over six innings to the Astros. He followed up that up by shutting out the Rays over six innings in Tampa (a magnificent start I got to watch in person), and then he struck out a career-high 14 against the White Sox to set the Yankees’ rookie single-game strikeout record. He pitched 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Mariners last Thursday and then there was Wednesday’s masterpiece against the Angels.

“I’m friendly with a couple of guys on other teams,” Anthony Volpe said, “and they’re saying after games that it’s the most electric fastball they’ve ever faced.”

7. Volpe has been on a nice run of his own and extended his hitting streak to 21 games with a leadoff single on Wednesday. He later added a triple that he would score on after the Angels sloppily threw the ball around. Volpe has had multiple hits in five of the last seven games and has returned to being the guy he was for the first week of the season.

Volpe’s season can be broken down into three parts:

March 28-April 14: .382/.477/1.041
April 15-May 5: .163/.247/.238
May 7-May 29: .341/.378/.550

8. The Yankees needed Gil to be as dominant as he was and for Volpe to score on his wild triple because the offense was nowhere to be found in terms of driving in runs for a third straight game. A day after scoring three runs and stranding 10 baserunners, the Yankees scored two runs and stranded 13 baserunners, including stranding all nine of their walks.

Nothing was more frustrating than in the first inning when Volpe singled, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge walked and the Yankees had the bases loaded with no outs. Followings two straight walks, Giancarlo Stanton decided to swing at the first pitch he saw and popped it up in the infield. The infield fly rule was enforced and Stanton was called out, but in getting back to second base, Soto and Angels’ shortstop Zach Neto bumped into each other and Soto was also called out for interfering with the play. The call of interference was the right call by the rulebook, but also nonsensical since Soto didn’t have a lane to get back to the base and Stanton was already called out because of the infield fly rule. As mentioned on the YES broadcast, on a play like that, the play should be ruled dead since the batter is already out and the ball doesn’t even need to be caught. Instead, it was a double play against the Yankees and they wouldn’t score in the inning.

9. I figured that play and not scoring with the bases loaded and no outs in the first would come back to haunt the Yankees, and it nearly did with Clay Holmes on the mound in the ninth.

Here is what I wrote about Holmes on Wednesday:

I don’t trust Holmes with anything less than a four-run lead … If the Yankees don’t have a big lead, the bullpen will either blow it or come as close as possible to blowing it, and Boone will see to it.

Holmes allowed a leadoff single to Luis Rengifo on a ground ball to begin the ninth after getting ahead of him 0-2. (Reminder: having a closer that relies on weak contact isn’t a great strategy since bad things happen when the ball is put into play.) Holmes then threw a wild pitch to move Rengifo to second. With the tying run on second and the winning run on first with no outs and ex-Yankee Willie Calhoun up, I figured the law of ex-Yankees would come into play with every former Yankee coming up big against their former team. Thankfully, Calhoun hit into a 4-6-3 double play. Rengifo moved to third with two outs, but never scored as Logan O’Hoppe hit a rocket to third base that DJ LeMahieu in just his second game of the season was able to make a spectacular play on to field the ball and throw out O’Hoppe. Ballgame over. Yankees win.

10. On Thursday night the Yankees will face left-handed Patrick Sandoval in the series finale. Sandoval hasn’t been good this year (5.60 ERA), but he has pitched decently well in three career starts against the Yankees (18.1 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 11 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 3.93 ERA, 1.091 WHIP).

Carlos Rodon gets the start for the Yankees. His lone start again the Angels as a Yankee came last July  19 in Anaheim. That was the game Rodon got lit up (4.1 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 5 BB , 3 K, 2 HR) and then responded to heckling fans behind the Yankees dugout by blowing them a kiss. I trust Rodon about as much as I trust Holmes, so hopefully the offense shows up for the first time in this series and takes Rodon, Aaron Boone and the bullpen out of the equation.

The Yankees’ nine-game West Coast road trip started out with two wins over the Padres, but has been followed by losses to the Padres and last-place Angels.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last July 17 when the Yankees really sucked, they faced Griffin Canning and the Angels in the Bronx. Canning entered that start with a 4.62 ERA and 5.03 FIP. Over 5 2/3 innings against the Yankees, he struck out a career-high 12. The Yankees put nine runners on base against him, but could never seem to get the big hit, losing 4-3.

On Tuesday night in Anaheim, Canning was on the mound to face the Yankees for the first time since that start. Like that start, he entered Tuesday with a 5.08 ERA and 5.35 FIP. Like that start, the Yankees put 12 runners on base against him in five innings. And like that start, the Yankees could never get the big hit, losing 4-3.

2. After being held to one run by Joe Musgrove and his 6.14 ERA and 5.81 FIP on Sunday in San Diego 4-1 loss, the Yankees’ offense minus Juan Soto hit like the Yankees’ offense minus Juan Soto on Tuesday in Anaheim. Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill will tell you how “explosive the offense has been,” but has it? The Yankees have scored nine runs in their last three games and 36 in their last eight, and to no surprise they’re 4-4 over that span.

3. The loss to the Angels was frustrating because the Yankees had a one-run lead with four outs to go and couldn’t hold the lead. They couldn’t hold the lead because of Anthony Rizzo who booted an inning-ending grounder, giving the Angels a fourth out to work with, and with that fourth out they hit a two-run double to take the lead.

“That play needs to be made,” Rizzo said.

Yeah, no shit, Anthony.

“The first couple of weeks were pretty brutal, but overall the last five or six weeks, I would say pretty normal,” Rizzo said about his defense this season. “A play like today’s, I’ve got to make it.”

Rizzo’s defense has been atrocious all season. He has bobbled and booted many routine plays and has scooped and picked balls like he’s blindfolded.

“He’s still great over there,” Aaron Boone said. “Just a couple of hiccups here lately.”

Except he isn’t great over there and it’s not just a couple of hiccups.

4. You could live with Rizzo’s horrific defense if he were hitting, but he isn’t. And you could live with his lack of offense if he are still playing Gold Glove defense, but he isn’t. He isn’t doing anything to help the team, just hurt it.

Rizzo hasn’t homered in 17 game. He doesn’t have an extra-base hit in the last 16 games. He has three walks in the last three weeks. His slash line is down to .245/.310/.370. He has been awful all season.

5. What’s startling is he’s not even the worst everyday player on the Yankees. That title goes to Gleyber Torres.

If you like Torres then you don’t like the Yankees because Torres is detrimental to the team’s success at the plate, in the field and on the bases. His two-week “hot streak” has his OPS out of the .500s, now at .631, but while his bat has been better of late, everything else about his game remains as sloppy as ever. On Sunday, Torres was picked off at first and later made the late-inning error that led to the Padres taking the lead in their eventual comeback win. On Tuesday, Luis Rojas inexplicably sent Torres home on an Austin Wells double, but of course it was Torres of all runners getting thrown out at the plate. When disaster strikes, Torres is always in the middle of it.

6. Boone is also in the middle of it. If you didn’t notice, all four of the Yankees losses in their last eight games are by three runs or fewer. Only one of the four wins was by three runs or fewer. The Yankees win when they hit and take Boone out of the equation. When they don’t hit and let Boone get his hands on the game, well, you get games like the last two. The more close games the Yankees are forced to play, the more they will lose with Boone having to make important bullpen decisions.

Last week against the Mariners, the Yankees nearly overcame a late-game deficit after being stifled by Bryan Woo, but Boone made sure it wasn’t possible. Trailing by two runs, Boone let Dennis Santana double the deficit. Then after the Yankees cut the deficit from four to one, he used Clayton Andrews to push the deficit back to two. (Immediately after the game, Andrews was sent to the minors. Good enough to pitch in the seventh inning of a one-run game, but not good enough to be a major leaguer after the ninth inning.)

On Sunday, Boone used Victor Gonzalez as the first guy out of the bullpen with a one-run lead and the tying run on base. Gonzalez let that run score and then another two, and the Yankees lost.

On Tuesday, after Rizzo’s error, Boone removed Luke Weaver in favor of Clay Holmes. (Ever since Boone pissed away the game in Milwaukee last month, he has been using Holmes for multi-inning save opportunities.) I don’t trust Holmes with clean innings, let alone with two runners on, considering it usually takes him a few pitches to gain his control and command, and sure enough, the first pitch was an elevated sinker that got crushed for a go-ahead, two-run double.

“I had to make a pitch, and I think he just put a good swing on that sinker there,” Holmes said. “He put it in the air, which doesn’t happen very often.”

8. The bullpen being untrustworthy and not very good isn’t all on Boone. While he rarely puts his players in the best possible position to succeed, he didn’t build the bullpen he’s working with. The Dodgers didn’t give away Gonzalez and Caleb Ferguson because they thought they would help them win the World Series. They’re the Dodgers. It’s not the Pirates giving up on and giving away Holmes. Nick Burdi wasn’t available as a free-agent signing because he’s often healthy and has a history of impeccable control. Dennis Santana isn’t on his fourth team in four years because he’s really good.

The only trustworthy relievers the Yankees boast at the moment are Holmes, Weaver and Tommy Kahnle, and I don’t trust Holmes with anything less than a four-run lead, a month ago I figured Weaver would be pitching in an independent league by Independence Day and Kahnle has thrown 19 pitches this season. If the Yankees don’t have a big lead, the bullpen will either blow it or come as close as possible to blowing it, and Boone will see to it.

8. I got a good laugh out of Boone batting DJ LeMahieu ninth in his season debut on Tuesday. LeMahieu hit behind Rizzo (.680 OPS), Torres (.631 OPS) and Austin Wells (.591 OPS). It wasn’t the “HAHA THAT’S HILARIOUS!” type of laugh, it was a “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS GUY IS THE MANAGER OF THE YANKEES STILL” type of laugh.

LeMahieu looks like himself at the plate. He drove the first pitch he saw to right field, which is where you want LeMahieu to be driving the ball) at 99.5 mph. He drew a walk in his second plate appearance, hit a 99.5 mph flyout in his third and a 101.7 mph flyout in his fourth (a ball that had a .680 expected batting average, but was caught).

When LeMahieu is healthy and going right, he should be hitting no lower than fifth in the lineup. I would hit him first, but Boone’s love for Anthony Volpe will outweigh what’s best for the team. And because Boone has to alternate righty-lefty throughout the lineup, a lefty will always hit fourth, and because Rizzo flat out sucks, Alex Verdugo is the only option there.

9. Well, he’s the only option until Jasson Dominguez is ready. Once Dominguez is ready, he should be an everyday Yankee. Will he be? Of course not. That would make too much sense. Veteran status, reputation and money owed will always trump talent and ability with the Yankees, so when Dominguez is ready to be activated, expect him to go to Triple-A.

10. The Yankees will try to end their two-game slide in which they blew late one-run leads in both games on Wednesday night in Anaheim as this 10-day, nine-game road trip continues. They will have to do it against the solid left-hander Tyler Anderson. I expect Rizzo to be on the bench for this one. Lefty starter or not, he deserves to be.

The Yankees suffered their worst loss of the season on Monday, losing 5-4 after blowing a three-run lead to the Mariners with one out and no one on in the ninth inning.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When Jon Berti ended the fourth inning by hitting into a double play with the bases loaded, and when Giancarlo Stanton hit into an inning-ending double play in the fifth inning with runners on the corners, and when Stanton again ended the seventh inning with a double play with the bases loaded, I figured those three enormous missed opportunities would come back to haunt the Yankees later in the game. But after the Yankees were able to extend their 3-1 lead to 4-1 going into the ninth, I brushed those fears aside. There was no way the anemic Mariners offense was going to score three runs with three outs left to play with.

I was wrong. They scored four.

2. With one out and no one on, the Mariners soft contacted Clay Holmes all the way to a blown save and then a loss. It started with a Julio Rodriguez swinging bunt in front of home after Holmes couldn’t put him away with two strikes. Then it was Cal Raleigh drawing a walk after Holmes couldn’t put him away with two strikes either. Luke Riley hit a slow roller to second that Gleyber Torres sloppily threw away as Anthony Rizzo gave the least amount of effort possible to keep the ball from getting by him. Mitch Haniger blooped a single into no man’s land between Aaron Judge and Juan Soto and Dylan Moore drew a walk after being behind 0-2 in the count. Dominic Canzone tied the game with a sacrifice fly to the wall in right and Ty France gave the Mariners the lead with a single up the middle. Holmes faced eight batters, retired one, walked two, gave up four hits and four runs.

“That one’s on me,” Holmes said.

3. The loss felt very much like the Yankees loss to the Reds at the Stadium on July 12, 2022 when Holmes entered in the ninth with a 3-0 lead, faced five batters, hit two of them, walked another and gave up two hits. He didn’t record an out, allowed four runs and the Yankees’ 3-0 ninth-inning lead became a 4-3 loss.

“My stuff, I thought it was good enough tonight,” Holmes said. “I just didn’t make the pitch when I needed to.”

4. Anyone who has watched every Holmes appearance this season knows he hasn’t been as good as his 0.00 ERA (entering last night) suggested. He needed Soto to throw out a runner at the plate in his very first appearance on Opening Day to prevent a blown save. He has been on the fortunate end of line drives being hit right at Yankees infielders to double off runners. He has been lucky to have as many ground balls hit at fielders as he has had. The luck wore off on Monday, and the result was a disastrous loss. The Yankees have only lost 16 games this season, but this one to the Mariners was easily the worst.

5. It’s hard to be overly upset (except if you had the Yankees’ money line like I did), considering the team’s record and Holmes’ overall performance through this point in the season. Winners of seven straight, the Yankees weren’t going to win every game for the rest of the season, but it would have been nice if their next loss was because their starting pitcher laid an egg or their offense no-showed and not an excruciating, painful ninth-inning loss in which they had a three-run lead with two outs to go and no one on.

6. The loss was a reminder of what it’s like to have a closer who relies on ground balls and not strikeouts to generate outs. If you allow the ball to be put in play, bad things can happen. There have been a lot of soft contact hits against Holmes this year, though, prior to Monday, he always found a way to get out of the inning before the game was ruined, either by making pitches or getting lucky. Against the Mariners, he couldn’t make pitches, couldn’t put away three hitters with two strikes and couldn’t get lucky.

“I was ahead on a couple of guys there 0-2, 1-2, and put them on base,” Holmes said. “They could hav been big outs.”

I’m not upset that ground balls found holes, Rodriguez reached on a swinging bunt or Haniger blooped a ball perfectly between two fielders. I’m upset that Holmes walked two batters with a three-run lead.

7. Because the Mariners rely on their pitching and lack offense, it’s likely all four games in this series will be close. Holmes pitched on Sunday, so him pitching on Monday meant by the idiotic Yankees rules, he wasn’t going to pitch on Tuesday no matter what. Because he threw 31 pitches, he probably won’t be available on Wednesday either. Not only did Holmes ruin Monday’s game, but the Yankees lost and now don’t have their closer for at least the next two games.

The Yankees will have Luke Weaver available though, and somehow Weaver went from barely being a major leaguer to now being the Yankees’ latest version of Jonathan Loaisiga or Michael King. This is Weaver’s line over his last 11 appearances: 18 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 24 K. He’s throwing strikes, missing bats, not walking anyone and hasn’t allowed a run for the equivalent of two games.

8. “To be honest, it’s baseball,” Marcus Stroman said. “It was very weak contact. Essentially, if they hit the ball harder on some of those plays, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Stroman is right, and he said all the rights things even after having to watch his 7 1/3 innings of one-run ball disappear in the ninth. It was the longest Stroman has pitched into a game this season through 10 starts.

“He was dealing,” Aaron Boone said. “He had it all going.”

9. When disaster strikes the Yankees on the field, Torres is usually involved, and he was again in the ninth inning of this one. After fielding a slow roller that should have been put in his back pocket, Torres threw off balance to the left of Rizzo, whose picking ability has evaded him this season. It was a losing play by a losing play in what was a horrible loss. Torres did make up for it at the plate by going 0-for-3 with a walk.

10. The Yankees left 13 runners on in the game (the Mariners only left five). They hit into three double plays (two from Stanton and one from Berti) and were caught stealing on both of their steal attempts (one by Anthony Volpe and one by Berti). The offense was sloppy and Holmes’ meltdown was the cherry on top of a wildly frustrating night.

“A loss is a loss,” Judge said. “You’ve got one of the best closers in the game, and stuff like that is bound to happen at some point.”

Holmes 0.00 ERA is gone. The Yankees’ perfect record of 28-0 when leading after eight innings is over. The seven-game winning streak is no more. Start a new one on Tuesday.

The Yankees haven’t lost in more than a week.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. That’s how it’s supposed to go if you’re a true championship contender: play a historically bad team and beat the crap out of them.

On Friday, I wrote: 

At the absolute minimum, I expect the Yankees to win the weekend series, and will be disappointed if the Yankees aren’t riding a seven-game winning streak at the end of play on Sunday.

The Yankees have that seven-game winning streak after sweeping the White Sox, outscoring them 17-5.

2. Aaron Judge got the series started with a bang, homering in the first inning of the first game of the series, continuing his return to his normal self. In the last week (starting last Sunday in Tampa), Judge went 12-for-24 with five doubles, four home runs, seven RBIs and eight walks (with just six strikeouts). A comical .500/.625/1.208 slash line and 1.833 OPS.

“When Aaron’s swinging it like he is right now, the guys definitely get a jolt out of that,” Aaron Boone said. “And we’ve seen a lot of that in the last week.”

Nestor Cortes didn’t allow an earned run over seven innings (7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K) and Clay Holmes slammed the door on the worst team in baseball. It was a nice, tidy 4-2 win over a team on pace to lose 114 games.

3. On Saturday, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez threw out the first pitch on a day Luis Gil started. A three-time champion with the Yankees, Hernandez entered Saturday still holding the Yankees’ rookie record for strikeouts in a game (13), but after nearly 26 years (Aug. 13, 1998), Gil now holds the record.

Like Don Larsen and Yogi Berra throwing out the first pitch to commemorate Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series on the same day David Cone would throw a perfect game of his own, Gil went on to strike out 14 White Sox on Saturday to pass Hernandez.

“I was very happy to meet him today and establish a connection,” Gil said of meeting Hernandez.

Yes, it was the White Sox Gil broke the record against, but 14 strikeouts are 14 strikeouts. Cortes didn’t strike out 14 White Sox on Friday. Carlos Rodon didn’t strike out 14 White Sox on Sunday.

4. Gil leads the league in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (4.8), has struck out 62 in 49 innings and has only given up three home runs on the season (a 12-home run pace projected out over 200 innings). Of Gil’s nine starts, the only time he gave up more than three earned runs was in Milwaukee, and the only time he really had no command was after the Yankees idiotically gave him eight days off between starts. He hasn’t just filled in for Gerrit Cole, he has been Gerrit Cole.

If the Yankees had to play one game for their season right now, I don’t know how you don’t pick Gil to start it. Certainly, he may be a little too amped (think Luis Severino in the 2017 wild-card game) and may have trouble commanding his fastball (which he tends to do regularly), but if he’s on, he’s as good as any starting pitcher in baseball.

5. Someone is leaving the rotation when Cole returns. I don’t envision the Yankees going with a six-man rotation, but maybe they will surprise us. If all five members of the current rotation are heathy, given the combination of production and money owed, I’m not sure who the odd man out will be. Usually these things have a way of taking care of themselves (injuries, lack of production, etc.) and Cole isn’t coming back any time soon, and maybe by the time he does, the Yankees will be in dire need of rotation help (knock on all of the wood). All I know is right now, Gil can’t lose his spot. He has been the team’s best starter.

Gil is only getting better too. He shut out the Orioles for 6 1/3 innings in Baltimore to lead the Yankees to their only win in that four-game series. Then in his next start, he allowed one hit over six innings to the Astros. He followed up that up by shutting out the Rays over six innings in Tampa (a magnificent start I got to watch in person), and then there was Sunday’s 14-strikeout performance.

6. “It was fun,” Juan Soto said of Gil’s dominance of the 6-1 win over the White Sox. “I mean, I was just standing out there.”

Soto had the luxury of standing out in right field smiling as Gil racked up strikeouts and because of his own destruction of the White Sox. Soto rebounded from his first Yankees slump with a 5-for-11 series, hitting a double and two home runs.

“I’ve been working my swing, working with my hitting coaches, watching videos,” Soto said. “I think we are in a good spot.”

Soto’s slash line is back up to a ridiculous .311/.411/.552.

7. On Sunday, with a chance to sweep the White Sox, Rodon took the ball and put the Yankees in an early two-run hole. He rebounded to have a solid start and his line from the day (6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 1 HR) looks nice, but allowing a home run, walk, triple sequence to Corey Jules, Korey Lee and Zach Remillard is worrisome. Rodon had to pitch around a two-on, no-out situation in the fourth, but after that it was smooth sailing and a chance to pitch to the scoreboard with Jon Berti opening the game with a three-run home run in the eventual 7-2 win.

“My goal is to go out there and think about getting 18 outs every time I come to the field,” Rodon said. “The goal is to start with 18 outs, and we’ll go from there.”

Last season, in 14 starts, Rodon got 18 outs three times. This season, he’s already accomplished it six times in 10 starts, including his last three starts and five of his last six.

8. Even with his shiny 3.27 ERA, Rodon hasn’t really dominated this year outside of a seven-inning, one-hit shutout of the A’s (the third-worst offense in the American League). I still don’t trust him. After last season’s antics of being out of shape, oft-injured, blowing a kiss to heckling fans in Anaheim and turning his back on Matt Blake during a mound visit that went undisciplined by his friend-first manager, it’s going to take a lot more than Rodon simply doing the job he’s grossly overpaid to do for one-third of a season.

“I sit down in the dugout now and look around, and I feel pretty comfortable in this stadium,” Rodon said. “I’m looking around and I’m like, ‘This does’t feel overwhelming anymore. This feels like home.'”

I want Rodon to do well, and I’m glad he mostly is. I also don’t forget the past and am not willing to easily move on from what he did (or didn’t do) last season. Ten starts doesn’t change that.

9. During the Yankees’ seven-game winning streak, they have outscored opponents 41-12 and their starters have an ERA of 0.80. They have built a two-game lead in the AL East and trail the Phillies by one game for the best record in baseball. They are playing as good as they have in two years with a winning percentage of an 111-win team. (Their preseason over/under win total was 90.5.)

10. There are still four games left on the current homestand before the Yankees head West for a 10-day, nine-game West Coast trip to play the Padres, Angels and Giants. The Yankees will host the AL West’s first-place Mariners (they would be 7 1/2 games out in the AL East) for the next four days. The Mariners are AL West good (25-22 with a plus-1 run differential), which means not very good, but they do have excellent starting pitching. It will be a good test for the Yankees’ offense.

After sweeping the Tigers and winning series against the Astros and Rays, the Yankees swept the Twins over the last three days. Winners of 10 of their last 12, the Yankees sit atop the American League.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After beating up on the Tigers and Astros at home last week, the Yankees took care of business at Tropicana Field over the weekend with yours truly in attendance for the Sunday series finale. Winners of seven of their last nine, the Yankees put their recent run on the line against the hottest team in baseball over the last three-plus weeks and didn’t disappoint.

On Tuesday night in the series opener against the Twins, when Ryan Jeffers greeted Carlos Rodon with a leadoff home run to immediately put the Yankees in a one-run hole, I thought Here we go again! But after Jeffers crossed home plate at the end of his home run trot no other Twin crossed the plate for the remainder of the series. The Yankees went on to sweep the Twins, outscoring their 23-year-old doormat 14-1.

2. Rodon gave them a nice performance on Tuesday (6 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 1 HR) and Marcus Stroman turned in his best start in five weeks on Wednesday (6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 2 K), but the star of the rotation in Minnesota was Clarke Schmidt, who put together the best outing of his career on Thursday: 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K.

“I’ve learned so much on the mental side of this game, how to navigate lineups and how to manage an outing throughout the past year and a half,” Schmidt said. “So it’s been really good to see that progression and continue to put some work in.”

Nine times through the rotation now and Schmidt leads Yankees starters in wins (5), ERA (2.49), FIP (3.41), strikeouts (55) and is second in innings pitched (50.2). The rotation has been so good that Nestor Cortes has the worst ERA of the group, and it’s not even bad at 4.02.

3. “His pitches are taking that next step all around,” Austin Wells said of Schmidt. “I think that’s just given him so many options to attack different hitters and different lineups.”

In the past Schmidt has had immense trouble with left-handed hitters and going through a lineup a third time. He overcame his lefty issues and of late he is having success going through lineups that vaunted third time. He has been the Yankees’ best and most consistent starter through more than a quarter of the season, and is as big of a reason as any for the Yankees sitting atop the American League.

4. Aside from winning (which is always the most important thing even if the organization forgets that at times), since the start of the Tigers series, Aaron Judge has returned to being Aaron Judge. Over the last 12 games, he’s hitting an absurd .452/.566/1.024 with nine doubles, five home runs, 11 RBIs, 10 walks and just eight strikeouts. Every ball Judge has to put into play for nearly two weeks seems to either go over the fence, hit it or bounce up against it.

“I’ve seen him obviously do a lot of great things the last six, seven years,” Aaron Boone said, “this trip alone … just seeing it and not missing when they do make a pitch to him.”

With Judge getting hot, Juan Soto has cooled off and is experiencing his first slump as a Yankee. Soto is hitting .111/.219/.148 over the last seven games. Soto carried the Yankees for the first six weeks of the season and Judge has carried them for the last two. One day they will both be at their best at the same. One day.

5. Even with the recent one-week slump, Soto is still hitting .302/.403/.517 on the season, which is a reminder of how great he has been in his first seven-plus weeks as a Yankee. Hal Steinbrenner told Jack Curry what every Yankees fan expects and that’s for Soto to be a Yankee “for the rest of his career.”

“I think it’s worth doing at some point,” Steinbrenner said of discussing an in-season extension. “I wanted to give Juan time to really settle in, have a conversation with him at some point.”

Oh, you think it’s worth talking to Soto and Scott Boras at some point about a contract extension before the best hitter on the planet reaches free agency at age 25 and every team has a chance to sign him? Good to know, Hal!

“They know the phone number and everything,” Soto said when asked about negotiating in season. “They know where to call.”

“We all know he’s generational, right?” Steinbrenner said.

Yes, we all know that, Hal.

“He’s the complete package. I had no doubts he would perform here under pressure; zero doubts with that … He’s fun to watch.”

6. As I have written many times since Soto became a Yankee, if he isn’t a Yankee for 2025 and beyond, it may be time to walk away from the team and the game. If the team that possesses more financial resources than any other and generates more revenue than any other isn’t going to do whatever it takes to sign a 25-year-old Soto then who will they do whatever it takes for?

To think about where the team would be without Soto when Judge was struggling through the first five-plus weeks of the season is scary. Without Soto, the 2024 Yankees are the second-half 2022 Yankees and 2023 Yankees. Without Soto in 2025, they will revert back to that.

7. Soto’s presence makes it so that Judge doesn’t have to be the offense, when you can’t count on for Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo for health reasons, or Gleyber Torres for consistency reasons. Torres only had one hit in the three games in Tampa, but it was a big one: a three-run home run to extend the Yankees lead after Boone and his bullpen nearly blew a six-run lead. Torres then went on pick up a pair of multi-hit games in Minnesota, going 5-for-12 in the series with two doubles. His slash line is still an embarrassing .223/.301/.295 with his OPS sub-.600 at .596, but he needs to start somewhere and maybe that three-run home run on Sunday at the Trop was that somewhere.

“It’s really good to see Gleyber starting to swing like we all know’s he’s capable of,” Boone said, “because he all of a sudden gets it going like that, then we got that real length going in our lineup.”

8. After struggling for a month, Anthony Volpe has gotten hot again as well, hitting .361/.385./.611 over the last eight games. With Judge being in an impossible out, Volpe and Torres getting hot and Jose Trevino hitting like Jorge Posada, Soto has been able to slump and Rizzo and Stanton have been able to remain unreliable without the team racking up losses. This is how a lineup is supposed to work. It’s been so long since the Yankees weren’t reliant on one batter to carry them that I forgot how a real lineup worked.

9. Am I going to harp on Boone’s mismanagement of the bullpen in the first game of the Brewers series back on April 19 all season? Why yes I am. Boone cost the Yankees a win by not going to Clay Holmes in that game, and since, Holmes has appeared in five games in the last 20 days and was only needed in a save situation in four of those games. Holmes has thrown six pitches in the last week and just five innings in May. This should serve as a reminder to Boone and all that you should worry about the game at hand and not about some potential scenario that may never play out. The Baseball Gods don’t like that.

10. Baseball is fun when your team is hitting home runs, getting timely hits and getting the kind of pitching the Yankees are. It likely won’t last forever since it rarely does (outside of 1998), but when things are going right it sure is fun.

I do expect it to last this weekend at the Stadium with the horrendous White Sox visiting. At 14-30 with a negative-87 run differential, they are the worst team in the AL and have had nothing to play for since the first week of the season. At the absolute minimum, I expect the Yankees to win the weekend series, and will be disappointed if the Yankees aren’t riding a seven-game winning streak at the end of play on Sunday.

The Yankees followed up their three-game sweep of the Tigers with a series win over the Astros. The season series with the Astros is now over with the Yankees having won six of seven.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees did their job against the Astros, taking two of three, winning the series and pushing the Astros another game under .500. The offense showed up on Tuesday (10 runs) and Wednesday (nine runs) and then left a whole bunch of baserunners on (eight) on Thursday.

The Yankees finished the season series 6-1 against the Astros. I would have gladly signed up for 4-3 and would have even taken 3-4. But 6-1? Maybe the rivalry that has been one-sided in favor of the Astros for seven years is flipping to the other side?

After sweeping the Tigers, the Yankees went 5-1 at the Stadium, and now have an AL-best .684 winning percentage at home.

2. Juan Soto hit .348/.423/.522 on the homestand and drove in eight runs and it feels like he was just OK in terms of his standard. Soto is so good that him having a .945 OPS against the type of pitching the Yankees faced from Detroit and Houston is just OK.

“It’s just the relentless nature of his at-bats,” Aaron Boone said of Soto. “He doesn’t give a pitch away.”

I think I think he was just OK this week because I expect him to be great, and he is. He’s so good that when he doesn’t come through in a big spot it’s shocking. He has met and exceeded all expectations as a Yankee, and this is a reminder that if he isn’t a Yankee in 2025 and for the rest of his career, I will have no choice but to walk away from the team.

3. “I think before Juan got here, that’s who we always have wanted to be as an offense,” Boone said. “I do think there’s been at least a subtle movement of the needle, because of his presence.”

I wish the other eight Yankees would or could emulate Soto and have the same mentality and presence at the plate that Boone thinks they “subtly” do, but they don’t. Boone can think what he wants, but the other eight hitters are all playing to the back of their baseball cards with Aaron Judge now showing up for the season after five weeks. Judge is who he is when he’s on (which is awesome), Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo are who they are, Alex Verdugo hasn’t changed, Gleyber Torres has been an outright disaster and after impressive starts to the season Anthony Volpe and Oswaldo Cabrera are back to their 2023 ways. (I will exclude the catching tandem since I don’t expect them to contribute offensively, and they rarely have.)

4. Volpe hit a pair of home runs in the Astros series after hitting one home run over the last month. But even with those long balls off of Justin Verlander and Ronel Blanco, Volpe’s hitting .224/.311/.343 since the sixth game of the year. Last year, he was a .209/.283/.383 hitter, so not much has changed.

When Volpe is ahead in the count (65 plate appearances), he’s a .311/.523/.533 hitter.

When Volpe is even in the count (43 plate appearances), he’s a .325/.342/.475 hitter.

When Volpe is behind in the count (63 plate appearances), he’s a .175/.175/.270 hitter.

Certainly, nearly every major-league hitter is going to be a better hitter when even or ahead in the count than when behind, but the disparity for Volpe when ahead or behind is startling. When he’s ahead in the count (1.056 OPS), he hits like he’s Mookie Betts. When he’s behind in the count (.445 OPS), he hits like he’s on his way to playing in an independent league.

I really thought after the first five games of the season Volpe’s approach and plan at the plate was here to stay. I was wrong. It doesn’t mean it won’t come back, it’s just not who he is or has been since those first five games.

5. After going 1-for-the Orioles series over four games, Judge looked like his old self on the six-game homestand against the Tigers and Astros. The Yankees faced five very good to Hall of Fame starting pitchers … and Spencer Arrighetti, who reminds me of the kind of arm the Yankees would call up in the mid-2000s for spot starts in what would be the only major-league appearances of their career. Arrighetti has an 8.44 ERA and has allowed 44 baserunners in 21 1/3 innings.

In the six games, Judge went 10-for-22 with four doubles, three home runs, seven RBIs, four walks and six strikeouts. He only grounded into one double play (he stills leads the league with 11) and even stole a base. A .455/.539/1.046 slash line and 1.584 OPS will do.

Judgey’s special, man. Judgey’s special,” Marcus Stroman said. “He’s not even hot yet.”

Let’s hope this is Judge “getting hot” and staying hot for an extended period of time to make up for whatever went on with him in the first five weeks of the season. It would be nice if Stroman could get hot as well.

6. Stroman put the Yankees in an early hole on Thursday, giving up three runs on two first-inning home runs. He managed to go 5 2/3 innings, but allowed four earned runs and 11 baserunners.

Stroman likes to live on the edges, get ground balls and get soft contact, but he’s been walking too many and not getting enough ground balls, having allowed seven home runs this season. He hasn’t pitch six innings in a start since his second start back on April 5 and has put 55 baserunners on in his last 30 3/2 innings, pitching to a 5.28 ERA with a .925 OPS against.

7. Carlos Rodon made up for the egg he laid in Baltimore (4 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 3 HR) with a strong performance against the Astros (6.1 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB 7 K, 1 HR). He still has a long way to go for me to trust him or respect him (if I ever do) after last season, but he’s making progress.

8. The bullpen and bench are going to get help soon with Tommy Kahnle, Nick Burdi and Oswald Peraza all having started rehab assignments. DJ LeMahieu has resumed “baseball activities” (as opposed to hockey activities or basketball activities) though there is no timetable for his return after the Yankees completely botched his last one and allowed him to begin playing without imaging his injury to see if it had healed.

When LeMahieu comes back, the plan will be for him to be the everyday third baseman (or as close to “everyday” as a 35-year-old with season-ending injuries the last three years can be). That means Torres is safe as the everyday second base … unless … Peraza can hit consistently in the majors. If Peraza joins the team and hits, the Yankees will have no choice but to finally start sitting Torres with regularity.

After going 1-for-the Astros series with four walks, Torres’ OPS is at .565 on the season. Going back to September of last season, Torres has one home run in 60 games and 256 plate appearances. He’s already been demoted twice in the lineup and when you play defense and run the bases like he does, when you’re not hitting there’s nothing to fall back. A bloop single every few days isn’t going to cut it.

9. Remember when Boone said he didn’t go to Clay Holmes for a second inning in that eventual Friday night loss in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago because of Holmes’ appearance pace? At the time, Holmes was on pace to appear in 75 games even though Boone said it was 80 games. And while 75 is a perfectly acceptable number, Boone chose to pitch Michael Tonkin and lose rather than close out a game in which the Yankees led. Tonkin has appeared in three games since, all in mop-up duty. Holmes has also appeared in three games since. Three games in 13 days. If Holmes doesn’t get into Friday’s game against the Rays, it will be three appearances for him in two weeks. His pace now is 66 games. Good call back in Milwaukee, Boone.

10. Now it’s off to Tampa for a three-game weekend series against the .500 Rays. Despite taking two of three from the Rays three weekends ago in the Bronx, the Yankees struggled to score in that series. The Aaron Boone Yankees have never played the Rays particularly well overall, especially at Tropicana Field. The Boone Yankees have been able to overcome their Astros issues (at least in the regular season), and it would be satisfying if they could do the same with their Rays issues.

After taking three straight games over the weekend against Justin Verlander’s former team, the Yankees destroyed Verlander his current team on Tuesday, winning 10-3. The Yankees are now 5-0 against the Astros on the season with two games remaining between the two.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When the 2009 Yankees pounded Pedro Martinez for seven runs in 10 innings in Games 2 and 6 of the World Series, it didn’t feel right. Yes, standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium twice in the series and taking two of the Phillies’ four losses in the six games was technically Martinez, but it wasn’t the Martinez I had grown accustomed to watching pitch against the Yankees as a Red Sox starting in 1998 and then as a Met seven years later. Martinez was there in name only.

That was the feeling I had on Tuesday night watching the Yankees beat up Justin Verlander at Yankee Stadium. Verlander has been a rival since 2006 and has nearly always pitched well against the Yankees, including being on the winning side of six postseason series against them (2006, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2019, 2022) and never once on the losing side of a postseason against them. But the pitcher standing on the Stadium mound on Tuesday may have been Verlander, but only in name.

2. “They had a good approach and I wasn’t very good,” Verlander said. “If I’m being really honest with myself, the last couple of games, particularly the walks, showed me I was a little off.”

The first walk off Verlander came from Aaron Judge in the bottom of the first. After Anthony Volpe lined out on the first pitch Verlander threw, Juan Soto followed with single and Judge drew a five-pitch walk. Then Alex Verdugo put together a seven-pitch at-bat, and on that seventh pitch, he hit a three-run home run to right field. Just like that, the Yankees had a 3-1 lead.

3. “I think these guys told me today that I got some work to do,” Verlander said. “I’ve got to be more deceptive.

Verlander threw 97 pitches and recorded just 15 outs, allowing 11 baserunners. Of his 97 pitches, the Yankees only swung and missed at five of them. Last season, Verlander faced the Yankees twice as a Met and twice as an Astro. In those four starts, the Yankees swung and missed an average of 10 times per game. When Verlander struck out 11 Yankees in Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS, he got 17 swinging strikes.

4. On Tuesday, Verlander had a hard time fooling anyone. The Yankees were taking his breaking pitches off the plate and he couldn’t blow his patented high fastball by anyone, as it was either put in play or fouled back, even at 96 mph. David Cone remarked on YES that Verlander “didn’t know where to go” to get strikes and outs.

“I would like to have a tick or two more veto on my fastball,” Verlander said, “which is something I’ve been expecting because I wasn’t able to long toss really at all.”

5. The Yankees’ early 3-1 lead was a lead they wouldn’t relinquish and a lead that was never in jeopardy, thanks to the offense’s ability to tack on a run in the third, two runs in the fourth, a run in the fifth and sixth and two more in the seventh. The Yankees put 20 baserunners on in the game and scored half of them, including three home runs off Verlander (Verdugo, Volpe and Giancarlo Stanton). The lead was also never in jeopardy because of Luis Gil’s dominant performance.

6. After retiring Jose Altuve to begin the game, Gil allowed a long home run to Kyle Tucker. In the moment, I figured Gil would be wild, give up some long balls, the offense would be stifled by Verlander and the Yankees would help wake up the Astros and save their season. The Tucker home run ended up not only being the only run that Gil allowed, but the only hit he allowed.

7. It was the second straight start Gil gave the Yankees at least six innings after pitching 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Orioles last Wednesday. In just one of seven starts this season has he allowed more than three earned runs, now boasting a 2.92 ERA and 1.135 WHIP.

“He’s just got a lot of weapons, he’s hard to hit,” Aaron Boone said. “It wasn’t perfect by any means for him tonight.”

Gil did add his league-leading walk total with four, and against a better team that’s a recipe for disaster, but against the last-place Astros, it wasn’t.

8. It feels weird to talk about the Astros in such a degrading manner. After seven straight ALCS appearances and four World Series appearances over that time with two championships, at some point the clock would strike midnight on their dominance, but I didn’t see it coming this season. It was the Yankees who put them in an 0-4 record hole to begin the season and it’s the Yankees who are now 5-0 against them on the year with still two games to go. The Yankees 5-0 against the Astros? It’s a record that seems impossible, and yet it’s fact.

9. I’m not ready to pronounce the Astros’ season over, not even with their 12-23 record and negative-27 run differential. Despite their horrific position, they are still only seven games back in the loss column in a weak AL West and still hold an astounding 35.1 percent chance of making the playoffs. They have the same amount of losses as the Angels, three more losses than the A’s and the only team with a worse winning percentage than them in the AL is the White Sox. Despite all of that, I’m still not ready to call their season over. Their last seven seasons, especially 2017, 2019 and 2022 have scarred me.

10. Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and the offense could help push the 2024 Astros closer to the brink and to the point of no return on Wednesday and Thursday. Taking five in a row against the Astros and five of seven in the season series is already more than enough, but taking another or both over the next two days would go a long way to ruining the rest of the Astros’ season. With two games left in this series and two games left against the Astros for the season, the Yankees can continue to do their part in ending a dynastic Astros run they helped start.

After shutting out the Orioles 2-0 on Wednesday, they dropped the series finale 7-2 on Thursday and lost an important series in Baltimore.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. In the biggest series of the season to date the Yankees came up small, losing three of four to the Orioles.

“A really good team, obviously,” Aaron Boone said of the Orioles. “They can pitch, they’re athletic, they got thump. They’re a complete team that you gotta play well.”

And his team didn’t play well against them.

2. A four-game series against the Orioles is about as close to a postseason series as you can have in the regular season and these Yankees played exactly like they always do in the postseason.

In four games and 36 innings at Oriole Park, the Yankees scored six runs. They were shut out on Monday, hit a pair of solo home runs on Tuesday, hit a two-run home run on Wednesday, and on Thursday, they scored on the worst throw home you’ll ever see and a solo home run. An average of one-and-a-half runs per game over four games against their direct competition for the AL East.

3. And because it was as close to a postseason series as you get in the regular season, Aaron Judge played as close to the way he does in the postseason as possible. 

Judge went 1-for-13 with two walks and four strikeouts in the series. A measly single in four games. A measly single in four games is all he provided in the 2022 ALCS as well (1-for-16), the last time these Yankees were in the playoffs.

“Somebody’s going to pay, big time,” Boone said of when Judge gets going. “He’ll get it going, and look out when he does.”

If healthy, it’s impossible to believe Judge won’t “get it going.” But knowing the Yankees’ now six-year track record of misdiagnosing and improperly handling injuries, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Judge isn’t healthy. Also, Boone is the last person in the world who should be trying to sell people on his players “getting it going” after his failed attempts at this in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

4. Judge was the worst hitter on the team in the biggest series of the season to date, but he wasn’t alone.

Giancarlo Stanton went 1-for-10 with two walks and three strikeouts and Anthony Rizzo went 1-for-13 with four strikeouts. The Yankees’ 3-4-5 hitters went a combined 3-for-36 with four walks and 11 strikeouts as the heart of the order needs a triple bypass.

5. If you’re thinking, “Well, Alex Verdugo is really the cleanup hitter now,” you’re right, but Verdugo was on paternity leave for the first three games of the series, and for the fourth he batted sixth? Why? Here’s what Boone had to say:

“Verdugo will be back in the cleanup spot tomorrow,” Boone said. “With the long travel, I just want to get him settled and ease him in.”

So he’s “eased in” enough to start and play, but not bat cleanup, and instead bat behind Gleyber Torres. I don’t care if he lost his eye sight on the flight to Baltimore or a limb, he should never bat behind Torres again.

6. Before Verdugo’s return flight to the East Coast, the Yankees shut out the Orioles 2-0 on Wednesday. A two-run home run from Oswaldo Cabrera was all the offense in the game behind Luis Gil’s best start in the majors: 6.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K. When Gil is throwing strikes, he can dominate, and the only start in which he didn’t really throw strikes was the seven-walk performance in Toronto after the Yankees inexplicably gave him extra rest.

Clay Holmes was asked to get the final five outs of the game and it only made the loss in Milwaukee on Friday that much more comical when Boone wouldn’t use him for six outs and the Yankees lost. Holmes wasn’t needed on Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday (he did get one unnecessary appearance on Monday from Boone just to get some work in a close game the Yankees were losing), just as I predicted.

7. On Thursday, Carlos Rodon was putrid, reverting back to his 2023 self: 4 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 3 HR. For as bad as Rodon was, Boone thought there was some good.

“A few mistakes around some good,” Boone said of Rodon.

That quote would make you believe there was more good than mistakes. “Some” is more than a “few.”

Rodon had a 1-2-3 first inning then loaded the bases with no outs in the second and was fortunate to get out of it when Ryan McKenna’s line drive was hit right at Verdugo in left.

In the third, immediately after the Yankees took a one-run lead, he gave the run back on a solo home run to Ryan Mountcastle.

In the fourth, he gave up a pair of solo home runs to Jorge Mateo Ryan McKenna. Yes, the 29-year-old Jorge Mateo who has 24 home runs and a .637 OPS in his career. And yes, the 27-year-old Ryan McKenna with six home runs and a .620 OPS in his career.

During the fifth inning, Michael Kay mentioned how Rodon had “great stuff” in the game, despite the Yankees losing 4-1. After Kay said that, the Orioles scored three more runs and Rodon never recorded an out in the inning.

I’m not sure how anyone could have “great stuff” and allow three home runs (including to JORGE MATEO and RYAN MCKENNA) and six earned runs in four-plus innings. Delusional.

8. Boone would rather tell you it’s snowing outside on a 99-degree day in July than not defend one of his players when he sucks and did so again by trying to sugarcoat Rodon’s awful day. However, when it came to Torres’ error, Boone didn’t stand by his second baseman.

“You gotta secure the ball,” Boone said. “This is the big leagues. You gotta make the play, and he didn’t make the play.” 

Of course Torres hit his first home run of the season (in the 33rd game of the season) the following inning with the Yankees losing by six. In terms of meaningless home runs it was high on the list.

“We got punched in the face,” Torres said. “We have to figure out a way to beat them.”

One day closer to Torres no longer a Yankee. One day closer.

9. With the game out of reach, Boone gave the ball to Michael Tonkin for mop-up duty in the seventh and eighth innings. It was Tonkin’s third appearance as a Yankee. In his second appearance he also was asked to eat meaningless innings. In his first, well, he was asked to close out a one-run game with the automatic runner on. Isn’t Boone the best?

10. The Yankees now trail the Orioles by two games in the loss column and return home for a three-game series against the much-improved Tigers. The Tigers lost 84 games last year, but are five games above .500 this season and have a really good rotation and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Then again, after the Yankees struggled to put away the Rays and split a series with the A’s at home, they should know better than to take any team lightly, even at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees’ offense mostly no-showed for a second straight game in Baltimore, and the Yankees lost to the Orioles again.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees couldn’t hit for a second straight night, and for a second straight night they lost to the Orioles. The 4-2 loss on Tuesday coupled with the 2-0 loss on Monday gives the Yankees two runs in 18 innings in what is the most important series of the season to date.

Dean Kremer entered the game with a 4.61 ERA, but had no problem keeping the Yankees’ offense quiet: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 2 HR. The Yankees had five hits in the game and Juan Soto (2) and Austin Wells (2) had all but one of them. Anthony Volpe had the other.

2. Soto stared down Kremer after his home run, and when asked about it after the game, he said, “We were going back and forth. He didn’t like the shuffle. I bet he didn’t like the homer, too.”

Typically, it would bother me for a Yankee to be trash talking an opponent after a loss, but Soto can do whatever he wants since he represents the entirety of the offense for the season. This is his team and if he wants to chirp Kremer after blasting a 447-foot home run onto Eutaw Street, so be it. He’s the only one contributing offensively with any consistency.

3. With the loss, the Yankees fell to 0-9 when they score two runs or fewer this season, which is the worst winning percentage in the majors.

As I wrote yesterday, the Yankees are 19-3 when they score at least three runs, and yet they couldn’t do that for two straight days against the Orioles. They have the best winning percentage in the majors when they score three runs and it feels impossible for them to do so at times.

4. The biggest reason it feels impossible at times is because of their knack for destroying innings with double plays. The Yankees hit into three double plays in the game: Aaron Judge hit an inning-ending one in the first, Anthony Rizzo erased a leadoff walk in the second and Giancarlo Stanton ended the Yankees’ rally in the sixth. The Yankees have hit into 36 double plays, which leads the majors.

5, Nearly three years ago in June 2021, after a loss to the Red Sox, Boone said, “Typically, the better teams are going to hit into double plays.” Three years later, I’m still laughing at that quote. Here is the double play leaderboard this season following the Yankees’ 36.

Marlins (7-24): 34
Padres (15-18): 30
Blue Jays (15-16): 28
Diamondbacks (14-17): 26
Rockies (7-22): 24

Not exactly the kind of company you want to be keeping.

6. The Yankees’ double play problem is led by Judge, who has hit into 10, tops in the majors. His previous high in a season is 16 (2021), which he could break by mid-May at this rate. Judge is 1-for-7 with a walk and two strikeouts in the series.

7. “I think they’ve had a lot of good bounces go their way,” Wells said of the Orioles after the game.

That’s not how I view it. I view a young, athletic, fast team that puts the ball in play and is able to put pressure on the defense, even beating out balls that might otherwise not be hits. The Yankees, on the other hand, have players like Rizzo and Stanton going station and station (and at times not even doing that like Stanton on Monday) and I’m not sure either would beat Jorge Posada in a race during his playing days.

The Orioles may have soft contacted their way to a three-run lead against Nestor Cortes (6 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K), but Joe Girardi explained it best on the broadcast, saying, “They beat two balls out for infield hits where a lot of teams don’t get those hits and it changes the complexion of the inning. Very athletic and young, fast team. It doesn’t always have to be stolen bases and first to home. Sometimes it’s infield singles.”

8. This is Anthony Volpe’s batting line from the first four games of the season: .571/.667/1.000.

This is Volpe’s line from the next 26 games: .231/.310/.317.

Volpe has stolen one base on one attempt in the last 14 games. He has been on first base 14 times in that span and has run once.

It’s clear the Yankees don’t want Volpe to run in front of Soto or Judge for fear of taking a run off the board if either of them goes deep, but Volpe needs to run. It’s the one thing offensively he’s good at. Considering he is rarely getting on base (.246 on-base percentage in the last two weeks), it would be nice if he could put some pressure on the defense and make something happen on the bases.

9. Gleyber Torres made his losing play of the day when on a ground ball instead of taking an easy out at first tried to throw out the runner moving to third and hit the runner with the ball, allowing the runner to then score. Even on days when Torres pitches in offensively (which is rare), he’s usually negates it with a defensive or baserunning mistakes. On Tuesday, he made the defensive mistake and did nothing at the plate, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. His OPS is .549.

10. “Overall, I think it was a pretty good month for us,” Cortes said. “We could have probably won four of those 12 games that we lost.”

It was a good month (plus four days), and Cortes is right, the Yankees could have won more games than they did, much more than four.

The only true loss was 7-0 to Arizona on April 2. Other than that, the Yankees were in every loss. They lost by one run three times, lost by two runs six times and lost by three runs two times.

If they continue to play the way they played for four days in March and all of April, they will be just fine. It would be nice though if they could win the next two days in Baltimore.

The Yankees lost to the Orioles 2-0 on Monday. It was the fifth time the Yankees were shut out in 30 games this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees began the most important series of the season to date — a four-game series against the Orioles — with a 2-0 loss.

“They’re legit,” Clarke Schmidt of the Orioles said after the game.

Yeah, no shit. They only won 101 games last year, finishing 19 games ahead of the Yankees, have the best offense in the AL this year and now have a one-game lead in the AL East.

2. “When you face them and then you face other teams, you really kind of feel it,” Schmidt said. “They really hit mistakes.”

Schmidt made his only mistake of the game to the first batter he faced. With a 2-2 count against Gunnar Henderson, Schmidt was unable to put the lefty away as Henderson fouled off two two-strike pitches and then hammered a long home run to right field. Schmidt’s career issue of being unable to put away lefties found its way into the first batter of the game and it seemed like an ominous sign.

3. But it wasn’t. The Yankees lost the game, but it wasn’t because of Schmidt. He ended up going 5 2/3 innings while allowing just the one run from the Henderson home run. To me, it was the best start of Schmidt’s career, considering the lineup and the ballpark.

The Yankees’ offense is what lost them the game, which has been the case in all but two of their losses this season (April 14 at Cleveland and April 26 at Milwaukee). The offense was shut out for a fifth time in 30 games.

4. “I haven’t really thought much of it,” Aaron Judge said of the shutouts. “Things like that happen.”

Things like that do happen, but for these Yankees, they happen way more than they should. To put into perspective how truly awful it is to be shut out five times in 30 games, here is the game number when the fifth shutout of the season happened for the Yankees in the other five full seasons in the Aaron Boone era.

2023: 103
2022: 72
2021: 90
2019: Only two shutouts
2018: Only three shutouts

The 2023 offense was as bad as it gets in terms of Yankees’ offenses and that team didn’t get shut out for a fifth time for another 73 games. The 2018 and 2019 offenses were so good they were only shut out three and two times respectively. (It’s hard not to think the Yankees’ best chance at winning it all with this group, or what’s left of this group, was 2017-19.)

“We’ve had some of those nights where we’ve gotten shut out when we’ve had a lot of traffic,” Boone said. “We didn’t come up with a big hit, and they kept us in the ballpark.”

It’s really not surprising when the Yankees get shut out because the 2023 Yankees Plus Juan Soto don’t score and don’t win when Soto doesn’t hit. These Yankees go as Soto goes, and Soto only went 1-for-4 with a single on Monday. Now that single unfortunately went off the high right-field wall at Camden Yards, but that’s baseball, right?

5. After Schmidt, Dennis Santana threw 1 1/3 perfect innings, Caleb Ferguson got two outs and Clay Holmes got an out.

As I wrote on Saturday …

The best part is Holmes probably won’t be needed for a few days. He may not be needed for a week. If Boone wants to play the what-if game, let’s play it. He thinks he made need Holmes for an inning on Saturday, so he wasn’t going to push him for a second inning on Friday. Well, what if Holmes isn’t need on Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday? Then he’ll be used in a game on Wednesday no matter what the score is to get him work. 

Holmes wasn’t needed again on Monday, but Boone went to him. Apparently, having Holmes get an out in the eighth inning of a game the Yankees are trailing is more important than Holmes closing out a game the Yankees are winning.

If the Yankees had tied the game in the ninth, Holmes was going to pitch the ninth and be used for four outs. Which means, Boone is OK with Holmes pitching in multiple innings in a game the Yankees are losing and then tied in rather than pitching multiple innings in a game the Yankees are tied and then winning.

6. Anthony Volpe had another poor night at the plate (0-for-4 with a walk) and made an extremely costly error in the field, booting an inning-ending ground ball in the eighth that increased the Orioles’ lead from 1-0 to 2-0. Once the deficit went from one run to two runs with the bottom of the order due up (Gleyber Torres, Oswaldo Cabrera and Trent Grisham) it was hard to envision the Yankees coming back. And they didn’t.

7. Grayson Rodriguez got lit up in his previous start by the lowly Angels (4.1, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 1 HR), so of course he was awesome against the Yankees (5.2 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 3 K). The Yankees had some bad luck on their side in the game with booted balls by the Orioles going right to other fielders, rockets hit right at fielders, the called third strike on Anthony Rizzo, the Soto “single” and the play where Giancarlo Stanton had to hold up on a base hit to the outfield before getting thrown out at second.

8. Michael Kay is always quick to defend Stanton and his speed on the bases saying he’s not “loafing” and that that’s how fast he can go. That’s not as fast as Stanton can run. That’s as fast as Stanton can run without getting injured. It’s not running. It’s jogging. It may not even be jogging. It’s the type of speed a valet attendant uses to go get your car. Unfortunately, Stanton isn’t going to get faster, only slower, which is hard to believe.

9. It’s hard to believe the Yankees only struck out three times in the game and not only lost, but were shut out, stranding all 10 baserunners they had. It’s hard to believe this offense scored 15 runs in back-to-back games over the weekend (even if some of those runs came against position players pitching).  It’s even harder to believe how much the offense missed Alex Verdugo’s bat in the lineup.

Verdugo has become the team’s second-best hitter through the first month of the season, behind Soto. Is anyone surprised the two best hitters on the team through the first month are two players the Yankees didn’t draft or develop and have had the least to do with the major-league success?

10. “Guys were taking good swings all night,” Judge said. “We just couldn’t get them to fall.”

The Yankees will need them to start falling over the next three days. The Yankees are 19-3 when they score three runs in a game. That’s all that’s needed: three runs! At worst, the Yankees need to split this series with the Orioles, and to do that, they will now need to win two of the next three. They will need to more offensively than they did on Monday, which was nothing … again.

The Yankees lost a winnable game to the Brewers on Friday, falling 7-6 in 11 innings thanks to their own manager.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On Monday, I wrote the following:

Boone has had a mostly error-free three-plus weeks to begin the season. Wait until that changes. The Yankees are 7-2 in one-run games. Of their 23 games, 39 percent have been decided by one run. The more one-run games they play in, the more Boone’s in-game decisions become vitally important. If there’s any part of the Yankees standing on the tracks waiting to be destroyed by the regression train it’s their play in one-run games when managed by Boone.

The train is here.

On Friday night in Milwaukee, Yankees fans were treated to the version of Aaron Boone they have watched for six-plus seasons. The version of Aaron Boone that plays for tomorrow when there’s a winnable game at hand. The real Aaron Boone.

2. It all started in the bottom of the sixth inning with the Yankees leading 5-4.

Luis Gil had given the Yankees five mediocre innings, allowing four earned runs on five hits and two walks and getting burned by a pair of two-run home runs. He had thrown 95 pitches and considering the Yankees haven’t let him reach 100 pitches this season and have already given him extra rest once (which led to a seven-walk performance), he wasn’t going to be able to finish a sixth inning of work unless he got three groundouts in four pitches (something he’s incapable of doing). But Boone sent him back out for the sixth anyway.

Two pitches later, the Brewers had a leadoff double with the tying run on second and no one out. That double came off the bat of Gary Sanchez, who undoubtedly wants to give it to the Yankees more than you want anything in your life. Knowing how the law of ex-Yankees works in that every ex-Yankee comes back to haunt their old team, an extra-base hit was inevitable in that situation.

3. Boone used Gil in hopes of stealing one or two outs in the sixth, figuring it would be one or two less outs his bullpen would need to get. It’s a strategy employed by Boone frequently and one that backfires nearly every time, just like the contact play the Yankees put in motion with a runner on third and less than two outs on a ball hit in the infield with the infield in. You know, the play they miserably failed to convert in the 11th inning.

Stealing outs is a dangerous game, but Boone doesn’t care. He doesn’t care who the pitcher is he’s sending back out, what the score is, what the situation is, what the standings say, nothing. He’s going to do it no matter what and on Friday he sent back out a clearly fatigued Gil, who didn’t have his best stuff all night and who battled and grinded to get through five innings.

Because teams other than the Yankees have no problem scoring a runner from second with no outs without getting a base hit, the Brewers did it with ease: ground ball to second followed by a sacrifice fly. 5-5. Tie game.

4. The Yankees failed to score in the seventh inning because Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo, the only hitters on the team capable of getting on base consistently didn’t bat in the seventh. In the eighth, Soto led off the inning with a single, but was quickly erased when Aaron Judge hit into a double play, which is all he seems to do. Well, that and strike out. In the ninth, Verdugo did walk with one out, but was thrown out trying to steal second.

5. With the game tied going to the bottom of the ninth, Boone called on Clay Holmes. Ron Marinaccio (1 1/3 innings), Dennis Santana (2/3 innings) and Caleb Ferguson (1 inning) had done their jobs keeping the Brewers off the board for the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. Holmes is the team’s best reliever, and despite it not being a save situation he entered the game. (It’s absolutely insane to manage your bullpen based on a stat, and yet, the Yankees still do so.)

Here was Holmes’ recent workload before Friday:

Sunday, April 21: Didn’t pitch
Monday, April 22: Didn’t pitch
Tuesday, April 23: Nine pitches
Thursday, April 24: Didn’t pitch

Over the previous four days, Holmes had made one appearance throwing nine pitches. When he entered the game on Friday against the Brewers, I figured because of his recent light workload, he was going to pitch the ninth, and if the game reached the 10th inning and the Yankees scored in the top of the 10th, he would close out the game in the bottom of the 10th inning. Sound logic. Unfortunately, the manager of the Yankees doesn’t operate or base decisions on sound logic.

Holmes went out and had arguably his best outing of the season. He retired the side on 10 pitches, striking out Oliver Dunn and William Contreras in the process. To the 10th inning the game went.

Giancarlo Stanton pinch hit for Trent Grisham and immediately crushed a double to the left-center gap scoring the automatic runner on second. The Yankees had a 6-5 lead and the idea of Holmes having a chance to close out the game in the bottom half of the inning was coming to fruition.

6. After the top of the Yankees’ lineup stranded Stanton on second with no outs (because why wouldn’t they?), Holmes didn’t walk to the mound from the dugout. Instead, out of the bullpen came newest Yankee Michael Tonkin.

If you were unfamiliar with Tonkin prior to seeing him jog to the mound to close out Friday’s game and were thinking “Who the fuck is this guy?” when an unknown Number 50 uniform began throwing warm-up pitches to Jose Trevino, it’s understandable. I wasn’t thinking “Who the fuck is this guy?” I was thinking “Why is this fucking guy in the game?”

Tonkin had become a Yankee just the day before. He had signed with the Mets in the winter, got designated for assignment by the Mets and purchased by the Twins on April 9, got designated for assignment again and selected off waivers by the Mets on April 17 and then got designated for assignment again and selected off waivers by the Yankees on Thursday. Why has Tonkin been designated for assignment three times in less than three weeks? Surely, it must be because he’s awesome and capable of closing out the first-place Brewers in extra innings with the automatic runner on second and no outs.

Tonklin immediately gave up the lead, allowing a game-tying single to Willy Adams, but did manage to get out of the 10th inning without losing the game. Unfortunately, he would save that for the 11th inning.

In the 11th inning, the Yankees failed to score the automatic runner from second, largely because the team’s offense sucks, but also because their trusty manager had the aforementioned contact play on with a runner on third and one out in the inning. That runner was Jahmai Jones and he was thrown out by at least 10 feet on the idiotic play, running home on contact on a ball hit right back to the pitcher. In the bottom of the 11th, Tonkin allowed a walk-off single to Joey Ortiz, as the Brewers’ 8-hitter capped off a nice four-RBI day.

“It’s definitely a tough spot to go in,” Boone said of Tonkin entering an extra-innings save situation for his first appearance in his first day as a Yankee.

Then why was he put in that spot, you moron.

Boone’s sole job as manager of the Yankees is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. If he does that and it doesn’t work out, so be it. There isn’t a person in the world who would have questioned Holmes being used for a second inning if he couldn’t hold the lead and allowed the tying run to score or lost the game. He’s the best reliever on the team in the middle of a stretch in which he had thrown nine pitches in four days. Boone didn’t see it that way.

7. “He’s on about an 80-game pace in April, and with some of the attrition we’ve had in our bullpen, I wasn’t going to send my closer out,” Boone said.

Holmes was on a 75-game pace prior to his appearance last night, not 80. Holmes’ career high for appearances is 69, so his pace wasn’t far off a number he’s already previously accomplished. (For reference, Mariano Rivera averaged 67 games per season in his career, and three times pitched over 70 times. A 75-game pace is in no way outrageous.)

I wish Boone were joking about the attrition the Yankees have had in their bullpen, but he wasn’t. Jonathan Loaisiga went down for the season within the first week. Guess what Loaisiga is best at? Getting hurt. That’s what he does. The only “full” season he pitched in the majors was in 2021 and he was the best reliever in baseball that season. But outside of that his career has been marred by injuries. Not even three weeks ago, Boone himself said, “It’s been pretty much something every year that’s tripped him up.” Relying on Loaisiga to be the team’s best reliever was irresponsible given his injury history, much like it was irresponsible to rely on Aaron Hicks to be a starting out fielder on the team in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The Yankees continue to count on players with extensive injury histories and when they inevitably get injured, the front office and manager cry about the injuries and adversity the team has had to deal with, or in this case: attrition. The only other reliever the Yankees have had get hurt since the start of the season is Nick Burdi. He entered this season having thrown 15 1/3 career innings in the majors over six years because of injuries. I can’t believe he’s hurt again.

8. “I’ll do four outs this time of year,” Boone said, “but I wasn’t going to send him out for a second inning.”

If you don’t think Boone is detrimental to the success of the team he manages, don’t ever forget that sentence.

The evaluation of a pitcher should be done by pitches never by outs, and yet, Boone is making millions of dollars per year for the seventh straight year while doing the complete opposite. Not all outs or appearances are created equal. Holmes pitched a scoreless ninth inning in Milwaukee on Friday. He also pitched a scoreless ninth inning in Houston on Opening Day. He recorded three outs in both and pitched exactly one inning in both. To Boone, those two appearances are of equal value and energy.

Again, Holmes threw 10 pitches in the ninth. TEN! He threw nine pitches over the previous four days. The Yankees had the opportunity to win a game against a good team and Boone decided saving Holmes for a situation on a different day that may never happen was a better idea. The Yankees had a winnable game at hand and Boone decided he would rather take his chances of winning a made-up game in the future. That’s who’s managing the Yankees.

The best part is Holmes probably won’t be needed for a few days. He may not be needed for a week. If Boone wants to play the what-if game, let’s play it. He thinks he may need Holmes for an inning on Saturday, so he wasn’t going to push him for a second inning on Friday. Well, what if Holmes isn’t need on Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday? Then he’ll be used in a game on Wednesday no matter what the score is to get him work. Not even two weeks ago, Boone refrained from using Ian Hamilton in the extra-inning game in Cleveland that the Yankees led in and instead used Caleb Ferguson who blew the game and the Yankees lost. Three days later, after having still not pitched, Boone used Hamilton in a game the Yankees were trailing in because he needed the work.

9. “He’s got a lot of experience,” Boone said of Tonkin.

Yeah, a lot of experience sucking.

“That’s just where we were in the game,” Boone said, “with what we had left.”

The Yankees also had Victor Gonzalez available. I guess he was good enough to close out the Rays with a one-run lead on Sunday, but five days later isn’t good enough to close out the Brewers with a one-run lead. Let’s have the new guy that the Braves didn’t want back, the Mets gave up on twice and the Twins allowed to make one appearance before cutting ties.

10. I’m not mad at Tonkin. Not in the least bit. He’s not good. If he was, the Braves would have re-signed him after last season or the Mets or Twins would have kept him. He wasn’t put on waivers because he’s really good at closing out one-run games. He didn’t ask for the Yankees to offer him a major-league contract. He didn’t ask for Boone to put him into the game in that spot. It’s not his fault he blew the lead in the 10th and lost the game in the 11th.

It’s the Yankees’ fault for lacking bullpen depth when they knew they wouldn’t have Michael King, didn’t re-sign Wandy Peralta, knew of Loaisiga’s unbelievable injury history and knew they would be without Tommy Kahnle, Scott Effross and Lou Trivino to begin the season. And it’s Boone’s fault for putting him in the game. Unfortunately, that won’t be the last bad decision Boone is allowed to make.

The Yankees have played four games on their current homestand, have been shut out in two of them and even lost to the A’s.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The 2023 Yankees plus Juan Soto have been on full display through the first four games of the current seven-game homestand. The Yankees beat the Rays 5-3 on Friday, lost to the Rays 2-0 on Saturday, beat the Rays 5-4 on Sunday and were embarrassingly shut out by the A’s 2-0 on Monday. The Yankees have scored 10 runs in the four games, were shut out twice and have only scored in three of 36 innings to begin the homestand. If that doesn’t portray how truly awful the offense has been, how’s this: Soto has two extra-base hits in the four games and the rest of the Yankees have zero. Not a single extra-base hit from anyone other than Soto in four straight home games.

I continue to wonder where the 2024 Yankees would be without Soto, and it’s a place you don’t want to know about. The Yankees’ strategy to upgrade the offense this season was to trade for the generational superstar and then hope all of their aging, oft-injured, on-the-wrong-side-of-30 bats would bounce back. Soto has lived up to his expectations and then some, while the other half of the strategy has been a collective disappointment.

2. There’s been no bigger disappointment than Judge who seems to ground into a double play or strikeout in every at-bat, killing any rally he can get his hands on. His one clutch hit of the season, the two-run single against the Blue Jays last Wednesday was hit on the ground and mere inches from being an inning-ending groundout.

Judge is hitting .174/.308/.337 and the narrative is to not worry about him and the commonly used silver lining is “Look at the Yankees’ record without Judge hitting!” It’s no longer acceptable to make excuses for Judge not getting a full spring training worth of at-bats when he’s had 104 plate appearances during the season.

3. Judge has been booed this week at Yankee Stadium, and a lot is being made about it. Every Yankee has been booed at least once. Derek Jeter was booed during his 0-for-32 slump in 2004. Mariano Rivera was booed for blowing saves. The two of them helped the Yankees to five championships. Their numbers are in Monument Park and they are the most voted-for Hall of Famers in history. If they can be booed anyone can be, especially Judge.

“I’ve heard worse,” Judge said about the booing, though he has never heard worse at home. “I’d probably be doing the same thing in their situation.”

Judge gets it. He has sucked this year and he’s hearing about it. It comes with the territory. It’s not going to last because his slump isn’t going to last. He’s just another Yankees superstar who has been booed. It’s a non-story.

4. The Yankees don’t need 2024 Judge to be 2022 Judge to get to where they want to go now that they have Soto. The Juan Soto Yankees don’t need the history-making version of Judge, they just can’t have this version of him.

“We’ve just got to keep grinding,” Soto said after the 2-0 loss to the A’s even though he doesn’t need to do anything different. “We just had a tough game. Forget about it and come back tomorrow.”

Unfortunately, the Yankees didn’t just have a tough game as in a single game, and it would be easy to forget if it wasn’t a disturbing trend.

The Yankees have already been shut out four times this year. They have scored three or fewer runs in more than one-third of their games. They are 14-1 when they score four runs in a game, which seems like it should be so easy for a team that features the names this team features, and yet, they frequently have trouble plating four runs.

5. Aaron Boone, who lasted less than one inning on Monday after he was wrongfully ejected for something a fan said gave us his fist “We’ve got to mount more than that” after the shutout loss to the A’s. That’s how bad things are offensively that Boone is dipping into his buzz word bag to describe his offense.

“I’m seeing the ball well,” Rizzo said after another 0-for on Monday. “I’ve just got to put better swings on the ball.”

I don’t know what’s worse: home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt trying to say he ejected Boone because what was said to eject Boone came from the dugout or Rizzo trying to tell the world he is seeing the ball well. Rizzo sounds like a clearly drunk person trying to tell you they’re not drunk.

Rizzo is hitting .227/.307/.284 on the season. The batting average is 36 points below his career, the on-base percentage is 57 points below his career and the slugging percentage is 245 points below his career. Rizzo isn’t seeing the ball well and hasn’t in 11 months since suffering a concussion against the padres last May. As a soon-to-be 35-year-old who has a negative-0.3 WAR on the season and whose contract ends this year (plus the $6 million buyout the Yankees idiotically agreed to for 2025), he’s closer to being designated for assignment than he is putting “better swings on the ball.”

6. For as “bad” as Judge has been, Rizzo would gladly trade his .590 OPS for Judge’s .645. And Gleyber Torres would donate an organ to have Rizzo’s .590 instead of his own .516.

The day Torres is no longer a Yankee will be a wonderful day. For someone who should have been traded three years ago, Torres has somehow been worse than Judge and Rizzo. Torres has yet to hit a home run and has driven in two runs. TWO RUNS in 98 plate appearances. Austin Wells is 3-for-the season and has as many RBIs as Torres in 55 fewer plate appearances.

On Monday, Torres struck out on three pitches in his first plate appearance and in his second plate appearance he struck out on nine pitches. So when he came to bat a third time, Ryan Ruocco said, “Here’s Gleyber Torres. He struck out in his last at-bat, but really battled.” That’s what we’re resorting to in evaluating Torres? Congratulating him for battling? Can someone show me where battling can be found in a player’s slash line? Is it before or after slugging percentage? Torres struck out on three pitches in that third plate appearance, finishing the day 0-for-3 with three strikeouts.

Torres had to be praying he didn’t get a chance to come up in the ninth representing the tying run. Considering he couldn’t get the bat on the ball against the light-throwing JP Sears, I’m curious to see how he would have looked swinging against A’s closer Mason Miller and his 104 mph fastball that he used to strike out Anthony Volpe, Judge and Soto for a perfect ninth.

7. The 2024 A’s aren’t the 2023 A’s because this version of the A’s has a bullpen, which is something the Yankees now completely lack. The two most trustworthy relievers in the Yankees’ bullpen are Ian Hamilton and Clay Holmes and I wouldn’t trust either of them to tell me what day of the week it is, so you can imagine how good I feel when I see them enter a close game. After those two it’s Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez? Because of a lack of relief depth, barely-in-the-majors Luke Weaver is firmly entrenched in Boone’s circle of trusted receivers, and Estevan Florial showed everyone 10 days ago why that’s a bad idea. The entire bullpen is a joke. No Yankees reliever is a true strikeout pitcher and no one out of the bullpen can put away a hitter with two strikes on them. Holmes has tried to blow or ruin every game he has come into, but he has had a horseshoe jammed so far up his ass this season, I hope he has been playing Powerball and Mega Millions every single day given what has transpired in his outings for him to still not have allowed an earned run.

If you’re waiting for Tommy Kahnle, Scott Effross and Lou Trivino to save the day, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. And by the time those three are all healthy (if they are ever all healthy at the same time) there might not be a day to save. It’s not early. The season is nearly a month old and we’re approaching the 20 percent mark of the schedule.

8. You may be wondering what I’m writing about since the Yankees are 15-8. If you are, then you were probably wondering what I was writing about when the Yankees were winning nearly every day in April, May and the first half of June in 2022 before that entire season crumbled leading into 2023, which was the worst Yankees season in 30 years.

I don’t view these Yankees as a team that has only played 23 games. How could you? It’s the same team plus Soto from last year. It’s the same team plus Soto from 2022 as well. Sure, some of the names are different, but the production is equal. Rizzo may as well be Josh Donaldson. Torres may as well be Aaron Hicks. The starting pitching is relatively the same and the bullpen is much, much worse without Jonathan Loaisiga, Michael King and Wandy Peralta.

9. I would trade King for Soto a trillion times out of a trillion, but when the Yankees knew they weren’t going to have King, how do they not bring back Peralta at a measly $4.25 million a year? He has a 0.82 in 12 appearances for the Padres.

Relying on Loaisiga to be the team’s best reliever was irresponsible given his injury history, much like it was irresponsible to rely on Hicks to be a starting out fielder on the team in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The Yankees continue to count on players with extensive injury histories and when they inevitably get injured, the front office and manager cry about the injuries and “adversity” the team has had to deal with. 

The Hal Steinbrenner Yankees always have to cut corners somewhere. They will give Judge a monster contract, only to not address left field or the bench. They will trade their farm system for Soto, only to skimp out on the bullpen. For the last six-plus years, both Hal and Brian Cashman have talked about “leaving no stone unturned” when speaking to the media about the free-agent market, and yet they rarely turn over any stones. That’s how you end up with Dennis Santana and his career 5.19 ERA pitching important innings in the third week of April.

10. These Yankees are what they are and that is the same offense of the last four years plus Juan Soto, a starting rotation that rarely gives more than five innings and a bullpen that is being held together by tape, glue and gum scraped off a bleacher from Section 39. Boone has had a mostly error-free three-plus weeks to begin the season. Wait until that changes. The Yankees are 7-2 in one-run games. Of their 23 games, 39 percent have been decided by one run. The more one-run games they play in, the more Boone’s in-game decisions become vitally important. If there’s any part of the Yankees standing on the tracks waiting to be destroyed by the regression train it’s their play in one-run games when managed by Boone.

The offense has the ability to take Boone’s in-game strategy out of the equation before the train comes with an inverse regression of their own. That will take Judge waking up, Rizzo proving he’s past his 2023 head injury and Torres not being the equivalent of a random fan getting to face major-league pitching. If it happens, the Yankees will be fine. It could even happen as early as this week against the A’s mediocre-at-best starting pitching. I’m going to need to see it for a lot longer than a series against the A’s, but after what I watched on Monday, I’ll gladly take any offensive outburst even if it’s against the A’s.

The Yankees avoided a fourth straight loss and a sweep in Toronto with a ninth-inning comeback win over the Blue Jays to maintain their place atop the AL East.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I don’t know what Juan Soto is going to get this winter, all I know is the Yankees better be the ones to give it to him. Whether it’s $500 million or $600 million or $700 million, whatever the price tag is, the Yankees need to meet it. Give him $1 billion. Give him an ownership stake. I don’t care what it takes, the Yankees have to pay it. If the organization that generates more revenue than any other in the sport isn’t going to sign 25-year-old Soto (who amazingly may not even be in his prime yet), then who will they sign?

2. The Yankees have to sign Soto because he is the Yankees. It’s disturbing to think what the Yankees’ record through 19 games would be without him, and the 13-6 record they do have is largely based on his performance alone.

The 2024 Yankees are the 2023 Yankees with Soto and a better offensive version of Anthony Volpe. Remove Soto from the equation and the Yankees would be battling the Red Sox for sole possession of the AL East basement. Remove Soto from the equation and the Yankees would have been swept in Toronto the last three days.

3. On Wednesday, in Soto’s first-inning plate appearance he walked. The “heart” of the order stranded him. He led off the third with a single and Judge erased him with yet another double play. With two outs in the fifth, he doubled in Oswaldo Cabrera for the Yankees’ first run before Judge stranded him again. In the eighth, he hit a solo home run off of Genesis Cabrera. With two outs in the ninth, he drew a walk against tough lefty Tim Mayza to extend the inning. Five plate appearances, three hits, two extra-base hits, two walks, one run and two RBIs.

Soto kept the Yankees alive and in the game to create their ninth-inning comeback and Blue Jays manager John Schneider did the rest, choosing not to use Jordan Romano or Yimi Garcia to close it out, allowing the Yankees to come back, win and salvage the third game of the series.

4. “We have confidence; grinding every day, playing 27 outs,” Soto said. “I have really good confidence in this team. We all know what kind of players awe have. I just every single one of them.”

(That’s nice of Soto to say, but there’s absolutely no truth to it. Do you think Soto feels good about Gleyber Torres coming up with the bases loaded? Do you think when he’s standing on second he believes Anthony Rizzo is going to drive him in? I know I don’t.)

5. Soto is the most important player on the team. He’s hitting .352/.478/.577 and has reached base safely in 17 of 19 games. He leads the team in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, RBIs and walks.

In the Yankees’ six losses this season, Soto is 4-for-19 with four strikeouts and two walks. Simply put: when Soto has a bad day, the Yankees lose. Or when Soto has a bad day, the 2024 Yankees look like the 2023 Yankees.

Unsurprisingly, in the Yankees’ six losses, Soto has driven in one run. And in the six losses, the Yankees have scored 13 total runs, being shut out twice.

This is Soto’s team and needs to be his team for the next decade-plus. Judge may be the captain, but these are the Juan Soto Yankees.

6. The Yankees have won 13 of 19 and are in first place because of Soto. Judge is hitting .183 and has banged into five double plays.Rizzo has a .620 OPS and has 18 strikeouts to six walks. Torres has yet to hit a home run shown and is slugging .236. Alex Verdugo is tied for the team lead in double plays with Judge and pretty much only hits ground balls to the right side of the field. The combination of Jose Trevino and Austin Wells hasn’t been good. Volpe was off to an incredible start before Yusei Kikuchi seemingly broke him with Volpe now reverting back to swinging at balls and abandoning his early-season plan at the plate. Giancarlo Stanton has chipped in with some big home runs in between swings in which he looks blindfolded.

And then there’s Oswaldo Cabrera, who has been impressive and has become a lineup necessity. (It’s comical to think 21 of his plate appearances this season went to Jon Berti.) Cabrera is hitting .309/.350/.545 with four doubles and 13 RBIs. He has driven in more runs than Rizzo (7), Torres (2 … embarrassing), Verdugo (5) and even Judge (11) in about 20 percent less plate appearances than each.

The offense has been mostly Soto, some Volpe and Cabrera, a little Stanton and little to nothing from everyone else.

7. The starting rotation has been much of the same, led by Marcus Stroman and then very little from everyone else. Stroman was strong again on Wednesday (5.1 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR) at his former home stadium, and he needed to be after Luis Gil and Carlos Rodon combined to give the Yankees just nine innings the previous two days.

8. It was painful to watch Gil on Monday: 5 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 7 BB, 6 K. There’s nothing worse than watching a pitcher either wants to nibble and refuses to throw strikes or simply can’t throw strikes. Gil is the latter.

With seven walks in the start, Gil now has 14 in 14 innings this season. It’s almost as if giving a starting pitcher eight days off is detrimental to success.

“I don’t think it affected me,” Gil said of the time off. “It’s definitely extra time that you’re not used to, but you’re just trying to execute pitches.”

Gil said it didn’t affect him, and yet said it’s something he’s not used to. So of course it affected him. It would affect just about anyone, let alone someone who has made two major-league starts in two years.

If Gil is going to be part of the rotation, let him be part of the rotation. It doesn’t matter that he’s coming off of Tommy John surgery. There is absolutely no evidence that skipping starts, limiting innings or giving a set amount of days off to a pitcher prevents further injury, whether or not they are coming back from elbow surgery. Pitchers get hurt. That’s what they do. And a pitcher that throws as hard as Gil throws is likely to get hurt again no matter what unnecessary precautions are taken. If you want Gil to not tear his elbow throwing a baseball overhand at 100 mph then have him retire. But if you want him to throw a baseball overhand at 100 mph then let him throw a baseball overhand at 100 mph.

9. Rodon had his worst start of the season on Tuesday (4 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 5 K), inexplicably needing 101 pitches to get 12 outs.

“It was death by the foul ball tonight,” Boone said of Rodon. “They just kept spoiling pitches.”

That seems to be who Rodon is with his once-great fastball now incapable of missing bats (he has 18 strikeouts in 19 2/3 innings this season). 

“He was in the strike zone,” Boone said, “and the stuff was really good.”

Three runs, nine baserunners and 101 pitches to get 12 outs, yet “the stuff was really good?” Never change, Boone. Never change.

10. If it feels like you watch the Yankees sweating through their new road gray jerseys every day it’s because you do. Only six of the team’s 19 games so far this season have been at home, but home is where they will be for seven straight games beginning on Friday. Three against the Rays and four against the A’s.

Friday also begins a stretch of 17 games in 17 days with the next day off on Monday, May 6. As I wrote earlier this week, the Yankees seem to have changed their approach with unnecessary ret and load management, really only giving Stanton days off to this point. We’ll see if that changes over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

The Yankees went to Cleveland four a three-game series and took two of three, winning their fifth straight series to start the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I used to love Yankees doubleheaders. That was before the unnecessary rest and load management era. Now I fear them, knowing that the best you can count on is a split, especially if the Yankees win the first game with Boone and the analytics team drooling over the idea of giving as much of the lineup a game off as possible. But things are different this season.

I would like to thank the Braves and their penchant for playing their everyday lineup every day (what a concept!) has made the Yankees rethink their strategy of playing their expected everyday lineup as little as possible. The Yankees have played 16 games this season and Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo have played in all 16, and Anthony Volpe would have if not for an illness that kept him out of one game. The Yankees seem to have rethought their idiotic approach from the last 14-ish years and I couldn’t be happier.

2. The season is 10 percent over. So for the “It’s early!” crowd, it’s not that early. (And it’s never early. Every game holds equal value). And through that 10 percent the Yankees have been the best team in baseball at 12-4. Five series, five series wins. At no point last season was there a time as fun as the first two-and-a-half-weeks of this season has been, considering the only fun last year was the eight games Jasson Dominguez played in.

After beating up the lowly Marlins at the Stadium last week, but missing a chance at a sweep that was there for the taking, the Yankees went to Cleveland and beat up on the Guardians on Saturday, again missing a chance at a sweep that was there for the taking on Sunday. After winning the series opener on Saturday afternoon, my expectation level for Cody Poteet starting the second game was about as high as Clay Holmes throwing a first-pitch strike in an outing. After the Yankees held on to win the first game of the double header 3-2, Poteet allowed just one run over six innings and the Yankees blew out the Guardians 8-2 in the nightcap.

3. I was waiting for Boone to give us a ‘B’ or even ‘C’ lineup on Sunday with the Yankees having already clinched the three-game series, but nope, Boone went with the everyday lineup again. (If only he had done more things like this over the last six years I would respect him and possibly even like him.) Between this and the recent decision to urgently flip Volpe and Torres in the order, Boone is off to a good start in 2024. Here is what I wrote earlier this season about moving Volpe to leadoff:

If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

In the four games Since the move Volpe is hitting .400/.550/.467 (he was hitting .375/.444/.600 before) and Torres is hitting .214/.353/.214 (he was hitting .200/.281/.240 before).

Judge’s three-run home run in the third gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead, but Nestor Cortes, in what was his third mediocre start in four starts this season, quickly gave two runs back. Jose Trevino hit a stunning solo home run in the fourth to make it 4-2, but an inning later, Cortes erased the lead. Cortes (4 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 2 HR) has given the Yankees one quality start this season.

“I was in a lot of 2-2 and 3-2 counts, but I feel like my stuff was good overall,” Cortes said about his stuff. “I was just trying to be too fine with the corners and wasn’t getting enough early contact in play.”

As the game progressed and Boone decided he was going to stick with Luke Weaver in a 4-4 game for as long as possible, it was only a matter of time until the Guardians scored a run. That run came in the bottom of the eighth when Weaver threw a first-pitch, middle-middle fastball to ex-Yankee Estevan Florial (who can only hit fastballs) and Florial crushed it to give the Guardians a 5-4 lead. It was the most expected, inevitable result of all time: an ex-Yankee getting a big, timely hit against his former team. Add in that it was Florial who the Yankees passed over countless times for has-beens and bums, and there was no way Florial wasn’t hitting a home run in that spot.

With the bottom of the order due up against Emmanuel Clase in the ninth, I figured the game was lost. Verdugo did what he does best which is roll over a ground ball to the right side, but Trevino laced a first-pitch single to left to put the tying run on. Cabrera grounded out for the second out. With a 2-1 count against Clase, Volpe smoked a double to the gap in left-canter scoring Cabrera and tying the game at 5.

4. In the 10th, the Yankees scored two runs when Rizzo singled to right with the bases loaded and no outs. In one of the few acceptable times to ever bunt, Boone had Torres bunt the runners over to second and third. A third run would likely end the game and the Yankees just needed Verdugo to put the ball in the air to score the third run of the inning. Instead, Verdugo again did what he does best and hit a grounder to the right side. The Guardians went home for an out and then threw down to first to get Verdugo for an inning-ending double play. The Yankees’ extra-inning issues since the implementation of the automatic runner were rearing their ugly head again.

Rather than use Ian Hamilton to close out the game since Holmes had already pitched in the ninth, Boone went with Caleb Ferguson. Ferguson allowed a single to Jose Ramirez on the eighth pitch of the inning-opening battle, and the Guardians were immediately set up with runners on first and third with the winning run at the plate. Josh Naylor swung at the first pitch he saw, and while a run was going to score to make it 7-6, the ground ball should have erased Ramirez at second and gotten Naylor at first. Instead, Torres flipped the ball to Volpe at second and Volpe couldn’t transfer the ball to his throwing hand and the slow-footed Naylor reached. David Fry then crushed a ball off the wall in left-center and if anyone other than Naylor had been on first the game would have been tied, but Naylor was only able to reach third. Second and third with one out and the Yankees clinging to a 7-6 lead.

Will Brennan was up next and with the infield in, Ferguson got the ground ball he needed, hit directly at Torres. Torres couldn’t field the ball cleanly and then he couldn’t pick it up following his initial bobble and Naylor raced home to tie the game at 7.

“I missed it for a couple seconds,” Torres said, “and when I got the ball, it was too late.”

Four pitches later, Andres Gimenez hit a line drive to Soto in right field that was hit too deep for Soto to make a play at the plate. 8-7. Game over.

5. Volpe and Torres’ defense cost the Yankees in the 10th, but it’s not why they lost the game. It’s one of the reasons, but not the only reason. Cortes was mediocre again, and he wasn’t helped early on by Rizzo who forced Cortes to throw 13 additional pitches because of errors. Giancarlo Stanton was foolishly thrown out on the bases in the sixth, Judge left two on in the seventh, and Verdugo hit the ball the only place on the field he couldn’t hit it in the 10th. Add that all up and you get an excruciating one-run, extra-inning loss.

“We’ve got a lot of special players around that infield,” Judge said. “Days like today happen, and we’ve just got to move on. Everybody on this team knows [infield defense] is one of our strengths.”

Then again, it took all of that, all of those missed opportunities, poor pitching, sloppy defense and baserunning miscues and the Guardians still needed 10 innings to eek by the Yankees by one run. If there’s a positive to take away from Sunday’s debacle it’s that the Yankees were an all-around mess, and nearly came away with a sweep against a pretty good team in Cleveland.

“Tough one,” Boone said. “We just didn’t make a few plays we needed to make. When you grind through and get a lead there, it’s always tough [to lose].”

6. If you’re of the camp that the Yankees are 12-4 and everything is rainbows and butterflies, well you were likely of that same camp when everything went the Yankees way in the first half of 2022 before they played .500 baseball for about 250 games. I don’t view the 2024 Yankees as a 16-game sample size and sweep all the glaring issues under the rug or push them into the closet to worry about for another day. That’s something the front office does and why the team is mired in a 14-year World Series drought.

The Yankees’ offense has been Soto (.344/.468/.541), who has been as advertised, and Volpe (.382/.477/.564), who has been a completely different player than he was in his rookie season. Judge (.207/.373/.448) has been OK, Stanton (.250/.291/.538) has been better than expected and Cabrera (.289/.347/.533) has been a pleasant surprise when he has played (thankfully, we don’t have to watch Jon Berti play instead of him for the time being). But that’s it. Two guys you can count on every at-bat (Soto and Volpe), two guys who have had their moments (Judge and Stanton) and a forgotten utility player (Cabrera) who has had enormous hits in the first two-and-a-half weeks. Even with the Yankees’ offense running at about 25 percent most days and as high as about 40 percent at its best, the team is still 12-4 with the best record in baseball. There are problems though, both offensive and defensive problems.

7. Rizzo is one of those problems. For someone who tried to play through post-concussion symptoms for more than two months last year, and was allowed to play through them even after reporting them to Boone, I don’t know how Rizzo isn’t currently being re-evaluated for an ongoing concussion issue. You may think, “Well, of course the Yankees evaluated him recently and cleared him to play,” however, you probably also thought they evaluated him in May, June, July or August of last season, or after he complained about head issues, when instead, they just kept playing him.

My concern isn’t necessarily about Rizzo’s bat, which has been so-so through 16 games, it’s about his defense. If Rizzo was having depth perception issues last summer from his late-May concussion, I don’t know how anyone could watch him play in 2024 and think those issues aren’t lingering. Rizzo has been unable to pick short hops on throws from infielders, has bobbled and booted routine ground balls hit to him, has let would-be double play balls go under his glove and now is even dropping throws that reach him in the air. He looks lost in the field, when at his best, he’s one of the very best first defensive basemen in the world.

8. Rizzo isn’t the only infielder having a hard time. The up-the-middle tandem of reigning Gold Glove winner Volpe and Torres has been a mess. Short hopping routine throws to first, airmailing inning-ending balls into the camera well, kicking around ground balls hit right at them. I’m less concerned with Volpe since I do trust him and the plays in the late innings in Arizona and Cleveland are hopefully just unfortunate, ill-timed mistakes. I’m extremely concerned about Torres who isn’t just not fielding, but isn’t hitting at all and has a history of running the bases as if he has to be pegged to be thrown out.

9. Verdugo is the other issue offensively. (You can disregard the catching situation offensively since I expect the duo to come up with a hit every other week.) However, my expectations for Verdugo weren’t much given his status as a league-average hitter in his career, so he has been about as good as I thought he would be, which isn’t very good at all.

10. At some point, I would think, Judge will have his typical numbers (if he’s not already headed there) and Rizzo, if healthy, will be a trustworthy middle-of-the-order bat with a stellar glove, and you would like to think Torres will figure it out. Add in DJ LeMahieu possibly going out for a rehab assignment this coming weekend and the problems and fears of the 2024 offense just being the 2023 offense with Soto and a better Volpe may be able to dissipate. For now, given the lack of production the Yankees have received from so many important names and spots in the lineup, it’s amazing they’re 12-4. But I’ll take it.

The Yankees’ continued their winning ways at home over the weekend, taking two of three from the Blue Jays to improve to 8-2 on the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have won eight of 10 and three straight series to start the season against three teams with championship aspirations. Even with the best record in baseball, it feels like the Yankees have yet to really put it all together.

“I don’t feel like we’re totally clicking offensively yet,” Aaron Boone said over the weekend. “We’re doing what we need to do.”

Boone is right. (I can’t believe I just wrote that.) It seems like the Yankees have one inning per game where they post a crooked number and nearly all other innings are … well, nothing. It’s worked so far. As Boone said they’re “doing what they need to do” to get by, and they are more than getting by.

2. Juan Soto has “cooled off” since Houston and is still hitting .333 with a .438 on-base percentage. Aaron Judge has yet to get hot and still has a pair of home runs and a .362 OBP. Giancarlo Stanton made everyone forget he’s been striking out in half of his at-bats with his grand slam on Sunday. Anthony Rizzo has a .665 OPS, Gleyber Torres a .640, Austin Wells a .458 and Alex Verdugo a .454. The only two hitters who have remained consistent through 10 games are Oswaldo Cabrera (.333/.389/.545) and Anthony Volpe who has been unbelievable (.424/.486/.606).

3. Last week I wrote this about Volpe:

If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

Again, I realize it’s going to take an inordinate amount of time for Boone to make this kind of move, especially when it involves a veteran like Torres since Boone would rather not construct the best possible lineup than hurt feelings, which we have learned over the last six years. But every Volpe at-bat is a battle and he’s rarely swinging and missing. Torres, on the other hand, you just hope he gets a mistake to hit.

4. Kevin Gasuman made a mistake in the first inning to Judge on Saturday night and he clobbered it for his second home run of the season. With Soto on first after drawing a walk despite being down 0-2 in the count, the two-run home run was the first time the Yankees have scored in the first inning this season.

“That’s how you draw it up right there,” Boone said. “That’s our two big boys getting us rolling right out of the gate.”

The Yankees didn’t score in the first inning on Sunday, so Saturday is the only time in 10 games they have scored in the first inning. That’s both remarkable and sad that in nine innings with Soto and Judge up, the Yankees failed to score.

5. With the Yankees’ offense, it’s hard to not to think the 2024 isn’t just the 2023 lineup with Soto when they go through dry spells like they did in Arizona scoring two runs in 24 inning at one point, or how they were shut out in two of the first eight games of the season. Then they go out and hang 17 on the Blue Jays on Saturday and Sunday.

6. The Stanton grand slam on Sunday was majestic. The sound off the bat, the velocity off the bat, how quickly it left the park, how far it went, the timeliness of it in a 1-1 game. Everything about it was beautiful. 

With Stanton, there’s always going to be bad, like his 15 strikeouts in 33 plate appearance this season, and you just have to hope the good that does come cancels out some of that bad like his first-inning home run on Saturday night or the mammoth slam. Stanton isn’t going anywhere (at least not this season) and because of his name, stature and career, Boone will never not hit him in the middle of the order. As long as Stanton mixes in the timely bomb everyone once in a while, you can live with that. Yankees fans have no other choice but to live with it.

7. Yankees fans also have no choice but to live with the weakest bullpen of the Brian Cashman era. The Yankees, in their attempt to prove they can turn any hard-throwing arm with a sinker or sweeper into an elite reliever, have created this bullpen that has limited trustworthy arms and a revolving Scranton shuttle built in. With Jonathan Loaisiga lost for the year, the Yankees’ best two relievers are now Clay Holmes and Ian Hamilton followed by Caleb Ferguson and … Nick Burdi?

After being so good in Houston to open the season and strong in Arizona, the bullpen nearly blew a seven run lead on Saturday night, giving up six runs in 4 2/3 innings, and flirted with disaster on Sunday, nearly blowing a four-run lead in the middle innings.

“When you run out to a big lead and you’re handing on for dear life at the end,” Boone said, “that’s an extra exhale.”

8. The bullpen wasn’t going to be automatic to begin with and now it’s been overworked since Marcus Stroman has been the only starter to give the Yankees length (six innings in both of his starts). In 10 games, Yankees starters have thrown 50 1/3 innings and relievers have thrown 39 2/3. That’s a recipe for disaster and a good plan if your plan is for Hamilton, Ferguson and Holmes to end up like Loaisiga.

Here is my current order of trust in the bullpen:

Ian Hamilton
Clay Holmes
Caleb Ferguson
Nick Burdi
Victor Gonzalez
Jake Cousins
Dennis Santana
Luke Weaver

For Holmes to be second on this list when he’s allowed nine baserunners in five innings and has done everything imaginable to ruin every game he has come into so far shows has messy this whole thing is. The loss of Loaisiga is monumental (as are the losses of Michael King and Wandy Peralta from last year’s team). The Yankees are going to need to give some of their top minor-league arms opportunities as relievers at this rate.

9. Former Yankees reliever Chad Green owes the Yankees a few late-game home runs from his time with the team, and for a second on Friday, I thought he had coughed up the lead on a three-run home run to Verdugo. Instead it was just a long fly ball that resulted in an out, which is how nearly all of Verdugo at-bats end: with an out. Verdugo does have his extra-inning home run in Arizona to hand him hat on, but other than that he’s been the worst hitter in the Yankees lineup. I guess someone has to be the worst hitter in the lineup.

Green wasn’t the only ex-Yankee to return to the Bronx over the weekend. I was waiting for Isiah Kiner-Falefa to get a big hit against the Yankees since all ex-Yankees seem to come back to haunt the team, but that big hit will have to wait until another sire. Kiner-Falefa went 1-for-8 in the series with four strikeouts.

Of course, Don Mattingly was back in the Bronx too and it will never be weird to see Number 23 wear another team’s uniform. It was weird with the Dodgers and Marlins and it continues to be weird seeing him with the Blue Jays.

I didn’t miss seeing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit at Yankee Stadium, as he hit his 15th home run since 2020 there. Only Rafael Devers has hit more (18). It was good to see Guerrero get pitched inside and even hit on Sunday, and it would be nice to see Devers get the same treatment when he visits. After watching David Ortiz torment the short porch for 14 years without ever being moved an inch off the plate, it would be nice if Guerrero and Devers had even a hint of fear in the box against the Yankees.

10. The Yankees will now put their league-best record on the line against the majors’ worst record in the 1-9 Marlins. Don’t let the Marlins’ record fool you. They are better than their record suggests and I already have visions of Jesus Luzardo shutting down the Yankees on Monday night and Luis Arraez spraying line drives Jake Burger hitting gappers for the next three days.

Three night games followed by a scheduled day off on Thursday. No everyday Yankee other than Stanton has been given a personal day off yet (and he’s been given two), so I’m sure Boone has some unnecessary rest planned for his lineup this week.

The Yankees extended their season-opening winning streak to five with a 5-2 win over the Diamondbacks in Arizona on Monday.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have played five games this season and Anthony Volpe has played in four of them. The offensive player Volpe has been in 18 plate appearance is a version of Volpe we never saw in his rookie season.

Sure, he hit 21 home runs last year, but in between those home runs were a collection of at-bats you would expect from someone who had played just 132 games above Single-A, even someone as highly regarded as Volpe.

2. This Volpe, the Volpe of the first few days of this season, is the Volpe the Yankees likely envisioned when they allowed him to play in 159 games a year ago and accumulate 601 plate appearances despite hitting .209/.283/.383 over a full season. He was never threatened with a demotion, never lost playing time and kept having is name penciled into the starting lineup even as he was putting up numbers representing among the worst in the majors.

3. It’s not like Volpe finished 2023 in such a way that it foreshadowed his start to 2024 as he hit .163/.226/.255 in September and struck out in 29 percent of his plate appearances. Volpe essentially was worse in September than he had been the rest of the season and there was no promise at the time that his development was headed in the right direction.

Whatever Volpe did in the offseason completely changed him as an offensive player. This doesn’t seem to be a sample size issue either. The command he has had of the strike zone this season, the discipline he has shown laying off unhittable pitches and the swings he has taken on balls in the zone are all traits he lacked last season. Yes, players go on random hot streaks (look at Jose Trevino in 2022) and eventually revert to their normal, former selves, but for Volpe, his presence and plan in the batter’s box suggests this version of him is here to stay.

“Results can be fleeting, especially this time of the year,” Aaron Boone said. “But the fact that he is getting results and the quality of each at-bat, it’s been impressive.”

(Is that Boone and I agreeing on something?!)

4. If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

5. Last season, Volpe’s at-bats were painful to watch with him flailing at breaking balls and swinging through high-and-away fastballs. This season, so far, it’s been the opposite because he’s been the opposite. On Monday, Volpe continued his early season onslaught, going 4-for-4 with two doubles. The Yankees had eight hits in their 5-2 win and Volpe was responsible for half of them and had a hand in three of the five runs.

6. Luis Gil started his first game in the majors in nearly two years and mostly stifled the Diamondbacks: 4.2 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K. Gil blew his triple-digit fastball by the reigning National League champions, but even after allowing just one run on one hit, with one out and no one on in the fifth, Boone came to take the ball with Gil at 84 pitches.

“I get it,” David Cone said of Boone taking the ball from Gil before he could face the Diamondbacks’ lineup for a third and qualify for the win. “I still don’t like it.”

I’m guessing Gil’s pitch count was 85 and being at 84 was enough? I didn’t have a problem with it. A “win” for a pitcher is meaningless, and the “win” for the Yankees is all that matters. Gil gave the Yankees 13 outs and trusting the bullpen to protect at least a four-run lead (even if it’s Luke Weaver you’re asking to protect that lead) is understandable.

“I understand there’s a set amount of pitches that I’m under,” Gil said. “I definitely didn’t feel bad about coming out of the game at that time.”

7. One time through the rotation and Gil gave the Yankees’ their second-best start after Marcus Stroman. I would rank the Yankees’ starters first starts this way: Stroman, Gil, Clarke Schmidt, Nestor Cortes, Carlos Rodon. Cortes gave up more runs than Rodon (four to one), but Cortes’ final four innings were strong, where Rodon had two runners on every inning and every out seemed to be a line drive.

8. It’s crazy the Yankees have won five straight against the Astros (who have been to seven straight ALCS) and the Diamondbacks (who went to the World Series five months ago) with mediocre-at-best starting pitching. Only two of their five starters has pitched into the sixth inning (Stroman and Schmidt) and only has given them six innings (Stroman). The Yankees have asked their bullpen to hold deficits and protect leads and it has to a ridiculous level. Yankees relievers have allowed one run (Weaver on Monday) in 19 1/2 innings.

9. It’s even more crazy the Yankees are 5-0 and the first five hitters in the lineup (Torres, Soto, Judge, Rizzo and Stanton) have combined for two home runs in five games (one from Soto and one from Stanton). No long balls from Torres, Judge or Rizzo. The Yankees are averaging more than five runs per game and Torres, Judge, Rizzo and Stanton have driven in a total of four runs in five games. That’s scary. In a good way.

10. In the past (especially the last two seasons), if Judge didn’t hit, the Yankees didn’t win. Judge has done very little this season (3-for-21 with two walks), which is understandable since he missed a lot of spring training at-bats, and the Yankees are still winning. It’s amazing what lineup balance can do for a team. Who would have thought having quality left-handed bats and not an all-right-handed lineup could lead to success?

The Yankees opened the season with a four-game sweep of the Astros in Houston.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The beginning of the 2024 schedule worried me. Four games in Houston against a team that has been to seven straight ALCS and that has owned the Yankees followed by three games against the defending National League champions in Arizona? I would have gladly signed up for a 4-3 start to the year, and even going 3-4 would have been acceptable. After four games in Houston, the Yankees are 4-0.

2. The odds of the Yankees sweeping the four-game series in Houston were close to zero and in the fifth inning on Opening Day I was already trying to think about how the season-opening road trip could be salvaged and not end in complete disaster. But not only did the Yankees win all four games in Houston, they won all four in memorable fashion. On Opening Day, the Yankees erased a four-run deficit. In the second game, they trailed 1-0 through six before scoring seven runs in the final three innings. In the third game, they used a three-run seventh to overcome a two-run hole and in the series finale, they got to the Astros’ superstar closer — the highest-paid reliever of all time. The Yankees are 4-0 and the Astros are 0-4. That may be my most favorite sentence I have ever written.

3. At some point in the four games, every single position player had a moment. Gleyber Torres had the single that led to his go-ahead run on Sunday. Aaron Judge had the double off Ryan Pressly on Thursday and came around to scored the game-tying run. Anthony Rizzo had four hits, two walks and an extremely important hit by pitch. Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run on Friday and added a big double on Sunday. Alex Verdugo hit the go-ahead sacrifice fly on Thursday. Jose Trevino got the three-run rally started on Opening Day. Austin Wells had a pair of hits and two impressive walks. Anthony Volpe provided tough at-bat after tough at-bat in what has been and a complete turnaround from the hitter he was last year. Jon Berti provided a go-ahead RBI single (and later saved the game with his glove on Sunday) in his first Yankees start. Oswaldo Cabrera had two home runs, seven hits and spent the weekend tying games or giving the Yankees a lead. And then there’s Juan Soto.

4. I could write 10,000 words gushing over Soto’s play every game. Here is some of what I wrote about him after Opening Day:

Soto was the Yankees’ first baserunner of the game, drove in the first run of the game, added a second walk and threw out the would-be game-tying run in the bottom of the ninth. This wasn’t a one-game blip. This is who he is. He’s the best hitter with the base eye in baseball. A 25-year-old superstar. Not a generational superstar, but an all-time superstar, who has achieved more italicized bold on his Baseball Reference page by age 25 than the rest of the roster has combined.

He followed up his Opening Day performance by going 8-for-14 with a double, home run and walk in the next three games. His home run off Bryan Abreu on Saturday gave the Yankees a late lead, and the at-bat he had against Josh Hader on Sunday did the same. Soto may be the only hitter in the world capable of doing what he did against Hader in that spot against those pitches.

5. “Tip your cap,” Hader said. “You can always say you can throw another pitch, but I executed what I wanted to do, and a good hitter is going to do that sometimes.”

Excuse me, Josh. A “good” hitter? How about the “best” hitter? And how does a 15-year, $1.5 billion contract sound? That’s what I would offer the 25-year-old Soto. Not even Aaron Boone allowing Clarke Schmidt to face the top of the Astros’ order a third time could keep the Yankees from winning with Soto. Not even Clay Holmes doing everything he could to blow multiple games this weekend could keep the Yankees from winning with Soto.

6. The Yankees looked like the 2017-2023 Astros and the Astros looked like the 2017-2023 Yankees over the weekend. Would I feel confident with the Yankees playing the Astros in a postseason series? Of course not. But for these last four days, the roles in this one-sided rivalry were finally reversed.

“You don’t really play playoff games in March,” Schmidt said. “But this was a big-time series and a big-time sweep.”

These games did feel like playoff games, or maybe that’s just because I forgot what the playoffs feel like after a postseason-less October last year. Opening Day always feels like a playoff game no matter the opponent, and that was heightened this year because of the opponent. But then Games 2, 3 and 4 also felt like playoff games because of the opponent, which isn’t normally the case.

And this was a “big-time series” and a “big-time sweep.” The four-game sweep clinched the Yankees the season series over the Astros. That could matter. That could be the difference between getting a playoff berth or not. Every game matters, and a game on March 30 matters just as much as a game on September 30. These last four games mattered a lot, and the Yankees won all of them.

7. “It’s eerily similar to how we were in 2022, when we started off good,” Schmidt said. “We just felt like we weren’t going to lose at the end of games.”

I have tried my best to erase the 2022 season from my memory, or at least everything from that season from July 9 on, when the Yankees were 61-23, only to finish 41-46, including the postseason. But I know what Schmidt means. The difference is that first-half Yankees performance was somewhat of a mirage given how bad the team was in 2021 (outside of one 13-game winning streak to save their season) and how miserable they were in 2023 (finishing two games above .500). This version of the Yankees feels different because the roster is a lot different.

8. These Yankees are likable. Not just because they’re winning, but because they have gotten rid of seemingly everyone that was unlikable, mainly Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson, Harrison Bader and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. That’s not to say I’m a fan (yet) of Alex Verdugo, but if he keeps playing defense like he did over the weekend, it will be easy to be. It’s fun to root for a team with players that you actually like. It’s fun to root for a team with a lineup that features left-handed batters.

9. The starting pitching was OK overall, and pretty much how I expected it to be. Nestor Cortes was awful through the first inning-plus, but settled in to give five innings after the bullpen was up early. Carlos Rodon limited the damage (one earned run in 4 1/3 innings), but he put eight baserunners on and needed 87 pitches to get 13 outs. Marcus Stroman had the best start of the series (6 IP, 0 ER) and was let down by his defense, giving up three unearned runs. Schmidt would have had a nice line if Boone had pulled him after five, but whenever you can steal outs with Schmidt whose numbers the third time through are as bad as can be against Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, you have to try, right? The starting pitching is certainly not trustworthy, given the recent production and injuries of everyone in the rotation, but it was good enough for four games in Houston, which is something no one expected.

10. Now it’s Luis Gil’s turn, and he will open the series against the Diamondbacks on Monday night. When the Yankees went down 4-0 with no outs in the second inning on Thursday in Houston, it seemed like they were going to need to have a big three days in Arizona to avoid returning home for the first time in 2024 with a dismal record and disappointing start to the season. After their weekend in Houston, they no longer need to have a big series in Arizona, but it certainly won’t hurt if they do.

The Yankees began the 2024 season in Houston against the hated Astros, and for the first four innings, Opening Day was playing out like nearly every Yankees-Astros game over the last seven years. It didn’t finish that way though.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The last meaningful game the Yankees played was on Sunday, Aug. 13 of last season. It was an 8-7 walk-off loss to the Marlins in Miami, a game the Yankees led by four runs going into the bottom of the ninth. That game ended the 2023 Yankees season, and the remaining 44 games were a mere formality, a two-and-a-half month slog to the finish line in which the Yankees barely finished above .500 and then retained their manager, general manager and their entire front office.

Thursday’s Opening Day game in Houston was the first meaningful game for the Yankees in seven-and-a-half months. And through the first four innings, you would have never known it was a new year and a new season. Those four innings played out like a continuation of last season. Game 1 of 2024 was looking like Game 163 of 2023.

2. Nestor Cortes was named the Opening Day starter out of necessity and through two innings pitched like the Nestor Cortes that the Yankees, Orioles and Mariners didn’t want once upon a time. During the first inning of the first game of the season to start a seven-games-in-seven-day stretch, Aaron Boone had Nick Burdi warming up in the bullpen. That’s how well Cortes was doing.

Cortes allowed three runs in the first inning and a solo home run to the 9-hitter to lead off the second. Framber Valdez and the Astros were getting big outs when they needed them and big hits when they needed them as well. Cortes and the Yankees weren’t, just like they never seem to do against the Astros.

3. Juan Soto’s first plate appearance as a Yankee poetically resulted in a walk, but he was left stranded in the first when Aaron Judge hit into an inning-ending double play. The Yankees left the bases loaded in the second when Jose Trevino banged into a 6-4-3 double play and they were left loaded again in the fourth when Alex Verdugo banged into a 4-6-3. The Yankees were getting the kind of “traffic” Boone dreams of, but they were ruining it with inning-ending double plays. (We’re coming up on the three-year anniversary of Boone saying, “Typically, the better teams are going to hit into double plays,” after the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox on June 4, 2021.) Valdez had thrown more balls than strikes and the Yankees hadn’t made him pay.

4. Everything changed in the fifth inning, thanks to the Yankees’ two worst hitters. Cortes had put up back-to-back scoreless frames in the third and fourth, and the Astros’ lead remained 4-0. Then the Yankees’ .570 OPS duo went to work.

Trevino posted a .570 OPS in 55 games last season and Oswaldo Cabrera barely beat him out with a .574 OPS in 115 games. (Yes, Cabrera was allowed to play in 115 major-league games with a .574 OPS. That’s how bad the 2023 Yankees’ offense was.) But it was those two who got the Yankees’ fifth-inning rally started with a walk and single. The catcher who is strictly a major leaguer because of his defense and the utility player who was only in the lineup because the everyday third baseman is on the injured list, and the player the Yankees traded for to avoid having to play Cabrera didn’t arrive in Houston until 2 a.m.

5. After Gleyber Torres walked, Soto ripped a line-drive single to right to plate the Yankees’ first run. Following back-to-back strikeouts from Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo was drilled by a pitch to score a run and Anthony Volpe drew a walk to score another. Through five innings, the Yankees had cut the deficit to 4-3.

Trailing by one in the sixth, Cabrera came to the plate with one out. For as bad as Cabrera looked in his first at-bat of the game against Valdez (a four-pitch strikeout in which his swings looked as if he were blindfolded), it was startling that he was able putting the ball in play in a 1-2 count against Valdez in the fifth for a single and then clobber a home run on a 1-2 pitch off Rafael Montero in the sixth to tie the game. Maybe it’s just one game, or maybe Cabrera is beginning to figure things out.

6. The same goes for Volpe. Volpe looked like a different player on Thursday than he did for all of 2023. His at-bats on Opening Day were battles. He singled in the first inning, walked on four pitches in the fourth, walked on four pitches in the fifth and drew an eight-pitch walk in the seventh. (He ended his day with a strikeout against Josh Hader, but there’s no shame in that.) It was the best Volpe has ever looked at the plate for an entire game. The Volpe we watched on Thursday was not the Volpe we watched for 159 games last year.

7. The Yankees took the lead in the seventh on a Verdugo sacrifice fly (a skill previous iterations of the Yankees lacked), and four innings of shutout relief work from Jonathan Loaisiga, Ian Hamilton and Clay Holmes gave the Yankees a 5-4 win. It wasn’t as smooth as that reads though, and why would it be with Holmes on the mound in the ninth?

There was no way the Yankees were going to trail by four runs early to the Astros in Houston, then mount an improbable comeback to get within one run, then tie the game on a home run off the bat of the 9-hitter the team desperately doesn’t want to play, then take the lead and coast to a win. It wasn’t going to be easy.

8. You pretty much know which Holmes you’re going to get from the very first pitch he throws, and Holmes’ first pitch on Thursday nearly took Mauricio Dubon’s head off. Dubon hit a line-drive single on the next pitch. I figured either Dubon was going to steal second and Jose Altuve was going to drive him in to tie the game or Altuve was just going to skip tying the game and club a two-run, walk-off home run to destroy a game that was three outs away from being a glorious win. Altuve swung at the first pitch and lined out to Torres.

When Yordan Alvarez walked up the plate all I could envision was Holmes leaving his sinker up and Alvarez hitting a ball to a place no other player had ever hit a ball in MinuteMaid Park. Holmes got the ground ball he needed to possibly end the game from Alvarez, but it was perfectly placed and instead resulted in a single. Wither runners on first and second and one out, it was like the Astros were trying to make their inevitable comeback and walk-off win as painful as possible.

9. Holmes put a second-pitch sinker right over the middle of the plate for Kyle Tucker to extend his arms on and drive to right field. Dubon rounded third and headed for home to tie the game as Soto gathered the ball to throw a laser to the plate. Dubon tried to evade Trevino to get to the plate with a headfirst slide, but Trevino tagged him and Dubon was called out.

I’m not sure Trevino did tag Dubon, and for that, I’m thankful James Hoye called Dubon out on the field. I’m even more thankful there wasn’t a sufficient angle of the play to overturn the call. The call stood, and two pitches later, Holmes got Alex Bregman to ground out to end the game. A nice, clean one-inning save for Holmes that included three hits and a runner getting thrown out at the plate.

10. I couldn’t sleep on Thursday night. Not because of the excitement of the win, the idea of Yankees baseball being back or the Yankees hitting on the money line as an underdog. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t get the idea of life without Soto out of my head, and the thought of him leaving at the end of the season, and ending up with the Mets, or anywhere other than the Yankees had me tossing and turning.

Soto was the Yankees’ first baserunner of the game, drove in the first run of the game, added a second walk and threw out the would-be game-tying run in the bottom of the ninth. This wasn’t a one-game blip. This is who he is. He’s the best hitter with the base eye in baseball. A 25-year-old superstar. Not a generational superstar, but an all-time superstar, who has achieved more italicized bold on his Baseball Reference page by age 25 than the rest of the roster has combined.

I realize there’s a better chance of Boone becoming Bruce Bochy than there is of Soto signing an extension without testing free agency (though maybe that has or will change given Scott Boras’ performance this offseason). But Soto is the guy and needs to be a Yankee for the rest of his career. I can’t just watch this guy play for the Yankees for another 161 games and then possible playoff games. I need to watch him play for the Yankees until my three-year-old and one-year-old are teenagers.

For now, I will enjoy every game he is a Yankee, and thankfully, there’s another one on Friday. And another one on Saturday, and Sunday, and so on. Yankees baseball is back.

The Yankees introduced Marcus Stroman as their newest addition this week and Brian Cashman answered questions about other players and pitchers from his 2024 roster.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Marcus Stroman is officially a Yankee. The newest Yankee said all the right things during his introductory press conference.

“I’m not someone who shies away from the limelight or the pressure, the lights,” Stroman said. “I think a lot of people avoid coming to New York and playing for the Yankees because of that reason. I feel like it brings out the best in me.”

We have heard similar things from other starting pitchers over the years upon becoming Yankees. James Paxton talked about how “pressure is a privilege” entering the 2019 season before proceeding to crumble under that pressure. Last winter, Carlos Rodon talked about how “just putting on these pinstripes is something special,” and then gave all Yankees fans a “special” season when he missed the first half of it and was the worst starting pitcher in the majors during the second half of it.

2. When the Yankees sign or trade for someone, they say it’s because they believe that person can handle New York without anyway of measuring or knowing who will or won’t perform well playing their home games in New York. When it doesn’t work out, they say it’s because that person couldn’t handle New York. It’s never because they targeted, traded for, signed or paid the wrong person.

“There is a population of Major League talent that does not want to play in the New York arena,” Brian Cashman said in introducing Stroman. “It’s too hot, it’s too difficult, it’s too much. That is not this player. This player wanted to be here.”

In Stroman, the Yankees are getting a pitcher who has pitched in big markets in Toronto, New York and Chicago, and in the postseason. They are getting a pitcher who is from New York, grew up a Yankees fan, has already pitched on the other side of the city and understands the microscope he will perform under every five days. It doesn’t mean it will work out. It doesn’t mean he won’t take to social media immediately following a bad start to instigate online fights with fans unhappy with his performance. For now, it just means he’s aware of what he has signed up for.

3. “The bigger the opportunity, he runs to the competition,” Cashman continued. “It’s how he seems to have been wired, all the way back to his amateur days.”

If that’s Cashman’s evaluation of Stroman, again, like I wrote last week, how was Stroman not a Yankee at the 2019 deadline? Especially since Cashman believes Stroman’s makeup dates back to his amateur days which predate 2019.

“Toronto, being in the division, was certainly going to ask more of us at that time,” Cashman said in reflecting on not trading for Stroman. “I just said, ‘For the amount of talent they wanted back, it wasn’t going to be enough of a difference-maker.’ That was my bad, because then how it played wasn’t certainly how it was intended.”

4. I wonder what the Blue Jays asked for in return in July 2019. Clint Frazier? Miguel Andujar? Tyler Wade? Estevan Florial? All the stud Yankees prospects who were later designated for assignment and released for nothing?

You have to admire Cashman saying the quote was “his bad” for how it played rather than saying it was “his bad” for not being willing to part with prospects that amounted to nothing or for not trading for Stroman, who may have helped the Yankees overcome the Astros in that year’s ALCS. 

Everyone always seems to be misquoting Cashman or taking his words out of context. In mid-November after Cashman spoke about Giancarlo Stanton and said, “He’s going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game,” he later tried to backtrack and say his words were misconstrued. If Stroman fails as a Yankee, I’m sure Cashman will say his quote from this week about Stroman being “wired” to play for the Yankees isn’t what he meant.

5. Stroman can’t fail as a Yankee. He can’t because there are too many other questions marks in the rotation. Every starter other than Gerrit Cole has a lengthy and scary injury history, and it would be foolish to think the Yankees can navigate 162 games with the five names currently in their rotation. They traded away their starting pitching depth to acquire Juan Soto, and their master plan (their only plan to negate the depth they traded) fell through when Yoshinobu Yamamoto chose the Dodgers and their $75 million higher offer over the Yankees.

6. Cashman was asked about other Yankees on Thursday, including the disappointing Rodon and oft-injured Nestor Cortes.

“The feedback I’m getting is really good,” Cashman said of Rodon. “He looks like he obviously worked his tail off. Very optimistic that Rodon can return to form (and) be the pitcher that we know he’s capable of being.”

My nose still burns from the water I was drinking while reading that quote coming out of my nostrils due to uncontrollable laughter. I love a good “best shape of their life”-type story from the start of spring training, but to have one in mid-January for a starting pitcher who was the worst starting pitcher in baseball in his first year of a six-year, $162 million deal is truly absurd. Rodon looking “good” in mid-January should be the bare minimum to expect from someone who makes more than $800,000 per start whether he starts or not.

7. “All reports on him have been fantastic,” Cashman said of Cortes.

Here is the combined line for Rodon and Cortes from last season: 127.2 IP, 124 H, 87 R, 84 ER, 48 BB, 131 K, 26 HR, 5.94 ERA, 1.347 WHIP.

There’s a month until pitchers and catchers officially reports, five weeks until spring training games begin and 10 weeks until Opening Day. Let me know what kind of shape those two are in and how they look at the end of March, if they can both get to that point healthy and available.

8. When asked about Stanton, Cashman decided against unnecessarily criticizing his designated hitter like he did two months ago. Cashman commented that Stanton has a new “tact” to his offseason and that his training is “in a really good place between his diet and his offseason conditioning.”

I’m glad Stanton is eating vegetables and has possibly shied away from using a sledgehammer to pound a tire as part of his offseason strengthening routine. I don’t know that he’s an offseason workout change away from going from a .695 OPS in 2023 to even the mediocre .759 OPS (which he posted in 2022) in 2024. When Stanton wasn’t hurt last year, he was lost at the plate, taking middle-middle fastballs and swinging at sliders in the opposite batter’s box. It’s hard to believe a change in diet is going to help him with pitch recognition and pitch selection, but OK.

“He’s always been one of the most feared hitters in the game,” Cashman said of Stanton, clearly unknowing of the meaning of “always.” “And I think he’s locking forward to getting back to that.”

9. “The doctors have told us he’s 100 percent clear,” Cashman said about Anthony Rizzo’s health. “The type of concussion he hd, once he’s past it, will not return. I can’t speak to that. I’m not an expert. But there’s no looking back, just moving forward.

I’m glad Cashman clarified he’s not an expert on concussions. Here I was thinking Cashman was an expert on head injuries after he allowed Rizzo to play for three months and endure the worst three-month stretch of his career following a head collision. But nothing is better than Rizzo telling Aaron Boone of head fogginess prior to a three-game series in Baltimore in August, only to then play all three games before being shut down for the season after that series.

10. Aside from Jason Dominguez, who is expected to return sometime in the summer, every Yankee who is coming off a career-worst year or finished last season injured is either in fantastic shape or once again healthy. You don’t need to look at a calendar or outside your window in New York City to falling snow today to know what month it is. The overly-optimistic health and performance reports coming from the Yankees are all you need to know it’s mid-January.

The Yankees added to their rotation by signing Marcus Stroman to a two-year deal.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. At the 2019 trade deadline, the Yankees desperately needed to add starting pitching. Masahiro Tanaka was having the worst season of his career, James Paxton had been inconsistent and injured, CC Sabathia had an ERA hovering around 5, J.A. Happ was ineffective in his second season with the Yankees, and due to injuries, Luis Severino wouldn’t be available until September. The Yankees’ starting pitching situation was a mess with a lack of organizational depth that would grow more shallow with the eventual suspension of Domingo German.

2. The Yankees had an opportunity to improve that rotation by trading for 28-year-old Marcus Stroman, who boasted a 2.96 ERA in 21 starts for the Blue Jays through the end of July. They didn’t.

“We were interested, but we didn’t think he would be a difference-maker,” Brian Cashman said at the time about not trading for Stroman. “We felt he would be in our bullpen in the postseason.”

3. Three years before making the same claim about Jordan Montgomery (who it turns out is a pretty good postseason starter), Cashman and his team failed to properly evaluate Stroman. The Yankees went into the postseason with a three-man rotation of Tanaka, Paxton and Severino, put Happ and Sabathia in the bullpen and turned to Chad Green as an opener when they needed a fourth starter. In the ALCS, Tanaka, Paxton and Severino couldn’t give the team length, Happ allowed a walk-off home run as a reliever in Game 2, Sabathia blew out his shoulder in Game 4 and Green’s opening act in Game 6 put the Yankees behind three runs in the first inning. A masterclass in roster construction by Cashman. After the series ended, the Yankees’ elite relievers, all of which were no longer effective by Game 6 complained of fatigue. You know who would have likely prevented that fatigue? Stroman, who gave the Blue Jays and Mets length for the entirety of 2019.

4. That season was either Stroman’s best (137 ERA+) or second-best season (he had a 145 ERA+ in 201 innings in 2017) in the majors depending on how you want to view or value each. He was in his prime and had done an excellent job combating the juiced baseball, and still, the Yankees didn’t want him.

Stroman is now 32 and will turn 33 less than five weeks into the 2024 season. He’s coming off back-to-back seasons for the Cubs in which he missed 20 percent of his starts due to injury. Apparently, now the Yankees consider him to be a difference-maker.

5. On Thursday, after failing to increase their offer for the Yoshinobu Yamamoto and after lowballing reigning NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell, the Yankees signed Stroman to a two-year, $37 million deal.

So what changed in the four-and-a-half years since Cashman passed on Stroman at a time when the Yankees desperately needed him? The Yankees grew even more desperate is what changed.

6. Coming off an embarrassing 82-80 season in which the Yankees couldn’t qualify for the postseason in a format in which 40 percent of the league is eligible, the Yankees’ offseason plan was to trade for Juan Soto and sign Yamamoto. They used up every last starting pitching resource to acquire Soto, thinking the addition of Yamamoto would cancel out the lost starting pitching depth. When that failed, the Yankees were left without a plan, much like they were 13 years ago when Cliff Lee signed with Phillies, and the Yankees’ lack of a Plan B led to them replacing Andy Pettitte and the idea of Lee with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia.

The Yankees’ rotation-enhancing options quickly went from penciling in Yamamoto as the No. 2 Carlos Rodon was supposed to be to either overpaying for Snell or Montgomery (who Cashman dealt in 2022 because he didn’t see Montgomery being a postseason starter for his team) or signing Stroman and all the baggage that comes with him. Knowing the cost of each, the Yankees made a “Hey, we tried!” offer to Snell then pivoted to Stroman.

7. Stroman has worn out his welcome at every place he has been: the Blue Jays, Mets and Cubs. The New York native, who was suspended in the minors for using a performance-enhancing substance frequently engages with critical fans on social media (which is always a good idea) and has spent the last four-plus years since Cashman made the “difference-maker” comment bashing the Yankees through social media. (Oddly enough, all past Yankees bashing done by Stroman has now been scrubbed from his social media accounts.) When Stroman pitches poorly, rather than be accountable, his first instinct seems to be to search for his name on X/Twitter and respond to anyone who has mentioned his most recent performance. Rodon blowing a kiss to heckling fans after he missed most of last season and then pitched poorly when he did pitch is minor-league softness compared to what Stroman is capable of.

Stroman has his issues, both on the mound where underlying metrics suggest his prime is over, and off the mound, where he will go off on fans when he doesn’t meet expectations. The Yankees had to fill their hard-to-root for quota somehow with the recent losses of Josh Donaldson, Domingo German and Jimmy Cordero, and by acquiring Alex Verdugo and signing Stroman, they are doing everything they can to fill those voids.

8. The Yankees’ rotation is now made up of the reigning AL Cy Younger winner (Gerrit Cole), the worst starting pitching in the majors in 2023 (Carlos Rodon), a starter who went down in the 2022 postseason with an injury and then made only 12 starts in 2023 because of injuries (Nestor Cortes), an oft-injured righty who just pitched a career high in innings to middling results (Clarke Schmidt) and Stroman, who again missed 20 percent of last season.

The Yankees still need to add another starter, whether it’s Snell or Montgomery. Bringing back Luke Weaver isn’t going to help me sleep at night, and the odds of Rodon, Cortes, Schmidt and Stroman all being healthy and available when the seasons starts at the end of March is a four-leg parlay I want no part of.

9. “Hope” should never be a word associated with the Yankees during an offseason. The Yankees have the ability to remove the idea of “hope” from their offseason plans every year, and yet, every year they continue to make that their organizational motto. You would think after 14 pennant-less and championship-less seasons, they would go back to their old way of doing business, signing and banking on sure-things rather than hoping and praying for bounceback seasons and Comeback Player of the Year nominations for members of their roster. But that’s all Yankees fans are likely left to do going into 2024 again: hope and pray that a group of oft-injured, over-30 players and pitchers somehow defy their individual injury histories and recent performance issues.

10. Hopefully, Stroman pitches well for the Yankees (as well as he would have in 2019 had they acquired him in his prime), and he doesn’t feel the need to search for his name on social media and wage a war with the largest fan base in the sport. If he doesn’t pitch well, or if he does come decide to take out any performance-related frustrations on fans, he’s at least in the right environment to do so where his new manager will be there to defend, support and lie for him to no end. Let’s “hope” Stroman is an All-Star again in 2024 like he was in 2023 and it all works out.

The Yankees lost out on free-agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese star signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers and a lot of Yankees fans seem worried. I’m not one of them.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I thought I would be more upset about the Yankees not landing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but I’m not. Losing out on Yamamoto (and losing Michael King) hurts their overall pitching staff, but it’s not enough to ruin the 2024 Yankees. The Yankees may not have the pitching depth they had before trading for Juan Soto or the depth they thought they could replenish when Yamamoto was still an option, but pitching hasn’t been a problem for the Yankees in 15 years. The offense, however, is what has led to the demise of the current Yankees core in each of their postseasons and what prevented them from even reaching the postseason last year.

2. The Texas Rangers just won the World Series with a rotation similar to the Yankees’ and an inferior bullpen. They were able to win four postseason rounds and went on the road in the wild-card series to end the Rays’ season, swept the 1-seed Orioles in the ALDS, knocked off the Astros in Games 6 and 7 in Houston and then beat an NL Cinderella story that had eliminated the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies.

3. Does that mean I don’t want the Yankees do anything else? Certainly not. The Yankees still need to build back up their starting pitching depth. It seems as though they are content with their current lineup situation, and because of that, pitching will be their primary focus for the remainder of the offseason. As currently constructed, the Yankees have a strong team on paper and in theory. On paper and in theory, it’s a roster full of household names that should return them to the postseason. In actuality, it’s a roster that is banking on the majority of its players to stay healthy and return to their usual form. I don’t want to go into 2024 with the roster representing the type of parlay card full of +400 and +500 underdogs the Yankees have put together in recent years. Parlays are for suckers and the recent rosters the Yankees have called “championship-caliber” were suckers. The long odds on that parlay card can be shortened by signing one or two of the leftovers starting pitchers with Yamamoto off the board.

4. The Yankees’ inability to sign Yamamoto makes their trade for Soto all that more important. If the Yankees hadn’t acquired Soto and were three days out from Christmas with a replacement-level outfielder the Red Sox didn’t want as their only move, then yeah, things would be bleak for 2024. Soto moved the needle that much for me and the 2024 Yankees. They will still need a lot to happen, but they need a lot less now that they have Soto.

5. Ultimately (credit to Aaron Boone for that word), the Yankees’ season will come down to the following:

Anthony Rizzo being healthy and the offensive force he was in April and May of last season.

DJ LeMahieu being healthy and productive.

Giancarlo Stanton having his first productive season in three years, and if not, the Yankees being willing to move him down in the order, bench him or release him.

Anthony Volpe taking a giant step offensively in his second full season after a rough rookie season at the plate.

Carlos Rodon not being the worst start pitcher in baseball.

Nestor Cortes staying healthy.

If all of those things happen, the Yankees will be fine. (Fine in terms of the regular season.) If half of them happen, they should still be fine in terms of reaching the postseason. If only the Rodon and Cortes needs work out, they will still be fine. If none of them happen, well, Yankees fans will have a lot of free time in August, September and October again like they had last season.

6. The addition of Soto helps mitigate a lot of the offensive issues and uncertainty, but had the Yankees signed Yamamoto they would still be hoping to hit on a few items from that list. Like Soto, adding Yamamoto would have lessened the need for those listed items to go the Yankees’ way, but neither Soto nor Yamamoto alone, nor together, would fully safe-proof the 2024 Yankees from some sort of roster parlay.

7. This offseason has felt longer than normal because the Yankees’ season was hanging on by a thread in mid-July and officially over on August 13. There was essentially seven weeks added to the length of his offseason because of how early the Yankees were out of it. When they open the season on March 28 in Houston, it will be more than seven months since they last played a truly meaningful game.

The Yankees’ lack of depth in all departments leaves little wiggle room for them to sustain injuries and underperformance the way they were able to in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. We saw last year what happens when the current roster is banged up, and next year’s roster currently has less depth than that. If you’re a Yankees fan who’s not already praying for a healthy 2024, you may want to start.

8. I don’t care how much money Yamamoto received and anyone who thinks it’s too much money for a pitcher who has never thrown a pitch in the majors or too much period has been fooled by the owners into thinking there is a limit to how much players can be paid. At least three teams offered Yamamoto $300 million and the team that landed him already invested $700 million in another player. That same team has more than $400 million committed to Mookie Betts and nearly another $200 million to Freddie Freeman and Tyler Glasnow each. Every team can pay and overpay for players. Some just choose to do it more than others.

9. The good news is I don’t see how the Yankees don’t re-sign Soto now with Yamamoto off the table. Hal Steinbrenner could have cried poor after 2024 and let Soto walk if he had just committed to a decade of Yamamoto at $300-plus million. But now? Now the only star position player for the Yankees under contract after 2024 is Aaron Judge. A year ago, Steinbrenner said, “Fans want to see stars,” and then paid a star-less lineup for most of 2023. The Yankees have two stars now and they will hit back-to-back in the order, representing the best back-to-back situation in the sport. I expect them to have both for 2024 and beyond. I have been under the impression the Yankees would re-sign Soto from the second they traded for him, and now I fully expect it. If they don’t, I will be right back to where I was as a Yankees fan the second before the deal for Soto was finalized.

10. Missing out on Yamamoto in this dreadful free-agent class means the Yankees can’t go into 2024 as the true odds-on favorite to win the AL. (Maybe that’s a good thing since they were the odds-on favorite for 2021 and finished third in their division and fifth in the AL and their postseason lasted nine innings.) The AL was wide open for 2023 and the Yankees chose not to be a part of it with their “Run It Back” roster. As open as the AL was last year, it’s similarly open for 2024. Without Yamamoto, the Yankees can’t truly separate themselves from the pack, but there are still free-agent signings they can make to at least have somewhat of an edge on the rest of the league.

After years of shopping in the clearance aisle for position players to no success, the Yankees finally acted like the Yankees once again and acquired a generational talent.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last month when Hal Steinbrenner was staring into a laptop rather than publicly assessing the miserable 2023 season in person, nothing he said made me feel better about being a Yankees fan going into 2024. Unless Steinbrenner guaranteed he would stop at nothing to acquire Juan Soto, he wasn’t going to make me feel better about retaining his general manager and manager and his overall evaluation of his inherited franchise.

The Yankees acquired Soto on Wednesday night after days of negotiating, trading player names and finally reviewing the medicals of all of the arms the Yankees exchanged for the 25-year-old superstar. Today, I feel as good about being a Yankee fan as I have since the team won Game 5 of the 2022 ALDS over Cleveland. (That feeling lasted barely 24 hours with the Yankees losing Game 1 of he 2022 ALCS the following night. I expect this feeling to last longer.)

2. I have seen many Yankees fans who say they have been hard on ownership and Brian Cashman in recent seasons take a step back to applaud their work here. There will be no applause from me. This trade doesn’t erase last season. It doesn’t make up for the 2022 trade deadline disaster. It doesn’t negate not signing Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or Corey Seager when it would have only cost money — the Yankees’ greatest resource — to do so. Trading for Soto was necessary and it was the type of move the Yankees should always be willing to make. The trade for Soto is the Yankees as an organization doing their job, something they no longer often do. The Yankees doing their job every few seasons isn’t worthy of congratulatory praise.

3. This deal wasn’t a luxury move, the way it was when the Yankees acquired 28-year-old Alex Rodriguez in February 2004. This move was a necessity. The Yankees desperately needed a middle-of-the-order, superstar, left-handed bat to complement Aaron Judge, and paying whatever price San Diego demanded was going to be worth it. I have seen commentary suggest the Yankees overpaid for Soto or that the Padres somehow “won” a trade that isn’t even a day old. To me, the Yankees didn’t give up anything they couldn’t afford to lose, they acquired the best player in the deal, and it will take the Padres hitting a massive parlay with the arms they received to somehow come out on top from the deal after trading away a unique talent like Soto.

4. During the negotiating period, I came across real people who were worried the Yankees were overpaying for one guaranteed year of Soto by moving Michael King and Drew Thorpe. King was a great late-game, multi-inning reliever for the Yankees and showed exceptional promise as a starting pitcher over the final two months of this past season. He also blew up his arm when he fractured his elbow in July 2022 and the 104 2/3 innings he threw in 2023 represent the most innings he has thrown since 2018. Thorpe had a great season in the minor leagues, but again, it was the minor leagues and his success in High-A and Double-A is in no way indicative of his future success or potential success in the majors. Neither pitchers are good enough to prevent the Yankees from acquiring Soto, and thankfully they weren’t.

5. Soto isn’t a superstar, he’s a generational superstar. He’s a unicorn in terms of plate discipline in today’s game as he has more walks (640) than strikeouts (577) in his career, and only in his rookie season (when he was 19 years old) did he not outwalk his strikeout total (79 to 99). He has the fifth-highest OPS+ for any player with 3,000 plate appearance through his age-24 season with the only players above him being Ty Cobb, Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle and Jimmie Fox.

6. Soto just turned 25 at the end of October and has already played six full seasons in the majors. What he accomplished through his first six years and his age-24 season is ridiculous: posted a .923 OPS as a 19-year-old, led the Nationals to a championship as a 20-year-old with a .949 regular-season OPS and 1.178 World Series OPS; won the batting title (.351 average) as a 21-year-old, recorded the first 145-walk season in 17 years (Barry Bonds) as a 22-year-old; drew another 135 walks and added a Home Run Derby crown as a 23-year-old; played in all 162 games with 132 walks and a .930 OPS as a 24-year-old.

7. To put into perspective just how young Soto is and how absurd it is that he has been in the league for six years already, here is Soto compared to the ages of other Yankees considered “kids” by the organization and fan base:

Estevan Florial: 26.0
Juan Soto: 25.1
Oswaldo Cabrera: 24.9
Austin Wells: 24.5
Anthony Volpe: 22.7

8. Once Jasson Dominguez returns in the summer, the Yankees have the ability to use this lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Juan Soto
Aaron Judge
Jasson Dominguez
Gleyber Torres
Anthony Rizzo
Giancarlo Stanton
Austin Wells
Anthony Volpe

Here is a real lineup the Yankees used in September:

Estevan Florial
Aaron Judge
Gleyber Torres
Austin Wells
Anthony Volpe
Jake Bauers
Oswald Peraza
Oswaldo Cabrera
Everson Pereira

9. In the past, Soto has said he prefers to hit third. Whether he still feels that way and if it will be Judge then Soto or Soto then Judge in the Yankees lineup is now the team’s biggest offensive problem. For long stretches of last season, Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, Willie Calhoun, Harrison Bader and Jake Bauers took turns hitting second and third. The team has come a long way since late last night.

10. I don’t think the Yankees traded for Soto with the idea of taking one shot at ending the championship drought with him on the roster. I think they made this move with the idea they will do whatever it takes to extend him (unlikely with Scott Boras as his agent) or re-sign him. Ideally, the Yankees would pay him before the other 29 teams have a chance to, but if they aren’t able to (and I don’t think they will be able to with the way Boras operates) then at least they have a season together to lay the groundwork needed to keep him a Yankee for the rest of his career.

The Yankees have passed on too many mid-20s position players in recent years (Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Corey Seager) with their decisions to pass immediately coming back to haunt them. The focus for the Yankees with Soto can’t just be for 2024.

The Yankees’ offseason is going about as well as the actual season. No changes have been made to the front office, dugout, clubhouse or roster and everyone within the organization continues to talk about how great everything is.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After the last day of the miserable, embarrassing 2023 season, the Yankees went quiet for 36 days. More than five weeks of nothing from the organization. Over that time, every other major-league club either kept playing or held some sort of end-of-the-season post mortem to explain what happened over the previous six months and why it won’t happen again. Some teams even decided during that time to move on from their general manager and/or manager, a concept foreign to ownership in the Bronx.

2. The Yankees chose nothing: say nothing and do nothing. They decided against holding their standard end-of-the-season press conferences with their general manager and manager. They decided against replacing the two people in those jobs. They went into hiding as an organization, choosing only to hold internal meetings in Tampa where they decided to run it back with the same front office and same staff. And when they report to spring training in a little under three months, they will make it apparent they are running it back with the same roster as well.

3. It was only recently the Yankees came out of hiding to publicly answer questions for an 82-win season, and the only reason they did was because they had to. Brian Cashman had to attend the General Meetings and show his face in public, and Hal Steinbrenner knew Cashman had to attend these meetings and would be questioned, so he too came out of hiding. Knowing he had to be the first person from the organization to say something, anything since the end of the regular season, hours before Cashman went on an expletive-filled tirade, Steinbrenner popped open his laptop and virtually addressed the media like a coward.

4. “I’m proud of our operation,” Steinbrenner said. “I think we have a great group of baseball people. I think we have a very strong process that has served us well up until what happened this particular season.”

The Yankees have such a “strong process” that they finished fourth in the AL East and eighth in the AL, producing more runs than only the Tigers, Guardians, White Sox and A’s. So what did Steinbrenner tell his “great group of baseball people?”

“I told them this season is completely unacceptable.”

And yet, that “group of great baseball people” are still employed by the Yankees in the same positions they held during the “completely unacceptable” season. Those employees keeping their jobs includes Cashman and the equally untouchable Aaron Boone.

5. “I think he’s a good manager,” Steinbrenner said of Boone. “He’s extremely intelligent. He’s hardworking. The players respect him as a manager. They want to play for him and win for him.”

If the players want to win for Boone, why didn’t they do that more often? Of course players want to play for him. Boone is a dream boss. He’s the ultimate player’s manager. Make the first out of an inning at third? He likes the aggressiveness. Give up seven runs in two innings? He thought the stuff was great, but there were just a few pitches the starter would like to have back. Jog down the first-base line like you’re a valet attendant retrieving a car? Turn your back on the pitching coach after allowing eight runs without recording an out? He’ll say he would have disciplined the pitcher in question, but it’s late in the season.

As for Boone being “hardworking,” maybe he is, but it doesn’t mean the work he does is good, and what is Steinbrenner basing Boone being “extremely intelligent” or a “good manager” on?

6. Steinbrenner admitted to wavering on if Boone should continue as manager of his team. Why would Steinbrenner even think about replacing someone who is “extremely intelligent” and “hardworking” and a “good manager” the players “respect” and “want to play for” and “want to win for.” Those are the exact characteristics every MLB team is looking for in hiring a manager, and yet Steinbrenner was willing to move on from someone he has under contract who possesses those traits. Why? Because Boone doesn’t actually possess those traits.

Steinbrenner said he changed his mind about a possible managerial move after consulting with Andy Pettitte, Nick Swisher and Aaron Judge. Steinbrenner’s own intuition nor his highly-paid “great group of baseball people” mattered in the decision. Instead, a former teammate of Boone’s, someone who never played with or for Boone and the team’s current captain (who gets to enjoy an accountability-less work environment) acted as the driving force in Boone getting a seventh season to manage the Yankees.

7. Nothing Steinbrenner said made me feel any better about being a Yankees fan going into 2024. Truthfully, unless he guaranteed he would stop at nothing to acquire Juan Soto, he wasn’t going to make me feel better after retaining his general manager and manager. But then Cashman spoke and suddenly all of the lies and excuses that came out of Steinbrenner’s mouth didn’t seem so bad.

In Cashman’s first run-in with the media since the end of the season, he behaved in a manner wildly inappropriate for someone of his position. He spoke about his job and his team as if he had put a few back in the hotel lobby before meeting reporters. Not only did he ideologically challenge anyone who thinks or talks poorly of the disastrous roster he has built, I was waiting for him to physically challenge media members for saying or writing anything critical of him or his team over the last year.

“I think we’re pretty fucking good,” Cashman said with microphones in his face, and that’s all he needed to say. That one sentence sums up the state of the Yankees better than any words I can put together possibly can. Coming off their worst season in 30 years in which they had the highest payroll in the AL, Cashman still believes the Yankees “are pretty fucking good.”

8. The lack of accountability within the organization is startling. Steinbrenner said the season was unacceptable, and yet, he didn’t fire a single employee. Cashman has blown through more than $3 billion of payroll over the last 14 years without producing a single World Series appearance let alone World Series win and still believes his team is “pretty fucking good.” Boone has a litany of performance-related excuses for his players after every single game and those players spend all season talking about tomorrow until there are no more tomorrows and then they talk about next year.

9. When Steinbrenner was asked about Cashman’s unhinged appearance, he said, “While I don’t condone the cussing, I do like the passion.”

Steinbrenner doesn’t condone Cashman’s language except he does, since nothing came of it. In mid-July when Carlos Rodon blew a kiss to heckling fans in Anaheim, Boone said, I would like him not to do that … But I think it was better than getting into a shouting match or doing something that he would regret.” Rodon shouldn’t have reacted and blown a kiss to upset fans, but hey, at least he didn’t verbally or physically assault a fan! Every single member of ownership the front office and clubhouse lacks accountability and it trickles down from Hal, who won the birth lottery, all the way to someone like Harrison Bader, who condescendingly responded, “No concern,” to Meredith Marakovits when asked about his level of concern regarding the team’s place in the standings in early August.

10. Early in the 2023 season, a friend of mine told me he believes the Yankees are operating as a social experiment: a test to see how far the organization can push its fans while still maintaining a fan base. At first I laughed because of the comedic way it described the 2023 Yankees’ season, but as the season progressed, it became hard to ignore as a possibility.

Maybe the Yankees are just fucking with all of us? It sure would explain Steinbrenner recently saying Boone thinks the team needs to bunt more or Cashman opting to criticize his second-highest-paid position player’s injuries unprovoked. It certainly would explain everything the two said over the last two weeks. It would definitely explain everything that has gone on with this team for a long time now.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ season officially ended nine days ago, and unofficially ended on August 13 in Miami. The wild-card best-of-3 series ended last week, and today, a division series could end. All of this has happened without a word from the Yankees. No end-of-the-season press conference full of lies, excuses and empty promises. No nothing.

Then again, what is there for the Yankees to announce that we don’t already know? The lack of sourced rumors and news means there will be no changes for 2024. Brian Cashman will continue in his role for a 27th season. Aaron Boone will be back for a seventh season.

2. I’m numb to these Yankees. A year ago, I was livid when Boone was retained after the ALCS debacle in which the Yankees were swept by the Astros and he used the 2004 ALCS to unsuccessfully motivate his clubhouse. The year before that, I was irate when he was given a new three-year contract with a fourth-year option. Now? Now I really don’t care.

It’s not good for the Yankees that I don’t care. When their most ardent fans are throwing their arms up in disgust, it’s not good. I’m not alone. I have received countless texts and had countless conversations with friends, many of whom are in the same tier of me when it comes to caring about the Yankees who no longer care.

3. Once the Yankees avoided a last-place finish in the AL East and prevented the consecutive season winning streak from ending, the possibility of real, meaningful change was gone. Boone wasn’t going to survive a last-place finish, but a fourth-place finish, well that’s a whole different story! He wasn’t going to survive the Yankees finishing under .500, but two games above .500, well that’s a whole different story! The measuring stick for what is and isn’t considered a success for the Yankees has been watered down to the point that being slightly better than a Red Sox team that just fired their general manager after four seasons is enough for people to keep their jobs.

4. Joe Torre managed the Yankees for 12 seasons. In those 12 seasons, the Yankees went to the playoffs 12 times (in a format in which only the Top 4 teams in the AL reached the playoffs), won four championships and appeared in six World Series. Despite unfathomable success that led to his number 6 being retired, he was forced to sing for his supper in front of Cashman, George Steinbrenner and ownership in Tampa after three straight first-round exits. It didn’t matter that he was given an approaching-40-year-old Mike Mussina, a 42-year-old Randy Johnson, a 45-year-old Roger Clemens, Chien-Ming Wang, Shawn Chacon and Jaret Wright to navigate those postseasons. The Yankees were expected to win every season and they hadn’t in seven years, so Torre was offered a degrading incentive-laden deal to remain Yankees manager.

This week in Tampa, Boone is meeting with Cashman and ownership led by Hal Steinbrenner, who was his father’s fourth choice (at best) to run the Yankees. Boone isn’t in Tampa to sing for his supper or convince a room full of the same millionaires and billionaires that took Torre for granted in that same room 16 years ago. Boone doesn’t have to persuade the front office as to why he should still be manager of the Yankees after six unsuccessful seasons and with the organization’s championship drought now at 14 seasons with one in the last 23 years. Because to the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, these last six seasons weren’t unsuccessful. To the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, they were wildly successful.

5. The idea a Yankees season is a success if it ends with a championship or is a failure if it doesn’t died with George. Once the championship-or-bust mentality was erased from the organization, success was measured by simply making the postseason. “Just get in” became the motto for Hal’s Yankees and his general manager referred to the postseason as a “crapshoot” in every opportunity he could. Oddly enough, Cashman never referred to the postseason as a “crapshoot” when the Yankees were winning the World Series every year. There was no mention of success in October being “random” when Cashman inherited a dynasty built for him. Only when that dynastic roster grew old and eventually retired and Cashman was forced to build his own core did the words “crapshoot” and “random” become a part of his vocabulary.

Cashman was done the favor of all favors by the league and the players’ association when they expanded the postseason format to five teams and then eventually to six. Not only would his preaching that winning in the postseason was the equivalent to trying to win a casino game be more acceptable, but with 40 percent of the league getting a postseason berth, his Yankees would never miss the postseason. Until they did. In just the second year of seven of the AL’s 15 teams reaching the playoffs, the Yankees weren’t one of them. So the championship-or-bust measuring stick that had been downgraded to “just get in” had dropped another notch: Stay out of last place. Mission accomplished.

6. Cashman’s predecessors built him a stunning, breathtaking mansion, of which he drilled a few holes and hammered in a few nails, and then spent the next nearly three decades acting as though he built the whole thing alone with his bare hands. Once the core of players he inherited that had won four championships in five years — the five years for which Cashman still holds his job to this day — began to age and retire, Cashman couldn’t build his own core. After eight championship-less seasons, he was able to squeeze one final ring out of the Core Four by surrounding them with a half-billion-dollar offseason. Four years and a pair of ALCS losses, an ALDS disaster and a postseason-less season later, he tried the same trick, except this time his half-billion-dollar spending spree was every bit as bad as every single trade for a controllable starting pitcher he has ever made. Three years later, the Yankees had a single postseason game to their name: a 3-0 shutout loss at home to the Astros. He spent the following summer trying to convince ownership to sell at the deadline and hit the reset button, and somehow fooled everyone into thinking he wasn’t the person responsible for all the bad deals and acquisitions the Yankees were trying to sell off for pennies on the dollar.

The Baby Bombers were going to be Cashman’s legacy. They were going to prove he could develop his own talent, build a core of his own and allow him to stop living in Gene Michael’s shadow, no longer needing to pass off Stick’s work as his own. Except the Baby Bombers couldn’t turn Cashman into the genius the faction of the fan base that sleeps in Yankees pajamas so badly wanted him to be recognized as. After coming within one with of the 2017 World Series, the Baby Bombers never got that far again.

They never got that far again because Cashman’s analytically-driven organization either couldn’t finish off the development of the majority of its young players, or watched their careers stall out with no answer to fix them.

They never got that far again because Cashman continued to prospect-hug the wrong prospects only to eventually release or designate them for assignment for nothing in return.

They never got that far again because Cashman signed the wrong free agents, acquired the wrong acquisitions, surrounded his already oft-injured roster with more oft-injured players and continued to believe aging players could beat Father Time, as if it were the early 2000s and they could get help in beating Father Time.

They never got that far again because Cashman took a team that came within one win of the World Series and turned it over to someone whose managerial and coaching experience at any level was the same as mine.

7. Not only did Cashman convince Hal Steinbrenner and the executive group that offered Torre a prove-yourself contract that Boone was the right man to take over a team knocking on the door of the World Series, but he convinced them to cancel all additional interviews.

Of all the irresponsible decisions Cashman has made in tarnishing what the interlocking NY stands for, hiring Boone is right near the top. Boone proved himself overmatched for the job in his very first spring training, forgetting he needed to notify the bullpen of when to get relievers warm. In the very first series of the season, he decided to trust Jonathan Holder as if he were peak Ramiro Mendoza. In his very first postseason, his starter for the pivotal Game 3 of the ALDS didn’t know the start time for the game. When that starter could only get outs by lucking into 105-mph line drives finding gloves, Boone let him put the Yankees in a three-run hole. When that hole wasn’t big enough, Boone sent him back out for the next inning where he loaded the bases without recording an out . Needing a strikeout, Boone went to his least likely option in the bullpen to generate a strikeout. The Yankees would go on to suffer the most lopsided home postseason loss in the team’s history that night. The following night, Boone let his fatigued starter face the opposing lineup in its entirety a second time because he liked the matchup of his starter against the 9-hitter. The Yankees’ season ended that night with Boone nonsensically defending his thought process.

The results aren’t as important as the process for the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees. Cashman told us all exactly that a year ago at the team’s end-of-the-season press conference. The same press conference they have yet to hold this month. And because the process is what matters, and not scoring more runs than the opposition and not winning games and championships, there’s truly no goal for the Yankees. A process is a subjective thing. Cashman may think Boone’s process is outstanding. Someone else (anyone else) may not. Wins and losses aren’t subjective, and because of that, they’re not necessarily part of the internal process the Yankees believe they have perfectly concocted, the same way the organization said their 2022 internal metrics proved Isiah Kiner-Falefa was one of the best defensive shortstops in the league. (I guess they stopped believing in those numbers in the postseason when they benched him for his defense against the guardians and Astros.) Boone’s process hasn’t changed since his first season as a major-league manger. He made the same in-game strategic mistakes in 2023 he made in 2018. Shockingly, the Yankees have only grown worse during his tenure, operating under his process.

From top to bottom, the Yankees are a mess. Their majority owner wants no part of owning the team. He wants to reap the financial benefits of being an all-time lucky sperm, but doesn’t want to do any of the work involved in earning those benefits. His hands-off approach has kept Cashman in power, and the cocky, stubborn smartest-guy-in-the-room, who five years ago rejected the idea of Bryce Harper being a Yankee, continues to operate with no accountability or consequences. Do you really think the guy who didn’t even meet with Harper during his free agency because he had an outfield depth chart of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, Jacoby Ellsbury and Clint Frazier or the guy who watched Josh Donaldson’s 2022 and then brought him back and rostered him for nearly all of 2023 is going to admit to any wrongdoing in his hiring of Boone. Because that’s what moving on from Boone would be. It would be an admission that choosing the guy with no experience was the wrong choice. We’re talking about the same guy who was forced by ownership to call up the kids in August and September against his wishes. If it were up to Cashman, Donaldson and Harrison Bader would have still been batting fifth and sixth for the Yankees last Sunday.

8. Steinbrenner has Cashman’s back. Cashman has Boone’s back. Boone has his players’ backs. And his players say they have Boone’s back because what else are they supposed to say? Judge could think Boone a moron (which he is) and do you think the captain of the team is going to tell a sea of microphones his true feelings about his manager? And yet, Judge’s supporting his manager to the media at the end of the season is being used as some sort of proof that none of the Yankees’ failures are on Boone. Boone losing his job wouldn’t be scapegoating. He’s not a scapegoat. He’s not the problem, but he’s a problem and part of the overall problem, and has been since he was hired. The goal for the organization should be to resolve all problems.

In all likelihood Judge and Gerrit Cole and all of the Yankees love Boone, and why wouldn’t they? Everyone wants a boss who is their friend first and authority second, if at all. Everyone wants a boss who doesn’t care about mental, physical or emotional mistakes, who holds no one accountable and has little care for results.

Boone is a dream boss. He’s the ultimate player’s manager. Make the first out of an inning at third? He likes the aggressiveness. Give up seven runs in two innings? He thought the stuff was great, but there were just a few pitches the starter would like to have back. Jog down the first-base line like you’re a valet attendant retrieving a car? He’ll say he believes the effort was there. Blow a kiss to heckling fans who are fed up with a soft, thin-skinned $800,000-per-start pitcher? He’ll say at least the pitcher in question didn’t physically assault the fans. Turn your back on the pitching coach after allowing eight runs without recording an out? He’ll say he would have disciplined the pitcher in question, but it’s late in the season.

There’s no ceiling for the lengths Boone will go to “protect” his players. But in doing what he thinks is protecting is his players, all he has really done is create a losing culture for the winningest organization in sports history. He has created a clubhouse and roster that is comfortable with losing and that believes there’s always tomorrow. And why wouldn’t they? That’s all any of them have heard since becoming Yankees under Boone. The only player still around now to remember how things were before Boone is Judge, and maybe that’s why Judge referred to the season as a “failure” two weeks ago, something his manager or teammates wouldn’t dare to do.

9. With no change at general manager and no change at manager, what change is coming for a team that just finished 19 games out in the division? How are they planning on closing that 19-game gap? They aren’t. The only movable player on the roster is Gleyber Torres, and while I’m not the biggest Torres fan, it’s probably not a great idea to trade the team’s second-best hitter. (I fully expect the Yankees to keep Torres, not extend him and then lose him to free agency a year from now.) The rest of the roster is a collection of young players you can’t trade out of necessity, young players whose trade value has decreased now that they have reached the majors with little-to-no success or mid-to-late-30s players owed big money. The free-agent market looks like a tag sale of items that belonged to an owner who was a chain smoker.

10. That leaves the Yankees with one option for next season: another massive parlay. Hope DJ LeMahieu gives them a full season, Stanton isn’t officially washed, Anthony Rizzo can avoid long-term concussion symptoms and be productive, Anthony Volpe isn’t a bust, Jasson Dominguez returns in July looking like he did in September, Carlos Rodon can stay healthy and pitch to his salary, Nestor Cortes can bounce back from shoulder problems and that Michael King and Clarke Schmidt can build on their 2023 seasons. And on top of all that, they need Judge and Cole to continue to perform at a superstar level. Easy.

It’s a lengthy parlay card that looks every bit like the offseason parlay cards the Yankees have created for themselves over the last decade. If A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K all happen, this could be a World Series team! None of those parlays hit and don’t expect this one to either.

No change at general manager. No change at manager. No change to the roster because there’s no change to be made.

They’re really going to run it back. Again.

There are less than two weeks left in the Yankees’ season. Thankfully.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. In 12 days, the 2023 Yankees will no longer exist. It’s both happy, because this has been the most miserable Yankees season of my life, given the performance relative to expectations, and sad, because it sucks when the baseball season ends, even one as miserable as this.

I gave up on the Yankees long ago. The Sunday, Aug. 13 loss in Miami was the day I came to realization the season was officially over. The Yankees confirmed my realization by losing nine straight games.

2. I was starting to feel good about 2024 with the arrival of Jasson Dominguez, but that lasted eight games before the actually promising prospect was taken from us through at least next season’s All-Star break, and likely longer. Dominguez was and hopefully remains the real deal. He’s not Anthony Volpe, who you have twist numbers and narratives to feel good about. He’s not Oswald Peraza, who hopefully is building on his .849 OPS over his last 13 games, and he’s not Everson Pereira, whose inability to make contact is startling. Maybe Volpe will become the superstar he’s believed to be. Maybe Peraza and Pereira will continue their development into being everyday players for the Yankees. There was no maybe with Dominguez. There were no growing pains. He was every bit as good as advertised over the last four years, and would have opened the 2024 season as the Yankees’ 3-hitter and returned hope to a fan base starving for someone other than Aaron Judge to believe in in the batter’s box. Unfortunately, on March 28, 2024 in Houston, we will all have to pray a 1 through 4 of DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton that wasn’t good enough or healthy in 2023 will be good enough and healthy a year older in 2024.

3. I keep hearing “It’s crazy the Yankees are only six games out with 12 games to play!” It’s not crazy. This is what the six-team, three wild-card format was created to do: keep as many teams in the postseason picture for as long as possible (especially the team with the highest payroll in the AL and second-highest payroll in the majors). The Yankees are only “almost a playoff team” because 40 percent of the league gets into the playoffs, and sadly they aren’t in the Top 40 Percent of the league, a feat that seemed impossible of ever happening when the new playoff format was implemented.

4. Sometime in the next two to three weeks, the Yankees will hold their end-of-the-season press conference and explain why they didn’t win a championship for the 14th straight season. Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone will both undeservedly remain in their positions for 2024, the Yankees will do little to nothing to upgrade the roster over the winter, and expect fans to tune in beginning on Opening Day believing next season will end differently than the previous 14 simply because the Yankees are the Yankees, as if that means anything anymore.

5. The Yankees’ recent play and winning 14 of 20 assures Boone will be back for 2024. The Yankees needed to continue their bottoming out, finish in last place and end the consecutive-season winning streak for him to be removed as manager. Now that they have spent the last three weeks beating up on the Tigers, Pirates and Red Sox, are out of last place and above .500, there’s no doubt in my mind Boone will be back next season. We know Cashman is coming back. He has a lifetime contract. So where will the change come from to make sure a season like this doesn’t happen again? How about nowhere. There won’t be any change.

6. The players the Yankees could have gotten rid of have already been gotten rid of: Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson and Harrison Bader.

If you think Bader was bad as a Yankee (and he was painfully bad), well, Reds fans can’t be too happy with how he has played for their team. Bader is 5-for-31 and hitting .161/.235/.194 with Cincinnati. (Yes, that a .194 slugging percentage.) Bader was a below-league-average hitter with the Cardinals (99 OPS+), well below one as a Yankee (75 OPS+) and is an automatic out as a Red (18 OPS+). I’ll always remember Bader for his “No concern” comment when asked how concerned he was about the Yankees’ place in the standings after their loss to the Astros on August 6.

Donaldson has played seven games with the Brewers, and while he’s nowhere near the level of player the Yankees decided to take on $52 million for, he’s been better than he was as a Yankee, hitting .217/.357/.391. Donaldson already has a double with the Brewers, after hitting one in 120 plate appearances for the Yankees this season.

And then there’s Aaron Hicks. Hicks isn’t just playing well for the Orioles, he’s playing the best baseball of his career, hitting .288/.386/.452. Hicks had similar seasons with the Yankees five and six years ago, but those came during the days of the juiced baseball. What Hicks is doing now, for the veteran minimum, while the Yankees are paying him to play for the best team in baseball is sickening.

All three of these ex-Yankees may be playing in the postseason. Hicks and Donaldson definitely will be, and the Reds are tied for the final wild-card berth in the National League. Here’s to Hicks and Donaldson winning ALCS and NLCS MVP respectively and meeting in the World Series.

7. Congratulations to Carlos Rodon on giving the Yankees his second quality start of the season on Sunday in Pittsburgh! The Yankees have paid Rodon about $25 million of his $27 million for this season so far to receive two quality starts. The Yankees lost both of those starts and are 3-9 when Rodon takes the mound, but that’s just semantics.

8. Stanton has one multi-hit game in nearly a month, and he’s down to .193/.279/.431. He’s hitting .202/.289/.448 in his last 205 games and 843 plate appearances. He will be 34 for 2024 and is under contract for next season, the season after that, the season after that and the season after that. Rodon will still have a season left on his contract when Stanton is gone.

9. I have made a small fortune this season betting on the under in Yankees games, so when I saw this stat two days ago, it didn’t surprise me: The Yankees have been held hitless in 48.8 percent of innings this season. It made me laugh because when you watch the Yankees get no-hit through the first five innings of a game two to three times a week (like they did most recently on Sunday), it’s easy to understand just how horrible the offense is. But when it’s written it out that in half of their innings this season they have been no-hit, well, that really drives the point home.

10. The Yankees are six back with 12 to play. They essentially need to win every remaining game to possibly reach the postseason. If you think they can do that and have the Mariners or Rangers collapse (since the Yankees going 12-0 would mean 6-0 against the Blue Jays which would mean the Blue Jays have collapsed) then hats off to you. There’s a reason the Yankees have a 0.4 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, and it’s not because that scenario is likely.

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The Yankees won two of three from the Tigers and lost two of three to the Brewers. None of it matters.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The only reason to watch the Yankees this September no longer exists. I guess there’s some intrigue in watching the continued development of Anthony Volpe and the hopeful development of Austin Wells, Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira (and maybe Oswaldo Cabrera if he’s not a lost cause), but the one true reason to watch any remaining games was Jasson Dominguez. Unfortunately, Dominguez is now out for the rest of this season and likely half of next season after tearing his right ulnar collateral ligament.

The most miserable Yankees season imaginable grew even more miserable with the Dominguez news on Sunday. Dominguez had been the Yankees’ switch-hitting center-field superstar that everyone hoped he would be after he signed four years ago, and now he will miss out on three more weeks of major-league plate appearances this year and most likely three months of next year.

2. Dominguez reportedly told the Yankees on Wednesday that his arm was sore. He then went on to play Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Sounds a lot like Anthony Rizzo telling Aaron Boone he was experiencing “fogginess” prior to a series opener in Baltimore before going on to play all three games in that series and then being shut down. So now Dominguez needs surgery and the next time we will get to see him play is around the All-Star break next summer, and that’s probably only if everything goes perfectly. Get ready for ‘Isiah Kiner-Falefa Center-Field Stopgap for the First Half of 2024.’ 

3. I was upset the Yankees didn’t just get no-hit for nine innings and lose on Sunday to add another notch on their belt of embarrassment from this season. Instead, they finally got a hit in the 11th inning to tie the game, tied the game again in the 12th inning down two runs and won in the 13th inning on a Kyle Higashioka walk-off hit.

Higashioka got to play in the game because Jake Bauers pinch-hit for Ben Rortvedt, who happens to be Gerrit Cole’s latest personal security blanket, and Higashioka went into the lineup for the Rortvedt/Bauers spot. I thought I was done having to watch Higashioka play baseball as a Yankee, but apparently I’m not.

4. Higashioka has only received one start in September and two since August 31, but that’s two too many. Wells and Rortvedt should be playing every day no matter what hand the pitcher throws with. Wells has only played in three of the last six games. If Cole has to have Rortvedt catch him, which he clearly does (just like he had to have Higashioka catch him over Gary Sanchez and then Jose Trevino catch him over Higashioka) then Rortvedt should catch the remaining Cole starts and Wells should be catching every other start. He needs the at-bats, he needs the work behind the plate, he needs the experience. Every day he’s sitting on the bench is a day wasted toward the Yankees being better in 2024 and beyond.

5. The same goes for Peraza, Pereira, Cabrera, and also Estevan Florial, who was called up on Monday, which likely pained the Yankees since they would rather roster has-beens, and never-weres than Florial. Those four should be playing in all 19 remaining games. (Comically, Peraza and Pereira are both not playing on Monday.) There is absolutely no reason for any of them to not play. Bauers and Kiner-Falefa should only get another plate appearance this season if two of Aaron Judge, DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres or Giancarlo Stanton get a day off on the same day.

6. Luis Severino isn’t going to throw another pitch this season and most likely threw his last pitch as a Yankee. I can’t see the team re-signing him after the way the last five years have transpired. I have always been a Severino fan and have gone out of my way to defend and support him against his critics, of which there are many. Once Severino is gone, Judge will be the last remaining player from the 2017 team that had so much promise. Severino hasn’t been healthy since 2018 and hasn’t been a consistent front-end starter since the first half of that season. That’s more than five years ago, which in baseball, is a long, long time ago. I’m sure the Dodgers, Rays or Astros will sign him, fix him, keep him healthy and have him reaching his full potential again, and I’m sure he will have success wherever he goes in 2024 since he won’t be pitching for or coached by the Yankees.

7. Five years and three weeks from now, the Yankees will no longer be paying Carlos Rodon. Like I said, five years in baseball, is a long, long time. The Yankees’ offense got thoroughly dominated in the 2022 ALCS by the Astros, and came to the conclusion they were adding Rodon away from closing the gap on the Astros. They didn’t add a single bat in the offseason, and instead ran it back with Josh Donaldson and Aaron Hicks, and believed in Harrison Bader and Oswaldo Cabrera. As I wrote and said when Rodon signed, he was a luxury, not a necessity at a time the Yankees needed necessities. Their starting pitching wasn’t why they lost to the Astros, and yet, they chose to sign Rodon to a six-year, $162 contract.

The always-injured Rodon missed the first half of the season with injuries, and had he missed the entire season, the Yankees may have a chance at the postseason since they are 2-8 in his 10 starts. He has given the Yankees one quality start, and that happened to be on August 22 against the Nationals when the Nationals had traffic on the bases in all six of Rodon’s innings, but he managed to escape jam after jam. In half of his starts, he has failed to pitch five innings, and he’s put 69 baserunners on in 46 1/3 innings while allowing 12 home runs. On Thursday, he got lit up by the Tigers (3.2 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), who have scored the second-fewest runs in the majors.

The Yankees are tied to a two-pitch starter, who makes more than $800,000 per start and who has made a full season of starts once in his nine-year major-league career for five more years. The decision to sign him was unnecessary at the time, and now it will likely prevent them from signing other starting pitchers this offseason. It shouldn’t prevent them from doing so, but Hal Steinbrenner operates in the limits of the imaginary salary cap that he helped impose. (And remember, he has been an adamant public supporter of a hard salary cap in the sport and a spending structure that would destroy his own team’s ability to be consistently be good because it would save him some money.)

8. Michael King’s line as a starter across four starts: 16.2 IP, 13 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 21 K, 1.08 ERA, 1.28 FIP, 0.960 WHIP. King’s first two starts were abbreviated because of pitch count concerns, but the last two times out he was allowed to throw 69 and 79 pitches and went five innings both times, allowing one earned run in each of the two starts. Those two starts came against the Astros and Brewers, two teams with championship aspirations this season, and real championship aspirations, not the fake kind of championship aspirations the Yankees had this year. As long as King’s health holds up, he will be given a rotation spot for 2024, and the Yankees need starting pitching options for 2024

9. Right now, their expected rotation would be Cole, Rodon, Nestor Cortes, Clarke Schmidt and King? There are enormous injury concerns with everyone other than Cole. It’s likely why Brian Cashman was in Japan on Saturday to watch Yoshinobu Yamamoto start. Cashman chose to be in Japan and attend that Yamamoto start of all Yamamoto’s starts because it was Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium and the 1998 Yankees were being celebrated for their 25th anniversary. And yet, the general manager (who inherited that team) wasn’t present. Cashman wasn’t about to show his face to the public and leave himself open to get destroyed by the crowd. There was no coincidence in Cashman being absent.

10. It’s unfortunate Cashman won’t be absent from the Yankees forever, and only is when it’s convenient for him to not have to answer in the form of boos and expletives for the decisions he has made with the organization since the final out of the 2017 ALCS. He will have to answer questions soon. There are now less than three weeks left in the season and then the Yankees will hold their annual end-of-the-season press conference. It’s typically takes place during the ALCS or World Series since the Yankees are usually eliminated before both of those rounds of the postseason, but this season it could even take place during the wild-card round since they won’t even qualify for that.

Cashman will have to answer for this season and this roster. He can hide for a Saturday in Japan on a conveniently-timed scouting trip. He can’t hide forever.

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Labor Day is depressing, but with Labor Day has nearly always come the anticipation of October and Yankees playoff baseball. Unfortunately, there won’t be any postseason baseball for the Yankees this October. So as the summer comes to an end, and this miserable Yankees season comes to end, let’s look at the state of franchise.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. While I have spent the last couple of weeks rooting for the Yankees to lose to further cement this embarrassing season and give ownership no room to possibly run it back again next season, part of me was hoping they pulled off the four-game sweep in Detroit just to hear the postgame comments from Aaron Boone and his players. I so badly wanted to hear that this is the turnaround they have been waiting for and that they have momentum going into September, but I was deprived the opportunity for comedic comments from the Yankees clubhouse because they couldn’t even pull off a sweep of the Tigers. In spectacular Yankees fashion, Gleyber Torres threw away a double play ball (after booting a double play ball earlier in the game that extended an inning and led to the Tigers scoring) that would have sent the game to the 11th inning. It was so Gleyber and so Yankees that it was beautiful in the way a tornado is.

2. The Yankees managed to go 3-1 in Detroit, and they are now 11-2 against the A’s, Royals and Tigers, and 57-67 against all other teams. If they only played those three teams (on pace for 115, 113 and 90 losses respectively) then they would be “championship-caliber” in the way Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman and Boone have talked about them this season. Instead, the Yankees are 65-69, sitting comfortably in last place in the AL East and need to go 17-11 in their remaining 28 games to preserve the consecutive season winning streak that dates back to 1993.

3. What’s even harder to stomach about this season is that the Yankees would be 64-61 if they never played the Red Sox. And the Red Sox would be 61-64 if they never played the Yankees. The Red Sox singlehandedly ruined the Yankees’ season, and the Yankees singlehandedly propped up the Red Sox’ season. I guess the good from that is the Red Sox helped the Yankees realize they need organizational and roster change, and the Yankees prevented the Red Sox from selling their wide array of assets at the deadline, only to stand pat (like the Yankees) and they will now also miss the playoffs.

4. The Yankees’ decision to stand pat at the deadline was ill-advised at the time and looks even worse in hindsight. After choosing to not move Harrison Bader by the first of August, the Yankees put him on waivers on Tuesday and then watched him join the Reds on Thursday for nothing in return other than salary relief. Just some money back in Hal’s bank account.

On Aug. 2, 2022 when the Yankees traded Jordan Montgomery for Bader, I tweeted, “Umm … Harrison Bader sucks.” Bader sucked with the Cardinals and he sucked even worse with the Yankees. He came to the Yankees as a below-league-average hitter for his with a 99 OPS+ and posted a 72 OPS+ with the Yankees, somehow managing to be 27 percent worse in New York than he had been in St. Louis. He hit .237/.273/.353 with the Yankees for a .627 OPS. His first six weeks as a Yankee were spent on the injured list and a lot of his 2023 was spent there too. His five 2022 postseason home runs in nine game is what some will remember his time with the Yankees by, but I will remember him for three other things:

1. His error in Game 3 of the 2022 ALCS. He dropped a fly ball that would have ended an inning, but instead extended the inning and the next batter (Chas McCormick) hit a two-run home run to essentially end the Yankees’ season.
2. His postgame comments on August 6. After losing to the Astros, Bader was asked how much of a concern it is being 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot? “No concern at all,” he answered. “We keep playing this brand of baseball it’s going to be just fine.” The Yankees did keep playing that brand of baseball and are 7-14 since.
3. Not knowing what waivers is. After Tuesday’s game he was asked what his reaction was to finding out he was put on waivers. “Like what is waivers mean?” he replied. (That’s not a typo. That’s how he worded his answer.) How does a going-to-be-30-year-old in their seventh major-league season not understand waivers?

Bader was as much of a bust as busts get, and I’m glad I no longer have to watch him play for the Yankees, and I’m especially glad he won’t be a Yankee for 2024 and longer as many wanted him to be with a possible extension. The fact the Yankees technically traded Montgomery (who they could have desperately used this season) for nothing is the type of result that can be expected from Cashman transactions at this point.

5. Bader’s dismissal was only the start of the roster news for the week as Josh Donaldson was released by the Yankees on Tuesday. Why did the Yankees wait until now to release Donaldson in a move that every Yankees fan was clamoring for since the end of last season? I have no idea. But I do know if the Yankees’ season didn’t spiral out of control, the Yankees would have kept Donaldson and he would have been starting at third base and batting fifth the moment his current 60-day IL stint ended.

Bader’s time with the Yankees was forgettable, but short-lived. Donaldson’s time with the Yankees was disastrous with long-term ramifications.

On Jan. 12, 2023. prior to the start of spring training, I wrote about Donaldson, questioning how he could still be a Yankee for 2023:

Donaldson is owed $21.75 million in base salary in 2023 and has an $8 million buyout attached to him for 2024. There’s a better chance the Yankees figure out how to efficiently conduct Stadium entrance security than there is that Donaldson isn’t bought out in 2024. That means Donaldson remains a $29.75 million investment for the Yankees. I have made a lot of foolish purchases in my life. The Tubthumper album from Chumbawama in 1997 comes to mind. But that cost my sixth grade self, what, $14? Maybe $15. (I should have used that money on a safer investment like buying more Pogs.) The Yankees willingly traded for Donaldson and took on the entire $51.5 million owed to him to acquire Kiner-Falefa. Teams do crazy shit like that when they are getting an elite player in return. Pay off this overpaid sunk cost for us and we will give you the player you covet. The Dodgers took on David Price’s remaining contract to get Mookie Betts. The Yankees coveted Kiner-Falefa, a player the Rangers spent half-a-billion dollars to avoid playing (by signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien), and a player the Twins immediately flipped to the Yankees (and then used the money saved on Donaldson to sign Carlos Correa). The Yankees coveted him so much, they were willing to take on more than the entire team payrolls of the A’s and Orioles to make it happen.

Donaldson is going to play because of owed money. There’s no circumstance in which he will be benched for underperformance. If he wasn’t benched last year when he posted career lows in runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and had the highest strikeout rate of his career, what exactly would he need to do to get benched in 2023? If he were to have a sub-.500 OPS around Memorial Day, Boone would still deflect questions about Donaldson batting fifth with how great his defense has been as if defense doesn’t grow on trees.

On Memorial Day, Donaldson did have a sub. 500 OPS at .489 and was on the IL, having been so since the sixth game of the season. He did eventually get his OPS up to .659 (which was 190 points lower than his career OPS and represented a new low for him for an OPS in a season, beating last year’s .682) before going on the IL for the remainder of his time as a Yankee. His .142 batting average was alarming and his .225 on-base percentage made him unplayable, and yet, when healthy, he always played and never batted lower than sixth in the lineup.

6. “The things he did this winter to get himself ready to go, I think you’re crazy to think that a bounce back is not in there offensively,” Boone said of Donaldson in spring training. “This guy still has bat speed, and is super talented. He’s in a much better place than he was a year ago right now.”

I guess we’re all crazy. Everyone not employed by the Yankees is just a crazy idiot. He never bounced back, and he ended up being in a worse place than he was the year prior. I can hear John Sterling now at an Old Timers’ Day in the near future …

“This next Yankee came to the Bombers via trade prior to the 2022 season. In his first year in pinstripes he posted full-season career lows in every single offensive statistic, culminating in a magnificent 1-for-13 performance with 10 strikeouts in the ALCS as the Yankees were swept away by the Astros. Despite offseason calls to release him, the Yankees brought him back for 2023, never batted him lower than sixth and eventually released him in late August, while still on the 60-day injured list. He missed 44 percent of the team’s games over his two seasons as the Yankees paid him $51.5M for 165 games of a .678 OPS. That’s Josh, by gosh! Josh, with panache! Welcome back, Josh Donaldson!” (Stadium organ plays.)

7. All of the recent benching, waiving and releasing has made it possible for the Yankees to call up and play the next wave of Baby Bombers that the organization hopes can fulfill the goal the last wave couldn’t: win a championship. Or even play for a championship.

Last week, it was Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira. And now on Friday, in Houston, against Justin Verlander, it will be 20-year-old Jasson Dominguez and 23-year-old Austin Wells. Dominguez reaches the majors after just nine games and 37 plate appearances in Triple-A and Wells after 33 games there.

8. In a vacuum, neither Dominguez nor Wells are likely ready for the majors. But the Yankees don’t operate in a vacuum. Hal sees the possibility of an empty Stadium for all of September and likely deteriorating TV ratings over the last three weeks that are only going to get worse over the next four. He hears the calls for him to sell the team, replace his entire front office, fire everyone in the dugout and get rid of any player whose last name isn’t Judge, Cole or Volpe. He knows the Yankees’ brand and the interlocking NY are being viewed as if they’re a steaming pile of crap, and with all of the recent 2024 season-ticket emails that have gone out, the demand, interest and sales can’t be doing well.

9. Hal had two moves to negate the damage done by the last-place season for his bottom line. The first was to raise ticket prices for 2024, which he did, reportedly by as much as 10 percent for some seats. (He needs to make up for the missed postseason gates somehow.) The other was approve the call-ups of all top prospects, and he has now done that as well.

No Yankees fan who hadn’t already purchased September tickets and had an ounce of self respect (or a life) would trek to the Stadium to see Bader swing through fastballs from righties, watch Giancarlo Stanton power walk on the basepaths, sit through a Carlos Rodon shellacking, witness Kyle Higashioka throw the ball into the outfield on stolen-base attempts or be present for an Albert Abreu meltdown. But to see top prospects? To see the future? Well, that’s a different story. Potential September Stadium-goers know it, YES viewers know it and Hal knows it.

It’s likely the Yankees’ baseball operations department doesn’t agree with the decision, but screw them. They have been wrong about everything for several years that it’s time they are overruled before hopefully being replaced.

10. Odds are Dominguez and Wells will be overmatched this weekend, and could be all month the way Peraza and Pereira have been for the last week, Oswaldo Cabrera has been all year and Anthony Volpe has been for the most of the season as well. That’s fine. Winning games no longer matters, and hasn’t since the horrific Sunday loss in Miami. All that matters now are plate appearances, innings played and continued development for those six. The only way the Yankees make their stay at the bottom of the division a one-year thing, and the only way they climb back to the top of the East in the relatively near future is by building their own homegrown talent.

The remaining 28 games of this season are crucial to 2024 and beyond. For the next month, it’s probably going to look ugly a lot more than it’s going to look promising, and that’s OK. The 2023 Yankees, had they been at full strength all season, were never going to do what the 2017-2022 couldn’t do either. That core had their chance. They had many chances. Now it’s time for a new roster, a new team and a new era, and I’m ready for it. I think all Yankees fans are.

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The Yankees have lost five straight. They haven’t won a series against a team other than the A’s or Royals in two months. Their postseason odds are down to 2.3 percent.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After Tuesday’s loss to the Braves, Aaron Judge said what everyone outside of the Yankees knows. “We’re not showing up,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down.”

It wasn’t a great look for Judge’s manager, who spent the previous two nights telling everyone how his team is “scuffling their asses off” and “playing hard” and “preparing the right way” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Aaron Boone is part Pollyanna to accept his team is showing up, part delusional to think they are playing hard, and part liar to tell everyone he thinks they are doing both things. And yet, there was the star of the team, the franchise player and captain disagreeing with everything Boone has been saying for days.

2. Boone was asked about Judge’s comments and tried to spin, twist and mold them into something other than what they were, which is an indictment on the entire roster and organization. Boone said Judge didn’t mean what everyone thinks he meant, which is exactly what he meant: that the Yankees have given up.

A night later, after the Yankees were shut out for the second straight game, Judge had changed his tune. Changed it to a karaoke tune of his manager. Judge was no longer calling out his teammates, instead he did a perfect impression of his manager. “It’s right in front of us,” Judge told the media after the Yankees lost their fifth straight game and fell under .500.

3. There’s nothing in front of the Yankees. They no longer control their own destiny. The Blue Jays hold the third wild card. The Blue Jays are 6 1/2 games up on the Yankees. The Yankees have six games left with the Blue Jays. If the Yankees were to sweep the six games from the Blue Jays, they still wouldn’t overcome the deficit. The season is in front of the Blue Jays. It’s not in front of the Yankees. They need to help themselves and then they need outside help.

Twice this week Boone talked about how there is a quarter of the season left. He mentioned the history of baseball being “littered” with teams that went on “unlikely runs” to reach the postseason. He referenced the 2019 Nationals, the 2021 Braves and the 2022 Phillies. He said Suzyn Waldman told him about the 1995 Yankees. He didn’t reference the hundreds of teams that were just as disappointing and bad as the Yankees that never turned it around.

4. Let’s act as though Boone isn’t a crazy, desperate man who has a little more than six weeks left in his current job and is spewing nightly bullshit to the media worse than he ever has. Let’s take the Yankees’ current 2.3 percent odds of reaching the postseason and join Boone in thinking having a 2.3 percent chance of reaching the postseason is just some minor adversity that a team that has been under .500 for 213 games can overcome. Let’s try to map out a way for the Yankees to reach the postseason.

The Yankees trail the Blue Jays by 6 1/2 games, and in between them are the Mariners (6 games back of) and Red Sox (3 games back of). Let’s remove the Mariners from the equation and standings for now.

The Yankees have six games remaining with the Blue Jays and seven with the Red Sox. Realistically, the best you could hope for is the Yankees to go 4-2 against the Blue Jays and 5-2 against the Red Sox.

Yes, winning five of seven against the Red Sox will be difficult, but it seems like every season no matter how good or bad one of the teams in the rivalry is, they always end up one or two games apart in the season series. The Red Sox depressingly lead the season series 5-1. If the Yankees go 5-2, they will finish 6-7 against the Red Sox. They would lose the season series, and therefore would need to finish at least one game ahead of them in the standings to avoid the tiebreaker.

5. Here are the Yankees’ remaining other games: Nationals (3), Rays (3), Tigers (7), Astros (3), Brewers (3), Pirates (3), Diamondbacks (3) and Royals (3).

For the sake of this exercise, we are going to need to pretend the Yankees can win series against teams other than the A’s or Royals, something they haven’t done since June 25. We are also going to need to pretend the Yankees can beat bad teams, even though they themselves are a bad team.

The Nationals (3), Tigers (7), Pirates (3) and Royals (3) are all bad teams. That’s 16 games against bad teams. Simply winning each series isn’t going to cut it. The Yankees are going to need to win at least 12 of the 16 games against these teams. They are going to need to clean up here. It’s their only chance.

That leaves games against the Rays (3), Astros (3), Brewers (3) and Diamondbacks (3). The Yankees are going to have to find a way to win two-thirds of these 12 games and go 8-4. This is the most unrealistic part of this exercise, even though the entire exercise is unrealistic. The Rays, Astros and Brewers are all in the postseason currently and trying to hold or better their position. The Diamondbacks are a game out of the last wild card in the NL. All four of these teams will be going all out in September to solidify their place in October.

The Yankees are 60-61. Add in the 9-4 record against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, and they are 69-65. Add in the 12-4 against their fellow bad teams, and they are 81-69. Add in the improbable 8-4 against the remaining schedule, and they are 89-73. Are 89 wins enough to get in?

6. The Blue Jays would be 69-59 if they went 2-4 against the Yankees. The Yankees could tie the Blue Jays with wins since they would hold the season series advantage. The Yankees would need the Blue Jays to go at best 20-14, as that would give the Blue Jays 89 wins but give the Yankees the tiebreaker.

The Red Sox would be 65-63 if they went 2-5 against the Yankees. The Yankees can’t tie the Red Sox since they would have lost the season series, so they need the Red Sox to finish with 88 wins. The Yankees would need the Red Sox to go at best 23-11, as that would give the Red Sox 88 wins, and they would finish one game behind the Yankees.

Then there’s the Mariners.

The Mariners are 66-55 and six up on the Yankees. The Yankees won the season series (4-2) against the Mariners, so they can finish with the same record. The Mariners have to go 23-18 to finish with 89 wins. The Mariners have won 11 of 14, and after they play three against the Astros this weekend, they play nine straight against the White Sox, Royals and A’s. They also have three games against the A’s in September.

7. To recap:
The Yankees need to go 4-2 against the Blue Jays.
The Yankees need to go 5-2 against the Red Sox.
The Yankees need to go 20-8 in all other games.
The Blue Jays need to win no more than 20 games against other teams.
The Red Sox need to win no more than 23 games against other teams.
The Mariners need to win no more than 23 games.

That’s a lot that needs to happen. The Yankees need to play .707 baseball for six weeks, they need to beat up on the Blue Jays and the Red Sox, and have those two teams cooperate when they aren’t playing the Yankees, and then they need to the Mariners to play no better than .561 baseball for the rest of their season. And now you know why the Yankees’ playoff odds are down to 2.3 percent.

8. But they’re not 0 percent, and that’s what Boone, Judge and the Yankees want you to remember. It’s why Tommy Kahnle wrote “BELIEVE” on a piece of paper and hung it above his locker. As ridiculous as it is for the Yankees to start winning like the 1998 team they are celebrating next month at Yankee Stadium, and as absurd as it is to think the Blue Jays, Mariners and Red Sox will all do just enough to not beat out the Yankees (and even the Angels who I left out, but are just one game behind the Yankees), there’s still a chance, no matter how small it is, and the Yankees as an organization are clinging to idea they can be the team a team in a future disappointing will reference when talking about trying to reach the playoffs.

9. It would be very on-brand for the Yankees to go on a historical run, have all the needed elements to reach the postseason fall their way and get into the playoffs only to get embarrassed at some point by the Astros and then run it back in 2024 with the same general manager, manager, coaching staff and roster. It’s my biggest fear, that the Yankees as currently constructed on the field, in the dugout and in the front office will be the Yankees eight months from now. And if the Yankees miraculously do reach the playoffs only to get run out of the tournament, the 2023 Yankees will be the 2024 Yankees because they will have accomplished their goal: make the playoffs.

10. That is the Yankees’ goal: make the playoffs. Whether it’s as the 1-seed with the best record in the league and holding home-field advantage throughout or as the third wild card that clinched in the final at-bat of the final day of the season. Be in the Top 40 percent of the league is what the Yankees strive for, not to be the Top 1 in the league. Again, it’s in every Yankees fan’s best interest that they don’t reach that goal, and that the degrading series in Atlanta carries into this weekend against the Red Sox. Bottoming out is the only way change can happen (even if bottoming out doesn’t promise doesn’t guarantee change).

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
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