1. This is the best I have felt about the Yankees in 2026. Coming off the two-game destruction of the entire Red Sox’ organization, the Yankees are flying high with the ALDS set to begin, and I’m flying equally as high. Who needs alcohol or drugs when your favorite baseball team beats the absolute shit out of your least favorite baseball team?

But when Drew Rasmussen throws the first pitch of the ALDS to Ben Rice on Saturday night at Tropicana Field, I will immediately be grounded. I’m already on my way back down like the hysterical Uncle Albert floating to the floor in Mary Poppins. Because while basking in the blowout of the Red Sox and the misery-fueled aftermath for their fans, I recognize the Rays are not the Red Sox.

2. The Rays don’t boast a punchless lineup or a manager that makes me appreciate Aaron Boone. They got to sit at home this week and watch the Yankees put their season on the line and force their best two starters to make an extra start for a reason. The Rays had the best record in the American League for a reason. The Rays earned their bye to the ALDS and home-field advantage in the AL playoffs for as long as they are alive in the playoffs. They held off the Yankees from June 28 through Game 162. Each time the Yankees made a play to overtake them, the Rays answered with lengthy winning streaks.

3. Cam Schlittler against the Red Sox is what the Rays’ Game 1 starter Drew Rasmussen has been against the Yankees in his career. This is Rasmussen’s career line against the Yankees: 59.2 IP, 38 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 13 BB, 70 K, 3 HR, 1.81 ERA, 0.855 WHIP. He has held the Yankees to a .180/.228/.246 slash line in his career.

The good news is the Yankees did beat Rasmussen up at the Trop (where Game 1 will be played) on July 9: 2.1 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 1 HR.

The bad news is that in his other three starts against the Yankees this season, Rasmussen pitched to this line: 19.2 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 24 K. 

Rasmussen blanked the Yankees for six innings (and allowed one baserunner) in Tampa in April. He shut them out for seven innings in the Bronx in May. He got lit up by them at the Trop in July and then one-hit them for 6 2/3 innings (with 11 strikeouts) in September. He’s the single-worst possible pitcher for the Yankees to face in the league and they will have to face him in Game 1 and then again in Game 4 (if there is a Game 4).

4. Here are the Yankees’ individual numbers against Rasmussen:

Ben Rice: 1-for-16, HR, 7 K
Cody Bellinger: 4-for-17, 2 BB, 2 K
Luis Garcia: 0-for-6, K
Spencer Jones: 0-for-3, 2 K
George Lombard Jr.: 0-for-2, K
Jazz Chisholm: 2-for-14, 2B, 3 BB, 6 K
Trent Grisham: 6-for-16, HR, 4 K
Austin Wells: 1-for-8, HR, BB, K
Ryan McMahon: 1-for-10, 2B, BB, 7 K

Aaron Judge: 2-for-16, 2 BB, 8 K
Anthony Volpe: 0-for-11, BB, 7 K
Paul Goldschmidt: 2-for-9, 2 BB, 4 K
Jose Caballero: 1-for-6, 2 K
Giancarlo Stanton: 2-for-4
Heliot Ramos: 1-for-3, 2B, K
Amed Rosario: 0-for-2
Ali Sanchez: Has never faced Rasmussen

Outside of Grisham, it’s bad pretty much all around. That doesn’t mean he’s unhittable. Entering Game 2 of the 2017 ALDS and facing Corey Kluber, the Yankees’ roster was a collective 23-for-148 with eight walks, 44 strikeouts and a .155/.204/.250 slash line against Kluber for their careers. They chased him in the third inning in that game (2.2 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 2 HR) and then chased him in the fourth inning five days later (3.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 2 HR) to win the series. No, I don’t feel good about the Yankees having to face Rasmussen on Saturday and possibly twice within the next week, but it doesn’t mean the Yankees can’t beat him.

5. The postseason is different. In Rasmussen’s only postseason start (as a Ray back in 2021), he was pulled before recording an out in the third inning at Fenway Park. He faced 11 batters and six of them reached as he lasted only 33 pitches. Five years is an eternity in baseball and Rasmussen is now a seasoned veteran and an All-Star in each of the last two seasons. He was very good back then too (2.44 ERA in 10 starts and 20 games with the Rays that year), but he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball now.

Because Schlittler likely won’t pitch in the games Rasmussen starts (unless the Rays hold him back for Game 5), Rasmussen’s starts represent the only time the time(s) the Rays will have the starting pitching advantage in the series. If the Yankees win when Rasmussen starts, it will be nearly impossible for the Rays to win the series because it will mean having to win all of Schlittler’s starts. If the Yankees win Game 1, the path to a series win for the Rays becomes incredibly difficult to envision.

Unless the Yankees are going to blitz Rasmussen on Saturday like they did in July (and that’s impossible to expect), the way to beat him is the plan the Red Sox’ unsuccessfully attempted against Schlittler in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series: keep it close until he’s out of the game.

Rasmussen averaged just under six innings in his 30 starts this season, but he never pitched more than seven innings. His season-high for pitches was 114, which he threw in his final start of the season in the division-clinching game at Yankee Stadium on September 22. He will start Game 1 of the ALDS on 10 days’ rest. It’s possible there’s some rust initially after having not pitched in a third of a month, or it’s possible he’s so rested that he comes out dotting the corners and racking up strikeouts.

6. However Rasmussen comes out (whether rusty or dominant), Gerrit Cole needs to match him. That’s a lot to ask, considering Cole is pitching as poorly as he ever has a Yankee. The only other time Cole looked this bad was in the final month of 2021. That month-long slog foreshadowed his 2021 one-game playoff performance at Fenway Park, in which he lost the game after four batters. If Cole pitches on Saturday like he did in September, the Yankees will be down 1-0 in the series.

Thanks to the day off between Games 1 and 2 and with Schlittler going in Game 2, Cole doesn’t need to give the Yankees length. If he empties the tank and only gives the Yankees five spectacular innings (or even four), he will have done his job. The Yankees’ bullpen is well-rested. It had one high-leverage plate appearance in the Wild Card Series and Paul Blackburn induced a double play in it. The bullpen is so rested that Aaron Boone had to use his high-end relievers in a Game 2 blowout just to get them work in. The bullpen can cover as many innings as needed. They just can’t help if a game is ruined early.

7. And that’s what I’m most worried about with Cole: ruining the game early. Allowing a crooked number in the first or second inning can’t happen. The Yankees can’t be playing from behind by multiple runs against this Rays team, especially in a Rasmussen start. Cole doesn’t have to be great for long. He just needs to be great for as long as he’s in the game. I don’t expect him to have the kind of start Schlittler or Fried had against the Red Sox because I don’t expect much from this version of Cole or postseason Cole. I recognize his overall postseason career numbers are strong, but as a Yankee, when there have been fans in the stands or the opposition hasn’t been an AL Central team, he hasn’t been very good.

8. The games at the Trop won’t feel like road games because the crowd will be mostly Yankees fans. The Rays are opening the upper deck for the series due to ticket demand and that demand is coming from Yankees fans. It’s going to sound like Yankee Stadium inside the Trop on Saturday and Monday (and possibly next Saturday too). But the turf, the oddities of the field and roof and everything that comes with the 36-year-old dome will favor the Rays.

9. If the Yankees play clean baseball, they will win the series. They could lose both Rasmussen starts and still win the series. I believe that many more things have to go right for the Rays to win three games than need to go right for the Yankees to win three games. The Rays are going to get good-to-great starting pitching and superb managing and will play exceptional defense. But they have to win the Rasmussen starts and win one of the non-Rasmussen starts and get production from their Big 3 at the top of the order and get shutdown performances from their bullpen. (The Red Sox went in to the Wild Card Series with the No. 1 bullpen in the majors in 2026 and the Yankees scored 15 runs against it in 6 2/3 innings. The Rays had the 14th-best bullpen in the majors this season.)

10. The Yankees own the better rotation, the better lineup, the better bullpen and more power (they finished second in the majors in home runs by three without Judge and Stanton, while the Rays finished 22nd). The Rays have the edge in defense, manager and home-field advantage in terms of the actual field and not the crowd. Because of the slop in the AL Central side of the AL bracket, whichever team wins this series is not only going to the ALCS, but to the World Series. That team should be the Yankees, and if they can win Game 1 on Saturday, it will be the Yankees.

1. A little more than three months ago, the Yankees had the opportunity to end the Red Sox’ season during a four-game series at Fenway Park in the last week of June. But instead of burying the then 14-games-under-.500 Red Sox, the Yankees saved their season by getting swept over that that miserable weekend. The reason the Yankees were forced to play in a best-of-3 series for the second straight season began that weekend. The reason their opponent in the Wild Card Series was the Red Sox began that weekend.

A little more than three months later, the Yankees finally finished the job. A night after beating the Red Sox 9-0 in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees ended the Red Sox’ with a second straight rout, winning 9-2. There were limited tense moments on Wednesday, just like there were on Tuesday. Postseason games aren’t supposed to feel mostly carefree. They aren’t supposed to be laughers. But that’s how both games in this short series ended. Best-of-3 series aren’t supposed to feel easy, but that’s how this series felt: extremely easy.

2. Game 2 played out a lot like Game 1. The Yankees scored first in both, both were one-run games in the fifth, the Yankees broke both games open late, the Yankees got dominant starting pitching in both games and Chad Tracy managed in a way that makes me feel proud to have Aaron Boone as my team’s manager.

The Yankees couldn’t lose to former failed Yankees Sonny Gray, Aroldis Chapman, Greg Weissert, Jahmai Jones and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and they didn’t. They had to beat a Red Sox team that was mediocre at best in the 125 games sandwiched around their historic 32-5 run, and they did. And they didn’t just beat them, they humiliated them.

3. The Yankees outscored the Red Sox 18-2 over the two games. The Red Sox had one baserunner reach second base in Game 1, and in Game 2, they had one baserunner reach second base in the first 5 2/3 innings, and that runner only got to second because Trent Grisham jogged to a shallow fly ball like a valet driver going around the block to get your car. The Red Sox’ starting pitching was OK (aided by a foreign substance on the neck of Gray), their offense was nonexistent, their bullpen was atrocious and their manager was a disaster. The Yankees embarrassed their entire organization and I enjoyed every second of it. It was both beautiful and satisfying.

4. Who was that team wearing pinstripes and making contact and putting the ball in play the last two nights? Because it looked nothing like the Yankees’ offense I watched for 162 games. It looked nothing like every other Yankees’ offensive performance during the Boone era. The Yankees had more walks (five) than strikeouts (four) in Game 1, and then spent Game 2 extending their lead by putting the ball in play and putting pressure on the Red Sox.

5. Before Cody Bellinger put the finishing touch on the Red Sox’ season, the Yankees scored three runs without doing much. Spencer Jones reached first base to lead off the inning after striking out on a wild pitch. Jones took off for second and Adley Rutschman made an errant throw into the outfield to allow Jones to go to third. George Lombard Jr. singled Jones in. Jazz Chisholm followed with a single to move Lombard Jr. to second. Grisham tried to sacrifice both runners over with a bunt, but ended up reaching on a bunt single to load the bases with no outs. Austin Wells (who had as many RBIs in this series as he did in the first month of the regular season) hit a deep fly ball to score Lombard Jr. The Yankees manufactured three runs with really only a pair of singles, simply by running hard, putting the ball in play, putting pressure on the defense and performing good situational hitting. Instead of waiting around for a three-run home run like they have in every other Boone era postseason, they built runs by simply playing good baseball. And then they were rewarded with the three-run home run to end the game.

6. The Yankees went 12-for-32 with five walks and four strikeouts in Game 1 and every starter other than Heliot Ramos reached base safely. In Game 2, the Yankees went 14-for-36 with three walks and 10 strikeouts and every starter had at least one hit. This certainly isn’t the offense Yankees fans watched all season and it’s certainly not the postseason offense Yankees fans have grown accustomed to. The last two nights felt like I was watching a completely different version of the 2026 Yankees’ offense. The offense looked like the type of offense I always want the Yankees to have, but they never do.

7. It’s not like the Yankees were playing the Astros or White Sox either. They faced two of the best starting pitchers in the majors and the bullpen with the lowest ERA in the majors, and they pummeled them. The offense got to the Red Sox’ talented rookie and chased their superb veteran. They rocked their big deadline acquisition, torched their middle relief and even beat up on their elite setup man. It all seemed too good to be true.

8. And maybe it was. While every Yankees fan should celebrate on Thursday and Friday, it’s highly unlikely that what we all watched the last two nights at the Stadium is going to take place in the next round beginning on Saturday in Tampa. The Rays aren’t the Red Sox. They earned a first-round bye by winning the division and holding off the Yankees. Each time the Yankees got within striking distance of the Rays this summer, the Rays ripped off a winning streak to push them away. They won the season series over the Yankees despite treating the last two games of the season series like spring training games in early March. They play in a venue the Yankees have had a hard time winning in and they play a brand of baseball that combats what the Yankees do well, and they boast the best manager in the sport, who won’t make even one of the countless mistakes Chad Tracy made in the Wild Card Series. Beating the crap out of the Red Sox was fun, but playing the Rays won’t be.

9. For a team that had to play a best-of-3 series for their season, the Yankees are set up as well as a wild-card team could possibly be. Aside from the scary setting of a best-of-3 that could end your season and not having home-field advantage in the ALDS, the Yankees are in a good spot. Their offense is humming, they only had to use two starters, their bullpen is rested and even their manager is managing in a way he never has before (though I’m going to need much more than a two-game sample size against a shitty opponent to believe it’s for real). Because of the day off between Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS, the Yankees have the ability to start Cam Schlittler in Games 2 and 5, on the road where he had a 1.16 ERA in 17 starts.

10. I’m not ready to think about the Rays yet. I still haven’t consumed every possible Game 2 reaction from depressed Red Sox fans mourning the humiliating defeat that ended their season. I will start to worry about the Rays on Friday. Today is a day for celebration.

1. “We don’t say hate.” That’s what my wife and I have taught our kids. With one exception: when you’re talking about the Red Sox.

I hate the Red Sox. Everything about them. I hated them long before I was a freshman in college in Boston in 2004. (If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sounds from outside my 11th-floor downtown dorm room when Ruben Sierra grounded out to end Game 7.) I hated them long before the 2018 ALDS disaster and the 2021 Wild Card Game.

I spent my Yankees fandom up until a year ago wishing and praying a Yankee would come along that could dominate the Red Sox in a way that David Ortiz did. My wish was granted and my prayers were answered in the form of a pitcher named Cam Schlittler. He’s almost too perfect in the role as a Massachusetts native who grew up pitching in the Red Sox’ backyard. He attended college one mile from Fenway Park, and yet, he was drafted by the team’s archrival. And in 15 months as a major leaguer, he has owned the Red Sox in a way no Yankee ever has. In a way no pitcher ever has. In a way no professional athlete has ever owned any team.

2. Outside of my wife and kids, Schlittler (who has the same first name as my oldest son) is the greatest thing to ever happen to me. (I’m only somewhat joking.) He’s an ace in every sense of the title and utterly dominates the Red Sox every time he pitches against them. In Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Tuesday, Schlittler threw a career-high 117 pitches over 6 1/3 scoreless innings, while allowing just two singles to go along with 10 strikeouts and one walk. This comes a year after he ended the Red Sox’ season with eight scoreless innings in a masterful 12-strikeout performance.

3. “It’s very well-known that if you want to be a legend, which is obviously the goal,” Schlittler said, “you’ve got to do it in the postseason.”

Schlittler has now made six career starts against the Red Sox between the regular season and postseason and has pitched to this preposterous line: 38.2 IP, 22 H, 7 R, 2 ER, 10 BB, 49 K, 2 HR, 0.47 ERA, 0.828 WHIP. He’s already a legend in terms of the rivalry and he’s well on his way to being a postseason legend with a 0.87 ERA in three career postseason starts.

4. My only fear with Schlittler going into Game 1 was that I didn’t think this level of dominance could possibly continue. At some point, the Red Sox have to hit him, right? Maybe not. The Red Sox went into the game ready for Schlittler’s fastball-heavy approach and instead he leaned on a curveball that had the movement of a scraped-up Wiffle ball. Schlittler threw the most curves of his career and racked up strikeouts with it throughout the game. The game plan was a masterpiece and Schlittler executed it beautifully. I’m convinced the Red Sox will never hit him.

5. Schlittler wasn’t the only Massachusetts native to stick it to the Red Sox in Game 1. Ben Rice carried the offense the way he did all season in Aaron Judge’s absence. Rice doubled in his first at-bat, struck out in his second, hit a solo home run in his third, hit a 106.4-mph RBI single in his fourth and hit a grand slam in his fifth. He finished the game 4-for-5 with two home runs and six RBIs. It was as if the Red Sox’ scouting report on Rice was to wrongfully throw him fastballs.

“Any time you can come through for the team in a playoff game,” Rice said, “it feels pretty awesome.”

6. It’s hard to remember a game in which the Yankees’ offense had more walks than strikeouts, but they did so in Game 1 with five walks and only four strikeouts. The Red Sox’ bullpen failed to record a single strikeout in 3 1/3 innings. Everyone not named Heliot Ramos contributed. (Ramos had three of the worst plate appearances you’ll ever see and has to go down as the worst player to ever bat third for the franchise in a playoff game.)

Paul Goldschmidt drew two walks. Rice had the all-time night. Cody Bellinger had a single. George Lombard Jr. had three hits in his postseason debut, becoming the second-youngest player in major-league history to record three hits in their postseason debut. Amed Rosario drew a walk. Anthony Volpe had a single and a well-placed sacrifice bunt. Spencer Jones had a single and a walk and Austin Wells had two singles, a sacrifice fly and drove in two runs, including the game’s first run. Wells has the opportunity to erase one of the worst offensive regular seasons in the history of baseball in the postseason, and he’s off to a fast start. (Even Ryan McMahon drew a walk in the game. It was a four-pitch walk, which goes to show you just how bad Red Sox reliever Wyatt Olds is.)

7. The offense did enough against Payton Tolle to chase him after 4 2/3 innings. I was surprised Chad Tracy took him out when he did, as Tracy managed like early-career Aaron Boone (though Boone hasn’t evolved much since 2018) in the game, treating a one- and two-run postseason game like a random midseason game. Boone didn’t have to do much, and that’s the goal: keep Boone out of the game. Let him sit in the dugout and blow his bubbles, rotate his watch and shake hands at the end. Schlittler made sure Boone didn’t have an impact on the game and the offense did enough before blowing it open to keep Boone’s brain from maneuvering the game in the wrong direction. Boone did the right thing in pushing Schlittler the way he did and made the right call by going to Paul Blackburn when he did.

8. It was telling when Boone went with Volpe over Jazz Chisholm in the starting lineup, especially after sitting Chisholm last year in Game 1 and after Chisholm’s comments earlier this week, essentially threatening to have a tantrum if he didn’t play against lefties. Well, he didn’t play against the lefty, and when Boone had the chance to use Chisholm in a guaranteed plate appearance against a righty in the sixth inning, he stayed with Volpe. And I loved it. I like this version of Volpe. I’m fine with Volpe being an average-at-best bat if he hits at the bottom of the order and plays a great second base, which he has. He looks like a natural at second. He looked out of place at shortstop. If Boone stays with Volpe as the starting second baseman with the right-handed Sonny Gray starting Game 2, Chisholm may not show up to the game.

I think Chisholm will start Game 2. I think eight left-handed bats will start Game 2. I think Boone will go with this lineup:

1. Ben Rice, DH
2. Cody Bellinger, LF
3. Luis Garcia, 1B
4. Spencer Jones, RF
5. Jazz Chisholm, 2B
6. George Lombard Jr., SS
7. Trent Grisham, CF
8. Ryan McMahon, 3B
9. Austin Wells, C

That means Boone will have Volpe, Ramos, Rosario, Goldschmidt, Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Caballero and Ali Sanchez to deploy as right-handed pinch hitters once the Red Sox go to their lefty-heavy bullpen.

9. Max Fried goes for the Yankees. Fried shut down the Red Sox with eight scoreless innings back in April and pitched well against them again in August in an abbreviated, pitch-count-limited start coming off the injured list. Fried pitched very well against them in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series last year, and I expect him to do so again on seven days’ rest.

10. Game 1 was fun. A little too fun. Pouring it on in the eighth was euphoric. I don’t want to write it, but I have to: It felt like Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have written that, but I did. The Yankees need to make sure it isn’t history repeating itself by winning on Wednesday. Only one team in the 16 best-of-3 series to date has erased a 1-0 deficit, and that was the Yankees over the Red Sox last year. Don’t allow a second instance to happen. Go out in Game 2 and do what you should have done in the four-game series in June and end the Red Sox’ season.

1. The Yankees are the best team in the American League, but the combination of injuries, poor roster construction and their annual summer vacation cost them the division for a second straight season. They lost Giancarlo Stanton for “24 hours” at the end of April and he hasn’t played since. They lost Aaron Judge for 96 games. Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm, Jose Caballero, Austin Wells and Ryan McMahon each landed on the injured list, while Trent Grisham, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon all landed on it twice. They let Camilo Doval and Jake Bird blow games and spent another half-season trying to sell the world on Anthony Volpe as a shortstop. They suffered a midseason slump with bad summer series losses to the Reds, Tigers and Twins, but nothing was worse than getting swept in a four-game series by the Red Sox at Fenway Park. That series is why the Yankees are playing the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series for the second straight season.

2. The Yankees went into that June 25-28 series with the Red Sox with a three-game division lead. The Red Sox were 32-46, had fired their manager, were 15 1/2 games out in the division and in last place in the AL. In the first game of that series, the Yankees had a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning with Cam Schlittler on the mound adding to his career domination of the Red Sox. The Red Sox were on their way to falling 15 games under .500. Their season was over. At least until the Yankees pulled out the defibrillators on defense and brought the Red Sox back to life. A comedy of errors led the Red Sox to a 6-3 win. Schlittler allowed no earned runs with nine strikeouts over five innings and took the loss. The Red Sox won the next day, and the next day and the next day and kept on winning, ripping off a 32-5 run to turn their season around. The 15 1/2-game lead the Yankees had over the Red Sox eventually dwindled down to a half-game, but thankfully, the Red Sox never passed the Yankees in the standings or the venue for the games this week would be Fenway Park and not Yankee Stadium.

3. The Yankees have no one to blame other than themselves for having to play in the best-of-3 Wild Card Series for a second straight year. They have no one to blame other than themselves for the Red Sox — the one AL team that possesses their kryptonite with an abundance of left-handed pitching — being their opponent. Like last year, if the Yankees were to play the Red Sox in a best-of-5, my confidence would be much greater than it is now, even without Judge and with Stanton relegated to a one-at-bat-at-most-per-game role. If the Yankees had to play them in a best-of-7, my confidence would be through the roof. But in a three-game series? I don’t know if there is any measurable confidence in a best-of-3. Just like there wasn’t last year when the Yankees eked out a series win with Judge and Stanton against a Red Sox roster inferior to this year’s.

That’s not because the Yankees are an inferior team. Quite the opposite. When they’re not beating themselves, the Yankees are a much better team than the Red Sox, even without Judge and Stanton. It’s because it’s a BEST-OF-3 SERIES. The Yankees lost three-game series this season to the Athletics, Orioles, Blue Jays, Reds, Tigers, Twins and Cardinals. The Rockies swept the Red Sox in a three-game series this year. It’s three games! The margin for error is slim and for the Aaron Boone Yankees who have always played as if their margin for error is infinite, it’s not an ideal setting. After Tuesday night, one team will be on the brink of elimination.

4. I have to believe Cam Schlittler will dominate the Red Sox like he always has in Game 1. I can’t entertain thoughts that he could be tired, that he’s due for a clunker against a team he has dominated or that he could get outpitched by Payton Tolle, even if it’s very conceivable he could get outpitched by Tolle. Tolle is the Red Sox’ Schlittler, just left-handed and smilier and fatter with a mustache. The Yankees had 46 plate appearances against Tolle in 2026 and went 4-for-43 with three walks, 18 strikeouts and a .093/.152/.163 slash line. The Yankees scored one run against Tolle in 13 innings and that one run was a Jazz Chisholm home run at Fenway Park around Pesky’s Pole. Last season, Garrett Crochet (who is on the Red Sox’ Wild Card Series roster) made four starts against the Yankees and the Red Sox won all of them with Crochet allowing just four walks and recording 39 strikeouts in 27 1/3 innings, and yet, Tolle has been more dominant against the Yankees.

If there is offense while Schlittler and Tolle are in the game, it’s likely to come from a home run. Schlittler and Tolle combined for 342 1/3 innings and only allowed 252 hits. It’s nearly impossible to envision either of them allowing a series of consecutive hits to plate runs. Only 31 of the 1,364 combined hitters they faced hit home runs, but the 2.3 percent chance that someone gets a mistake over the short porch is the only believable way the duo would allow a run (or runs) to be scored on Tuesday. For two starters who walk few, strike out many and rarely allow hits, let alone home runs, hitting a mistake out is the best and may be the only chance to score.

5. Fortunately, the Yankees are much better at hitting home runs than the Red Sox. The Yankees were second in the majors in home runs (three fewer than the Astros) in a season in which Judge missed 96 games and Stanton missed 138. The Red Sox were 26th in the majors in home runs. If the long ball is the path to generating offense and being the difference in a game started by two pitchers who both own the opposition, the Yankees’ lineup is better constructed to do so. (Now watch some bum like Nick Sogard hit one out in Game 1.)

6. But that’s about where the positivity on lineup construction ends for the Yankees. As of Tuesday morning — the morning of the start of the postseason — the Yankees’ postseason roster was mostly unknown and only three of nine lineup spots were set in stone: left field (Cody Bellinger), shortstop (George Lombard Jr.) and catcher (Austin Wells). The Yankees are a team full of mostly designated hitters, built like an autodrafted fantasy team. They have three possible first basemen: one who can’t hit righties, one who can’t hit lefties and one who can’t field. They have three possible second basemen: one who has all the talent in the world but is mentally fragile and a postseason disaster, one who is pesky but reckless and one who just started playing the position in August. They have four options at third base: one who is owed a lot of money but is the worst non-catcher offensive player in the sport, one who is an extreme liability and the reason the Red Sox won that Schlittler start to save their season in June, one who is the pesky-but-reckless option from second base and one who is the second base option that just started playing second and also just started playing third. In center field, they can either play a rookie who can’t field, strikes out a ton, but can hit home runs or a veteran who can’t run and can’t hit postseason pitching, but has good plate discipline. In right field, it’s either move the rookie center fielder to right or the all-world left fielder to right or play the guy who mashes left-handed pitching but fields like he’s drunk or blindfolded (or both).

7. Not having a one-size-fits-all lineup like championship teams have or even a set lineup for lefties and righties means a lot of crucial, season-changing decisions have to be made from what the starting lineup should be, to who gets pinch-hit for, to when someone gets pulled for a defensive replacement and so on. And the person who will make these decisions is a manager whose worst tool is in-game management. Aaron Boone will be counted on to make countless logical, smart, intelligent moves throughout each game that will all need to have positive outcomes.

8. That’s what worries me most about the Yankees in this series: Boone’s brain. Boone will have his hands all over this series in a way he has never had to before. The front office did a good job Boone-proofing the pitching staff by giving him the best rotation and minimizing his in-game input on pitching decisions. Ideally, the formula would be starter to David Bednar, but when it’s not, he has two very good setup men and a pair of starters who would be No. 1 and No. 2 starters on a lot of major-league teams. But when it comes to the lineup, it won’t be so easy. Boone will have to balance going for offense while not sacrificing defense. He will have to use bench bats at the most opportune times and avoid his habit of creating lengthy left-handed lanes for the Red Sox to expose.

It’s unlikely the Yankees lose the Wild Card Series because their starting pitching gets lit up. It’s unlikely they lose because their bullpen implodes. It’s possible they lose because they don’t hit enough — a staple of the Boone era in the playoffs. But if they lose, it’s most likely because their manager fails to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. The Boone Yankees are 25-27 in the postseason. His Yankees have never won a series of 5 or 7 games against a non-AL Central team. A lot of it is because of the offense’s annual disappearing act, but Boone hasn’t done anything to elevate the chances of his previous seven postseason teams. If anything, he has hindered their chances of winning.

9. I like to say 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 many consecutive correct decisions, which is what it takes to win in October. And now he will play his biggest role and have his biggest impact of his eight postseasons.

Even with Boone being asked to play the biggest role in the postseason of his managerial career, I believe the Yankees will win. Sure, if they had a healthy Judge and Stanton, it would make it a lot easier, but even without them, they are better than a Red Sox offense that makes the 2026 Yankees offense look like the 2009 Yankees. And for those who watched this offense every day for the last six months, you know how frustrating it is. The Red Sox haven’t scored more than four runs in a game since September 12.

10. 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. “The top of the mountain” as he likes to say. Just win for the first time in his nine-year tenure and the first time in 17 years for the franchise, so I can stop dreaming about the day he’s no longer employed by the team.

I’m nervous. How can you not be if you’re a Yankees fan? I expect the Yankees to win this series because I don’t want to envision this series ending any other way. At the end of today, the Yankees will either be playing for their season tomorrow or playing tomorrow for the chance to play on Saturday. It better be the latter because I can’t handle the former again.

1. The Yankees beat up a hungover and depleted Rays team (they sat four regulars) 9-2 on Wednesday, a day after the Rays clinched the AL East title at Yankee Stadium. No performance should be taken seriously from the game as both teams treated it like spring training.

2. That means don’t read into Gerrit Cole’s start (5.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 8 K) as he’s always better when there’s no pressure and the games don’t matter. Just look at his 2023 Cy Young season. It’s the one season the Yankees missed the playoffs during his tenure with them, and considering they were essentially eliminated at the All-Star break, he pitched more than two months of meaningless games to eventually win the award. Carlos Rodon (who is more deserving of a postseason start than Cole) faced the actual Rays — the version of the team still trying to win the division — on Tuesday and he pitched eight scoreless, three-hit innings without allowing a walk. Rodon saw the lineup the Rays will use in the postseason. Cole saw a lineup they will use in February and March.

3. It also means don’t read into the 2-for-4, five-RBI night from Ryan McMahon that included a grand slam. McMahon’s grand slam came against Mason Englert, who was called up from Triple-A to eat innings for a team locked into the AL’s No. 1 seed. McMahon hit his first home run since August 3 and his second since July 11 off a Triple-A pitcher because McMahon is a Triple-A player. Englert allowed 10 baserunners, eight earned runs and four home runs in 3 2/3 innings. I don’t think the Yankees are foolish enough to buy into some kind of McMahon resurgence over these last few exhibition-like games, but then again, there’s nothing the Yankees like more than playing an undeserving veteran they owe money to.

4. In the first of five exhibition games to finish the season, the Yankees didn’t really try anything new out. The only glaring change to the lineup was George Lombard Jr. batting second (he homered for the third time in six games) with Cody Bellinger getting the night off. Move Jose Caballero around. Give Anthony Volpe a start at third base. Do things that could give you flexibility next week. With the weather forecast looking bleak for the weekend series against the Orioles, there’s a good chance two of the games don’t get played since the Orioles’ elimination number is down to 1 and the Yankees can’t move in the standings. The Yankees may not have as many games remaining as they think to try out different defensive alignments.

5. The postseason is five days away and the Yankees’ roster has so many question marks. As of now, the only two sure things are Bellinger in left field and Lombard Jr. at shortstop. Every other position is an unknown. It got a lot more complicated on Wednesday when it was announced that Giancarlo Stanton was hitting, a day after he was shown running. Trent Grisham is also hitting. Jazz Chisholm just returned. And then there’s the bizarre situation with Aaron Judge where he says he “intends” to play and Aaron Boone says he isn’t playing. No one outside of the Yankees knows the degree of calf strain he has since all we have been told is that it’s “moderate.”

6. Is Austin Wells starting no matter what hand the pitcher throws with? Who plays first base: Luis Garcia or Paul Goldschmidt? Does Ben Rice play first if either Judge or Stanton comes back to DH? Is Chisholm definitely the second baseman or does he get benched like he did last postseason against a lefty? Does Volpe start at second against lefties? Is it going to be McMahon at third or Caballero or Amed Rosario or Volpe (who has been taking grounders at third and could play there in the remaining four games)? Is Spencer Jones undoubtedly the starting center fielder? What if Grisham is ready? Could Caballero start in center like he did this past week? Who’s in right field if Judge remains out and isn’t a defensive option? It’s preposterous that it’s Thursday and the Yankees will play the Red Sox on Tuesday and seven of nine lineup spots aren’t set, but that’s where we’re at.

7. It also seems like Cole is going to get the ball for Game 1. The problem with that is Cole is currently the Yankees’ No. 4 starter (and possibly No. 5 based on Will Warren’s recent run). If Cole had a different name, he wouldn’t be one of three Wild Card Series starters. The only time Cole has pitched like an ace for the Yankees in the postseason has been with no fans in the stands or against AL Central teams. The many variations of Red Sox rosters since 2020 have owned him. He has been getting lit up with home runs and gave up another on Wednesday to Cedric Mullins(!).

8. Cam Schlittler has owned the Red Sox in a way that no other Yankee has ever owned them. Really in a way that no other pitcher in history has. His numbers against them seem fake. At the moment, he’s the best starting pitcher in the American League, and at worst, the second-best starting pitcher in the world. How does he not get the ball against the team he owns to set the tone and potentially put the Yankees up 1-0 immediately in a best-of-3 series?

9. I understand that by pitching Schlittler in Game 2, he will have the opportunity to send the Yankees to the ALDS or to save their season, but it’s not like there’s an equal or close-to-equal option to start in his place in Game 1. Starting him in Game 2 is overthinking it and leaving Boone and the Yankees open for quite possibly the biggest real-time second-guess of the Boone era, which seems impossible given how many instances of poor decisions Boone has had in seven prior postseasons. If Cole starts Game 1 and the Yankees are in a hole before they even come to bat against Payton Tolle, it will be ugly.

10. Thursday will be Schlittler’s final start of the regular season. So either he will start Game 1 on normal rest or Game 2 with an extra day of rest. (Because the Yankees like to give their starting pitchers extra rest before the postseason, all signs point to him starting Game 2.) He already has the Cy Young Award in his pocket, so Thursday is about getting work in and staying healthy. Schlittler has thrown at least 92 pitches in all but two starts since June 7, so if the Yankees pull him earlier than that, it may be a hint that they are going to use him in Game 1 on normal rest. If he throws his normal high-90s or 100-plus pitches, we’ll know he’s going in Game 2. As long as Schlittler gets through Thursday night healthy, nothing else related to the game matters.

1. Another year, another team celebrating eliminating the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in some form. In 2022, the Astros won the American League pennant on the Yankee Stadium field. In 2024, the Dodgers won the World Series on the Yankee Stadium field. In 2025, the Blue Jays won the ALDS on the Yankee Stadium field. And on Tuesday, the Rays won the AL East on the Yankee Stadium field.

2. After losing the second game of Tuesday’s doubleheader, Aaron Boone was asked by Meredith Marakovits about losing the division to the Rays at Yankee Stadium and Boone was prepared with an answer since he answers the same question nearly every season.

“We wanted to push it off if we could,” Boone said. “They’ve put together a fantastic regular season to earn that.”

When the Rays bunted to squeeze in the second run in the division-clinching win, I couldn’t help but think about how many championships the Yankees would have if Kevin Cash had been their manager all these years. Two? Three? It’s certainly more than the zero they have won under Boone.

After the loss, the Yankees’ website put up the headline: ‘No East? No sweat: Yanks focused with Wild Card Series home-field clinched’ because not only are the manager and his team comfortable with losing, but so is the editorial side of the franchise.

3. “It kind of sucks,” Jazz Chisholm said. “That’s what we work on all season, but it’s not the end goal for us. The end goal is the World Series, so it doesn’t really affect us here.”

Actually, it does affect you. Because instead of having 10 days off between Wednesday and Saturday, Oct. 3 to rest anyone who needs it (like the Rays now have) and avoiding an entire postseason round, you have to play a best-of-3 beginning in six days against the Red Sox. And if you are fortunate enough to survive that round for a second straight season, you get to travel to Tampa to play at a venue where you rarely win and against a team you rarely beat. But yeah, it doesn’t affect you.

4. “You don’t want anyone to be celebrating at your stadium,” Max Fried said, even though all Fried has known as a Yankee is other teams celebrating at their stadium.

Fried wasn’t good, but it didn’t matter because the offense was worse. Drew Rasmussen no-hit the Yankees through six innings in what is likely a preview of what he’ll do to them in 10 days if they get a chance to play the Rays again. Cash let Rasmussen throw a career-high 114 pitches because he wanted to close out the division and not leave anything open to chance over the remaining five games. I can’t say the manager of the Yankees would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed and the Yankees were trying to clinch the No. 1 seed, a bye and home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs.

But the roles weren’t reversed and the Yankees have now officially not won the division in six of nine seasons under Boone. It’s not nearly good enough for fans who expect more, though it’s clearly good enough for an organization that believes just getting to October is good enough, even if 40 percent of the league gets to October.

5. Why haven’t I mentioned the day game that the Yankees won? Because who cares? The entire offense was a two-run Cody Bellinger home run and Carlos Rodon was awesome again and will be rewarded by not getting to start a game in the Wild Card Series despite being more deserving of both Fried and Gerrit Cole. You could probably count on one hand the positive things I have written about Rodon in his four seasons as a Yankee (and you would likely have a couple of fingers left over), so for me to be advocating for him to start a postseason game despite a career of poor postseason performances, you know he’s deserving of it. (It will have to be Game 1 or 2 of the ALDS for Rodon, if the Yankees get there.)

6. Will they get there? Who knows. They are without their two biggest power threats, have a lefty-heavy lineup that is about to face nearly all left-handed pitchers from the Red Sox, have one starter you can truly count on, a bullpen that is running on fumes, the same old shitty defense and the same old shitty manager. The Red Sox aren’t any good (they went 32-46 then 32-5 then 20-22) and needed an all-time, six-week run to save their season, and I’m sure their fans don’t feel confident about a team that has been mediocre the last six weeks, but it’s the shortest of series and anything can happen. The Yankees lost three-game series this season to the Athletics, Angels, Reds, Tigers, Twins and Cardinals. At 8 p.m. on Tuesday both teams will be excited about the start of the postseason, and by the end of the night, one team will be on the brink of elimination.

The next five days represent meaningless games. The Yankees’ only goal between now and the end of the regular season is to not suffer another injury to anyone. Pull Bellinger and Ben Rice early from games since those two will represent the entirety of the Yankees’ offense next week, limit innings for starters and don’t let Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn or David Bednar pitch more than once.

7. The Yankees will carry 14 position players and 12 pitchers for the Wild Card Series and these are likely the names at the moment:

1. Austin Wells
2. Ali Sanchez
3. Ben Rice
4. Luis Garcia
5. Paul Goldschmidt
6. Jazz Chisholm
7. George Lombard Jr.
8. Anthony Volpe
9. Jose Caballero
10. Cody Bellinger
11. Spencer Jones
12. Heliot Ramos
13. Amed Rosario
14. Ryan McMahon/Trent Grisham
15. Cam Schlittler
16. Gerrit Cole
17. Max Fried
18. Carlos Rodon
19. Will Warren
20. David Bednar
21. Brent Headrick
22. Paul Blackburn
23. John Schreiber
24. Tim Hill
25. Clarke Schmidt
26. Michael Fulmer/Ryan Weathers/Carlos Lagrange

I don’t care if Grisham doesn’t play before the postseason begins, I’m taking him over McMahon, who isn’t a major leaguer and should no longer be a Yankee. The $16 million owed to him next season is a sunk cost. Move on.

The bullpen is trickier. If Weathers is healthy, put him on the roster. If Lagrange gets a chance in the last five games and knows where the ball is going, put him on. The goal needs to be to get Fulmer out of the equation as a possibility because if he’s on the roster, Boone will use him. There’s nothing Boone loves more than using someone who has no business pitching in an enormous spot in said spot. He went to Lance Lynn with the 2018 ALDS on the line. He turned to J.A. Happ for the 10th inning in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. There’s the 2020 ALDS Game 2 debacle. His love of Albert Abreu in the final weekend of the 2021 season is why the wild-card game that year was played at Fenway Park. He used Schmidt instead of his closer in Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS (Schmidt got walked off on) and then had Schmidt be the first guy out of the bullpen in a 1-1 game in Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS (Schmidt allowed two home runs to the first three batters he faced). He went to Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in 37 days, with a WORLD SERIES GAME ON THE LINE. He pulled Fried after 6 1/3 scoreless innings with a 1-0 lead in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series last year for Luke Weaver, who had a 7.36 ERA over the final month of the season. Weaver faced three batters, allowed two runs and didn’t get an out. If you’re on the postseason roster as a pitcher, Boone will have you pitch, and you’re likely going to be put into a situation in which you are unlikely to succeed. That’s why Fulmer needs to be unseated.

8. The Yankees operate under the philosophy that if you continue to get into the postseason year after year, eventually everything will break right and you will win it all. It’s the same philosophy the Dodgers live by. Except the Dodgers won one fake World Series in the first 11 years of this current run. They needed to change managers, trade for Mookie Betts, sign Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani and get Yoshinobu Yamamoto to agree to take less money to go to the West Coast over the East Coast to win a real one. They started winning when they stopped running it back. They started winning when they made changes.

The Yankees don’t believe in change. Not in the front office, not in the dugout and not on the field. They took a team that wasn’t good enough to win the division last year and ran it back, and shockingly, that team wasn’t good enough to win the division this year.

9. “Hopefully, we get another crack at them in the next couple of weeks,” Boone said of losing the division to the Rays.

The 2025 Yankees got beat up all season by the Blue Jays and then got beat up by them in the postseason. The 2026 Yankees are 4-7 against the Rays and it’s possible we’ll see if the same year-over-year roster is good enough to win a round in the actual postseason and not just the Wild Card Series.

But first, they’ll have to win the Wild Card Series. The 2025 Yankees were able to, but they also faced a Red Sox team that had Jarren Duran as its leadoff hitter, a team that gave two of three postseason starts to Brayan Bello and a rookie with a handful of career starts and a team that was without Roman Anthony and didn’t yet have Willson Contreras.

10. I will spend the next five or six days trying to make myself believe this season won’t end exactly like last year’s did (losing in the ALDS) or worse (losing to the Red Sox), and ultimately the same way the last 16 Yankees seasons have ended: without a championship.

1. The Yankees arrived in Arizona to play a struggling Diamondbacks team that had lost five of seven and couldn’t beat them. The Yankees lost two of three to the Diamondbacks, blowing leads in both losses. The Yankees won 9-2 on Friday, blew a 3-2 lead on Saturday to lose 5-3 and blew a 4-1 lead on Sunday to lose 8-4. The Yankees were unable to add on to either of their leads on Saturday, when they allowed three unanswered runs, or on Sunday, when they allowed seven unanswered runs.

2. A couple of weeks ago, the Yankees arrived in Anaheim with the Angels having lost seven straight, and the Angels promptly beat the Yankees 10-1. Then the Yankees went to San Diego to play a Padres team that had lost seven of nine, and the Yankees lost two of three to the Padres. This is what the Yankees do. The Red Sox were 32-46 before sweeping the Yankees in a four-game series to jumpstart their season at the end of June.

3. It’s a good thing the Yankees had a load management plan in place for Aaron Judge’s return two weeks ago to prevent him from getting injured. The Yankees continue to have these ridiculous rest plans for players and pitchers who recently returned to prevent injury and they never work. Never. This season is didn’t work for Judge. Nothing works for Giancarlo Stanton. Max Fried came back from a bone bruise, was limited by a pitch count and went back on the injured list with a bone bruise. Carlos Rodon missed a chunk of the season, came back, was limited and went back on the IL. Trent Grisham has been on the IL twice with hamstring injuries. Clarke Schmidt couldn’t pitch over the weekend because of biceps soreness. There’s no way to prevent injury other than to not play (unless you’re Stanton, who somehow always injures an additional body part while on the IL for a different body part).

4. And now Judge won’t play until at least the last game of the season. Judge made Ryan McMahon look like the MVP version of Aaron Judge during his return, going 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts. So he’s going to come back either in Game 162 and get one game’s worth of at-bats, or just come back for the postseason with no at-bats? No one should count on Judge to return and no one should count on him being anything more than a name in the lineup if he returns.

5. To add to the oft-injured softness that is the New York Yankees, Spencer Jones sat out Saturday’s game with “wear-and-tear” from playing on turf. He played on turf on Friday and previously played on it in Toronto on August 16. So two turf games in 35 days were too much for the 25-year-old to handle. Jones overcame his toe issue to play on Sunday and hit a home run. Good thing he didn’t play Saturday. I’m sure the Yankees couldn’t have used his bat in a two-run loss.

6. The Yankees wasted another really good Cam Schlittler start on Saturday as the righty allowed one earned run in six innings. Schlittler could pitch seven scoreless innings in the postseason or allow one or two runs and the Yankees could lose. It’s my biggest fear. What if Schlittler is spectacular and the offense can’t do anything, like it frequently can’t? Then I guess the postseason won’t last more than a few days.

7. Tuesday was supposed to be an awesome day with the Yankees trying to surpass the Rays and two games at Yankee Stadium to begin a four-game series. Instead, the games are meaningless. The Yankees are six games back with seven games to play. The Yankees have to sweep the Rays and then sweep the Orioles next weekend, while the the Rays win no more than one game against the Phillies. It’s not happening.

8. What is happening is the Rays celebrating a division title on the Yankee Stadium field at some point this week. It could happen Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday night or Wednesday or Thursday, but it’s happening. Add another line to the list of embarrassing moments that have happened under Aaron Boone’s watch.

9. Boone called the 2025 Yankees the best roster he has managed and that team was humiliated in four games in the ALDS. He called the 2026 Yankees the deepest team he has managed and the team couldn’t win the division for the sixth time in Boone’s nine seasons. The “best” team couldn’t get out of the real first round and the “deepest” team couldn’t overcome injuries to beat out a team whose highest-paid player makes $2 million less than DJ LeMahieu this season (and LeMahieu hasn’t been a Yankee in 14 months).

10. This week and the remaining seven games may as well be extended spring training. The division is over and the Yankees are going to be the first wild card. The next meaningful game will be next Tuesday night against the Red Sox in the first game of the Wild Card Series. Until then, the results don’t matter, only staying healthy does. And with this roster, staying healthy for a week is less likely than overcoming a six-game division deficit with seven to play.

1. The Yankees will play the Red Sox in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Tuesday, Sept. 29 at Yankee Stadium. That was made certain on Wednesday when the Yankees lost the series finale to the Twins. Now five games back in the loss column of the Rays, the Yankees would need to sweep the Diamondbacks this weekend in Arizona and have the Rays lose three of four to the A’s and Red Sox over the next four days to be where I thought they needed to be going into next week’s four-game series: two games back. But I don’t know what’s less likely: the Yankees sweeping a team with something to play for when they couldn’t even beat the Twins on Wednesday or the Rays losing three of four when all they have done is win, win and win some more to hold off the Yankees.

2. The Yankees are going to fall short of winning the division for the second straight season and for the sixth time in nine seasons under Aaron Boone. At a time when most of the league is actively not trying (there are five teams in the AL with a positive run differential) and when it’s never been easier to reach the playoffs with 40 percent of the league getting in (it’s possible one or more AL playoff teams finish under .500), the Yankees have done nothing to separate themselves from the rest of the AL. Instead, they will need to win a best-of-3 series (against the one team they needed to avoid) to reach the real postseason.

We are living last season all over again. The Yankees got off to a fast start, built up a lead in the division, squandered that lead after taking the summer months of the season off and then tried to make it all back in the final weeks of the season. Like last season, their end-of-the-season cramming strategy will fall short. While the Blue Jays allowed the division to go down to the final day with spotty play in September, the Rays have kept their foot on the gas. When the Yankees got the deficit down to 1 1/2 games in the final week of July, the Rays went 12-2 to push it back up to 6 1/2. When the Yankees cut it back down to three games in the last week of August, the Rays answered by going 7-2 to increase it again. And when the Yankees got it back down to three last Thursday, the Rays began the five-game winning streak they’re currently on. The Yankees have gone 34-20 since July 19, but the Rays have gone 36-17. The Yankees have gone 20-9 since August 16, but the Rays have gone 18-11. The Yankees have gone 10-4 in September, but the Rays have also gone 10-4. Each time the door has appeared to be open for the Yankees to overtake the Rays, the Rays immediately closed it.

3. The Rays’ payroll is going to be around $114 million for the season, or the rough equivalent of what the Yankees are paying Carlos Rodon (will finish with a half-season of starts), Trent Grisham (.703 OPS and two injured-list stays), Giancarlo Stanton (24 games played), Ryan McMahon (28 percent worse than league average), DJ LeMahieu (was released on July 10 last season) and Jazz Chisholm (.715 OPS). The Rays’ highest-paid player (Nick Martinez) will earn $13 million in 2026, which is $3 million less than McMahon and $2 million less than LeMahieu.

4. So now the Yankees will try to survive a three-game series against the Red Sox for a second straight season. Except this time the Red Sox won’t be starting Brayan Bello in a postseason series or a rookie taking a major-league mound in a winner-take-all game with just a handful of starts to his name. This time they will have Roman Anthony in the lineup and they will have Sonny Gray (2.76 ERA this season and 3.23 career postseason ERA), Payton Tolle (one earned run and four hits allowed in 13 innings against the Yankees) and Ranger Suarez (who owns one of the best postseason starter ERAs of all time). And if the Yankees do survive the Wild Card Series, they will travel to Tampa (to play at a venue they never win in) to play the Rays (a team they are 3-6 against this season) on just one or two days rest with their rotation out of order, while the Rays will have had a week off. It’s the same awful setup the Yankees had last October, a setup they deserved then and deserve now for taking the summers off as if they are educators.

5. If the Yankees had won the division and were able to host the first two games of a best-of-5 against a Rays or Red Sox team with its rotations out of order, I would have loved their chances of reaching the World Series. Because whichever of the three AL East teams survives the AL East-only bracket is going to the World Series. The Astros, Rangers, Guardians and White Sox are all jokes. But needing to best the Red Sox again and then needing to get past a well-rested Rays team with everything set up to favor them is a lot to ask. It’s doable, it’s just not favorable, which is what happens when you’re a wild-card berth.

It doesn’t matter that the Yankees have the best run differential and best team on paper. The postseason isn’t played in a vacuum, and the Yankees’ path to the World Series is now set up like the least desirable mirror maze imaginable. Beat the Red Sox and then beat the Rays with everything stacked to the Rays’ advantage (because they earned it) from rest to rotation to venue to home-field advantage? Again, it’s a lot to ask.

6. It will be a near-impossible ask if Aaron Judge is out again with a different injury. Judge left Wednesday’s game after striking out in two at-bats and coming as close to hitting a fastball as any fan picked at random would. Judge is 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and one walk since returning and looks more like Aaron Hicks before being designated for assignment than Aaron Judge. It says a lot about the Yankees’ roster construction that everyone employed by the Yankees and every fan of the Yankees knows the team’s postseason chances rest on the health of a guy who missed more than half of the season and who looks like he’s blindfolded at the plate right now.

7. The division-losing loss came in the form of a road extra-inning loss, in which the Yankees led in the 10th and 11th innings, had the bases loaded with no outs and didn’t score a run in the 12th inning and then didn’t score the automatic runner against in the 13th. How can you not be romantic about baseball? The worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020 blowing their last chance at a bye by losing such a game was like a fairy-tale story with a horrible, yet predictable ending.

8. It’s hard to win a division when you can’t beat Zebby Matthews and the Twins. The Yankees’ offense performed like a team that is content with being the first wild card. The offense was pathetic against Matthews — the kind of starter that has shut them down too many times this season, and the kind of starter they won’t see in October. There won’t be a Zebby Matthews in the postseason. There will be Gray, Tolle, Suarez and Drew Rasmussen and Shane McClanahan and so on. The Yankees’ offense is too inconsistent to make any Yankees fan feel good about October or to make any Yankees fan believe this October will be different than all of the other Octobers under this manager.

With or without a healthy, otherworldly Judge, the Yankees’ lineup has too many holes. George Lombard Jr. should be a rookie worried about playing great defense and batting ninth as he learns how to hit at this level. He shouldn’t be batting sixth for a team that thinks it can win a championship. Instead of being hidden at the bottom of the lineup under the notion that anything he gives you offensively is a bonus, Lombard Jr. is being forced into a middle-of-the-order role. He has a middle-of-the-order role because the options behind him like McMahon, Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe are all inferior to a 21-year-old with 34 career games and a .627 OPS.

McMahon isn’t a major-league player. How could he be with a .621 OPS and 72 OPS+ and an arm that can’t reach first base in the air. He does nothing well, and yet, he’s under contract for $16 million in 2027. The “Let’s See If He Can Find It” strategy didn’t work for Josh Donaldson (a former MVP who finished his career with a 129 OPS+) in 2022 or 2023, and it shouldn’t be an option for McMahon in 2027. McMahon shouldn’t be playing now, let alone next season. He shouldn’t even receive a postseason roster spot. He’s an awful baseball player with poor body language. His offensive effort on Wednesday was despicable.

9. Heliot Ramos against right-handed pitching is a disgrace and Luis Garcia against left-handed pitching is an equal disgrace. If Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger and Judge (when he’s himself) don’t put the Yankees on the board, the Yankees don’t get on the board with any consistency. Sure, Garcia (against righties) and Spencer Jones have their moments, but nothing that can be counted on. It’s hard to win when there is no expectation that nearly two-thirds of the lineup will do anything other than strike out, pop up or ground out. And that’s against the entire league and back-end starters barely in the league. What will happen when the field is cut down to only the best in 12 days and the No. 4 and No. 5 starters and middle relievers don’t see the mound? I think we know what will happen since we have seen it happen in every postseason in the Boone era.

10. It’s off to Arizona for the last road series of the season where the Yankees will try to sweep the Diamondbacks and simultaneously pray the Athletics and Red Sox can win three of four against the Rays to keep their 5.6 percent chance to win the division alive. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny. It’s no longer right in front of them, though since the end of June it likely never was. Ten games remain before a best-of-3 series I desperately wanted them to avoid. There’s no avoiding it now: Yankees-Red Sox in a couple of Tuesdays in the Bronx.

1. The Subway Series ends in a tie. After losing two of three to the Mets at Citi Field in May, the Yankees took two of three at Yankee Stadium to end the 2026 Subway Series at three games apiece. The Yankees held on to beat the Mets 6-4 on Friday, got blown out 12-2 on Saturday and won a 2-0 game on Sunday that featured six total hits.

2. Friday’s win included a three-run home run from Cody Bellinger and a solo home run from Ben Rice as the Yankees’ offense went 13-for-34 with one walk and seven strikeouts. They took a 1-0 lead in the first, had a 4-1 lead after two and a 5-1 lead after five and managed to hold on as the Mets scored three runs and put eight runners on in the final three innings.

3. The biggest takeaway from the series-opening win was the performance of Carlos Rodon: 6.1 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K. Rodon hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a start this season and has a 1.86 ERA over his last six starts and 29 innings. As I wrote going into the series, the Mets had been playing much better of late, especially their offense, so it’s not like Rodon stifled the White Sox or Reds.

4. Rodon’s performance was important because Gerrit Cole was once again a disaster the next day. After allowing three consecutive home runs to begin his start in San Diego last Sunday, Cole allowed a leadoff home run to Francisco Lindor on Saturday. Cole allowed one run in the first, two in the second, one in the third and another in the fifth. He couldn’t get through the fifth, lasted just 4 1/3 innings and gave up nine hits, including three home runs.

5. Cole is a problem. A big problem. Because the Yankees trust him implicitly, no matter how poorly he pitches. He’s going to start either Game 1 or Game 2 of the postseason because of his name and reputation and not because of his recent performance. I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but I trust Rodon more than I trust Cole. There’s a good chance Cole ruins October and the Yankees’ season.

6. If Cole doesn’t, the Yankees’ lineup against left-handed pitching may. The Yankees are going to play Heliot Ramos and Amed Rosario against a left-handed starter. One of Ben Rice or Luis Garcia won’t play, and possibly both, the way they were both held out of the lineup on Saturday. The Red Sox will use Payton Tolle and Ranger Suarez in a three-game series, meaning unless the Wild Card Series lasts two games, the Yankees will play without their optimal lineup for the majority of the series.

7. All of the platooning is tiresome. I wish the Yankees just had one lineup they would deploy no matter what hand the opposing pitcher throws with, but unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. They are going to sit some of the best bats on the team in the postseason (and weaken their defense in the process), and it just seems so unnecessary.

8. Cam Schlittler shut up Mets fans who were excited about their team’s 10-run rout on Sunday.

“It was a little frustrating yesterday, just hearing all the Mets chants,” Schlittler said. “I wanted to make sure I came in here today and shut that down.”

Schlittler threw six scoreless, one-hit innings to lower his ERA to 1.95 on the season. The single-season starting-pitcher ERA in Yankees history every Yankees fan knows is Ron Guidry’s 1.74 from 1978, which has always seemed so ridiculously insane and untouchable, and Schlittler won’t get that low with just two starts (at most) left this season, but finishing with a sub-2.00 ERA over a full season of starts (he’s at 31) is ridiculous.

9. There has been growing talk of Schlittler as the American League MVP and when you look at the seasons in which Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander won MVP awards, it’s not crazy (though I don’t think he will win).

What was crazy were Aaron Judge’s comments when asked about Schlittler winning MVP.

“He’s definitely pitching like an MVP, but they’ve got a Cy Young Award for a reason – best pitcher in the game,” Judge said. “So he’s got my vote, definitely, for the Cy Young.”

OK, Judge.

10. “The expectation is to make the playoffs, and the expectation is to win a championship,” Schlittler said. “We’re in a good spot if we keep playing the way we’re playing.”

The Yankees are going to the playoffs. But this has never been about just going to the playoffs, it’s about where you are when you get there, and right now, the Yankees remain four games in back of the Rays for the AL East after the Rays swept the scumbag Astros over the weekend. Before the Subway Series began, the Yankees were three back in the division, and I wrote they needed to cut another game off that deficit in the next nine games before the four-game series against the Rays at the Stadium later this month. Now they need to cut two games off this week to avoid having to sweep the Rays.

1. There were six homegrown Yankees in the lineup on Thursday for the series finale against the Rockies, and a seventh on the bench in Aaron Judge. The six who played led the Yankees to a 10-3 win behind a three-hit night from Spencer Jones and a three-hit night from Anthony Volpe.

2. Here is what I wrote about Volpe last week:

Anthony Volpe will be back. He will most likely be back as the team’s second baseman next season, and I would actually be OK with that. At second base, I would be OK with him being given a chance there. I wouldn’t be OK with him being given years or even a year there. I would treat him like every other player in team history has been treated other than him: perform and you will play. I would be extremely quick to pull the plug if it’s not working out after two months. I have no doubts he can field the position with the shorter throw to first, but he has to improve his hitting to league average.

Well, we didn’t have to wait until next season. After more than a month in Triple-A, Volpe was back in the bigs on Thursday, playing second base and batting ninth: two places he should have been all along. Volpe went 3-for-4 with a home run and five RBIs. The home run (a grand slam) was just his second of the season, as he accumulated 21 percent of his RBIs in 2026 in one night.

3. The home run was his ninth in his last 18 games between Triple-A and the majors. An insane run for a player with limited offensive ability, let alone power. When Jasson Dominguez said earlier this week that Volpe had turned into Barry Bonds, he wasn’t wrong. (Let’s just hope he’s Pirates Bonds and not Giants Bonds.)

4. I wasn’t too happy when Thursday’s lineup was posted without Judge’s name, but I guess 15 innings was too much for someone who needs as much playing time as he can possibly accumulate over the next two-plus weeks. I was mostly upset that Judge wasn’t playing on a day in which the Rays had already lost to cut the division deficit to three games. But the Rockies are so bad (a .377 winning percentage) that they couldn’t stop Volpe and the Judge-less Yankees.

5. “I wanted to get a lot out of it,” Volpe said of being sent down to Triple-A. “You have a game every night to try out different stuff and feel what works. You feel like it’s going to translate in case an opportunity like this comes. So there was just a lot of trial and error.”

Now imagine if the Yankees had sent Volpe down much earlier in his career instead of forcing him to play a position he couldn’t handle and continuing to have him try to hit pitching he couldn’t hit. Again, this was one game. One game against the worst team in baseball. (Let’s see how he looks against the Mets’ starters this weekend.) And it was three hits, two of which got through the infield and the other of which would have also been a home run only in Houston. There are four years and more than 2,000 plate appearances suggesting Volpe didn’t have the light bulb go off in a couple weeks of Triple-A play, but here’s to wishing he did so the Yankees can have a second baseman of the future to go along with their shortstop and center fielder of the future.

6. Max Fried was shaky, lacked control and threw too many pitches with a limited pitch count, only lasting 3 1/3 innings. Fried needed 80 pitches to get 10 outs against a Rockies lineup that made Will Warren look like Cam Schlittler on Wednesday. Fried has three starts left to get completely built up and figure things out before he starts either Game 3 of the Wild Card Series (if necessary) or Game 3 of the ALDS.

7. Michael Fulmer, John Schreiber, Ryan Yarbrough, Brent Headrick (the game was close at one point) and Luis Gil combined for 5 2/3 scoreless innings. With each scoreless appearance from Fulmer and Schreiber, it’s becoming more and more likely the duo will be a part of the bullpen for the postseason. It’s also becoming more and more likely Gil won’t be a part of it.

8.. Next up is the second half of the Subway Series with the Yankee Stadium portion. The Mets’ season has been a disaster, but they are playing much better of late and are currently riding a four-game winning streak. This is all the Mets have left in 2026. This is their postseason and their World Series. Once this weekend ends, the Mets will go back to counting down the games and days and outs left in their miserable year. Not only is it the Mets’ postseason, but their rotation is lined up as if it were with their three best starters going this weekend. It will be Nolan McLean against Carlos Rodon, Zac Thornton against Gerrit Cole and Christian Scott against Cam Schlittler.

9. The door for the division is still open thanks to the Rays’ loss on Thursday, and three games back with 16 to play is doable, simply because of the four head-to-head games remaining. While the Subway Series is played in the Bronx, the Rays will be hosting the Astros in Tampa. The Astros have a three-game lead in the West and are just a half-game behind the White Sox for a first-round bye. A big weekend against the Mets is a near-guarantee to cutting into the Rays’ lead even more.

10. The Yankees need to erase at least one more game from the deficit over their next nine games against the Mets, Twins and Diamondbacks while the Rays are playing the Astros, Athletics and Red Sox. At minimum, take one more off during those three series and the deficit will be two when the teams meet in the Bronx in less than two weeks. It starts with reminding the Mets just how bad their season has been.

1. After a wasted week on the West Coast, the Yankees are finally doing what good teams are supposed to do: beat bad teams. It wasn’t easy defeating the Rockies on Tuesday, but it was a little easier on Wednesday in a 6-1 win.

Luis Garcia gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a solo home run in the second inning and George Lombard Jr. blew the game open with a grand slam in the third, becoming the youngest Yankee other than Mickey Mantle to hit a grand slam. It was the Yankees’ first grand slam of the season in Game 145.

2. “It was a big swing to put us in front,” Lombard Jr. said, “and give us a good lead so we could win today.”

Cody Bellinger also added a solo home run as the Yankees went 7-for-31 with three walks and six strikeouts. Aaron Judge owns Tomoyuki Sugano, so when he struck out swinging against the Rockies’ right-hander in the first inning, it was as clear a sign as there could be that Judge is rusty. Judge did go on to pick up two hits in the game before being removed for a pinch runner in the eighth inning.

3. Will Warren went six innings and allowed just one earned run. Warren had given the Yankees just one quality start from the end of May through late August and now has given them two in his last two starts in wins over the Red Sox and Rockies. Warren mentioned “when it wasn’t going good there for a minute” when talking about his season, and I’m not sure how long Warren considers a minute to be since he had a 5.92 ERA over a two-month period. John Schreiber (who hasn’t allowed a hit in 4 1/3 innings as a Yankee), Paul Blackburn and Michael Fulmer pitched three scoreless innings in relief.

4. Unfortunately, the fraudulent Braves were beaten handily for a second straight day by the Rays, so the Yankees’ division deficit remains at four games. The Yankees have gone 15-7 over the last three weeks and have picked up 1 1/2 games in the standings. They desperately need to sweep the Rockies and have the Braves salvage the final game of their series against the Rays.

5. The biggest news of the day came when it was announced Jazz Chisholm would go on the injured list with a thumb injury and Anthony Volpe would be recalled. Volpe started to really hit a little over a week ago at Triple-A, while playing second base, so this call-up seems to at least be deserved. But for the fans who think Volpe figured something out in a week after struggling for four years, don’t be fooled. There are 2,080 major-league plate appearances of data to Volpe’s name. A hot week in the final week of the Triple-A season doesn’t erase four years of being the worst everyday player in Major League Baseball.

6. Would it be great if Volpe did figure something out, mashed in the majors, took playing time away from Chisholm and became the Yankees’ second baseman of the future? Yes, it would be amazing. But I’m going to need to see more than the limited schedule remaining this season to believe Volpe has figured anything out other than owning the sixth tool: having the front office believe in you to no end.

7. It will be interesting to see how the Yankees construct their postseason roster. These names are givens:

1. Aaron Judge
2. Ben Rice
3. Luis Garcia
4. Cody Bellinger
5. Spencer Jones
6. Ryan McMahon
7. Paul Goldschmidt
8. Heliot Ramos
9. Jazz Chisholm
10. Jose Caballero
11. Austin Wells
12. Ali Sanchez
13. Cam Schlittler
14. Gerrit Cole
15. Max Fried
16. Carlos Rodon
17. David Bednar
18. Brent Headrick
19. Paul Blackburn
20. Tim Hill

Does Warren get on? What about Luis Gil? Do Ryan Weathers and Clarke Schmidt do enough in two-plus weeks as relievers? Will Fernando Cruz be healthy? Have Schreiber and Fulmer done enough? Will Trent Grisham come back? Could Jasson Dominguez be a pinch runner? Would the Yankees leave Amed Rosario off? Could Volpe push himself into the equation? There are more than 30 options for 26 spots.

The Yankees carried 14 position players and 12 pitchers for the ALDS last year. Obviously, the Wild Card Series is weird in that it’s a best-of-3, so you don’t need as many starting options, and the ALDS is the “real” postseason roster.

8. I think it’s obvious Jones is the team’s starting center fielder even if Grisham does come back. Jones has an .854 OPS since July 29. He hits, hits for power, draws walks, has speed and is athletic, all traits Grisham doesn’t possess.

9. I also think Ryan McMahon may be playing himself out of a starting spot. He has one multi-hit game in the last month and one home run in the last two months. He doesn’t walk and strikes out a lot. He can get his glove on nearly everything, but then struggles to make accurate throws. He has an abysmal on-base percentage and no speed. If Volpe could hit, I would play him at second, move Chisholm back to third and stop playing McMahon. Caballero has been too poor offensively since his May IL stint to make him the starting third baseman. It will be McMahon at third in the playoffs, unless a lefty is starting and then it will be Caballero? Or Rosario? And then we will likely watch what happened in the late-June game at Fenway Park happen again with Rosario at third base in an intense atmosphere. The problem once again is that the Yankees have too many DHs on their team (Rice, Garcia, Ramos, Dominguez) and too many players making too much money to not play (McMahon, Grisham) to construct a logical roster.

10. Thursday’s series finale against the Rockies needs to result in a win. It’s Max Fried against Ryan Feltner. It’s not as lopsided as Tuesday’s pitching matchup was (because Fried will be limited by a pitch count), but it’s close. And because the Mets have their three best starters lined up for the weekend for the second half of the Subway Series, the Yankees can’t lose to the worst team in baseball.

1. Since the end of May, every Yankees fan has been waiting for the team’s best player to return to properly evaluate them and create expectations for October, and that time is now. With the return of Aaron Judge, I guess now the Yankees can be evaluated properly, and after one game, the Yankees are who I envisioned they would be offensively, and that is still a heavily flawed offense.

2. This has nothing to do with Judge, who looked like someone who hasn’t played in a game or seen real pitching in more than three months as he went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against a pitcher who can’t strike anyone out. (Gabriel Hughes entered Tuesday’s game with only 42 strikeouts in 52 2/3 innings and then struck out six Yankees in five innings.) This has everything to do with the entire lineup sitting around and waiting for Judge to do something to carry them to a win.

3. The Yankees scored one non-defense-aided run in seven innings against Rockies pitching before Heliot Ramos’ three-run home run in the seventh created separation. At the time of Ramos’ home run, the Yankees were clinging to a 2-1 lead over the worst team in Major League Baseball and were one swing away from another Cam Schlittler masterpiece (7 IP, 1 ER, 0 BB, 10 K) being wasted. Thankfully, the one swing that changed the game was Ramos’.

4. As expected, Judge’s return didn’t suddenly turn a lineup full of sub-.700 OPS into a lineup you can trust to hit elite pitching every day in October. Ben Rice went 0-for-2 with a walk, Cody Bellinger went 1-for-4, Luis Garcia Jr. went 2-for-4, Spencer Jones went 0-for-3 with a walk, Jazz Chisholm went 2-for-4, George Lombard Jr. went 1-for-3, Ryan McMahon went 1-for-3 and Austin Wells went 0-for-3. The Yankees went 8-for-30 with three walks and 10 strikeouts. They couldn’t hit the starter Hughes and his 6.19 ERA in 11 career starts, couldn’t touch reliever Mark Manfredi, couldn’t score against reliever Jaden Hill and needed a Brennan Bernardino meltdown to put the game out of reach. It was a frustrating performance even if the final score made it look better than it was.

5. This is nothing new. The Yankees’ offense has been wildly inconsistent all season, both with and without Judge. And once Judge gets more games and plate appearances under him and finds his timing, he will hit, but it doesn’t mean others will follow. After wasting a week on the West Coast during a time when the Rays went 3-4, the Yankees nearly wasted the most lopsided starting pitching matchup of their season against the worst team they will face all season.

6. Here’s what I wrote about Judge’s return and what I expected for a nonsensical load management plan last week:

The Yankees will of course institute some asinine return plan for him like playing a full game in right field and then sitting the next game and then serving as the DH for the next game and then sitting the next game and then playing right field for a full game and so on. The Yankees believe they have figured out a scientific way to beat injuries, and yet, their load plans don’t prevent injuries because injuries happen. It’s idiotic to not play Judge as much as possible when he returns because if Judge is healthy enough to play then he should play every day. He needs at-bats with a limited number of games remaining before October.

Judge was removed early from the game on Tuesday because apparently you’re more prone to injuries late in the game than early in the game.

7. “I feel great,” Judge said. “I played half a game, so I don’t know what to say about that. I respect Boone, so whatever he says, I’m going to do. I’m not happy about it.”

Judge had to have known Boone was going to remove him before the end of the game, so it’s hard to believe he was surprised by the decision. The Yankees will likely continue this charade for the next few games before eventually letting Judge play a full nine innings of baseball.

8. The Yankees’ elimination number dropped to 15 after the Rays’ 7-1 win over the Braves on Tuesday. The division deficit has to be at most what it is now (four games) for the four-game series against the Rays in the Bronx in two weeks, but you would like it to be less so a sweep isn’t mandatory.

9. With Will Warren getting the start on Thursday, the Yankees now have their rotation lined up to have Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon start the four games against the Rays. A lot can happen to a rotation in 15 days, but the Yankees at least are planning for the Rays series like it’s a postseason series.

10. It would be nice if the Braves could show up and win the next two against the Rays, but I’ll take even one win from the fraudulent Braves at this point. The Yankees have to sweep this series against the Rockies if they want to keep the division dream alive and avoid playing a best-of-3 against the Red Sox to determine their fate for the second straight season. Sweep the Rockies and get even just one win from the Braves and it’s three games with 16 to go and four head-to-head games remaining.

1. The Yankees were about to waste another Cam Schlittler gem. If Austin Wells’ ground ball doesn’t get through the right side of the infield with two outs in the 10th, the Yankees would have wasted an eight-inning, two-hit, one-run masterpiece from their ace. Because even though the score may have still been tied if Wells had gotten out there, we all know how the bottom of the 10th inning would have played out. (Michael Kay said the Yankees “haven’t had much luck” in extra innings on the road even though their abysmal record has nothing to do with luck.) But instead of adding to their humiliating extra-inning road record since the implementation of the automatic runner, the Yankees scored five runs in the 10th and pulled out a 6-3 win in Anaheim.

2. The Rays lost to the Mets and the Red Sox lost to the Mariners, so the Yankees improved in both the division and wild-card standings. They are now 3 1/2 games in back of the Rays (four in the loss column) and five games up on the Red Sox (six when you factor in the head-to-head tiebreaker). It was an all-around positive late night heading into Thursday’s day off.

3. Schlittler became the first Yankee in franchise history to have 19 starts of one run or fewer, a preposterous stat. The only two hits he allowed over eight innings were both to Vaughn Grissom: a single and a solo home run. He picked up nine strikeouts and lowered his American League-leading ERA to 2.04.

4. Schlittler’s only competition for the AL Cy Young Award is Dylan Cease and I don’t think it’s much of a competition. Schlittler has started three more games than Cease and has him beat in the majority of pitching categories, including the most important ones.

Schlittler: WAR, ERA, WHIP, ERA+, starts, innings, walks and walks per nine innings
Cease: Strikeouts, FIP, hits per nine, home runs per nine and strikeouts per nine

5. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if the Yankees had lost to the Angels for the fourth time in seven games this season and wasted Schlittler’s effort on a night the Rays lost, considering the Yankees have already wasted and lost these starts from Schlittler this season:

6 IP, 0 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
5 IP, 0 ER
6.1 IP, 1 ER
7 IP, 1 ER
5.1 IP, 1 ER

6. Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-3 in the leadoff spot and would have been 3-for-3 if not for a dazzling play by former Yankee Oswald Peraza at third base. It’s safe to say Goldschmidt will be leading off against any lefty for the rest of the season, including the postseason. Cody Bellinger went 3-for-5 in the game and 8-for-14 in the series. Heliot Ramos went 0-for-3 (but hit into some bad luck with a line-drive double play). Ben Rice went 2-for-4 and Amed Rosario went 1-for-5. Spencer Jones had a rare bad night going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts as Reid Detmers was able to get Jones to chase breaking pitches away and go after high fastballs. Jose Caballero went 1-for-4. Jazz Chisholm and Ali Sanchez combined to go 0-for-5. Wells went 2-for-2 after entering as a pinch hitter, Trent Grisham went 1-for-2 with a single in the 10th and Luis Garcia went 0-for-2 after entering as a pinch hitter. Garcia would have shouldered a lot of blame for a loss because of his at-bat with the bases loaded in the 10th, if Wells hadn’t picked him up.

7. Wells is a surprising 6-for-14 with two home runs and nine RBIs in his last five games. In those five games, Wells has produced 32 percent of his RBIs for the season. His overall stats for the year are a lost cause, but if he can just be bad and not historically awful for the rest of 2026, it will make a huge difference in the lineup. The Yankees have started to lessen the number of automatic outs in the lineup, and getting Wells to do something productive every once in a while instead of going weeks without reaching base will make the offense that much deeper.

8. I would expect George Lombard Jr. to be back in the lineup on Friday, and if he is, the only missing player will then be Aaron Judge. The Yankees are so close to having their expected position players for the postseason (not including Giancarlo Stanton since it’s hard to envision him being available again this season). The rotation is as good as it’s going to be health-wise since Ryan Weathers will only return as a reliever (if he returns) and Clarke Schmidt is preparing to come back as a reliever. It’s unfortunate the Yankees never had their entire expected roster for a single day in 2026. It’s annoying to think about what their record would be and how many games up in the division they would be if injuries hadn’t impacted Judge, Stanton, Cody Bellinger, Max Fried, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon and Ryan Weathers throughout the year. (Rice and Lombard Jr. also missed games without going on the IL, while Caballero, Grisham, Wells and McMahon all went on the IL at some point.)

9. As long as the Yankees are within four games (which they are now) in the loss column when they play the Rays four times from September 22 to September 24, they will have a chance at the division. Ideally, the Yankees would be closer than four games, so they don’t need to sweep the four games in three days, and they have a chance to be closer given the Rays’ upcoming schedule: four at Texas, three at Atlanta and three against Houston. The Rangers are two games back in the West and 1 1/2 games back of the last wild card. The Braves have a four-game lead on the Phillies and are tied in the loss column with the Dodgers for a first-round bye. The Astros have a two-game division lead and would be out of the wild-card race. All three teams are playing for their postseason lives and will give the Rays everything they have.

10. The Yankees head to San Diego where they need to avenge what went on last weekend when the Padres blew two late leads to the Rays. (If not for those meltdowns, the Yankees would be two games back in the loss column.) After the weekend in San Diego, the Yankees have nine games against the Rockies, Mets and Twins. This is their chance to make sure the deficit when they play the Rays is less than the four games it is now.

1. How could Spencer Jones not be the team’s starting center fielder over Trent Grisham at this point? Here’s what I wrote about Jones before Tuesday’s game:

Jones is a better offensive and defensive alternative to Grisham, but I highly doubt the Yankees (who treat Grisham like Ken Griffey Jr.) are ready to make that determination. It takes a lot more than 118 games of piss-poor defense and being five percent worse than league average at the plate for the Yankees to pull the plug on someone they love internally. Jones has a better batting average, a better on-base percentage, a better slugging percentage, a better OPS, a better OPS+, has accumulated more WAR than Grisham and is actually above league average as a hitter, and the Yankees will choose not to accept that when Aaron Judge returns. Add in Jones’ overall speed (he’s the fastest Yankee) and his superior defense to Grisham, and there is no debate as to who should play when Judge returns.

All Jones did in Tuesday’s 7-3 win in Anaheim was hit a first-inning, two-run home run, draw a walk and drive in a third run with yet another base hit against a lefty. Jones is up to .245/.320/.451 on the season and is 13 percent above league average offensively. Since his call-up at the end of July, he has an .827 OPS. He’s riding a five-game hitting streak and has hits in eight of 10 and 15 of 20. His home run was his fourth in his last 13 games.

2. Grisham went 1-for-5 in the game and did have an RBI single for his first hit since last Wednesday, bringing his OPS back to an even .700 for the season. He remains six percent worse than league average on the season. He was 16 percent worse than league average from 2021-24, then 23 percent above league average last season and back to six percent worse this season. I wonder who the real Grisham in: the player who was a below-league-average hitter for his career before 2025 and again in 2026 and who never hit more than 17 home runs in a season, or the player who hit 34 home runs last season?

3. Ben Rice has only reached base once in his two-game audition in the leadoff spot, but I like him. Leave him there against righties. How about this lineup against righties?

Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Luis Garcia, 1B
Cody Bellinger, LF
Spencer Jones, CF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
George Lombard Jr., SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Austin Wells, C

5. Jazz Chisholm had a three-hit game for the second time in a week and is 15-for-33 over the last week and a half. It’s crazy that even after this hot streak, he’s still below league average as a hitter this season. That’s how bad he was all year before this streak.

6. Jose Caballero was so good to start the season before landing on the injured list in May, and he’s been so bad really since then. He went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts on Tuesday, his fielding has been poor (though he has had to move around the entire field) and his plate appearance quality is just not good. He thinks every called strike is a ball, takes hittable pitches all the time, swings at garbage and wastes challenges either out of emotion or because he doesn’t know the zone.

7. I wish the Yankees weren’t grinding out wins against the American League-worst Angels. But so far this season, the Yankees are 3-3 against the Angels and their three wins are two ninth-inning comeback wins and then Tuesday, a game in which a four-run lead became a one-run lead and was still a one-run lead into the eighth inning. These are the scores of the six games this season:

Yankees win 11-10 (trailed 10-8 in bottom of ninth)
Yankees lose 7-1
Yankees win 5-4 (trailed 4-3 in bottom of ninth)
Yankees lose 11-4
Yankees lose 10-1
Yankees win 7-3 (4-3 game in eighth)

8. The Angels have outscored the Yankees 45-29. The Angels have scored the third-fewest runs in the AL and have allowed the sixth-most runs. They suck. And for some reason the Yankees have struggled with them.

9. The Angels’ ability to score runs against the Yankees should change on Wednesday with Cam Schlittler starting, but it may not be easy for the Yankees to score with Reid Detmers going for the Angels. Detmers owns a 0.59 ERA in 15 1/3 career innings against the Yankees.

10. It’s a game the Yankees have to win if they want to keep the division dream alive, whether the Rays win or lose their series finale against the Mets. The Yankees can’t lose another game to the Angels. They can’t lose the season series to the Angels. Not this Angels team.

1. It took the Yankees one game to show the importance of winning Sunday’s season finale against the Red Sox. The Yankees left New York on Sunday with a five-game lead over the Red Sox (thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker) and that lead is down to four. Had the Yankees lost Sunday’s game to the Red Sox, their lead would be one game in the loss column with the Red Sox owning the tiebreaker.

It took the Yankees one game because while there was a game in Anaheim against the MLB-worst Angels on Monday, the Yankees didn’t show up for it. Elmer Rodriguez got lit up and lasted only 3 2/3 innings, the defense committed three errors and the offense went 6-for-32 with no walks and 10 strikeouts. It was a pathetic performance all around from the Yankees, but not unsurprising. I answered reader questions on Monday and wrote the following about this series:

The Yankees historically don’t play well in Anaheim and that includes during this awful Angels era. I went back and looked at the last five seasons and the Yankees are 7-8 in Anaheim during that time. The Angels won 77, 73, 73, 63 and 72 games in those years. This year, the Angels have the worst record in the majors and are on pace to lose 100 games for the first time in franchise history. I could see the Angels series not being easy and being somewhat of a trap, especially the Monday game, with the Yankees coming off essentially a postseason series, having to fly across the country and using a rookie starter.

2. It’s not going to get any easier for the Yankees this week either. They will face Grayson Rodriguez on Tuesday and Rodriguez owns a 3.18 ERA in 17 career innings against the Yankees, and they will face Reid Detmers on Wednesday and Detmers owns a 0.59 ERA in 15 1/3 career innings against the Yankees.

3. It’s disturbing that the Angels are 3-2 against the Yankees this season and 50-83 against everyone else, and both of the Yankees’ wins were ninth-inning comebacks against the Angels. Losing 10-1 to any team is embarrassing, but losing 10-1 to the 2026 Angels and ending what was a seven-game losing streak is on another level.

4. In the 138th game of the season, Aaron Boone finally recognized Trent Grisham shouldn’t be the team’s leadoff hitter. Boone did the right thing by moving Ben Rice to first and Grisham to fifth and Rice rewarded Boone’s choice by going 0-for-4. Grisham also went 0-for-4, as did Luis Garcia. Jose Caballero and Austin Wells both went 0-for-3, as it turns out they aren’t very good when a position player isn’t pitching. Cody Bellinger had two singles, Amed Rosario had two singles, Jazz Chisholm had a single and Spencer Jones hit a solo home run. Those were the Yankees’ six hits and Jones’ was the entire offense.

5. Rodriguez didn’t build off his career-best start against the Astros, and instead, reverted back to the pitcher who looked unready for the majors from earlier in the season. Rodriguez allowed two-out walks in both the first and second innings, and then in the third, he allowed a leadoff double to a 35-year-old catcher with a .439 OPS, another two-out walk and an RBI single. In the fourth, with two outs and no one on, he hit the 8- and 9-hitters and then allowed back-to-back singles to make it a 4-0 game.

6. Michael Fulmer relieved Rodriguez to end the fourth and then showed why he’s on his fourth team since last season when he gave up a pair of doubles and a single and threw a pickoff attempt away in the fifth.

After Fulmer, Luis Gil made his first appearance since April 26 and allowed one run over two innings. He did strike out three, threw 27 of 39 pitches for strikes and even threw 98 mph, so there was some promise there.

Then it was David Bednar’s turn. After pitching once in 10 days, Bednar ate up the eighth inning to get some work in and whether it was rust or him just going through the motions to get through the game, he allowed three earned runs on four hits in his inning.

7. It was the kind of game that happens over the course of 162 and the kind of game you throw away and immediately forget about … if you’re in the position the Rays are in, leading the division by five games in the loss column with 24 to play. But the Yankees aren’t in that position and throwing away a game against a crappy opponent (the actual shittiest opponent you can have in the majors this season) is why it’s hard to take them seriously as being alive in the division race. The Rays lost to the Mets and the Yankees had an opportunity to cut the lead to four games, meaning they could control their own division destiny with the four head-to-head games remaining against the Rays, and instead, they took the night off against a team with nothing to play for, a team counting down the days until their latest miserable season ends.

8. If George Lombard Jr. is ready to play, inserting him at shortstop is the only lineup change I would make for Tuesday. Keep Rice in the leadoff spot and keep Grisham fifth. At this point, to me, Jones is a better offensive and defensive alternative to Grisham, but I highly doubt the Yankees (who treat Grisham like Ken Griffey Jr.) are ready to make that determination. It takes a lot more than 118 games of piss-poor defense and being five percent worse than league average at the plate for the Yankees to pull the plug on someone they love internally. Jones has a better batting average, a better on-base percentage, a better slugging percentage, a better OPS, a better OPS+, has accumulated more WAR than Grisham and is actually above league average as a hitter, and the Yankees will choose not to accept that when Aaron Judge returns. Add in Jones’ overall speed (he’s the fastest Yankee) and his superior defense to Grisham, and there is no debate as to who should play when Judge returns.

9. It appears as though Judge will be activated for the next homestand, which begins next Tuesday against the Rockies, whose loss on Monday dropped them one game behind the Angels as the worst team in the majors. If Judge returns on September 9, he will have 19 available games to get ready for October. It’s obviously unlikely he will play all 19 since the Yankees will of course institute some asinine return plan for him like playing a full game in right field and then sitting the next game and then serving as the DH for the next game and then sitting the next game and then playing right field for a full game and so on. The Yankees believe they have figured out a scientific way to beat injuries, and yet, their load plans don’t prevent injuries because injuries happen. It’s idiotic to not play Judge as much as possible when he returns because if Judge is healthy enough to play then he should play every day. He needs at-bats with a limited number of games remaining before October.

10. I’ll worry about Judge’s load management next week. For now, I still somehow have to worry about the Angels, a team on pace for the 100-loss season in their franchise’s history. The Yankees have to sweep the Rays in September and play one game better than them in the other 20 games to win the division. That’s the path to the best record in the American League, home-field advantage throughout the playoffs and a first-round bye. It’s the best statistical and most favorable road to ending a championship drought that’s approaching 17 years. The Mets helped out the Yankees on Monday and the Yankees couldn’t help themselves. That needs to change against this opponent over the next two days.

1. Maybe Will Warren will go out and pitch the game of his life … or maybe the offense will explode for five or six early runs off Ranger Suarez and all this worrying will be for nothing. If neither of those things happens, it will have been a disappointing weekend that could set up a disappointing October.

That’s how I finished the Thoughts after the doubleheader. Warren pitched the best game of his career (lasting at least seven innings for just the third time in 63 career starts), the offense got to Suarez for six runs over 5 1/3, and instead of losing a game in the standings to the Red Sox and losing the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Yankees clinched the first wild card. Yes, that’s right: clinched.

2. With 25 games to play, the Yankees have a five-game lead over the Red Sox because of the tiebreaker. If the Yankees go a meager 13-12 in those games, the Red Sox would have to go 18-7 to pass the Yankees. With 12 of those games against the Angels, Rockies, Mets and Twins, Max Fried back and Aaron Judge expected back within the next two weeks, it’s hard to imagine the Yankees playing that poorly over the final month. (It’s also hard to imagine the Red Sox playing .720 baseball, considering they are 42-57 sandwiched around their historic hot streak.)

3. In the 16-1 win, the Yankees scored 11 runs against actual pitchers and then put up five runs against the Red Sox’ backup shortstop, including home runs from Austin Wells (who homered twice in the eighth inning) and Jose Caballero, both on 49-mph lobs. (Having position players pitch in blowout games is a disgrace. It’s sad that it’s “strategic” now. It’s not Wade Boggs coming in and dazzling with a knuckleball. It’s an embarrassment to the game.)

4. Before the game was a one-sided rout, Heliot Ramos had his first Yankees moment with a three-run home run in a five-run fifth inning. Ramos was in a position to have his big swing because of a controversial call ruled in the Yankees’ favor earlier in the inning. Caballero led off the inning with a single. Jazz Chisholm then hit a ball to center field that was ruled a trap by Ceddanne Rafaela to set up first and second with no outs. The Red Sox’ challenge was unsuccessful and the replay room allowed the call on the field to stand. After that, Ali Sanchez laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runners over and Paul Goldschmidt hit a ground ball up the middle to score them both. Cody Bellinger singled and then Ramos broke the game open. The Yankees added a run in the sixth, one in the seventh and nine in the eighth.

5. The good news is the Yankees won the season series, have a five-game edge over the Red Sox and went 7-2 against the Red Sox around the four-game disaster at Fenway Park at the end of June. The bad news is the Yankees are going to have to play in the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox for a second straight season and possibly didn’t face a single starting pitcher the Red Sox would use in that series. I would expect the Red Sox to use Sonny Gray, Payton Tolle and Garrett Crochet (if he returns and is able to start). If not Crochet, then I guess it would be Jake Bennett, who shut the Yankees down on Friday, outside of the Goldschmidt home run.

6. No matter who ends up pitching, surviving a three-game series against the Red Sox is going to be as painful as it was last October and has been every time they have met in October outside of the 1999 ALCS. I’m not yet mentally, emotionally or physically prepared for it. The two teams have met six times in the playoffs — all in my lifetime — and both teams have advanced three times with the Yankees winning 14 games and the Red Sox winning 13 games.

7. And they are going to meet in October, because if I’m going to call the race for the first wild card over, I have to call the division over as well. I guess I already did that when I wrote the Thoughts titled Division Race About Done three weeks ago. At the time the Rays were 71-46 and the Yankees were 66-52. Since then, the Rays have gone 11-8 and the Yankees have gone 12-7. Three weeks and 19 games have come off the schedule and the Yankees have made up a single game. It’s just not going to happen unless the Rays lose something like 16 or more of their remaining 26 games.

8. The Padres blew a three-run lead in the seventh inning in a loss to the Rays on Saturday and then blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning on Sunday. It’s hard to be upset with the Padres for being shit when the Yankees couldn’t take care of their own business against the Rays this season (the Yankees are 3-6 against the Rays) or really anyone for two months, but the Yankees better sweep the Padres next weekend like the Rays just did this weekend.

9. So it’s looking like the Yankees’ postseason path in 2026 is going to be a lot like 2025: host the Red Sox for a three-game series, and if they survive that, they get to go on the road for the ALDS with their rotation out of whack to play an opponent they have trouble beating in a venue they have a hard time winning in. It’s less than ideal. That’s what happens when you don’t win the division. The Yankees’ only path now is to sweep the four-game series against the Rays in late September and play one game better than them in their other 21 games.

10. Next up is a West Coast trip to Anaheim and San Diego. Three straight 9:38 start times and a 9:40 start time. It’s going to be a long week of late nights, but it will be easier to handle if the Yankees can beat up on an Angels team that is the worst in all of baseball and a Padres team that just pooped their pants against the Rays. Couple that with the Mets and Rangers beating the Rays and I will gladly trade sleep to cut some games off the division deficit to begin September.

1. The old baseball adage that “it’s hard to sweep a doubleheader” held true on Saturday as the Yankees lost the afternoon game to the Red Sox 6-0 before winning the night game 9-2.

The first game on Saturday was the type of game Yankees fans have seen too frequently this summer as the offense took another game off. After scoring one run in the Astros series finale and one run in the Red Sox series opener, the Yankees were shut out in the second game of the series. Here are some appalling stats from Katie Sharp:

The Yankees had two runs, 12 hits and 31 strikeouts over the last three games. It was the first time in franchise history the Yankees had any three-game span with two or fewer runs, 12 or fewer hits and 30-plus strikeouts.

It was the 23rd game this season the Yankees had four or fewer hits. The Yankees had 17 such games all of last season.

The Yankees went 4-for-31 with no walks and nine strikeouts in the game. The only Yankees to have hits were Heliot Ramos (double), Cody Bellinger (single), Jose Caballero (single) and Spencer Jones (single).

2. You can’t win if you don’t score, so the Yankees weren’t going to win the game no matter what, but it’s not like the pitching was any good. Carlos Rodon lasted just 4 2/3 innings due to a pitch count and ineffectiveness and Ryan Yarbrough got rocked in relief. Rodon allowed a first-inning home run to a left-handed batter and had a mental meltdown in the fifth.

An Amed Rosario throwing error in the fifth on a double play attempt led to a runner on second with two outs. Rodon then allowed an infield single putting runners on the corners with two outs. A passed ball by Ali Sanchez led to a close play at the plate in which Rodon didn’t get the tag in time. The runner was called safe and while Rodon argued the call, the other runner moved up before being sent back on a phantom “time” call. Clearly rattled and unable to control his emotions (normal Rodon stuff), Rodon then walked the No. 9 hitter and hit the leadoff hitter and was pulled from the game.

3. Moments before Rosario’s throwing error in the fifth, he blew the chance to tie the game with some of the worst baserunning you’ll ever see. Rosario’s indecision between second and third base on a ball Ceddanne Rafaela misplayed into a double led to him being thrown out at home and prevented the game from being tied. Rosario likely would have been designated for assignment when Bellinger returned if not for the injury to Ryan McMahon, and each time he plays (which isn’t often), he continues to make it hard to justify keeping him if a roster spot is needed at some point.

4. George Lombard Jr. hurt his knee on a swing in the second game, stayed in to record a single in that at-bat, played defense and took another at-bat before eventually being removed. The fact that the Yankees let the future of their franchise continue to play for as long as they did in a game they eventually took him out of is nothing new for the Yankees. But if Lombard Jr. is in fact injured and is forced to miss time and Anthony Volpe returns, that will be it for me. I will walk away. It’s hard enough to watch an Aaron Boone-led, Aaron Judge-less team. The absence of Lombard Jr. and return of Volpe would be the final straw.

5. Max Fried returned from the injured list for the second game and looked like himself. He held the Red Sox to one run (a solo home run) over 3 2/3 innings, but like Rodon, was limited by a pitch count.

The Yankees trailed 1-0 in the third inning and after leaving runners on first and third with one out in the second, it started to feel like another game in which the offense wouldn’t do anything. Then the Yankees built three runs by not doing much.

Caballero led off the third with a single and Trent Grisham walked. Ben Rice singled in Caballero and Grisham moved to third. Ramos was hit by a pitch, Luis Garcia drove in a run with a groundout, Jazz Chisholm drove in another run with a sacrifice fly and the Yankees had a 3-1 lead.

6. Boone asked Yerry De Los Santos to get the last out of the fourth in relief of Fried, which he did. De Los Santos returned to the mound for the fifth and got the first two batters before allowing a two-out single. That led to Boone bringing in Michael Fulmer and Fulmer got out of the inning with one pitch.

In the sixth, the Yankees still led 3-1 with the Red Sox’ 3-4-5 hitters due up. It’s a spot that had Paul Blackburn’s name all over it. But instead of going to Blackburn, Boone sent Fulmer back out. Fulmer hit the first batter and walked the second batter. With the tying run now on base with no outs, Boone brought in Blackburn. After losing the first game of the day, the Yankees’ wild-card lead over the Red Sox was back to two games. The night game had become the latest most important game of the season, and yet, Boone was willing to steal outs in a two-run game with the heart of the Red Sox’ order up with a pitcher the Yankees signed out of necessity only a few days earlier. Thankfully, Blackburn saved his manager from his latest in-game managerial disaster, saved the inning and saved the game by retiring three straight hitters.

7. The Yankees added a run in the sixth to make it a 4-1 game, and when the Red Sox got that run back in the eighth to make it 4-2, the Yankees exploded for a five-run eighth to make it 9-2, put the game out of reach and avoided using David Bednar. Not using Bednar was extremely important because Brent Headrick pitched on Friday and Saturday (and was ineffective both times) and Blackburn pitched on Friday and Saturday as well, making both unavailable for Sunday. If Bednar had pitched on Saturday, he too would be unavailable for Sunday, but now he will be available.

The bullpen is a mess for Sunday. Based on the Yankees’ internal rule that no reliever is allowed to pitch three straight days, Headrick and Blackburn are both unavailable. De Los Santos pitched in both games on Saturday, so he’s unavailable. Yarbrough threw three innings on Saturday, so he’s unavailable. That means the Yankees’ available relievers are Fulmer, Justin Topa, Tim Hill and Bednar. How the Yankees plan on winning a game with their offense, Will Warren starting and only Bednar available among their elite relievers is beyond me.

8. The Yankees have a chance to go up four games on the Red Sox with 26 games to play and clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker with a win on Sunday. In order to do so, the offense will need to put up runs against Ranger Suarez and Warren will need to not suck. Because Warren does suck and got lit up by the Red Sox in his only start against them in June (5.2 IP, 5 ER, 0 K), the offense is going to have to do more than hit a couple of solo home runs. I think the best possible plan would be for Warren to give the Yankees a quality start (6 IP, 3 ER) and then try to piece together nine outs from Fulmer, Hill and Bednar. The problem with that is Warren has only one quality start since May 31. And then the other problem is asking Fulmer and Hill to serve as a bridge from Warren to Bednar.

9. Because the Rays are back to not losing (5-1 in their last six), the Yankees are now five games back in the loss column in the division. The math keeps getting worse and games keep coming off the schedule. The Rays have 27 games left. If they play under .500 and go 13-14, they will win 94 games and the Yankees would have to go 18-8 to pass them. We have reached the point where sweeping the Rays in the four-game series in the Bronx at the end of September and outplaying them by one game in all other games is the Yankees’ only path to winning the division.

10. That makes Sunday’s series and season finale against the Red Sox all the more important. The Yankees wanted to win at least two games this weekend and they have achieved that goal. If the Yankees lose on Sunday, four games will have come off the schedule and the Red Sox will be no closer than they were before the series started with no remaining head-to-head games to erase the deficit on their own. But a loss on Sunday keeps the Red Sox within two games of the Yankees and gives the Red Sox the head-to-head tiebreaker for home-field advantage in the Wild Card Series if the two teams finish with the same record. It’s unfortunate Warren is starting the newest biggest game of the season with such enormous implications. The idea that the Yankees will split a four-game home series against the Red Sox in which they didn’t have to face either Payton Tolle or Sonny Gray is unnerving. Maybe Warren will go out and pitch the game of his life and hand the ball right to Bednar or maybe the offense will explode for five or six early runs off Suarez and all this worrying will be for nothing. If neither of those things happens, it will have been a disappointing weekend that could set up a disappointing October.

1. Nine days ago, during the Orioles series, I mapped out the Yankees’ rotation for the next three series. At the time, Cam Schlittler was on track to pitch against the Astros and miss the Red Sox series. That couldn’t happen, I wrote. The Yankees had to hold him back to pitch against the Red Sox. They did, and on Friday night in the Bronx, you saw why.

There has never been a Yankees pitcher who has owned the Red Sox the way that Cam Schlittler does. Schlittler has now made four career regular-season starts and one postseason start against the Red Sox and this is his combined line: 32.1 IP, 20 H, 7 R, 2 ER, 9 BB, 39 K, 2 HR, 0.56 ERA, 0.897 WHIP. It’s a preposterous line for any major-league pitcher against any major-league opponent, let alone a Yankees pitcher against the Red Sox.

2. On Friday, Schlittler held the Red Sox scoreless for 5 2/3 innings despite not having nearly his best stuff and the Yankees won the biggest game of the season to date 1-0. Schlittler’s normal impeccable control evaded him as he walked five in the game and failed to have a single 1-2-3 inning, but each time the Red Sox put runners on, Schlittler walked off the mound unscathed.

When Wilyer Abreu reached on catcher’s interference with two outs in the first inning, Schlittler struck out Willson Contreras. After walking two with two outs in the second inning, Schlittler got a strikeout and groundout to end the threat. When Abreu hit a two-out double in the third, Schlittler struck out Contreras again. After a two-out walk in the fourth, Schlittler induced a groundout to end the inning. With two on and one out in the fifth, Schlittler got an inning-ending double play thanks to a lineout and some awful baserunning by Ceddanne Rafaela. In the sixth, Schlittler got two quick outs, but then walked Caleb Durbin and Aaron Boone went to Brent Headrick to eventually end the inning.

3. The entire scoring in the game was a Paul Goldschmidt solo home run in the third inning. The Red Sox went 5-for-30 with six walks and nine strikeouts. The Yankees went 3-for-27 with four walks and 11 strikeouts. The Yankees have scored two runs in their last 18 innings. They are a combined 8-for-58 with six walks and 22 strikeouts. That’s a good way to end the division race.

4. Goldschmidt went 1-for-4 with the home run and a strikeout in the leadoff spot. (It was Goldschmidt’s third start since August 1.) Ben Rice went 2-for-4 with two strikeouts (Rice has come alive with .981 OPS over the last two weeks). Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4. (Bellinger’s defense made up for it.) Heliot Ramos went 0-for-1 with two walks and a strikeout. (He’s a problem because he isn’t hitting and he keeps being put in prime spots in the batting order.) Trent Grisham went 0-for-2 with a walk and a strikeout. (This is who Grisham is). George Lombard Jr. went 0-for-2 with a walk. (Good at-bats all around for Lombard Jr. and his error streak is over.) Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. (To be expected from Chisholm.) Jose Caballero went 0-for-3. (To be expected from Caballero). Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. (Wells has struck out in six straight plate appearances.) Spencer Jones went 0-for-1 with a strikeout.

5. Headrick (two outs), Paul Blackburn (five outs) and David Bednar (three outs) closed out the game in relief of Schlittler. As I wrote recently, those three and the game’s starter are the only pitchers I want throwing pitches in postseason games and Friday was a postseason-like game.

6. Bellinger’s throw home to get Rafaela in the seventh inning was spectacular. Everything about the play was perfect. The way Bellinger backed up to step into the catch with his momentum going toward home. The throw, which was perfectly on line on one hop to home. The pick by Wells to receive the throw and the tag Wells put on Rafaela just in time to get the out. It was a lead-saving and possibly game-saving play by the best left fielder in the world.

“I was able to get some good momentum going home,” Bellinger said.

“That was one of the defensive plays of the year,” Boone said.”

7. It’s obvious Headrick and Blackburn are fatigued, considering the way they have been hit recently after not being hit all season. But there’s no other choice right now to bridge the gap from starter to Bednar other than those two because the Yankees really only play close games and they have to use their best every night to win and keep pace with the Rays.

8. The Rays won as the Padres were no help on Friday. The Yankees’ lead over the Red Sox is back up to three games, but the division deficit remains at four games.

Here is the updated path to winning the division:

The Yankees are 76-58.
The Rays are 80-54.
Four games back.

The Yankees go 2-1 against the Red Sox. 78-59.
The Rays go 1-1 against the Padres. 81-55.
3 1/2 games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Angels and Padres. 82-61.
The Rays go 3-4 against the Mets and Rangers. 84-59.
Two games back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Rockies and Mets. 86-63.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Braves and Astros. 87-62.
One game back.

The Yankees go 4-2 against the Twins and Diamondbacks. 90-65.
The Rays go 3-3 against the Athletics and Red Sox. 90-65.
Tied.

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

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

It’s still possible, but certainly losing two of three at home to the Astros hurt the math pretty badly. It would be nice if the Yankees just went on a 10-game winning streak and the Rays went on a 10-game losing streak. That would make this easy. But after the Rays’ recent slide where they lost seven of nine, they have rebounded by winning four of five.

9. Saturday is a day I have been looking forward to for months: a Yankees-Red Sox doubleheader. The Yankees will give the ball to Carlos Rodon in the afternoon game and Max Fried in the night game. The Red Sox are going with Jake Bennett in the first game and have yet to announce a starter for the second game. Rodon’s pitch count should be around 85-90 for his start. Fried threw 88 pitches on August 13, but I have no idea how many pitches he will be allowed to throw.

10. The safest way to negate any limitations for either starter on Saturday is for the offense to show up in a way it hasn’t in the last two games. That takes pitch count questions out of the equation, it takes using relievers not named Headrick, Blackburn or Bednar in high-leverage spots out of the equation and it takes Boone out of the equation. Score runs and put the Red Sox away like you should have at the end of June.

1. Just when you think you can trust Gerrit Cole to win a big game and the offense (with or without Aaron Judge) to show up in a big game, they remind you of who they really are. Cole was mediocre (because that’s what three earned runs in six innings is), and with a chance to maintain their position in the division and wild-card standings, the offense disappeared, going 5-for-31 with 11 strikeouts.

“I thought we made a lot of really good pitches tonight,” Cole said. “I think in certain situations we executed and they beat us, so it’s just a bit unfortunate. But sometimes that’s the way it breaks.”

2. That’s the way it seems to break for Cole in every big game (and given the standings, every game is a big game from here on out). Cole talks about how good his pitches were and the Yankees lose. I’m sure he will do just fine against the American League-worst Angels next week.

3. Of course the loss isn’t only on Cole. Hayden Wesneski continued the undefeated Law of Ex-Yankees as the former prospect held the Yankees to one run over five innings with a season-high six strikeouts. (Which opposing starter hasn’t recorded their season high for strikeouts against the Yankees this season?)

4. Trent Grisham continued his between-homers-disappearing act with another 0-for-4. Grisham went 2-for-11 in Toronto then 4-for-12 in Baltimore then 2-for-10 against the Blue Jays and 1-for-12 against the Astros. This is what Grisham is and why he has no business batting leadoff. A true contender’s leadoff hitter can’t have one good series every couple of weeks sandwiched around shit.

Here are the leadoff hitters of teams with more wins than the Yankees:

Shohei Ohtani: .927 OPS
Pete Crow-Armstrong: .924
Yandy Diaz: .829 OPS
Jackson Chourio: .822 OPS
Ronald Acuna: .731 OPS

Acuna is having the worst season of his career with an OPS 151 points below his career average, and yet, he still has a higher OPS than Grisham and there isn’t a person in the world who would take Grisham in any plate appearance over Acuna. Then there’s Kyle Schwarber (.890 OPS) and Fernando Tatis (.801 OPS) and even Nick Sogard of the Red Sox at .772.

5. Ben Rice went 2-for-4 with a double and has a .954 OPS in the last 10 games after deciding his two-month experiment of swinging at every pitch thrown to him wasn’t a viable strategy.

Luis Garcia went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and Cody Bellinger went 0-for-2 with a walk. George Lombard Jr. went 1-for-4 with a triple and two strikeouts and also made an error for the sixth straight game, something no Yankees shortstop has done in 111 years.

Spencer Jones went 0-for-3 with a strikeout and Heliot Ramos struck out pinch hitting for Jones.

Jazz Chisholm went 1-for-2 with a walk and a strikeout and Amed Rosario made an out pinch hitting for Chisholm.

Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. YES has stopped showing the graphic of Wells’ first-half numbers compared to his second half as his second half is slowly looking like his first half. Wells has a .502 OPS over the last two weeks with 13 strikeouts in 33 at-bats.

Jose Caballero went 1-for-3 and didn’t add to his portfolio of worst plate appearances you’ll ever see as he holds the first-, second- and third-worst plate appearances of the year for the Yankees.

6. It was a bad loss. A really bad loss given the Yankees’ starting pitching advantage and the fact that the Astros’ pitching (as a whole) sucks. But it’s the kind of loss that happens over 162 games. The problem is when you give away two months of the season and then need every win possible to win a division race, you can’t afford to lose games in which you have a very clear edge.

7. The Rays and Red Sox both picked up a half-game on the Yankees by doing nothing. The math is really ugly once again for the division with the Yankees four games back with 29 games left to play. If the Rays go even 14-15 the rest of the way, the Yankees will have to go 19-10 to pass them. The Yankees are getting to the point where their only chance at the division is to win all four games against the Rays at Yankee Stadium in the last week of the season.

8. But the Yankees can’t worry about the Rays at the moment because they have to worry about the Red Sox who arrive in the Bronx for four games in three days with two games separating the teams in the loss column. The Yankees have lost four straight to the Red Sox and five of six. The Yankees need to win at least three games this weekend to clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker, which could be extremely important to determine the venue for a potential Wild Card Series matchup.

9. The Yankees pushed Cam Schlittler back to start on Friday against the team he owns, and that’s the only game of the weekend that the Yankees will have a clear starting pitching advantage in. Other than that, they’re going to use Max Fried (fresh off his second appearance on the injured list for a bone bruise), Carlos Rodon (who never pitches well against the Red Sox) and Will Warren (who never pitches well against anyone). The Red Sox are likely to use four left-handed starters in the series, which poses a problem because the Yankees’ only right-handed bats are Lombard Jr. and his 20 career games, Caballero and his .559 OPS since June 20, Rosario and his .611 OPS against lefties, Ramos and his .411 OPS as a Yankee, and Paul Goldschmidt, who has a .443 OPS since June 26 and has started two games since August 1. (The Yankees traded for Ramos specifically for a series like this, and he’s going to hit somewhere in the first five spots in the order and has to do damage. I would feel a lot better about the Yankees’ chances this weekend if Judge and Giancarlo Stanton were playing, but Judge just started swinging at overhand pitches and Stanton is home laughing at the $179,012.35 he is making each game to not play. Well, maybe not laughing since he would probably pull a rib cage muscle doing that. Meanwhile, the Red Sox may get Roman Anthony and Trevor Story back this weekend. Not ideal.

10. The Yankees are responsible for reviving the Red Sox’ season. When the two teams met for four games at Fenway Park in late June, the Red Sox were 14 games under .500 and the Yankees had a three-game division lead. Since then, the Red Sox are 41-14, while the Yankees have seen their three-game lead become a four-game deficit. The Yankees never let the Red Sox pass them during their insane two-month run, and that needs to remain true through this weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. I ended Thursday’s Thoughts with this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Here is an updated version:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something like this needs to happen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Ever since Aaron Judge played his last game of the season to date on May 31, this season has been weird. Because when Judge went down, Giancarlo Stanton had already been down for more than a month, Max Fried had been on the injured list for two weeks and Gerrit Cole had yet to come back from Tommy John surgery. Yankees fans knew the Yankees without those four weren’t the real Yankees and couldn’t be properly evaluated until they were all active at the same time (if they would ever all be active at the same time), but there was a season to be played whether or not Max Schuemann was leading off.

2. Judge has remained out and so has Stanton, but Cole returned and so did Fried, only for Carlos Rodon to get hurt along with Cody Bellinger. Each positive Yankees injury update has been met with a negative announcement about a different Yankee. Judge playing catch and running in Toronto on Sunday provided Yankees fans with the realization he would return within the next month, but on Monday — on a day off nonetheless — the Yankees announced Fried was going back on the IL with the same injury he landed on the IL with in May: a bone bruise.

The Fried news means the best rotation in baseball won’t exist for the rest of the season. Fried started on May 13 and then was out until July 22 with his last bone bruise. If a similar timeline follows this IL stint, his season is over. So instead of a 1-2-3 of Cam Schlittler, Fried and Cole in some order in October, it will now be Schlittler, Cole and either Ryan Weathers or Carlos Rodon in some order. For an offense that is putrid, losing Fried is a season-changing injury because of its postseason implications.

2. No, the offense won’t remain this putrid if and when Judge returns from his rib injury and Bellinger returns from his hamstring injury and Stanton returns from his traumatic brain injury calf injury, but even if all three return, six other bats from the weakest lineup in baseball will still be present. Yankees fans waiting for the offense to get reinforcements from those three are also banking on all three coming back and producing at a high level. Last October, all three were healthy, and only Judge produced and the Yankees’ postseason ended in the division series.

There’s nothing Yankees fans can do other than to wait for the closest thing to the Yankees’ expected roster to be available. But while we wait for whatever that roster looks like to be available, the Yankees are trying to overcome a six-game division deficit with 38 to play, while also trying to hold off a Red Sox team that is just three games back in the loss column. This past weekend in Toronto, the Yankees did a poor job of trying to catch the Rays and hold off the Red Sox as they scored four non-extra-inning runs in three games and lost two of three.

3. The play that ruined Friday’s game was so spectacularly bad, and yet, it’s likely not even the Top 10 sloppiest defensive sequences in the Aaron Boone era. Ryan McMahon’s inability to throw the ball form third to first in the air on what should have been an inning-ending double play led to Luis Garcia trying to pick a short hop (which he was unable to do) and losing his glove in the process. Seeing a runner head for third after the dropped pick, Garcia picked up the ball and launched it toward third wildly with no one covering the base. George Lombard Jr. tried to get over to third to get his glove on the ball, and in the process, collided with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The ball went down the left-field line, and Guerrero Jr. ran home to score the Blue Jays’ second run on the play. Instead of an inning-ending double play to preserve a 1-0 lead, the Blue Jays scored twice and went on to win. Garcia’s ill-advised throw nearly ended Lombard Jr.’s career and did send Guerrero Jr. to the seven-day IL for a concussion.

4. On Saturday, the Yankees scored one run again and lost, wasting yet another strong start from Cam Schlittler. These are games the Yankees have lost since the All-Star break:

6 IP, 2 ER
7 IP, 3 ER
6.1 IP, 1 ER
7 IP, 0 ER
5.1 IP, 1 ER
7 IP, 1 ER
5 IP, 1 ER
6 IP, 1 ER
5.1 IP, 1 ER

Inexplicable. If the Yankees had won four of those nine, they would be two games out in the division. If they had won six of the nine, they would be tied for the division.

5. The Yankees entered Sunday’s series finale having gone 44-44 since May 4. So if you think Judge and Bellinger are going to save the offense, just remember that Judge played all of May and Bellinger played all of May, June and most of July and the Yankees were still a .500 team during that time.

The Yankees couldn’t score again on Sunday, putting up just two runs in nine innings. And because of their lack of offense, the Blue Jays were able to tie the game in the ninth following an error, walk, wild pitch and sacrifice fly. The Yankees were about to achieve a new worst loss of the season before Ben Rice hit a two-run home run in the 10th to make up for committing the leadoff error in the ninth. The Yankees miraculously held on for a 4-3 win.

6. It’s possible Brian Cashman has found his white whale in Ryan Weathers. After nearly three decades unsuccessfully trading for young, controllable starting pitchers (Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray, Jameson Taillon, etc.), Weathers may have ended Cashman’s search. Weathers has a 0.85 ERA over his last five starts, a 1.94 ERA over his last seven starts and a 2.56 ERA over his last 11 starts. After allowing 16 home runs in his first 14 starts this season, he has allowed just two over his last 10, following an adjustment in his pitch usage. With Fried out, Weathers gets my vote for a postseason start (if the Yankees’ postseason lasts more than two games). I find it hard to believe anyone would feel better with Rodon on the mound than Weathers, but there are still Boone supporters and Volpe fans out there, so there are likely Rodon backers as well.

7. Boone finally decided to shake up the lineup on Sunday after weeks of having Trent Grisham lead off proved ineffective. (The Yankees last scored a first-inning run on July 29.) Boone sat Jazz Chisholm and his .471 OPS since July 22 and played Jose Caballero. Boone made it clear Chisholm would return to second base on Tuesday no matter how well Caballero played. Caballero went 1-for-2 with a run, an RBI, a walk and a stolen base in just his third start since August 3. Caballero has a 1.033 OPS and more extra-base hits, RBIs, steals and walks than Chisholm since July 28. Without Caballero in the lineup on Sunday, the Yankees would have gotten swept by the Blue Jays.

8. While Chisholm has been so bad he got benched, Heliot Ramos has been so bad that Boone decided to bat him third on Sunday. Ramos went 1-for-4, picking up his first hit since August 7. He’s 3-for-36 as a Yankee. I always thought Austin Kearns in 2020 would go down as the worst trade deadline acquisition, but then Joey Gallo came along in 2021 and then Ramos. Ramos has made the deadline trade for Gallo look like the deadline trade for David Justice.

9. The Blue Jays aren’t any good. They’re four games under .500 and had to rip off a 13-7 run in recent weeks just to get to that poor record. They sold at the deadline and in a normal season would be buried in the standings. But because this isn’t a normal season and because the Yankees failed to end their season this past weekend, the Blue Jays are very much alive and a half-game back for the final playoff spot. It’s a disgrace that a team with an under-.500 record may get into the postseason this year, and right now that team is the three-games-under-.500 Orioles, who the Yankees will play for the next three days.

The Orioles have allowed the most runs in the AL East and the fifth most in the AL. Their pitching staff blew leads of 3-1 and 6-4 on Monday against the Rays. If there was ever a team for the Yankees’ offense to come to life against, the Orioles would be it. The problem is the Yankees were stifled by a crappy version of Shane Bieber on Friday and seven different Blue Jays on Saturday. They have spent more than two months making fringe major leaguers look like Cy Young candidates. I don’t know that there is any pitcher in the league who wouldn’t feel good getting the ball against these Yankees at the moment.

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

Rodon will make his first start since June 28 in what was supposed to be him replacing Will Warren in the rotation, but because Fried is now down again, Warren will continue to throw less than five innings and allow five earned runs every fifth day indefinitely. The only way for the Yankees to leave Baltimore with a series win is to score runs. And while “runs” technically means two or more, it’s going to need to be more like four or more for them to have a chance this week.

1. If you thought a four-run inning on Tuesday and a 10-run outburst on Wednesday was the Yankees’ offense finally getting going after 121 games, you must be new around here. The Yankees followed up back-to-back wins against the Mariners by getting shut out in a 1-0 loss in the series finale. As Katie Sharp pointed out, it was the Yankees’ fourth 1-0 loss at Yankee Stadium since 2025 after having zero 1-0 losses at Yankee Stadium in the previous 10 seasons.

2. Max Fried was good (5 IP, 5, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR) and allowed just a solo home run over five innings, but that solo home run was too much for the Yankees to overcome. The Yankees went 4-for-30 with three walks and 10 strikeouts on Thursday.

3. Trent Grisham was back in the leadoff spot on Thursday after his big game on Wednesday, but even without a big game on Wednesday, he still would have been in the leadoff spot on Thursday. None of his production on Wednesday came leading off an inning, and on Thursday, he led off a game with an out for the 53rd time in 68 games. Since July 3, Grisham hasn’t led off a game with a hit and has led off one game with a walk (July 22). None of his production has come from leading off other innings either. Stop giving him the most possible plate appearances on the team. (Grisham was also called out on Thursday following what should have been a double when he came off the base after his slide.)

4. Ben Rice went 0-for-3 with a walk and another strikeout as his OPS plummets from his mission to swing at every pitch ever thrown to him. Spencer Jones went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts before eventually being removed for pinch-hitter Heliot Ramos, who is making 2010 deadline acquisition Austin Kearns’ post-deadline Yankees tenure (80 OPS+) look like David Justice. Ramos is 2-for-25 with 10 strikeouts as a Yankee. He’s hitless against left-handed pitching, which is a little bit of an issue since he was acquired specifically to hit left-handed pitching.

5. Luis Garcia had half of the Yankees’ hits, and even led off the second inning with a double, but was of course left stranded. George Lombard Jr. had just his second 0-for as a major leaguer and gets a pass with 32 career plate appearances. (I love how Lombard Jr. is already up to batting fifth in the lineup and can’t be eased into his career at the bottom of the order because the roster construction is so poor.)

6. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. It was Chisholm’s third strikeout hat trick in the last 15 games, which also includes one Golden Sombrero. He has struck out in every game but one since July 25, and in the one game he didn’t strike out in, he went 0-for-4. He has struck out in every game but one in August. Chisholm is 9-for-60 with 27 strikeouts since saying “basically everybody” on the Yankees has told him he’s “the best in the world.”

7. Jose Caballero got his first start in five days and his second start in 10 days and went 0-for-2 with a walk, and Ryan McMahon also went 0-for-2 with a walk. Ali Sanchez, starting for the first time since August 1 went 1-for-2 before being removed for pinch-hitter Amed Rosario, who struck out.

8. With the loss, the Yankees failed to pull off their first series sweep since the last series before the All-Star break (July 10-12). They have swept two series since the start of June.

The Rays had the day off, so the loss dropped the Yankees to seven games back in the loss column in the AL East, further cementing my recent points and math about the division race being over. The Red Sox ended their five-game losing streak, so the Yankees’ lead over the Red Sox is back down to three games.

9. Up next is a trip to Toronto. The Yankees will play the Blue Jays six times in the next 10 days. Despite being five games under .500, the Blue Jays are only two games out of the third wild-card spot in the putrid AL. The Blue Jays traded away Kevin Gausman, Daulton Varsho and Jeff Hoffman at the deadline, but have managed to go 7-4 since to stay alive in the postseason picture. The Yankees have the opportunity to not only help their own bid for the first wild card during these six games with the Blue Jays, but they can also end the Blue Jays’ season. Burying the Blue Jays and keeping them out of October would be a nice way to avenge the Blue Jays ending the Yankees’ season last October in the ALDS.

10. Gerrit Cole gets the ball to set the tone in the series opener, while the offense will try to get to Shane Bieber, who seemingly everyone has gotten to. Bieber has allowed 71 baserunners and nine home runs in 42 2/3 innings. I won’t be surprised if the offense is unable to hit Bieber since there should be no expectation for this offense to hit anyone, but at the same time, if they can’t be relied on to hit this version of Bieber, who can they be relied on to hit?

1. A day after doing the improbable by scoring four runs in an inning, the Yankees’ offense achieved what was thought to be impossible and scored 10 runs in a game in their 10-5 win over the Mariners. It was the first time since July 9 that the Yankees scored double-digit runs in a game, and the second time since June 17.

2. Trent Grisham went 3-for-5 with a double and two home runs. Grisham struck out to begin the game and has now made an out as the leadoff hitter in the first inning in 52 of 67 games. None of his three hits came as the leadoff hitter in any inning on Wednesday.

3. Ben Rice and Ryan McMahon each went 2-for-4 with a double, Spencer Jones went 2-for-4 with two doubles and George Lombard Jr. also went 2-for-4. Jazz Chisholm and Austin Wells both had hits. The only two starters to not get hits were … you guessed it … the two deadline acquisitions in Luis Garcia and Heliot Ramos. Garcia is hitting .222/.276/.407 as a Yankee and Ramos is hitting .083/.241/.167. The Yankees went 13-for-35 with eight extra-base hits, three walks and eight strikeouts.

4. The Yankees needed a big, unexpected night from their offense because Will Warren was awful once again: 4 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 3 HR. The Mariners had scored nine runs over their last seven games and Warren allowed five runs, 10 baserunners and three home runs in just four innings. 

5. Warren put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole before they had an opportunity to bat and when they got one of the runs back in the second, Warren gave up another run in the third. After Warren threw a scoreless fourth, the offense pulled the Yankees to within 4-3 in the bottom of the fourth. Aaron Boone figured he would give Warren a fifth inning to figure it out even though it was evident he wasn’t going to figure it out and Warren walked the leadoff hitter in the fifth. That was enough for Boone as he put an end to trying to steal another inning from Warren. At least Boone didn’t mess around by going to Ryan Yarbrough to eat some middle innings and immediately went to his real relievers.

6. Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill, Paul Blackburn and Brent Headrick combined for four scoreless innings and by the time the ninth inning came, the Yankees had a five-run lead and could give David Bednar the night off. Yerry De los Santos nearly forced Bednar into the game when he put two on in the ninth, but worked around the jam to end the game.

7. The win was the Yankees’ fourth in their last five games and fifth in their last seven. The problem is that going 5-2 in their last seven has lost them two games in the standings to the Rays, who won their ninth straight game on Wednesday. As I have written the last few days, the division race is over unless the Rays suddenly play something like .333 baseball. Because right now, if the Rays play just .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they win 95 games, and the Yankees would have to go 28-14 to win the division.

8. The first wild card is where the focus is now and the Red Sox lost their fifth straight game on Wednesday, so the Yankees’ lead on the first wild card is back up to four games. If we use the same .500 projection from above for the Yankees, they will finish with 89 wins if they play .500 baseball for the rest of the season. The Red Sox would have to go 25-17 to tie them. I don’t see the Yankees playing just .500 for the remainder of the season even if they have been close to a .500 team for three months now. With the schedule softening up and reinforcements on the way, the Yankees should be able to stack wins more easily, especially in September.

9. But first they have to get to September. And between now and the all-important four-game series against the Red Sox in the final weekend of August, the Yankees have one more game with the Mariners, six with the Blue Jays, three with the Orioles and three with the Astros. It would be great if the Yankees had at least a three-game lead over the Red Sox going into that series, so that winning just one game would ensure they leave that weekend with the first wild card spot.

10. On Wednesday, the Yankees have the opportunity to do something they haven’t done since July 10-12 in the final games before the All-Star break: sweep a series. That sweep of the Nationals is the Yankees’ only sweep since June 8-10 (against the Guardians). Max Fried gets the ball, which is an important ingredient in attempting a sweep, but the offense will need to show up and give him some semblance of support.

1. I wasn’t surprised that Tuesday’s Yankees-Mariners game was 0-0 through five innings. I wasn’t surprised when the Mariners took a 1-0 lead on a solo home run in the sixth, and I wasn’t surprised when the Yankees trailed 1-0 in the seventh. I was surprised when the Yankees rallied to tie the game and then take the lead in the seventh en route to a 4-1 win.

2. The four runs the Yankees scored in the seventh inning were more runs than they had scored in 10 of their previous 13 games. It was just the third time since July 27 that the Yankees scored four runs in an inning. To add to the unbelievability of the four-run outburst, the Yankees did it all without the long ball.

3. Luis Garcia doubled to lead off the seventh and Jazz Chisholm followed with a single to put runners on the corners with no outs. George Lombard Jr. — batting sixth for the second time as a major leaguer in his sixth career game — struck out for the first out. Spencer Jones walked to load the bases and Ryan McMahon singled in Garcia and Chisholm with a ground ball through the infield. Austin Wells followed with a bloop single to reload the bases, and Trent Grisham singled in Jones and McMahon with another ground ball through the infield. It’s crazy what can happen when the ball is put in play!

4. Ryan Weathers was very good again (5.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 1 HR). It was Weathers’ fourth straight strong start and in those four starts, he has this line: 24.1 IP, 15 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 8 BB, 21 K, 1 HR, 0.74 ERA, 0.945 WHIP. Someone is going to have to come out of the rotation when Carlos Rodon is activated and that someone shouldn’t be Weathers.

5. Tim Hill rediscovered his ability to induce ground balls instead of allow home runs and retired all four batters he faced with grounders. Brent Headrick added to his major-league-leading scoreless appearance total with his 51st such appearance (stat from Katie Sharp), and David Bednar closed the door by working around an infield single that should have been ruled an error on Chisholm.

6. Grisham went 2-for-4, but led off the game with an out for the 51st time in 66 games. Rice went 0-for-3 with a walk and three strikeouts, as he’s down to .121/.237/.242 over the last three weeks. Heliot Ramos put up another 0-for, as he’s 2-for-21 with nine strikeouts as a Yankee. (Good thing two prospects got traded and Jasson Dominguez got sent down for Ramos!) Garcia went 2-for-4 and Chisholm went 1-for-3 with a walk. Lombard Jr. singled the other way in his first at-bat, grounded out in his second at-bat, struck out in this third at-bat and grounded out on the 12th pitch of his fourth at-bat, as the quality of his at-bats remains impressive. Jones went 0-for-2 with a walk, McMahon went 1-for-3 and Wells went 1-for-3. It was the most positive all-around offensive performance in weeks.

7. “Been a struggle several weeks now where it’s been difficult for us scoring runs,” Aaron Boone said. “We’ve had to play in a lot of really close games … and don’t do a good job against a lot of good teams winning those games.”

It hasn’t been a struggle to score runs for several weeks, it’s been several months now. And who exactly are the “good” teams the Yankees are beating in close games? The Braves? OK. The Mariners? They are eight games under .500. The Cardinals? They are .500 and sold at the deadline. The Cubs? OK. The White Sox? No. The Phillies? They are currently out of the playoff picture.

“I hope it serves us well in the end,” Boone said about playing close games every day. “I think that there’s value in playing these games and proving we can win in these games.”

I agree there is value in playing in and winning these games, however, it won’t serve them well when Headrick and Bednar have nothing left at the end of the season. If the Yankees as an organization care about whether or not they host the Wild Card series they will inevitably be playing in, then they are going to be playing with a purpose up until the final days of the season. There’s going to be no early clinch and treating the last weeks of the season like the end of spring training. The Yankees are going to be in a battle with the Red Sox for where the Wild Card series takes place up until the end.

8. Fortunately, there is once again some separation between the two teams as the Red Sox lost their fourth straight game on Tuesday. If the regression train and Baseball Gods are coming for the Red Sox’ insane run since the Yankees saved their season at the end of June, then they are due for many more losses. The Yankees once again have a three-game lead over the Red Sox. The head-to-head tiebreaker is going to be crucial in this matchup and the Red Sox currently have a 5-4 edge with a four-game series remaining between the two at the end of August.

Here are the schedules for both teams between now and their four-games-in-three-day series to close out the month:

Yankees: Mariners (2), Blue Jays (3), Orioles (3), Blue Jays (3), Astros (3)

Red Sox: Blue Jays (2), Pirates (3), Diamondbacks (3), Giants (3), Marlins (3)

9. As I wrote last week when the Red Sox tied the Yankees in the loss column, not allowing the Red Sox to officially pass the Yankees in the standings was important. There’s something to be said for the Red Sox having been as hot as they were only to tie the Yankees in the loss column. All of that work never got them past the Yankees. Had the Red Sox gotten past them, I think it would have been the end for the Yankees getting the first wild card.

And getting the first wild card is what it’s all about now. As I laid out yesterday, the math for the division just isn’t there unless the Rays have a monumental collapse, and all the Rays did last night was take an early 6-0 lead and go on to win their eighth straight game. Sadly, the division is theirs.

10. But that’s what happens when you fuck around for the middle two months of the season, like the Yankees do every year and then try to make it all up in the final two months. The math wasn’t in the Yankees’ favor at this time last year, but their easy schedule and the Blue Jays’ late-season slump led the Yankees to tie them with 94 wins, but the Blue Jays held the head-to-head tiebreaker and it changed the course of the postseason. The Yankees are the same six games back on August 12 that they were last August 12, but like last year, they are unlikely to hold the tiebreaker (the Rays need to win one of four against the Yankees to get it) even if everything unfolds their way.

1. The Yankees continue to do the bare minimum. After going 6-4 on a road trip in which they blew three late leads, the Yankees went 3-3 this past week at home against the crappy Cardinals and the very good Braves. Since Saturday’s Thoughts, the Yankees won a game started by Chris Sale before losing yet another extra-inning game.

Over the last five games, the Yankees scored 12 runs or 2.4 runs per game. What I wrote in Friday’s Thoughts (The Yankees have one way to win at the moment: get an outstanding pitching performance and score two runs. That’s it. A quality start isn’t good enough to give them a chance to win. They need near perfection. They need something like six scoreless innings to have a chance.) remains true. Only once over the last five games would a quality start have been good enough to win. Only twice in the the last 10 games would a quality start have been good enough to win.

2. The Yankees’ ways of scoring runs has become a modified version of the trivia question ‘What are the different ways to reach first base?’ The Yankees only seem to score runs if there is an error, balk, wild pitch, passed ball or a random home run. On Saturday against Sale, they took advantage of a Sale balk and a couple of late solo home runs to win. On Sunday, their only run was a solo home run. It’s hard to hit multi-run home runs when there’s no one on base. I would have liked to see Jacob Misiorowski against this version of the Yankees offense, considering they have made Colin Rea, Andre Pallante, Tyler Mahle and Grant Holmes look like Misiorowski recently. Over the weekend, the Yankees went 12-for-62 with seven walks and 22 strikeouts. But yes, keep on waiting for all of the dead wood in the lineup to “get it going” and “turn the corner.” I’m sure it will happen any day now, 118 games into the season.

3. It’s amazing how Luis Garcia and Heliot Ramos joined the Yankees and were immediately infected by the offense’s inability to do anything. Garcia joined the Yankees as the league leader in slugging, hit a home run in his first game with the team and is 2-for-15 with two singles since. Ramos came over as the third-best hitter in recent years against lefties not named Aaron Judge or Yordan Alvarez, and at 2-for-17 with seven strikeouts as a Yankee, the Yankees could have just kept the prospects they traded for him and kept playing Jasson Dominguez. When these two are your 3-4 hitters, following a 1-2 duo of Trent Grisham and Ben Rice, who are also slumping to no end, you get an offense whose ceiling remains three runs.

4. Grisham was back in the leadoff spot on Sunday and back making an out to lead off the game. Grisham has now started 50 of 65 games as the leadoff hitter with an out. But then in the eighth inning, Grisham did what he always does, which is hit a random solo home run from time to time. Here is what I wrote about Grisham back in May during the Subway Series:

Grisham always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

Well, that solo home run was his positive impact for the week or maybe two or maybe three. Grisham will likely disappear now for a few series and just when you think, maybe just maybe he will finally be moved down in the order, he will pop another one out, and then the process starts over again.

5. It’s no different for Jazz Chisholm, who provides infrequent positive production. I hate to say it, but I don’t think Chisholm is going to hit 50 home runs this season like he said he would back in February.

“I just can’t help, but get that gut feeling — it’s going to be an amazing year,” Chisholm said at the beginning of spring training.

Chisholm has never made a proclamation that has come true. He said the 2024 Yankees would win the World Series. They did not. During the pennant-winning celebration in Cleveland, he told the Yankees to “pay Juan Soto.” They did not. Last year, he said the Yankees would win the division. They did not. He also said the Yankees would win the World Series. They did not. This year he said he would hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases. He needs to hit 33 home runs in 44 games. He also said his teammates told him he’s “the greatest player in the world.” Here I was thinking Shohei Ohtani was the greatest player in the world when the actual greatest player in the world has been right in front of me all along with his .216 batting average, .295 on-base percentage and .690 OPS as a hitter who is 8 percent worse than league average. Chisholm isn’t even an average hitter, let alone THE GREATEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD.

Chisholm sat against Sale and went 2-for-15 with six strikeouts in the other five games against the Cardinals and Braves, contributing one of the worst throwing errors you’ll ever see on Sunday.

6. It wasn’t all bad. Everything about George Lombard Jr.’s game continues to mirror Derek Jeter and Spencer Jones seems to slowly be figuring out major-league pitching. But that’s where the good ends. Grisham and Rice continue to struggle, Garcia and Ramos are lost, Chisholm’s season is unsalvageable, Ryan McMahon is unplayable and Austin Wells is an atrocity. When Judge comes back, the Yankees need 2022-25 Judge. When Cody Bellinger comes back, the Yankees need 2025 Bellinger. If Giancarlo Stanton comes back, the Yankees need 2017 Stanton.

7. The Yankees continue to give injury updates on Stanton like he’s recovering from a life-threatening event. There are people who suffer traumatic brain injuries who learn to walk again faster than Stanton heals from a calf injury.

On Saturday, Boone said Stanton has “started the introduction to some bases.” What does that mean? “Giancarlo, meet first base. First base, meet Giancarlo.” Why do the Yankees try to sound so smart and bolster words and phrases that don’t need bolstering. Brian Cashman is the worst at it. It’s like the Yankees are using a thesaurus in every press conference too. Just talk normal. “He has started to run the bases.”

Boone also said, “He’ll be in there when the time’s right.”

The Yankees are petrified to give injury return timetables. They keep Judge injury information sealed like it’s plans for a military attack. They have been so bad and so wrong at diagnosing and treating injuries dating back to Judge’s wrist injury nine years ago that now they have decided to just share nothing. And then when Judge gets asked if he’s coming back, he acts surprised that would even be a question. Well, considering you haven’t played in more than two months, it’s a fair question. It will be absurd if Judge returns with what was deemed to be a potential season-ending injury before Stanton returns from a calf injury the Yankees initially said may not require an injured list stint.

8. On Sunday, Cam Schlittler pitched seven innings, allowed one run on a solo home run and struck out 11 and the Yankees lost. Schlittler is the favorite to win the AL Cy Young, leads the league in ERA, starts and innings pitched, and yet, the Yankees are only 15-10 in his starts.

These are Schlittler starts the Yankees have lost.

6 IP, 0 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
5 IP, 0 ER
6.1 IP, 1 ER
7 IP, 1 ER

There’s the division race summed up.

9. The Rays have 45 games remaining. If they go 22-23, they will finish at 93-69. The Yankees need to go 27-17 to finish with 93 wins. If the Rays win one of the four remaining games against the Yankees, they win the division tiebreaker, and because of that the Yankees would have to finish with one more win than the Rays. So if the Rays go 22-23, the Yankees have to go 28-16. A team with a .607 winning percentage playing under .500 the rest of the season is just as unlikely as a team with a .559 winning percentage playing .667 baseball for the rest of the season. Barring an unforeseen Rays collapse and Yankees surge, the division is over.

If you think the Yankees can win the division, then you must think the Yankees can miss the playoffs because the Yankees are six games back in the loss column from the Rays and seven games up in the loss column on a playoff spot. I’m not one of those people since I don’t think the Yankees can win the division, but know they won’t miss the playoffs. What does that mean? That means back to the best-of-3 Wild Card round for a second straight season. That means playing the Red Sox in a best-of-3. The only thing on the table now is if those three games will be at Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park. Given how this team has handled playing at Fenway Park this year and last, a Wild Card series there means elimination.

10. The Rays and Red Sox seem to do what the Yankees can’t. The Yankees couldn’t beat the Dodgers and struggled with the White Sox. The Red Sox swept both teams. The Rays just swept the Mariners in Seattle. The Mariners show up in the Bronx on Tuesday. Let’s see if the Yankees can take care of business like the Rays did and beat a fraudulent Mariners team that is seven games under .500. Beat the Mariners like the Rays did and finally get some help from whomever is playing the Rays and Red Sox, since neither of those teams seems to lose and neither rarely lose two games in a row.

1. For most of Friday’s game against the Braves, it felt like an inevitable loss. The Yankees once again couldn’t score and could barely “muster” (an Aaron Boone buzzword) any offense. It felt like only a matter of time until the Braves broke through with a home run and they eventually did in the eighth and again in the ninth. Trailing 2-0, when Raisel Iglesias struck out Spencer Jones to begin the ninth, another Yankees loss was on its way.

Not just any loss either. With the Red Sox having won already, a Yankees loss would mean the Red Sox would pass the Yankees in the standings, a feat that seemed impossible when they trailed by 15 games at the end of June. Not only that, but the Rays were working on closing out the Mariners in the ninth in Seattle. The Yankees were going to fall farther behind the Rays, get passed by the Red Sox and finish the night in third place in the AL East.

2. George Lombard Jr. was able to beat out a slow roller in the infield that Iglesias picked up and launched well past first base, allowing Lombard Jr. to move to third. The tying run was on base with two cracks at potentially tying the game, the only problem was that the two cracks belonged to Ryan McMahon and Austin Wells.

Having yet to strike out in the game, McMahon made sure to do so in the ninth for the second out of the inning, leaving the final out of the game in the hands of Wells — the worst offensive player in all of baseball. Somehow, Wells managed to double to right field to score Lombard Jr. and extend the game. The only problem was that the game was being extended for Amed Rosario.

The improbability of the inning continued when Rosario worked an eight-pitch walk against Iglesias. Now the Yankees really had something with Ben Rice coming to the plate. Rice came through with the biggest hit of the season to date, drilling the ball off the base of the wall in right field to score Wells and tie the game. Because nothing has been going the Yankees’ way the past two months, the ball couldn’t have gone over the wall to end the game or bounced away from Ronald Acuna to end the game. Instead, the ball stayed in and Acuna played it perfectly to hold Rosario at third, and eventually the game moved to extra innings.

3. The Yankees are the worst road extra-inning team since the implementation of the automatic runner, but they’re also the best home team during the same time. David Bednar pitched around the automatic runner in the 10th to set up a scenario in which the Yankees could walk off the Braves without recording a hit.

Easier said than done for the clown show that is the Yankees when it comes to baseball fundamentals. With Luis Garcia serving as the automatic runner, Jose Caballero stepped up to the plate with a myriad of options available to him to handle his at-bat. Caballero attempted to bunt the first pitch of the at-bat in what was one of the worst bunt attempts anyone has ever seen. Behind 0-1 in the count, Caballero then decided to swing away at the next pitch, a pitch that was at least a foot off the plate and he swung through it wildly to push the count to 0-2. Prior to the third pitch of the bat, Caballero showed bunt, but it was obviously only going to be for show to try to throw off Braves relier Tyler Kinley. Or not. Caballero did indeed try to bunt with two strikes and fouled the pitch away for an out. With the strikeout on a foul bunt, given the process of the at-bat, the situation and the magnitude of the game, Caballero officially clinched worst plate appearance of the season for the Yankees. It won’t be topped. It can’t be topped.

4. The Braves then did the Yankees a favor by walking Jones to put runners on first and second with one out. No, Jones’ run didn’t mean anything other than to set up a potentially double play and let Kinley face the right-handed rookie Lombard Jr. But if Kinley was going to strike anyone out in the inning, it was going to be Jones, and the Braves foolishly put him on. Lombard Jr. followed with a walk to load the bases and McMahon followed with a walk-off sacrifice fly for a 3-2 win.

5. Rice’s game-tying hit was the biggest moment of the game, until Luis Garcia made an over-the-shoulder-catch in right field with his back to the infield to keep the game tied at 2 in the 10th. Without that play, the Braves take a lead in extra innings and who knows how the bottom of the inning plays out. Actually, I think we all know how it plays out if the Yankees fall behind.

6. “It’s good to come out on top,” McMahon said. “We’ve got to get going a little more. It’s not from a lack of work or effort.”

No, it’s not from a lack of work or effort. It’s from a lack of talent. The Yankees have a lack of offensive talent, but they knew that last season and ran it back with the same offense this season. The below-league-average hitters like McMahon (and Wells and Caballero) are living up to their career track records. Goldschmidt was always going to fade as the season wore on, just like he did last year. Grisham was never going to replicate his 2025 season, and Chisholm being the head case he is, was always going to crumble under the pressure of being an impending free agent, just like he has crumbled in his two postseasons as a Yankee. Every offensive problem the Yankees have isn’t a surprise. It was to be expected. Add in injuries and you get the kind of disgraceful offensive performances the team provides on a daily basis.

7. It was another hitless game for leadoff-hitter-no-matter-what Trent Grisham. Grisham is down to 6-for-55 with nine walks leading off a game. I don’t see a need for a lineup change. Having a leadoff hitter who has started 40 of 55 games with an out is exactly what you want.

Rice was only 1-for-5 with three strikeouts, but the one was enormous. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts before he was pulled for a pinch hitter and then showed up back in the dugout in a T-shirt, as did Grisham. Paul O’Neill was quick to call them out for it. It wouldn’t surprise me if O’Neill is suddenly not on the broadcast this weekend. When Michael Kay said he had people in the Yankees tell him Anthony Volpe refused to play second base in the minors back in May, Kay did an about-face a day later and said it was not true. How dare O’Neill question how Boone manages his team, clubhouse and dugout. If Chisholm wants to pout after being removed from a game and wear a T-shirt in the dugout, so be it. When you’re nine percent worse than league average, you can do whatever you want: suck on lollipops in the field or in the batter’s box, make unhinged and emotional challenges on called strikes, get ejected from games, get tagged up on infield pop-ups, say your teammates told you you’re the greatest player in the world. Do whatever you want!

8. Fernando Cruz and Tim Hill both gave up solo home runs in the game as both have fallen far in terms of trustworthiness in recent weeks. Cruz has allowed 16 baserunners and three home runs in his last nine innings over the last three weeks. Hill has allowed six home runs and has a 5.84 ERA over the last month (12 1/3 innings).

Here is my current order of trust in the bullpen with gaps in between:

David Bednar
…
Brent Headrick
…
…
…
Paul Blackburn
…
…
…
…
…
Fernando Cruz
…
Tim Hill (much higher on the list if he’s entering with two outs in an inning and a lefty up)
…
…
…
Ryan Yarbrough

That’s not great for a team that didn’t trade for a single reliever at the deadline.

9. Max Fried was really good (6.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 7 K) because Max Fried is really good. I expect greatness out of him every time he takes the ball. And for the most part, as a Yankee, he has delivered. (Outside of the biggest start of his Yankees career in Game 2 of the ALDS.)

10. Not allowing the Red Sox to officially pass the Yankees in the standings is important. There’s something to be said for the Red Sox going 32-5 in their last 37 games only to tie the Yankees in the loss column. All of that work hasn’t even gotten them past the Yankees. Maybe that happens on Saturday. The Red Sox are paying the embarrassing Athletics, while the Yankees are facing Chris Sale. But at least there’s still the possibility now that it doesn’t happen and never happens.

If the Red Sox do end up passing the Yankees, I think the Yankees won’t recover in the standings and will end up as the second wild card. That can’t happen. It’s Gerrit Cole’s job to make sure it doesn’t happen on Saturday. He’s going to need some help from an offense that hasn’t been able to hit Colin Rea or Andre Pallante or Tyler Mahle of late, so I don’t know how they plan on scoring against the future Hall of Famer in Sale ,who is experiencing the highest average fastball velocity of his career at age 37.

1. The Yankees scored one run on Wednesday and lost 3-1, losing a three-game home series to the under-.500, going nowhere Cardinals. The offense turned in its latest pathetic effort, going 4-for-30 with 10 strikeouts against five different pitchers, and Will Warren failed to build on his last start against the Cubs, allowing eight baserunners and three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.

2. Trent Grisham put together his latest 0-for at the plate, going 0-for-5 with a strikeout. Offering Grisham the $22 million qualifying offer was a horrible decision in real time. This isn’t second-guessing after 379 miserable plate appearances for someone hitting eight percent worse than league average.

These are Grisham’s OPS+ by season since becoming a full-time player in 2021:

2021: 106
2022: 81
2023: 84
2024 (only a part-time player): 91
2025: 123

Which of those numbers is unlike the others? Last season, of course, when Grisham hit 34 home runs, 17 more than he had hit in any other season. Sure enough, his OPS+ is down to 92 this season and he has 12 home runs. He’s hitting the ball out once every 32 plate appearances. Last season, it was once every 17. He’s hitting .211/.310/.379, and yet, he continues to lead off for the Yankees. He’s 6-for-54 with a .111/.238/.204 slash line as the first hitter of the game. He has a .588 OPS when he leads off any inning. How is it that after 115 games of this he’s still batting first? And the answer isn’t because Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger are hurt because none of them bats first. It’s unacceptable and irresponsible that Grisham is still leading off and if he’s doing so again on Friday night in the series opener against the Braves, I may openly root against the Yankees. If they don’t care to provide the best possible lineup then why should I care if they win?

3. Ben Rice went hitless, but did provide three walks. Rice has homered once in the last two weeks, and when he isn’t hitting the ball over the wall, he’s not doing much else. He’s 6-for-50 with 19 strikeouts and a .474 OPS over the last two weeks.

Luis Garcia also went hitless as did Spencer Jones. The Yankees sent Jasson Dominguez down in favor of Jones, and with Judge and Bellinger out, Jones is getting everyday playing time and not doing much with it. His last hit came last Saturday at Wrigley Field.

Jazz Chisholm and Ryan McMahon also went hitless, but I think that’s a given from those two at this point. They did draw walks, but put either of those two up in a big spot with runners on and the chance to tie or take a lead in the game, and they will fail, just like they did on Wednesday.

4. It would seem to be a problem that George Lombard Jr., who has two days of being a major leaguer to his name, provides the most competitive plate appearances on the team. Lombard Jr. had a seven-pitch groundout and singled after falling behind 0-2 before striking out in his final two at-bats. Not only is it a problem that Lombard Jr. provides the best quality plate appearances, but it’s also a problem that the team needs him to be much more than a recently-called-up rookie because all of the veterans on the team suck.

5. No one sucks more than Austin Wells. The Yankees’ failure to get another catcher at the trade deadline is deplorable. They knew Wells and J.C. Escarra weren’t a worthy tandem last year then ran it back with them this year, eventually admitting Escarra can’t hit major-league pitching (despite Aaron Boone saying he would start on most teams in the majors) and replacing him with Ali Sanchez, who also can’t hit. The Yankees would be better off taking an automatic out at the catcher position, or at least having their catchers not go to the plate with a bat. The first option prevents them from hitting into rally-ending double plays, which is a Wells staple, and the second option allows them to potentially be walked or hit by a pitch. Wells should be in Triple-A with his best friend Anthony Volpe and he should be (and should have already been) removed from the future plans for the team like his best friend.

6. We’re at the point where it’s going to be hard to win the division unless the Rays collapse. The Rays could play .500 baseball from here on out and they would finish with 92 wins. For the Yankees to get to 92 wins, they have to go 28-19. There’s nothing to suggest the Rays are going to play .500 baseball for the remaining 30 percent of the season. And similarly, there’s nothing to suggest the Yankees are going play .596 baseball.

Sure, the Yankees still have four-game series left with the Rays and Red Sox, but does anyone think the Yankees will do anything more than split both of those series at best? The Rays and Red Sox also have a three-game series left against each other, so the Yankees will lose ground on one team no matter what with any loss during those three games. It’s getting late early for the Yankees.

7. Not in terms of making the playoffs. That’s a given since the AL is a joke and the final wild card currently belongs to the under-.500 Rangers, and it’s possible an under-.500 team will reach the postseason. It’s getting late early in terms of having any advantage in the postseason. The first-round bye and being able to set your rotation and have home-field advantage in the ALDS is unlikely (FanGraphs gives the Yankees a 20 percent chance to win the division). Having home-field advantage for all three games of the best-of-3 Wild Card Series is also fading. The Yankees had a 15-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox at the end of June. They are now tied in the loss column.

8. The Red Sox are on a seven-game winning streak and are 31-5 in their last 36 games. Guess who started the 31-5 run for them? Your 2026 Yankees, when they got swept in four games at Fenway Park to end June. The Yankees scored nine runs in those four games and one of the nine was an automatic runner, so they scored eight runs in four games in the most hitter-friendly environment in the world. The Red Sox’ next six opponents are the Athletics, Blue Jays, Pirates, Diamondbacks, Giants and Marlins. The only potentially postseason team in the group is the Diamondbacks, who currently hold the third-and-final wild-card berth in the NL. That’s 19 games against teams that are .500 or worse. Teams that are going nowhere, have little to play for and are counting down the days until the offseason.

What the Red Sox are doing is the actual Impossible Dream season. Forget 1967. Winning 31 of 36 with the roster they have is truly absurd. They were left for dead when the Yankees arrived at Fenway to close out June, but then the defense fell apart behind Schlittler as Amed Rosario gave the Red Sox season-saving CPR and they haven’t looked back. Willson Contreras is having the best season of his career at age 34, Caleb Durbin is batting fucking cleanup and Masataka Yoshida is hitting like Hideki Matsui. Everything they are doing defies logic, math, physics, you name it.

9. Prior to Wednesday’s loss I wrote that the offense’s ceiling for the game was likely three runs and they scored once. Three runs for this team feels like 13. In reverse chronological order, they have scored 1, 2, 7, 2, 2, 2, 1, 5 and 3 runs dating back to July 28. The 7 came in the game in a game they lost after overcoming a six-run deficit. The 5 came in an extra-inning game, in which one run was an automatic runner — a game in which they had Cam Schlittler on the mound in the seventh inning with a four-run lead and lost. The Yankees have one way to win at the moment: get an outstanding pitching performance and score two runs. That’s it. A quality start isn’t good enough to give them a chance to win. They need near perfection. They need something like six scoreless innings to have a chance.

10. That’s not a recipe for success in Major League Baseball. It may work from time to time against the White Sox or Cardinals, but it’s not going to work against the Braves who arrive in the Bronx this weekend riding an eight-game winning streak and are 25 games over .500. While the Yankees are battling the Braves, the Rays will be playing the fraudulent Mariners and the Red Sox will be playing the second-worst AL team in the Athletics. The Yankees will very likely be in third place in the AL East by this weekend.

1. Cam Schlittler’s performance in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series against the Red Sox last October. That’s the last time I felt as good watching a Yankees game as I did on Tuesday night for George Lombard Jr.’s debut. It was so much more than just another game or another win (a much-needed win with both the Rays and Red Sox winning). It signified change at a position that has been a failure over the last four seasons. It signified the promise that for the foreseeable future you won’t have to question who’s playing shortstop for the Yankees on a daily basis.

2. Yes, it was just one game, but Lombard Jr. checked every box. The defense prowess lived up to the hype. The plate discipline did too. He nearly beat out a slow roller in his first plate appearance, homered in his second and walked in his third. And in between his offensive opportunities, he made routine plays in the field look routine and made difficult plays look easy. I can only assume the result of LASIK eye surgery feels like watching Lombard Jr. throw a ball to first base after watching Anthony Volpe throw a ball to first base for four years.

3. Lombard Jr. didn’t just act the part in his first major-league game on the field, he did so in his pregame media session as well, speaking like a seasoned veteran instead of a 21-year-old kid being asked to somewhat help save this slog of a season and help the Yankees do something they haven’t done in going on 17 years. He looked the part with a 6-foot-2 build, immaculate defensive footwork, a strong arm and a plan at the plate. If you could create a shortstop’s build it would be Lombard Jr. He looks straight out of central casting manning shortstop in the Yankees’ infield.

4. Down in Scranton, Volpe must have felt like Ron Burgundy watching Veronica Corningstone do his job. The Stadium crowd went crazy every time Lombard Jr. had a putout or walked to the plate and lost its minds when he homered in a way it never did for Volpe. There was Lombard Jr. turning double plays with Jazz Chisholm and batting in front of Volpe’s best friend in Austin Wells. (I like to think Wells swung at the first pitch and grounded out following Lombard Jr.’s home run to ruin the moment and prevent the curtain call the Stadium crowd was asking for.)

5. As I recently wrote, if Volpe played second base and batted ninth for the Yankees, the perception of him would be completely different. And maybe that’s how he gets back to the Yankees, as a second baseman. Because it’s clear he won’t be playing shortstop again for the Yankees. Lombard Jr. was everything I wanted him to be and needed him to be and I look forward to watching him play shortstop for the Yankees again on Wednesday and on Friday and on Saturday and hopefully every game for the next 15-plus years.

6. Ryan Weathers turned in his third straight gem with six scoreless innings and has allowed just one earned run over his last three starts. The Yankees needed another masterful performance from their starting pitcher because the offense consisted of the Lombard Jr. solo home run and a Chisholm solo home run, while going 5-for-28 with three walks and five strikeouts. They had first and third with no outs in the fourth and failed to score, had first and second with one out in the seventh and failed to score, and also had the leadoff hitter on base in two other innings and did nothing. Heliot Ramos’ Yankees debut was overshadowed by Lombard Jr. mania as the newest Yankee went 0-for-4 with a strikeout.

7. Fernando Cruz and Brent Headrick were shaky, but the overused duo along with David Bednar combined to throw three scoreless innings around four baserunners to preserve the lead and close out the win. Bednar struck out the side in the ninth.

8. How about a 10-run blowout on Wednesday before Thursday’s day off to give the bullpen a rest? The Yankees have won one game by more than three runs since July 9, and in that game, they won by four runs and the White Sox had the tying run in the on-deck circle in the ninth inning. The Yankees either win a nail-biter or lose. It’s unsustainable and it’s completely on the offense. At some point they need to start scoring more than two or three runs per game.

9. It will be Will Warren against Andre Pallante in the series finale on Wednesday. Warren is coming off his best start of the season with 6 2/3 scoreless innings at Wrigley Field. Unfortunately, when it comes to Warren, one start has no bearing on the next. He’s consistently inconsistent and could throw seven scoreless innings against the Cardinals or be pulled in the first inning. I would expect to see the same lineup for the Yankees on Wednesday against another right-hander. Pallante is a good starter, and considering the Yankees’ best offensive attribute is making mediocre-to-good starters look unhittable, I wouldn’t expect anything more than a ceiling of three runs for the offense.

10. It’s a home rubber game against an average team going nowhere and it’s a game the Yankees need to win. The Rays seemingly never lose and the Red Sox actually never lose. The Yankees have gone 14-8 over the last three weeks ago and haven’t gained anything on the Rays in the standings and have lost nearly everything to the Red Sox in the standings. If those two are going to win every day, the Yankees have to do the same. With Garcia essentially replacing Goldschmidt, Ramos replacing Dominguez and Lombard Jr. replacing Volpe and the best rotation in baseball, they have the ability to.

1. The Yankees’ season was supposed to change by 6 p.m. on August 3. Even without Aaron Judge (due to a rib injury), Giancarlo Stanton (due to a ridiculous calf injury that is in its fourth month) and Cody Bellinger (due to a hamstring injury), August 3 was going to be the day the Yankees got a new catcher, added to their bullpen and got a right-handed bat. For weeks, the Yankees were connected to Tarik Skubal and Adley Rutschman, and even the great Mason Miller. But when 6 p.m. came on Monday, the Yankees had added only a right-handed bat (with poor defense) and a left-handed bat (with poor defense). The right-handed bat (Heliot Ramos) crushes left-handed pitching, but can’t hit right-handed pitching, and the left-handed bat (Luis Garcia) crushes right-handed pitching, but can’t hit left-handed pitching, and neither has a position.

2. There was no new catcher when the clock struck 6. The Rays — the team the Yankees have been chasing for essentially three months — got a new catcher. The Red Sox — the team that the Yankees once led by 15 games in the loss column and now lead by one game — got a new catcher.

There was no bullpen help. Despite an abundance of high-end relievers being dealt, the Yankees didn’t add a single arm to their overworked, top-heavy bullpen.

3. The Yankees needed a right-handed bat because Judge is out indefinitely and Stanton heals at a glacial pace. They needed a right-handed bat because Anthony Volpe is no longer a major leaguer and neither is Jasson Dominguez. They needed a right-handed bat because they believed Paul Goldschmidt could withstand a six-month season. They needed a right-handed bat because Amed Rosario isn’t hitting lefties. They needed a right-handed bat because they designated Randal Grichuk for assignment in April after very little playing time. (Grichuk started 0-for-13 as a Yankee then went 6-for-18 with four doubles before being DFA’d. He has an .880 OPS since.) So the Yankees traded their No. 5 and No. 13 prospects for Ramos.

The Yankees didn’t need another left-handed bat, but what they did need was offense, any semblance of major-league offense after scoring 32 runs during their 10-game road trip. You may think 32 runs in 10 games and abysmal, but it’s actually worse than it looks. Nine of the 32 runs came in one game and one of the runs was an automatic runner in extra innings. Not only that, but the Yankees played four extra innings on the trip and scored the automatic runner once. So the Yankees traded for Garcia to give them a quality major-league hitter not named Ben Rice in their current lineup.

Off the field, the deadline was a disaster for the Yankees. On the field, it was worse.

4. After walking 26 batters in 23 starts this season, Cam Schlittler walked five Cardinals in three innings on Monday. He walked the first batter of the game on four pitches and gave up a one-out, two-run home run. He then walked the fourth batter of the game and gave up a line-drive single before getting out of the inning with a double play.

In the second, Schlittler walked the leadoff hitter again and then gave up a run-scoring double on an 0-2 pitch. He walked another hitter, sandwiched between striking out the side.

In the third, Schlittler walked the leadoff hitter for the third straight inning and allowed that run to score on a two-out single. After three innings, nine baserunners and 81 pitches, Schlittler was removed from the game.

The Yankees trailed 6-0 after four innings. Four earned runs against Schlittler and another two from Tim Hill after Hill allowed his latest home run. But the Yankees fought back in the fifth with back-to-back home runs: a two-run home run from Austin Wells and a solo home run from Trent Grisham to make it 6-3.

5. Still trailing 6-3 in the seventh, Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero went back-to-back to lead off the inning and make it 6-5. Grisham hit a one-out double and Garcia brought him in with a two-run home run to give the Yankees a 7-6 lead. After last year’s post-deadline debacle in Miami, the Yankees were going to have a memorable deadline day performance on the field to make up for the shortcomings in the front office off it.

Except they weren’t. Aaron Boone had Ryan Yarbrough get the final two outs of the seventh when the game was still 6-3. It made sense to pitch Yarbrough with a three-run deficit and let him eat up the final innings if the score remained the same. But when the Yankees took the lead and were six outs away from a win in a game in which they had trailed by six runs, sending Yarbrough out for the eighth to protect the one-run lead should have never been an option. But it was for Boone. In Game 113 with the Rays having already won on the day, Boone tried to steal outs with Yarbrough. Sure enough, Yarbrough allowed a leadoff triple to begin the eighth.

6. Due to recent workloads, even though neither Fernando Cruz, Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick nor David Bednar had pitched on back-to-back days, Boone stayed away from all of them. The Yankees’ rule that relievers can’t pitch three straight days remains idiotic and unscientific as a way of preventing injuries, but in this instance, Boone wasn’t even following that rule, he was simply not going to his best relievers because he felt they had thrown too much lately. In a winnable game against an inferior opponent, Boone was willing to lose instead of use two of his best four arms. And lose they did. Angel Chivilli relieved Yarbrough and allowed three home runs in the eighth. The Cardinals entered the inning trailing 7-6 and left it leading 13-7. Chivilli was sent down after the game. Good enough to pitch in high leverage at 10:30 p.m. Not good enough to be a Yankee at 11:30 p.m. Just like Max Schuemann was good enough to bat LEADOFF for the Yankees multiple times in the last week and then wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee after the trade for Garcia. Chivilli wasn’t the only one sent down. Volpe was sent down along with Dominguez.

7. It was a bad start for Schlittler, but it was going to end up being a good win against a bad team. Instead, it was undone by a bad manager. Everything about the day was so perfectly the Cashman/Boone Yankees. Cashman didn’t just fail to get any game-changing talent at the deadline, he failed to fulfill the few needs the Yankees absolutely had to address. Needs that exist because of moves he has made. Boone was willing to lose a winnable game and play for tomorrow to protect the arms of impending free agents when it’s unknown if they will even be needed to protect small leads in the coming days.

8. Ben Rice went 0-for-4 and is 4-for-29 with 10 strikeouts since the start of Chicago week. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-4 and is 4-for-31 with 15 strikeouts since the start of the 10-game road trip. Maybe Chisholm just needs his teammates to remind him again that he’s “the best player in the world.” He only has 49 games remaining to hit 34 home runs and steal 20 bases.

9. The Yankees went 6-4 on the 10-game road trip to Philadelphia and Chicago. I wrote that I would have signed up for 5-5 before the trip started, but once the trip started 3-1, going 5-5 was a disappointment. The Yankees had extra-inning leads in two of the games against the White Sox and had a seventh-inning lead on Saturday against the Cubs and they lost all three games. It could have been an 8-2 or even 9-1 road trip. But much like everything with these Yankees, it was a disappointment. A disappointing road trip, followed by a disappointing deadline, followed by a disappointing game on Monday in what is becoming a disappointing season now that they are four games behind the Rays in the loss column again and just one game up on the Red Sox in the loss column. They had a 15-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox in late June.

10. It will be Ryan Weathers against Hunter Dobbins on Tuesday. Weathers was outstanding against the Phillies and White Sox. Dobbins is the former Red Sox, who said he hated the Yankees and that his dad was drafted by them, even though his dad wasn’t drafted. The Cardinals are a bad team headed nowhere other than to the offseason after Game 162. They sold at the deadline and have no business winning a series against the Yankees in the Bronx with the Yankees in the middle of a pennant race. But if you haven’t learned by now, and if the road trip, deadline and Monday’s loss weren’t reminders, always be prepared to be disappointed by these Yankees.

1. On Sept. 1, 2011, I thought I saw the lowest Baseball IQ play I would ever see from a Yankee when Nick Swisher laid down a sacrifice bunt with a runner on first and already one out in the inning. That play stood for nearly 14 years until Aug. 2, 2025, when Jazz Chisholm was picked off first base on a pop-up to the second baseman on the infield dirt. I didn’t think there would ever be a play that could top Chisholm’s idiotic baserunning decision, believing his former teammate would drop the ball on purpose to try and erase him on the bases. Until Wednesday.

Ali Sanchez’s extra-inning gaffe was so unbelievable, so ill-advised, so patently dumb that I can’t envision it ever being topped. I believe it will stand forever as the lowest Baseball IQ play I will ever see from a Yankee (though as long as Aaron Boone is at the helm, you can’t discount how fundamentally low the Yankees may stoop). To attempt to pick off a runner at third with two outs in a one-run game when all you need to do is retire the below-league-average Andrew Benintendi to win a crucial game is so incomprehensible that I still have a hard time believing it actually happened.

2. “Me and McMahon felt that he was a little slow getting back to the base,” Sanchez said. “I just made a bad throw. I’ve got to make a better throw.”

I don’t care if the runner (Munetaka Murakami) was 10 feet off the base with his back to Camilo Doval and his eyes closed it’s a throw that can’t be made. But it’s a throw that was made and it ruined the Yankees’ chance to win the game in that inning.

And Sanchez isn’t the only one to blame. Ryan McMahon played a part in the moronic play as well.

“It was there,” McMahon said, even though it wasn’t there. “Ali and I, we just didn’t execute. We did a shit job on both ends. I’ve got to block that and he’s got to get it there. It ended up hurting us.”

Sure enough, just like he defended Chisholm last August in Miami, Boone defended his catcher and third baseman.

“We’re big leaguers,” Boone said. “We’re not going to not do things.”

So because this is the big leagues, pickoff attempts at third base with the game on the line should be accepted? What the fuck are you talking about?

3. The Yankees held a 4-0 lead in the seventh with Cam Schlittler on the mound and had a 4-1 lead after the seventh. Paul Blackburn turned back into Paul Blackburn in the eighth and blew a three-run lead after allowing back-to-back home runs, erasing and wasting the 6 1/3 innings and two-hit start from Schlittler.

The Yankees stranded a runner on third with one out in the sixth and couldn’t score after a leadoff double in the seventh. Had they been able to come through with situational hitting in either of those spots, the game never goes to extras and they win. But the game did go to extras, and the worst road extra-inning team in the majors since the automatic runner was implemented six years ago, and the worst road extra-inning team in the majors this season lost another road extra-inning game.

If you think it’s a coincidence, randomness or chance that the Yankees continue to lose road extra-inning games under Boone, you’re a fool. When situational hitting, fundamentals, sound strategy, creativity and baseball smarts are at a premium, it’s no surprise the Yankees are at their worst.

4. The Yankees failed to score in the 10th despite the top of the lineup being up. Tim Hill was able to miraculously keep the White Sox off the board in the bottom of the inning with the winning run on third and no outs, but it didn’t matter, because after the Yankees took the lead in the 11th, Sanchez and McMahon decided to be “big leaguers” as their manager called them and threw away the game. The Yankees failed to score again in the 12th, even though they had runners on the corners and no outs, and then went on to lose in the bottom of the inning.

5. On Tuesday, the Yankees scored three runs in the second inning and never scored again. On Wednesday, the Yankees scored four runs in the first inning and never scored again until extra innings, when they plated one of six baserunners. It was a typical bad offensive performance in innings two through nine and the standard disturbing performance in extra innings.

6. Trent Grisham, who gets to lead off against right-handed starters no matter what, went 0-for-5 with a walk and two strikeouts. (Grisham has hit .156/.241/.312 in July with three hits since the All-Star break ended two weeks ago.) Ben Rice went 1-for-5 with a double, walk and two strikeouts. Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-4 with a walk and strikeout. Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-5 with a strikeout. Spencer Jones went 2-for-4 with a three-run home run and two strikeouts. Jazz Chisholm went 1-for-5 with two strikeouts. (Chisholm is 3-for-16 with 10 strikeouts on the road trip. Soon, he will hit a home run and the Yankees and YES will wonder if that is the home run that will get him going and then he will have an extended slump until the next home run and this cycle will continue until he’s no longer a Yankee.) McMahon went 1-for-5, Jose Caballero went 2-for-5 and Austin Wells went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. (We keep hearing how good Wells has looked over the last few weeks. He’s 1-for-11 on the road trip.)

7. The Yankees lost a game in which they had a four-run lead with eight outs to go and the best pitcher in the American League on the mound working a one-hitter. They lost a game in which they had the lead in the 11th inning and were one out away from the win. They lost a game in which they couldn’t situationally hit in the sixth, seventh, 10th and 12th innings, when they could have scored runs by making outs. They lost a game on a day in which the Rays won and the Red Sox won (on the road in extra innings for good measure). Their division deficit is back to three games in the loss column and their lead over the Red Sox is down to four games in the loss column.

8. It’s likely the game would have ended differently if Angel Chivilli, Brent Headrick and David Bednar had been available, but they weren’t because of recent workloads and usage. Bednar wasn’t available because he had pitched in the first two games of the series over the previous two days. If you remember, he was needed on Monday to get the last out of the game after Volpe dropped what should have been a game-ending pop-up.

9. The White Sox needed and wanted the game so badly that they had their best reliever Grant Taylor pitch across three innings, something he had never done in his 75 previous major-league appearances. Jordan Hicks — the White Sox’ version of Doval who throws 103 mph but can’t strike anyone out — ended up getting the win. Everything about the game except for the first inning and Schlittler was awful on what became the worst night of the season.

10. It’s up to Ryan Weathers to get the bad taste of Wednesday out of everyone’s mouth, though I’m not sure it’s a taste that can be removed with a single win. The combination of losing a Schlittler gem and losing on a day when the Rays and Red Sox won is going to take a long time to get over. I’m still not over the post-deadline, extra-inning game in Miami from a year ago that was the difference in the division. If the Yankees’ postseason seeding is impacted by a single game this year, I may never get over what took place at Rate Field on Thursday. Weathers pitched very well against the White Sox last month (6.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR) in a loss, and with the current state of the Yankees’ offense, it’s going to take an outing like that for the Yankees to win.

1. I love the AL Central. Since the 2012 ALDS, the Yankees haven’t won a best-of-5 or best-of-7 postseason series against a non-AL Central team. During that time, the Yankees have used beating up on the AL Central to reach the postseason nearly every season and they’re doing it again in 2026. Following Tuesday’s 3-2 win over the White Sox, the Yankees are now 4-1 against the White Sox this season and 17-9 against the AL Central overall, compared to 16-16 against the AL East and 13-9 against the AL West.

2. The White Sox are the “best” team in the Central and they have allowed the Yankees to have run totals of 12 (June 16), 10 (June 17) and 9 (July 27) against them without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton for the first two of those games and without Cody Bellinger as well for the third. They have lost games started by Gerrit Cole twice (12 IP, 2 ER), Carlos Rodon (5 IP, 3 ER), Ryan Weathers (6.1 IP, 1 ER) and a rusty, pitch-count-limited Max Fried (3 IP, 3 ER). Their only win came in a game in which the Yankees scored one run, and that game was tied at 1 in the eighth. The White Sox are fake good, the AL Central sucks, and the Yankees are doing their job by taking care of annual business against their postseason red carpet.

3. On Tuesday, for the second straight night, a mediocre-at-best left-handed White Sox starter struck out the side in the first inning. Jasson Dominguez and Trent Grisham hit back-to-back singles to open the second and moved up a base on a wild pitch. Anthony Volpe hit a double to the wall in left-center that allowed Dominguez to score, but Grisham was unable to score because of the combination of having to wait to see if it was caught (which it initially was) and his half-assed running style. Grisham and Volpe both came around to score when Max Schuemann hit a double down the third-base line and the Yankees had an early 3-0 lead.

4. Cole easily handled the White Sox lineup with six scoreless innings and seven strikeouts. The White Sox had a bases-loaded, two-out threat in the fourth, but Cole easily extinguished it with an inning-ending flyout to Amed Rosario in shallow left field. Angel Chivilli threw a perfect seventh in relief of Cole and Brent Headrick picked up his major-league-leading 46th scoreless appearance in the eighth. It wasn’t until a two-out, two-run home run in the ninth off David Bednar that the White Sox got on the board, ending Bednar’s scoreless appearance streak, which dated back to May 18.

5. The Replacement Yankees (a term I haven’t used since the 2019 Yankees) went 6-for-32 with four walks and 10 strikeouts, and their only offense came in the three-run second inning. Paul Goldschmidt went 0-for-3 with two walks and a strikeout, Ben Rice went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, Rosario went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts, Jasson Dominguez had his second straight two-hit game, Trent Grisham had a single, Volpe went 1-for-4 with the double, Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts, Max Schuemann went 1-for-2 with the double and Austin Wells went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. Spencer Jones went 0-for-2 with a strikeout after pinch-hitting for Schuemann. Defensively, the Yankees didn’t commit an error, which seems like a rarity this summer.

6. If Volpe played second base and batted ninth, the entire perception of him would be different. But because he was given the starting shortstop job and has had it taken away from him for not even two weeks over the last four seasons, while every other Yankees prospect ever has had to earn playing time, everyone is sick of him. Again, not sick of him as the person, but sick of what he represents in the Yankees’ arrogance in this era. Because Volpe continues to bat between fifth and seventh in the lineup and play shortstop every day despite having a second baseman’s arm, he will never live up to the prospect status and hype he once had. The Yankees and fans could deal with him if he played the lesser position and was a bottom-of-the-order presence, and maybe that’s the plan for him once George Lombard Jr. arrives and Chisholm leaves, but until then, the constant criticism of him and the disappointment from him won’t end.

7. Another game off the schedule and another day closer to the August 3 trade deadline and no new names on the roster for the Yankees. Last season, Ryan McMahon was traded to the Yankees six days before the deadline and Rosario five days before. The Yankees traded for Austin Slater one day before the deadline and got Camilo Doval, Jake Bird, Bednar and Jose Caballero on deadline day. The deadline is now five days away, so we are certainly in range of the Yankees beginning to make moves, and as I outlined in recent Thoughts, they have to make moves and get Judge, Stanton and Bellinger back if they plan on ending the championship drought before it reaches 17 years.

8. The Rays and Red Sox both lost on Tuesday, so the Yankees are now two games back of the Rays in the loss column and five games up on the Red Sox in the loss column. The difference between winning the division and not winning it right now is getting a bye to the ALDS or playing the Red Sox in a best-of-3 for the second straight season. A few days ago, the Yankees were in a position where, if the playoffs had started that day, they would have hosted the Guardians in the Wild Card Series with the winner playing the White Sox in the ALDS. I don’t want any part of the Wild Card Series, but if the Yankees are to play in the best-of-3 round, that’s the opponent and path you want.

9. Michael Kay stirring his tea with his glasses was disgusting and Joe Girardi was right to call him out for it. Kay tried to make Girardi out to be the crazy one in the argument, but I can’t imagine there is anyone on Kay’s side for this one. If the tea didn’t dissolve like Girardi explained, Kay could have either drunk it unstirred or not drunk it at all, but at no point was using his glasses to stir it an acceptable choice.

10. Schlittler coming off the most dominant regular-season start of his career gets the ball on Wednesday. He’ll go against Davis Martin — the White Sox best starter — who the Yankees blasted for nine earned runs and three home runs in 3 1/3 innings back on June 16 at the Stadium. A win on Wednesday would clinch at worst a .500 record on the 10-game road trip, which is the mark I would have signed up for before it began.

1. On July 27, the Yankees fielded a lineup resembling a February 27 game. Despite their spring training look, the Yankees scored their most runs since July 9 and their second-most runs since June 17 in a 9-5 win over the White Sox. It wasn’t the kind of win you would expect from a nine-run output. The Yankees fell behind three runs in the first inning, took a one-run lead in the fourth, gave away the lead in the fifth, retook a one-run lead in the sixth, made it a five-run lead in the eighth and allowed the White Sox to bring the tying run to the on-deck circle in the ninth.

2. After throwing five scoreless, one-hit innings in his return from the injured list on Thursday, Max Fried looked like his pre-IL self on Monday. Fried lasted only three innings, allowed seven baserunners and three earned runs and needed 66 pitches to get nine outs.

“I wish I would’ve been sharper to be able to get some more innings,” Fried said.

3. Fried wasn’t sharp, but he wasn’t helped by his defense either, which makes sense since the Yankees had multiple players playing out of position to maximize their right-handed-hitting options. The Yankees had Max Schuemann playing left field and leading off, Jasson Dominguez in the clean-up spot, Anthony Volpe batting fifth, Jose Caballero playing third base, Jazz Chisholm and Spencer Jones playing with a lefty starting and Amed Rosario (who was re-signed specifically to play against lefties) on the bench.

4. For the first three innings, it looked like the 22-year-old rookie Noah Schultz and his 6.04 ERA were going to easily navigate the Yankees’ lineup like so many mediocre starters have since the beginning of June. Schultz struck out the side in the first and had five strikeouts through three. In the fourth, trailing 3-0, the Yankees loaded the bases with a pair of walks and a single, leading to a Volpe groundout to make it 3-1, which led to Schultz’s removal. Chisholm greeted reliever Chris Murphy with a two-run, game-tying double, stole third and scored on a Jones groundout to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead.

5. The White Sox tied the game at 4 in the fifth against Tim Hill and it remained tied until Ben Rice drove in Rosario following Rosario’s pinch-hit double. In the eighth, the Yankees added a run to their lead after a throwing error and broke the game open with an Ali Sanchez three-run home run, the first of his career.

“You always dream to play in the big leagues,” Sanchez said. “Having yoru first homer with the Yankees uniform and getting the ‘W,’ it’s special.”

6. In the ninth, the combination of Camilo Doval and poor infield defense led to the White Sox bringing the tying run to the on-deck circle. Volpe dropped a popup on the right side of the infield that would have ended the game, but instead, it led to David Bednar needing to relieve Doval and throw pitches in a game the Yankees led by five in the ninth. Back-to-back games with crucial errors from Volpe. Nothing to see here! Start him again at short on Tuesday!

7. The Yankees had to use seven relievers to get through six innings after Fried’s ineffectiveness and pitch count forced him out after three. Will Warren only gave the team three innings as well on Sunday. The Yankees need length from their starters, and they need exceptional starts, considering expecting nine-run outbursts from a lineup that features mostly reserve and minor-league players is a recipe for disaster, not success.

8. I have no idea what the Yankees’ plan is for the trade deadline, and it seems like no one else does either. There are reports that they are willing to go all-in for Mason Miller. There are reports connecting them to CJ Abrams. There is talk of them going after Zach Neto. There are so many different outcomes for the Yankees at the deadline ranging from upgrading shortstop to getting a catcher to revamping one-third of the 26-man roster. All I know is that their deficit to the Rays hasn’t moved and their lead over the Red Sox is dwindling as neither of those teams seems to lose. Waiting until the actual deadline to acquire upgrades means six more games (against the White Sox and Cubs) off the schedule and likely a seventh with the Yankees playing an hour after the deadline.

9. When you look at Monday’s lineup, at full strength (if that ever happens) and after the expected post-deadline moves, it’s likely Rice and Chisholm are the only two who would be starting for the Yankees in the postseason. Schuemann would be on the bench (at best), Goldschmidt would be on the bench, Dominguez would be on the bench (at best), Volpe would hopefully not be on the roster or in the organization, Caballero would be on the bench, Jones wouldn’t be on the roster and Sanchez would likely not be on the roster either. With the left-handed Anthony Kay starting on Tuesday, the Yankees lineup won’t look much different from what it was on Monday.

10. The bad news is that, for probably the rest of the road trip, the Yankees are going to have to manage with lineups identical or close to Monday’s. The good news is that the Yankees are already 3-1 on the road trip. I would have gladly signed up for 5-5 before it began in Philadelphia, so based on that expectation, the Yankees winning two of the remaining six games against the White Sox and Cubs should be deemed a success. With Gerrit Cole, Cam Schlittler and Max Fried starting four of those six games, the Yankees have the opportunity to have a much-better-than-expected road trip.

1. If the playoffs started today, Cam Schlittler should be the Yankees’ Game 1 starter. But if the playoffs started today, I don’t think he would be. And when the playoffs do start, even if Schlittler continues this all-time season, I still don’t think he will be the Yankees’ Game 1 starter. In a year in which Schlittler leads the American League in ERA and WHIP and is second in innings pitched (Michael Wacha) and strikeouts (Dylan Cease) and has made all 22 starts to date, there’s no other choice, even though it would surprise no one if the Yankees made another choice, and they likely will since veteran status and reputation have always trumped actual performance in determining playing time and rotation setting.

Schlittler dominated the Phillies on Friday with 7 1/3 scoreless innings and 12 strikeouts. It was his best start of the season and the best regular-season start of his career as the Yankees won 1-0.

“He bullies you a little bit with the fastball on both sides,” Don Mattingly said. “I don’t think this guy’s getting hit very hard often.”

No, he’s not, Donnie Baseball. It was the 17th time in 22 starts Schlittler has pitched at least five innings and allowed two earned runs or fewer. The Yankees improved to 15-7 when he starts. In three of those seven losses, he went at least five innings and allowed two earned runs or fewer.

2. A Paul Goldschmidt home run was the entire offense for both teams on Friday. The Yankees’ and Phillies’ offenses are very similar in being top-heavy and completely reliant on home runs. It’s why both teams have had very similar postseason exits over the last five seasons. They both have a World Series loss, they both have a CS loss and the Phillies have two DS losses to the Yankees’ one. (The Phillies have made the playoffs in each of the last four seasons, while the Yankees missed the postseason in 2023 despite 40 percent of the league qualifying for the postseason.) And because the teams are nearly identical in how their lineups are built, there were five total runs in the first 18 innings of the series.

The Yankees won Saturday’s game 3-1 behind a surprising Ryan Weathers’ start (5.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 7 K) and home runs from Austin Wells and Jasson Dominguez. The Phillies’ bullpen game consisted of seven relievers, and the Yankees were able to score off of three of them.

3. Maybe you can’t truly predict baseball, but Sunday’s result was as predictable as the sport gets. Will Warren against Christopher Sanchez with a lineup featuring Amed Rosario batting third, Dominguez fourth and Anthony Volpe fifth? Due for an offensive outburst after the first two games of the series, the Phillies scored once off Warren in the first, once again in the second and opened the game up with four runs in the third on their way to an 11-4 win. Warren lasted only three innings and allowed six earned runs and eight baserunners. It was the fourth time this season Warren allowed six-plus earned runs in a game, while all other Yankees pitchers have done so just three times (thanks to Katie Sharp for the stat). Warren’s four starts of six-plus earned runs allowed are the second-most in the AL (also from Sharp). Jeffrey Springs of the Athletics has the most with five. Springs leads the league in losses, hits and home runs allowed. He pitched seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball against the Yankees back in April.

I won’t be upset if Sunday was Warren’s last start as a Yankee, and I’m fairly certain it was. Warren is the likeliest of current Yankees’ major leaguers to get traded by next Monday, and if they plan on moving him, I don’t know that they would risk running him out there for one more start on Friday. At this point, it’s not just about not wanting him to get hurt before the deadline to move him, it’s also about giving the team the best chance to win and Warren at Wrigley Field against the Cubs’ offense isn’t that.

4. Remember when David Bednar allowed that stunning game-tying home run at Citi Field back on May 17? I do, and my wallet does. The following day, Bednar allowed another earned run to the Blue Jays as the Yankees held on for a 7-6 win. That was the last time Bednar allowed an earned run. Here is Bednar’s line since that May 18 game: 23.2 IP, 8 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 5 BB, 24 K. Bednar was forced into high-leverage situations early in March because of the World Baseball Classic and then was leaned on heavily and overworked in late March and throughout April by the Yankees because of how many close games they were playing and how few trustworthy options they had. Once Bednar was given adequate rest and others emerged as late-inning relief choices, he began to look like his normal self, and now he looks like a version of himself that has never previously existed.

5. One of those choices who emerged was Brent Headrick who has a 1.38 ERA in 52 appearances and 52 innings in his first full season in the majors. He and Bednar are clearly and obviously the most trustworthy relief options on the team followed by Paul Blackburn (whose career has been saved by the Yankees like Luke Weaver’s was), then Fernando Cruz (in specific spots), then Tim Hill (in two-lefty lanes) and that’s the end of the list. With Blackburn’s ability to go multiple innings, the Yankees have the option of shortening a game to five or six innings if needed, or turning to others to close out games on days Bednar is unavailable. That doesn’t mean the bullpen is a finished product or should be, just that it’s in a much better place than it was just a few weeks ago when Jake Bird and Camilo Doval were pitching in high-leverage situations.

6. During Friday’s late-game meltdown, the NBC booth was talking about Girardi winning a championship as Yankees manager.

“I wanted to thank Mr. Steinbrenner for the opportunity and I was able to do that by giving him a ring,” Girardi said.

As Girardi finished that sentence, the camera cut to Boone walking to the mound for a pitching change in the middle of his ninth season of a ring-less tenure. I guess he’s playing the long game in thanking this Steinbrenner for the opportunity.

7. A Yankees comeback was made impossible on Sunday night when the Phillies used a Volpe error to open the floodgates for a five-run sixth. The inning began with a harmless ground ball to Volpe who lollipopped a throw wide of first down the line toward right field. Joe Girardi wondered if Volpe thought he had less time on a play in which he clearly could have set his feet and made a throw over to first rather than wildly throwing on the run, but no, Joe, that wasn’t it. That was Volpe knowing he lacks the arm strength needed to set his feet and get the ball over to first in time, so he lets it go as quickly as possible to try to make up for his lack of arm strength. The day before, Jose Caballero let a ball get to him slowly rather than charging it, knowing he could fire a strike to first in time to get the runner, and he did just that.

I couldn’t care less that Volpe had two doubles in the game. Whoop-dee-doo. It was Volpe’ first multi-hit game since June 23 and the first game he provided an extra-base hit since June 26. Nearly a month between multi-hit games and exactly a month between extra-base hits. One game against Sanchez, who had to grind through six innings without anything close to his best stuff (nine baserunners and two wild pitches) doesn’t make me suddenly think Volpe is now good or has figured it out or is a major leaguer. Volpe shouldn’t be on the roster and George Lombard Jr. is doing everything he can to make sure that happens.

8. Trent Grisham’s questionable defense led to the Phillies’ first run on Sunday as he took a beer league route to a ball that was played into a triple. Grisham’s route choices and arm are both poor and he’s not hitting the home runs he was last year to make up for it. He has two hits since the All-Star break. He’s been two percent worse than league average at the plate, and like Jazz Chisholm, Grisham provides random power here and there and nothing in between. That $22 million qualifying offer looks worse with each passing game and we are now 105 games into the season and Grisham is hitting .216/.318/.390.

9. Speaking of Chisholm, Mr. 50/50 is now a platoon player? Chisholm sat for both games started by a lefty in Philadelphia (Friday and Sunday) and on Saturday he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts against the Phillies’ bullpen game. He’s 1-for-12 with five strikeouts since his last home run. At some point in Chicago, he will likely hit another home run, but do nothing in the plate appearances leading up to that home run or after.

10. The Yankees started this challenging 10-game road trip with a nice series win to begin it. Now the trip moves to Chicago where the Yankees will be for an entire week and seven games. The four-game White Sox series will feature Max Fried followed by Gerrit Cole followed by Schlittler. It’s the dream Yankees fans have been dreaming since Schlittler burst into the big leagues last summer and it’s finally being realized.

The left-handed Noah Schultz and his 6.04 ERA will go for the White Sox in the opener. Don’t let Schultz’s poor numbers fool you. He has some good starts mixed into his 12-start career this season between two call-ups. And with Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and lefty masher Cody Bellinger all on the injured list, the lineup you saw on Sunday against a lefty is likely what Aaron Boone will put together on Monday.

Even with the loss on Sunday, two out of three in Philadelphia was a desirable (and unexpected) outcome. Don’t let the trip fall apart against in Chicago.

1. The Yankees waited 16 months to have Max Fried and Gerrit Cole in the same rotation, and after waiting through Cole’s Tommy John surgery and recovery and Fried’s two-plus-month stay on the injured list with a bone bruise, the two finally appeared in the rotation at the same time. Not only that, they pitched on the same day in their first day in the rotation together in Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Pirates.

“It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a while now,” Fried said. “And it kind of sucks that I got hurt when I did to delay that. But better late than never.”

2. The doubleheader went as expected: the Yankees got impressive starts from both Cole and Fried, but the offense provided little to nothing as the Yankees split the day with the Pirates. The entire offense in the 6-3 afternoon loss came from one Ben Rice swing in the form of a seventh-inning, game-tying home run. The offense in the second game was a pair of seventh-inning runs in a 2-0 win. The pitching continues to do everything it can to keep the Yankees in reach of the division and afloat overall, as the offense continues to do everything it can to try to sink the season.

3. As I have written many times since Aaron Judge went down at the beginning of June, it doesn’t matter if Judge returns and Giancarlo Stanton returns if Rice is the only other reliable hitter in the lineup. I keep waiting for Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm to find some consistency and do what they are expected to do, and with each passing day another game comes off the schedule. The Yankees have played 102 games and Bellinger had an .853 OPS through the first 60 and has a .636 OPS in the 42 since. Chisholm had a few big home runs over the last two weeks, but when he isn’t hitting an unexpected late-game home run, he turns in empty plate appearance after empty plate appearance, with ill-advised challenges mixed in. I guess the occasional home run from Chisholm is more than what Bellinger is providing power-wise as the $32.5 million-per-season man hasn’t hit a home run since June 17. Aside from those two and Rice, I have no expectations for the rest of the lineup to provide anything, so they are all living up to those expectations.

4. Spencer Jones was used as the 27th man for the doubleheader and was in the lineup batting third in the first game. So Jones wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee before being added as an extra roster player for the doubleheader, but was good enough to bat THIRD In the lineup upon his call-up. Then he was back to the bench for the night game. He went from not being a major leaguer to batting THIRD to not being a major leaguer again in a single day. If you remember Aaron Boone using Mike Ford as a pinch hitter with a game on the line six years ago only to send him down after the game, you know this isn’t the first instance of the Yankees making puzzling in-game decisions with fringe major leaguers during this era.

Jones went 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout in the game. He was lifted against a lefty for Amed Rosario, who struck out. Jones has a contact problem, but he’s far from the problem. The Yankees struck out 12 times in the afternoon game and Jones only struck out once. Rice (3), Bellinger (3), Jose Caballero (2), Chisholm (1), Ryan McMahon (1) and Rosario (1) also struck out.

5. Here are the OPS for each player since Judge’s last game on May 31:

Rice: .878
Grisham: .796
Jones: .781
Goldschmidt: .743
Chisholm .739
Schuemann: .719
McMahon: .716
Dominguez: .675
Caballero: .652
Bellinger: .640
Volpe: .613
Sanchez: .558
Escarra: .491
Wells: .427
Cabrera: .000

The MLB average OPS this season is .722. So five Yankees have been above league average since Judge went down, Chisholm just made the cut after his big week and Goldschmidt has six hits since June 26. Again, Judge can’t just come back. He has to come back and be at the top of his powers and others have to step up. Otherwise, the postseason will look like it has every other year during this era.

6. Fortunately, the team we have watched play 102 games and will watch play 112 games won’t be the team the Yankees have following the deadline. At least I hope it’s not. The Yankees need to upgrade catcher and shortstop and the bullpen and figure out third base and get Judge and Stanton back, and then the Yankees can dream about the team doing something it hasn’t done in going on SEVENTEEN YEARS. The rotation with Fried back is too good to allow for an extended losing streak now and too good to prevent the Yankees from reaching the playoffs, but it’s not good enough alone to win in the playoffs. The Yankees have to address those areas of need, otherwise they are looking at another early exit, and at best, if everything breaks right and they get an AL Central-only path, they could reach the World Series only to get trounced there again.

7. Yes, I want Mason Miller to be a Yankee. Not only is he the best reliever in the world, but this is entertainment and there’s nothing more entertaining than a reliever with a 0.86 ERA and 0.51 FIP, who allows 4.5 hits per nine innings with 16.8 strikeouts per nine innings. No, he’s not the biggest need for the team, but he’s awesome and the best at his job in the world, and acquiring players who are the best at what they do is a sound strategy. (Let’s forget about the fact that his right elbow is a ticking time bomb and at any moment he could go down for 16-plus months or for good.)

Yes, I want Ryan Jeffers to be a Yankee. I can’t watch Wells play baseball anymore. I can’t keep hearing about how Wells will break out any day now. Earlier this week, Boone said he likes what he has seen out of Wells the last eight games. That’s nice. It’s eight games. What about the 62 he played before that? Or the 260 from 2023 to 2025 before that? What about his .468 postseason OPS in 78 plate appearances in which he has run a 39 percent strikeout rate? When is enough going to be enough? Wells needs to call a near-no-hitter and throw out every would-be basestealer at this point to negate his offense.

8. Shortstop seems like it’s taking care of itself. Caballero is more occupied with the pitch clock and fucking with pitchers at the eight-second mark than he is actually getting on base and Volpe continues to be one of the all-time busts in franchise history. Caballero hasn’t been the same since he went on the IL briefly in May and Volpe has been the same as he was the last three years. Volpe’s .663 OPS this season is identical to last season and one point above his career OPS (.662) after 2,053 plate appearances. Progress! At this rate, he will have a league-average OPS (.722) in 59 years. The position is taking care of itself because while those two continue to be automatic outs, George Lombard Jr. continues to tear it up at Triple-A.

Lombard Jr. returned from the IL on July 13 and homered in back-to-back games for the FCL Yankees. He then went back to Triple-A where he’s 9-for-20 with three doubles and a home run in four games. This comes after he posted a .921 OPS in the 26 games prior to his injury. Lombard Jr. is 5.1 years younger than the average player in Triple-A.

I have long waited for Lombard Jr. to end the Volpe experiment and we are almost there. We are so close. So close. I’m talking any day now we could see Lombard Jr. with the Yankees. After sitting through more than 2,000 plate appearances of Volpe’s, the end is near.

9. This postseason lineup is a real possibility:

Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Trent Grisham, CF
Ryan Jeffers, C
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
George Lombard Jr., SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B

We know Grisham can’t hit elite pitching. Last year he hit 34 home runs and not a single one came against a pitcher that started a postseason game. Then he hit .138/.219/.207 in the postseason. This year, he does have solo home runs off Yoshinobu Yamamoto (shocking) and Sonny Gray (not so shocking), but his other nine home runs are against pitchers who are either no longer in the league or on teams that won’t be playing in October. Get him out of the leadoff spot once everyone is healthy. I’m willing to compromise by giving Boone his mandatory lefty-righty alternation throughout the lineup.

That gives the Yankees the five-man postseason bench of Wells (I guess), Caballero, Rosario, Schuemann and Goldschmidt.

A rotation of Cam Schlittler, Fried, Cole and Carlos Rodon. (Yes, that’s the order they should appear, but would never because of veteran status, reputation and relationships.)

A bullpen of Miller, David Bednar, Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill, Paul Blackburn, Yovanny Cruz and Will Warren. (It’s likely Warren gets moved at the deadline, especially for the Yankees to acquire Miller or Jeffers. The Yankees won’t give him a playoff spot, so it makes him expendable. But I’m including him here for now. I’m also including Cruz, even though the Yankees clearly don’t like or value him. Either way, those two spots on the playoff roster can be interchanged.)

That’s a lineup, bench, rotation and bullpen that can win it all. Sure, Boone and the Dodgers would still be in that roster’s way of winning it all, but it’s a roster that can win it all. Today’s roster can’t win it all. Today’s roster may not even win the division or hold off the Red Sox from closing the gap in the wild-card race. Luckily, today’s roster won’t be (it can’t be) the one the Yankees have at 6 p.m. on August 3.

10. The 10-game road trip that begins on Friday and starts a 13-game-in-13-days run for the Yankees represents the most important stretch of games to date, because every game now represents the most important game of the season to date. That’s what happens when you dick around for most of June and July, aren’t able to overcome a struggling Rays team and let the Red Sox shave off 11 of the 15 games you led them by in a month. The Yankees will play three games against the Phillies and then spend an entire week in Chicago with four against the White Sox and three against the Cubs. While that’s going on, the Rays will play the Guardians, Rangers and White Sox, and the Red Sox will play the Blue Jays, Athletics and Dodgers. When the 10-game road trip ends, the trade deadline will take place before the Yankees’ next game.

1. Before the start of the season when I planned a path to the Yankees exceeding their projected win total of 90.5, I planned for them to lose two of three to the Dodgers in July, and that expectation was met. After blowing a late lead on Friday, the Yankees were blown out in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader and then blew another late lead in the series finale before winning for just the second time at home in their last 11 games in the Bronx.

2. With my wife being a Dodgers fan, we let our 5- and 4-year-old sons stay up to watch the Sunday night game. Confused by our rivalrous marriage, our 4-year-old was confused by who the good guys were and who the bad guys were after watching my wife celebrate Cam Schlittler’s short outing earlier in the day. Normally, it’s easy for him to understand to root against the team that isn’t the Yankees, but with my wife celebrating each Yankees failure throughout the day, he wasn’t sure what was going on.

“Do we like that guy?” he asked me every time a new face was shown on the TV.

“Yes, we like him,” I answered when he asked about Ben Rice.

“Do we like that guy” he asked when Cody Bellinger appeared.

“Yes, we like him,” I said.

“Do we like that guy?” he asked with Anthony Volpe at the plate.

“We like that he’s a Yankee, but we don’t like what he represents,” I replied. “You see, he represents everything that is wrong with the team during this disappointing era in the history of the franchise.”

He didn’t respond.

“Do we like that guy?” he asked with Aaron Boone shown blowing bubbles in the dugout.

“No, we don’t like him,” I said. “He’s in charge of the Yankees during the game, but he’s bad at his job and makes them lose.”

“That’s not good,” my son replied.

“No, it’s not,” I said.

3. Losing to the Dodgers is something the Aaron Boone Yankees are good at. They lost two of three to them this past weekend. They lost two of three to them last year. They lost two of three to them during the 2024 regular season then four of five to them in the World Series. The Yankees are 4-10 against the Dodgers since the start of 2024 and two of those wins came when the Dodgers went with bullpen games: Game 4 of the 2024 World Series and Sunday night. The Dodgers figured they would save their real starter for Monday against the Phillies and still came within an eighth-inning Jazz Chisholm solo home run on Sunday of nearly pulling off a sweep of the Yankees.

4. The Swoon is still alive. Those three late-game comebacks against the Nationals before the All-Star break were a mirage. The Yankees scored five runs at home against the Dodgers. The first was produced by an outfield error and passed ball. The second was a solo home run. The third was the result of a sun-aided “double” and a bloop single. The fourth came with a two-out double and single, and the fifth was another solo home run. If the ball doesn’t go over the wall with runners on, the Yankees are unlikely to win unless the opposing defense gifts them runs.

5. The sun-aided “double” came off the bat of Chisholm when Andy Pages couldn’t find it in Sunday afternoon’s high sky. Pages took cover to avoid being struck by it rather than catch it. The Yankees were trailing by seven runs at the time and Chisholm had done nothing to deserve being on second base, but there he was celebrating back toward his teammates in the dugout as if he had just hit a 110-mph double off the base of the wall in a close game. Chisholm ended up coming through in the nightcap with a go-ahead solo home run to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning.

6. “I feel like we match up against any team in the league,” Chisholm obnoxiously said after the game.

The Yankees eked by the Dodgers in a game the Dodgers were OK giving away when they moved their starter to Monday and elected to go with a bullpen game, and yet, Chisholm was ready to stick out his chest after the win despite the series loss. He was the one who called the Royals “lucky” after their ALDS Game 2 win in 2024. He was the one who said last season the Yankees were going to go to the World Series after they beat the Reds in Cincinnati on June 25 for just their fourth win in 14 games at the time. Give Chisholm an inch and he’ll take a mile with his mouth.

“I feel like we beat ourselves a lot,” Chisholm said. “I feel like that stuff, we’re going to clean up as it goes.”

The “stuff” the team has been doing for nine years under Boone? Yeah, I’m sure it will miraculously be cleaned up over the remaining 63 games.

At least Chisholm said one truthful thing on Sunday when he said, “I’ve sucked all season.”

7. You always know when Boone realizes the team is in deep shit because he starts to manage in a way he would never otherwise manage. Bringing David Bednar in with two on and one out in the eighth inning was Boone showing his hand and admitting things aren’t as great as his postgame press conferences make them out to be. How many times has Boone said this year’s Swoon isn’t what it is or that it’s just been a bad series (like he said in Boston) or a few bad games. Well, after the Sunday afternoon loss, Boone used “weeks” twice to describe the Yankees’ futility and then he brought in his closer into a non-save situation in the eighth inning. Boone told everyone things aren’t what he wants you to believe they are and then he went out and proved it with his managing. His words in the afternoon and his usage of Bednar at night may not seem like a big deal, but if you have been listening to this in-over-his-head manager speak and have been watching him manage for nearly nine seasons, you know it was a huge deal.

8. I guess Anthony Volpe’s bloop RBI single over the outstretched reach of a glove in a seven-run game in the first game of the doubleheader was enough for him to get the start in the night game. The RBI was Volpe’s first since June 19. Yesterday was July 19. Yes, it took him a month to get an RBI despite playing in 22 games during that time. His best friend Austin Wells must be proud. Volpe rewarded his manager’s faith in him by going hitless in the second game and by taking a sword swing to strike out on a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded. Volpe’s .663 OPS is now identical to his 2025 OPS and in line with his career .662 OPS. He’s been given 2,050 plate appearances, but don’t worry, any game now he’s going to get going! “He’s fucking elite,” is what Boone told Meredith Marakovits last season.

9. I’m glad the Dodgers series is over. The Yankees are fortunate they won’t see the Dodgers again in the regular season. The Yankees are really fortunate they play in the American League and not the National League. The Yankees have the second-best record in the AL and are 5 1/2 games up on a playoff spot. They wouldn’t be leading any NL division, would have the fifth-best record in the NL and would barely be hanging on to a wild-card berth at the moment. Given where things were in the division a little over three weeks ago, the Yankees should be more worried about the Red Sox than the Rays. The Rays may have the division lead, but that is down to two games in the loss column. The Yankees’ once 15-game lead over the Red Sox in the loss column is down to four after the Red Sox ripped off 13 straight wins.

10. Next up is a three-game series with the Pirates, who are a lot like the Nationals. Great offense, awful bullpen. The Yankees will miss Paul Skenes in the series, so there is no reason they shouldn’t come out of it with a series win at home. Then again, after losing nine of 11 at home and with a pathetic offense that relies on Rice the way it did Aaron Judge and with both Ryan Weathers and Will Warren expected to pitch in the series, there are a lot of reasons why they may not come out of these next three days with a series win at home.

1. Two things are true from the Yankees’ 2-1 loss to the Dodgers on Friday night at Yankee Stadium: Aaron Boone should have taken the ball from Gerrit Cole when he went to the mound in the seventh inning, but when he didn’t, Cole should have rewarded Boone’s faith in him at a season-high pitch count post-Tommy John surgery by retiring Max Muncy. Boone left Cole in the game and Cole failed to deliver in a big spot in big game once again as a Yankee.

2. “In hindsight, I probably should grab him there,” Boone said. “He pitched so well. I felt like he had enough to get Max. That’s on me. I should probably get him there.”

The words “That’s on me” came from Boone, but they could have just as well come from Cole.

“Sometimes you’ve got to take it out of their hands,” Boone said.

Or sometimes you have to be a manager. But we all know what kind of in-game manager Boone isn’t. He’s the cool, got-your-back manager. The I’m-your-pal manager. And when you’re just one of the guys and not the guys’ higher-up, when it comes time to make a move like pulling Cole when he’s pitching a shutout against the two-time defending champions, you don’t because your friendship clouds your judgment.

But at the same time, if you’re Cole, how about for once, FOR ONCE you deliver in a big spot? Cole supposedly talked Boone into letting him stay in the game, but there wasn’t much talking needed. Boone knew he was going to the mound with the plan to leave Cole in, wanting to create a buzz and theatrics for the Stadium crowd that had to witness the latest demoralizing loss to the Dodgers. The last time Cole stood on that mound in a big spot was against the same Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series when he pooped his pants in the fifth inning and let a no-hitter turn into a tie game.

3. Boone and Cole are both at fault for Friday’s mess, but they’re not alone. It was another pathetic effort from an offense that provided one run, which came as the result of an outfield error and passed ball. Roki Sasaki went into the game with a 5.33 ERA and 5.58 FIP after pitching to a 4.46 ERA and 5.80 FIP last season. He hasn’t been able to get anyone out with any consistency since debuting in the majors, and yet, he threw 5 2/3 innings without allowing an earned run against the Yankees. Sasaki has had two starts in the majors of at least four innings without allowing an earned run. One of them came against the major-league-worst Angels last month and the other was Friday night against the Yankees.

4. The Yankees tried to perform the same comeback act they successfully pulled off for three straight days against the Nationals before the All-Star break. Trailing 2-1, Trent Grisham drew a one-out walk in the eighth. Ben Rice then drove an 0-1 pitch off the base of the wall in right-center. It looked like it was going to clear the wall to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead, but it stayed in the park. Grisham must have thought it was going to go over the wall as well, because he chose to jog from first to second. Once he realized it wasn’t going to leave the park, he picked up his pace, but didn’t really go into his full stride until he saw Luis Rojas waving his home. Mookie Betts received a cutoff throw on the move from Andy Pages and fired home slightly wide, but in time for Dalton Rushing to catch the ball on the first-base side of home and pull it back to tag out Grisham for the second out of the inning.

The mistake in this situation was on Rojas. Know your players. Grisham isn’t fast, and even if he were, it wouldn’t make up for his lackadaisical effort in everything he does. To make matters worse, there was one out in the inning when Rojas sent Grisham. (Boone, of course, said he liked the send by Rojas.) As the great Katie Sharp pointed out, entering Friday, Grisham had taken an extra base only 23 percent of the time this season, ranking 145th out of 151 qualified players. During his Yankees tenure, he has been on first base when a double was hit 21 times and has only scored twice.

With Rice on second and two outs and the left-handed Alex Vesia on the mound, Dave Roberts threw up four fingers for Paul Goldschmidt to bring up Cody Bellinger. Bellinger hits lefties as well as, if not better than, he hits righties, but Roberts was telling his former player whom the Dodgers non-tendered at age 27, that he knew he wouldn’t come through in that spot. And Bellinger didn’t come through. He popped up the first pitch he saw to end the inning.

5. The Yankees played poorly with their inability to score a non-error-aided run, their starting pitcher’s inability to bear down ever, their manager’s inability to manage and their third-base coach’s inability to successfully perform the one job he infrequently has to perform. But it’s not like the Dodgers played well. Pages had the miscue in center field that helped lead to the Yankees’ only run, Rushing whiffed on catching a slider in the air and the Dodgers offense relied on one Muncy swing. The difference is the Dodgers know how to win and they especially know how to win against the Yankees.

6. The Dodgers have the best record in the majors. Will Smith is on the injured list and has missed 46 games this year. Tyler Glasnow is on the IL and has made seven starts. Blake Snell is on the IL and has made one start. Kike Hernandez is on the IL and has four plate appearances this season. Edwin Diaz is on the IL and has appeared in seven games. The Dodgers are 26 games above .500 with a 12 1/2-game lead in the NL West despite all of that, and despite Shohei Ohtani’s OPS being 72 points below where it was last year and Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernandez all being below-league-average hitters this season. It’s hard to hear excuses for the Yankees’ injury issues and underperformance when you compare them to the Dodgers. The difference is that when the calendar turns to the second season, the Dodgers know how to turn it on, a trait the franchise they beat again on Friday and embarrassed two years ago once possessed.

7. There are so many current Yankees I hate watching play baseball that I don’t know who I’m most excited about not having to watch play baseball anymore when the time comes, whether through trade, free agency, DFA, non-tender or release. Is it Jazz Chisholm, whose approach at the plate remains as annoying as his words when he opens his mouth? Is it Austin Wells, who remains the single worst hitter in the major leagues? Is it Anthony Volpe, who went from being “fucking elite” to being “fucking useless” as a one-position bench player? Is it Grisham, who dogs it to catchable balls in the outfield and on the bases and is an automatic out against the types of pitchers who pitch in the postseason? The amount of Yankees who suck greatly outweigh the amount of Yankees who don’t suck. When Aaron Judge returns, most of the team will still suck.

8. The update on Judge wasn’t much of an update. If we have learned anything about Judge in his career it’s that he doesn’t heal quickly, so finding out he’s still unable to do anything to help him return to the field wasn’t exactly news. It was an update I expected. Judge claims he’s returning this season, and I believe him, but anything less than the otherworldly version of Judge isn’t going to be enough for this team to do what they have never done in the Judge era.

9. Friday was a typical Yankees-Dodgers game in this era of the Dodgers getting over the championship hump: the Yankees lost. With the loss, the Yankees missed out on an opportunity to make up serious ground in the division race with the Rays being swept in a doubleheader against the Red Sox, who have won 12 straight,. The Yankees now trail the Rays by three in the loss column, but they only lead the Red Sox by five in the same column.

10. Sunday is an opportunity for the Yankees to prove they aren’t going to keep getting bullied by the Dodgers in every facet of the game in every time they play them. The only problem is Ryan Weathers is starting and his career numbers against the Dodgers from his days with the Padres and Marlins are ugly. You would think the Yankees’ offense could do something against Emmet Sheehan and his 4.81 ERA, but that 4.81 ERA looks Cy Young-caliber compared to Sasaki’s and Sasaki dominated them. How good or bad the rest of the weekend turns out will fall on the right arm of Cam Schlittler and the left-handed bat of Ben Rice once again, which has come to be expected.

1. The Yankees had to win at least two games at Tropicana Field this week. Anything worse and their division chances would be in peril. They took care of business in the most Yankees way possible by doing the bare minimum and winning two of four against the first-place Rays. It was ugly as the offense struck out 45 times with just two walks across the first three games before exploding for 12 runs in the series finale — the first time they scored more than five runs in a game dating back to June 17.

2. As currently constructed, the way the Yankees are going to have to win in the postseason is how they won the first game of the series: get a dominant starting pitching performance that hands the ball off to one reliever and hit the ball over the wall. The offense went 3-for-30 with two walks and 17 strikeouts, but those “3” were all home runs (a three-run shot from Jose Caballero and a pair of solo home runs from Caballero and Ben Rice), and Cam Schlittler provided eight innings of one-run ball. The Yankees don’t make enough frequent contact to score by stringing together consecutive base hits, and that’s against non-postseason starters. Once they get into the postseason and see only elite starters and relievers, the odds of them scoring in ways other than with home runs will drop precipitously. The win on Monday is how they have to win this fall. The losses on Tuesday and Wednesday are how they will lose this fall. The win on Thursday (in which they scored 12 runs on 14 hits) was an outlier, as noted by their inability to score more than five runs in a game in more than three weeks.

3. Unfortunately, this all holds true if or when Aaron Judge returns. Brian Cashman showed his face at the Trop on Thursday and said Judge would be re-imaged during the All-Star break. He also said he doesn’t expect that imaging to come back clean.

“I don’t think we’re anticipating it’s coming back clean,” Cashman said. “I think we’re anticipating and hopeful that it’s showing the healing process.”

It’s likely that if Judge returns he will have to play with and through this injury and because the Yankees are built around one single bat, not having that bat at 100 percent is problematic. Yes, Judge at even 50 percent is better than the majority of players in the league, but when you have as much dead wood as the Yankees have in their lineup, you need Judge to be as close to 100 percent as possible and that now seems impossible for the remainder of 2026.

4. Cashman also discussed Giancarlo Stanton who hasn’t played since injuring his calf on April 24. The day after that injury, Stanton said, “I feel better than yesterday. I’m going to give it 24 hours, maybe [Sunday] see where we’re at and decide what to do. Stanton got hurt in the 26th game of the season. Friday will be the 94th game of the season.

“He had a new injury, which kind of resets the whole thing,” Cashman said of Stanton’s recent setback. “It’s an unfortunate circumstance. Certainly, we’d love to have him in that lineup.”

Cashman says a lot of outlandish things, like calling the 2023 Yankees that went 82-80 “really fucking good” or defending Anthony Volpe’s performance or continuing to support Aaron Boone (like he did again Thursday), but Cashman’s November 2023 comments on Stanton continue to hold up: “He’s going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game.” (Stanton’s agent Joel Wolfe should have to issue an apology for his retaliatory comments toward Cashman over Cashman’s remarks.)

5. Even if Judge comes back and is close to his normal self and Stanton comes back and is his normal streaky self, those two don’t solve the Yankees’ swing-and-miss issue (and likely make it worse) and they don’t remove all of the remaining bad hitters from the lineup. I thought a super rotation of Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon could make up for the team’s offensive and bullpen deficiencies, but Cole has been shaky (as expected returning from Tommy John surgery) and both Fried and Rodon are on the injured list. Will Warren is back to his old ways of being consistently bad, Ryan Weathers is the latest failed young controllable starter acquired by Cashman, and the Yankees decided to go with a bullpen game on Thursday in their most important game of the season to date rather than sit through another Elmer Rodriguez grind or a Brendan Beck debacle.

6. It’s hard for me to believe that Thursday was anything other than an anomalous offensive performance. You have to be the biggest Yankees homer to think it was the start of something after the way the team has performed over the last three weeks. The Yankees got to a starter they never get to with one big inning and then tacked on against the Rays’ versions of Camilo Doval and Jake Bird and got to face a position player in the ninth inning (who they were unable to score against). As of now, Thursday was nothing more than a much-needed win to keep the division within reach at five games in the loss column.

7. Thursday was the most important game of the season to date and before that it was Wednesday and before that it was Tuesday and before that it was Monday. Going back to Monday, in what was then the most important game of the season to date, Anthony Volpe was on the bench. The Yankees won and he was on the bench again on Tuesday even with a left-handed starter going for Tampa Bay. He started on Wednesday and then was on the bench again on Thursday. The two games the Yankees won in the series had Volpe on the bench.

I’m sick of Volpe. It’s not anything he has done. It’s what he represents. He represents the Yankees’ arrogance, smugness and their we’re-smarter-than-everyone attitude that has tarnished this era. I don’t understand what the Yankees see in him after four years and more than 2,000 plate appearances other than not wanting to admit they were wrong in their evaluation of an all-time bust. I really don’t understand fans who still want to see him play every day. There is nothing he does well. He doesn’t hit for contact and has no power. He’s not a good baserunner or basestealer. His footwork at shortstop looks like his ankles are tied together and his arm is a disgrace for the position. There’s not a single part of baseball he does well and there’s not a single part of the game he has improved upon since his debut. He has one home run (May 26) and eight extra-base hits in 42 games this year. His OPS this season is .664. It was .663 last year and .657 the year before. This is who he is! What more do you need to see? Another 2,000 plate appearances and a litany of errors on routine plays?

If Volpe played second base and batted ninth, he would still suck and it would still suck that he was an everyday player for the Yankees, but the way he was viewed by the fan base would be much different. But he doesn’t play second base. He only plays shortstop when he’s not the best shortstop on the current roster. And he doesn’t bat ninth. He hasn’t batted ninth since June 23, nearly three weeks ago. During that time in reverse chronological order, these are the places in the order he has batted as a starter: 6, 5, 5, 6, 5, 6, 8, 7, 6, 5. In those games, he went 5-for-36 with one extra-base hit and 10 strikeouts. The Yankees went 1-9 in those games.

8. It’s not that I think Caballero is a star or going to be a star. Caballero pretty much is who he is at this point too, but he makes the routine plays at short look routine, he’s a pest in the batter’s box, has pop and provides big hits. There isn’t a single thing Volpe does on a baseball field better than Caballero. The only thing Volpe has ever done (and it’s not even something he did) was be a first-round pick, and the Yankees for whatever reason are unwilling to succumb to the idea that they misevaluated him or were unable to complete his development.

I don’t want to have to keep caring about who is the day’s starting shortstop. No team with a shortstop problem is winning the World Series. The only way out of this mess is for George Lombard Jr. to return to playing at Triple-A and return to mashing the way he was before his finger injury. Lombard Jr. is the resolution to ending the Volpe experiment and providing the Yankees with stability at the position for the future.

9. This weekend — meaning the weekend leading into the All-Star break — has been a problem for the Aaron Boone Yankees. The Yankees seem to go through the motions this weekend annually like they are breaking the monotony of spring training to head north. These games this weekend against the Nationals are immensely important, not only because every game of the season is immensely important, but because when you piss away nearly a month of games it enhances the importance of the remaining games.

10. The Nationals are a problem. They lead the majors in runs and are above .500 this late in the season for the first time in years. They would be a problem for the Yankees if the Yankees were at full strength and with the Yankees in their current state, they’re a terrible matchup given their ability to put up crooked numbers of runs and the Yankees’ inability to put up crooked numbers of hits let alone runs.

The series opener will be Ryan Weathers against a left-handed opener in Carson Palmquist. I have no idea which version of Weathers will show up. Will it be the pitcher who has the ability to throw seven scoreless innings or the one who allows five earned runs and can’t get through the fifth inning? If it’s the former, it still may not be good enough given the state of the Yankees’ offense. If it’s the latter, they won’t have a chance, the Boone Swoon will continue and it will be another year the Boone Yankees limp to the break. If Thursday’s win over the Rays was really the start of something and the end of this edition of the Boone Swoon, we’ll know on Friday.

1. After getting their asses kicked by the last-place Red Sox all weekend at Fenway Park, the Yankees returned home and the ass-kicking continued with a 7-3 loss to the Tigers, a team that entered the game with a 12-28 road record. The final score wasn’t indicative of the Yankees’ latest pathetic effort, as their starter lasted 1 2/3 innings, the offense had one hit through 7 1/3 innings and the defense committed two more errors.

2. But this is what the Yankees do, baby. They love this. They eat this up. It’s a sickness. Right, Aaron Boone? The only thing sick about Monday night’s blowout at the hands of the Tigers was that people (like yours truly) watched the game.

Following Sunday’s crushing defeat to the Red Sox to cap off a four-game sweep, Boone said (after his “eat this up” and “sickness” rant), “The bottom line is we didn’t play well this weekend and we gotta do better.” In their first attempt to do better, the Yankees were down 5-0 in the second inning and 7-0 in the the fourth inning and didn’t score a run until the game was essentially over.

3. Ryan Weathers turned in his worst start of the year, unable to get through two innings. The latest failed controllable starter acquired through trade by Brian Cashman allowed seven hits and a walk in 1 2/3 innings. Maybe the next controllable starter Cashman trades for will finally be the one who works out after 28 years of misses.

4. The offense took another night off. After getting exactly three hits in each of the last three games against the Red Sox, the Yankees accomplished the feat again with just three hits on Monday. Four straight games with exactly three hits. Who says the Yankees aren’t consistent? They had one hit in the game until there was one out in the seventh inning. During the Boone era, the Yankees have set a lot of franchise records, taking down 100-plus-year-old records of humiliation, and during this June, they seemingly have done something every game the franchise hasn’t done since being called the Yankees. Over the last four games, the offense has 38 strikeouts, 12 hits and eight walks, a feat no Major League Baseball team has done since at least 1898 (thanks to Katie Sharp for the stat). It was also the first time in franchise history the Yankees had three hits or fewer in four straight games (another stat from Katie Sharp).

5. Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger have officially disappeared. Rice went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts on Monday and hasn’t had a hit since last Wednesday. He hasn’t driven a run in since Father’s Day. Bellinger went 0-for-4 with a strikeout and has two hits since Father’s Day. He hasn’t driven a run in since June 17.

6. Austin Wells got to start another game because why wouldn’t he? Despite being the worst hitter in all of baseball, Wells has been treated better than Jorge Posada was at the end of his career, when Posada posted a a .714 OPS and 90 OPS+ in his final season at age 40. Wells would do anything to have a .714 OPS and 90 OPS+ right now in his age 26 season, as he’s sitting on a .493 OPS and 39 OPS+. (Yes, he’s been 61 percent worse than league average offensively.) Wells would be a more effective offensive player at this point if he were go to the plate without a bat. But he keeps going to the plate with a bat and keeps striking out. Wells went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts on Monday and added another defensive miscue with a passed ball. Over the weekend, Boone said of Wells, “I feel like he’s moving the needle right now, believe it or not.” Wells is 1-for-13 since the weekend and 2-for-23 since coming off the injured list.

7. When things are going badly, Boone likes to talk about how “he believes in the guys in the room because of their track records.” (We are likely to hear this cliché for the first time in 2026 as early as this week.) Well, Boone’s favorite player in Anthony Volpe has found the back of his baseball card. After his “hot” start upon his undeserved call-up, Volpe’s track record has played true and his OPS is back down in the 600s at .690. It won’t be long before it’s at his career mark of .665.

8. Jose Caballero made a throwing error at third base because he’s not a third baseman and the great defender that is Bellinger dropped a fly ball in left field. If Bellinger is going to start playing Boone ball in the field, the Yankees might as well pack up the bats and balls for 2026.

9. The only thing the Yankees and YES have right now to discuss is moral victories. Michael Kay mentioned how Wells is happy as long as the pitching staff is doing well because it means he’s contributing defensively, and he’s only saying that because you could pick someone out of the right-field bleachers to bat for Wells and they would have the same chance at reaching base. Late in the game, Paul O’Neill talked about how the Yankees need to have good at-bats and take something from an at-bat into tomorrow. The Yankees have lost five straight and their AL East lead is now a three-game deficit in the loss column. How about the focus being on actual, tangible results like wins and losses, which are the only two things that matter?

10. “We are going to start playing better,” Weathers said. “We are going to win some more ballgames. Every team goes through a little rough patch.”

Does every team go through the same rough patch at the same exact time every season? The Yankees have lost five straight and nine of 12. At what point does a “little rough patch” become something more? I think we’re at that point. There is no help on the way in the immediate future. The lineup you see, the rotation they have and the bullpen they roster are what they’re going to be for weeks, if not a month or more. The Yankees that can’t hit or defend or protect leads are the Yankees for the indefinite future. And to stop this free fall, they get to face Tarik Skubal on Tuesday.

1. I thought this season could be different. I thought maybe the annual Boone Swoon wouldn’t happen. Not because I thought the clueless manager would get a clue in his ninth year on the job or that the “Run It Back” offense would be better than it was last year or that the piss poor defense that has defined this Yankees era wouldn’t constantly piss itself or that the bullpen would be trustworthy enough, but because I thought this rotation wouldn’t allow it to happen. What I didn’t account for was the manager, offense, defense and bullpen overpowering the rotation in baseball and making it irrelevant.

2. This weekend was bad. Very bad. The Yankees went from having the division lead to now being two games back of the Rays in the loss column. They were humiliated by a last-place Red Sox team that has had nothing to feel good about all season, and the Yankees gave them the four best days of their season. They lost a Cam Schlittler start in which they didn’t allow an earned run, they were dominated by Payton Tolle again, they lost a Gerrit Cole start because Cole can’t beat the Red Sox whether Rafael Devers is on the team or not and then came the grand finale: the worst loss of the season on Sunday night. The Yankees scored eight non-automatic-runner runs in four games at Fenway Park. They had three hits in each of the last three games of the series. They blew a two-run lead with Schlittler on the mound in the opener and then blew a two-run lead in the 10th inning in the finale, further improving their record and reputation as the worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented.

3. The Yankees have now lost eight of 11. Their lead in the AL East has become a deficit for the second time this season. I thought the worst part of the weekend for Aaron Boone would be him walking onto the field in the 10th inning on Sunday with an infield glove for Amed Rosario to use with the winning run on third and one out and the current at-bat already in a 1-0 count. But then Boone sat in his office at Fenway Park and gave one of the most tone-deaf, disturbing postgame press conferences of his nine-year tenure.

“We got a really good freakin’ team,” Boone said. “We played crappy on this trip, feels bad, kind of pissed off.”

There’s nothing the Yankees love more than telling you how good they are when things go badly. Brian Cashman said the 2023 team that went 82-80, had the worst record by a Yankees team in three decades and missed the postseason entirely in a format in which 40 percent of the league gets in was “really fucking good.” After the 2024 World Series disaster, they spent the offseason telling us how good they were to win the AL pennant, never mentioning their path to a pennant was the AL Central road of the Royals and Guardians. Boone told us the 2025 team was “the best he ever managed” and that team had to play in the Wild Card Series and won one game in the ALDS. The front office decided to run it back with the same roster that got run out of the postseason, and now they want you to know how good they are after getting swept in a four-game series by the last-place Red Sox in a year in which there are two other teams in the AL above .500 and one of them is the White Sox.

4. At full strength, the Yankees have a good team. Not a “really freakin’ good” team and nowhere near a great team. After all these years, their lineup is still reliant on one bat, the rotation isn’t as sound as it’s made out to be, the bullpen has one truly trustworthy arm and after nine seasons, the manager continues to show why hiring someone who never coached, let alone managed at any level should have never been given the keys to a team coming off a Game 7 defeat with a chance to go to the World Series. He continues to speak like someone who has never won anything at the major-league level, wanting people to believe he knows what it takes to win when all he has known is postseason failure.

5. How could he only be “kind of pissed off?” He was more pissed about Jazz Chisholm bringing a lollipop out to second base (an antic he supposedly didn’t even know took place until after the game) than he was about losing four straight to a last-place team, losing eight of 11 and once again losing the division lead to the Rays. The weekend was ugly and these last two weeks have been uglier.

With no date in sight for Aaron Judge to be re-imaged and Giancarlo Stanton only going through “low-volume workouts,” the offense you see is what you get. Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger have failed miserably to carry the offense when it was needed the most. Rice is hitting .114/.139/.200 over the last nine games and Bellinger is hitting .135/.273/.162 over the last 11 games. The Yankees had a top-heavy lineup with Judge and Stanton and Trent Grisham in it, without them, they need Rice and Bellinger to not be the zeros they have been these last couple of weeks and to pray the clock doesn’t strike midnight on Paul Goldschmidt’s renaissance.

6. I have given up thinking Jazz Chisholm will do anything this season other than hit the occasional solo home run and then take 49 seconds to jog around the bases. Chisholm led off for the first time as a Yankee on Sunday night and was eventually ejected after arguing a check-swing call and throwing his helmet like the baby he is. When Chisholm isn’t sucking on lollipops at the plate or in the field or telling the media he’s going to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases or that the Yankees are going to win the World Series, he’s leaving every runner in scoring position stranded and flailing at breaking balls low and away. With each game that comes off the schedule, we are that much closer to the end of Chisholm as a Yankee.

7. I couldn’t sleep after Sunday’s loss and I found myself searching for the worst single-season OPS for a regular player in major-league history with Austin Wells now at .499. The players who finished a season with a lower OPS than Wells all played in the early 1900s. Barry Bonds had four seasons with a higher OBP than Wells’ current OPS. Despite Wells being the undisputed worst offensive player in all of Major League Baseball, over the weekend, Boone said, “I feel like he’s moving the needle right now, believe it or not.” Wells went 1-for-11 in the series and is 2-for-21 since coming off the injured list. We are now in the second half of the season as Sunday was the 83rd game and Wells has two doubles, four home runs and 10 RBIs. Stanton has six doubles, three home runs and 14 RBIs and last played on April 24.

8. The Yankees called up Oswaldo Cabrera because he had been red-hot in June and hitting left-handed pitching extremely well. The Yankees faced three lefties in a row from Thursday through Saturday and Cabrera was on the bench all three games. Then they had him play against a righty on Sunday night after having not played in any game at any level over the previous four days.

9. Every game Anthony Volpe plays shortstop for the Yankees is a game they choose not to field their best team. Volpe’s arm is a disgrace for the position at the major-league level. I watched Bobby Witt Jr. finish turning an inning-ending double play on Sunday afternoon purely on arm strength that would have never been possible for Volpe and would have led to the inning being extended. Yes, it’s unfair to compare the best shortstop in baseball to the worst everyday player in baseball since his 2023 debut, but my point is that Volpe doesn’t defend well enough to justify his hitting, and if you haven’t noticed, his little hot streak is over and he’s back below the league-average line offensively. It’s only a matter of time until his season OPS is in line with his .665 career OPS. And when it is, we will still be watching him play every day for the Yankees as we remain trapped watching the same season unfold each year.

10. Last Monday, I listed the the tough opposing probables for the next 10 games and they are 2-5 in the first seven games of the 10-day stretch. Now they get to face Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal again to close out June before beginning a July littered with games against the Rays, Dodgers and Phillies, and also the .500-or-better Cubs, White Sox, Nationals and Pirates.

With no expected return date for Judge or Stanton or Max Fried and no immediate help for the bullpen, the offense and bullpen are going to have to hit and pitch better, the defense is going to have to play major-league-caliber defense and the manager is going to have to put the best team on the field as often as possible or this swoon will make previous swoons look like a walk in the park.

1. If I told you Cam Schlittler would throw five innings and allow no earned runs with nine strikeouts and the bullpen would throw four innings without allowing an earned run in the series opener against the Red Sox, you would have likely asked how many runs the Yankees won a shutout win by. But they didn’t shut out the Red Sox. They didn’t win. They lost 6-3 as the Yankees’ defense combined to allow six unearned runs in what was an unmitigated defensive disaster.

2. “We just didn’t do a good job taking care of the ball tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “It’s just not up to the way we’ve been playing.”

I disagree. The defense during the Boone era has always been questionable at best, and of late it has been very bad. Four errors on Thursday, one on Wednesday, two on Monday, two on Sunday, one on Saturday, one on Friday. What are you talking about, Boone?

The four errors were the most the Yankees have committed this season. It was the first game the Yankees allowed six or more unearned runs and no earned runs since 1913. The Boone era is full of memorable history.

3. Austin Wells made an error with another catcher’s interference, Schlittler threw a pickoff attempt to second base away, Amed Rosario let a ground ball go through his legs and Yerry De los Santos had a fielding error. Add in a couple of pop-ups that dropped in and the defense was even worse than the box score indicates.

4. Schlittler went to a lot of deep counts in the game in what was the first time the Red Sox have ever challenged him, but if Rosario fields the grounder that went through his legs in the fifth, the Yankees turn an inning-ending double play. Instead, that miscue led to four unearned runs in the inning and a 2-0 Yankees lead turned into a 4-2 deficit. Boone said the ball Rosario couldn’t handle was “in fairness, absolutely lathered,” which was an embarrassing comment. It’s the major leagues. It’s a play that has to be made. It’s a play that Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero make. It’s a play that Miguel Andujar makes.

“Definitely a play there that I’ve just got to make,” Rosario said. “I take responsibility there.”

Who else would take responsibility?

5. The Rosario miscue led to the first run and the Red Sox tied the game on a sacrifice fly when Jose Caballero couldn’t make an accurate throw home on a shallow fly ball. The Red Sox don’t try to score there if Cody Bellinger is in left field there, but when you have an infielder playing the outfield, that’s what you get, and the Yankees love nothing more than to have their best shortstop not play shortstop.

6. Rosario was in the lineup because the left-handed Connelly Early started. But it made no sense that Rosario was allowed to hit against the just-entered Garrett Whitlock to lead off the eighth inning. The Yankees had two left-handed options on the bench and Boone inexplicably stayed with Rosario. He struck out swinging on four pitches.

7. Offensively, it was another poor showing. The Yankees struck out 10 times, which is bad, and yet it’s not as bad as they’ve been at making contact of late. Rosario, Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells all struck out twice. Ben Rice went 0-for-5 and Bellinger went 0-for-4. It’s going to be hard to win when those two don’t produce. Add in the inability to make major-league plays defensively, and you get the kind of result the Yankees experienced on Thursday.

8. “It’s always tough when we lose,” Caballero said. “The good thing is, there’s always tomorrow.”

Spoken like a player under Annie Boone. There’s always tomorrow … It’s only a day away.

9. Tomorrow in this instance is Friday and it will be Will Warren against Payton Tolle. Tolle dominated the Yankees for six innings in his April 23 start against them at Fenway Park. This is how the first four of those six innings went:

Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Groundout
Strikeout
Groundout
Flyout
Single
Walk
Single
Strikeout
Flyout
Strikeout

The Yankees finally broke through in the fifth inning when Jazz Chisholm hit the first pitch of the inning around Pesky’s Pole to tie the game at 1. Tolle pitched a 1-2-3 sixth inning and left with a 2-1 lead. The Yankees then went to work against the Red Sox’ bullpen in an eventual 4-2 win.

10. Tolle is really good, and against a lineup that is missing the right-handed bats of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, it’s easy to envision him mowing the Yankees down like Early did on Thursday. Warren is going to have be really good and the defense is going to have to avoid producing six unearned runs for the Yankees to avoid a second straight loss to the last-place Red Sox.

1. A day after Jazz Chisholm was ridiculously playing defense with a lollipop in his mouth, the outspoken, 50/50 chaser with a .731 OPS stopped the Yankees’ three-game losing streak with a two-run, go-ahead home run in the sixth inning against the Tigers.

“I was looking for the pitch all night,” Chisholm said. “I missed it earlier in the game, so I was on it.”

The Yankees were able to overcome an early 2-0 deficit to take a 4-2 lead and hold on for a 4-3 win in Detroit.

2. Monday marked the second time this season Chisholm played in a game with a lollipop in his mouth, after taking an at-bat with one earlier this season. Aaron Boone claims he didn’t know about Chisholm batting with a lollipop in his mouth and also wasn’t aware Chisholm played defense with one either until after the game. Instead of defending Chisholm like Boone has with every opportunity (including the idiotic baserunning decision on the infield pop-up in Miami last year), Boone said Chisholm playing with a lollipop “pissed him off” and that he spoke to his second baseman about it.

“He can have all the lollipops he wants now,” Boone said after Tuesday’s game.

3. The home run was Chisholm’s sixth in June and 12th of the year, putting him just 38 away from his goal of 50. (He’s 27 stolen bases away from his goal of 50 steals.)

The Yankees needed the Chisholm home run because Carlos Rodon turned in a poor start: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. It was the eighth start of the season for Rodon and the fifth time he failed to go at least six innings. (He has yet to get more than 18 outs this season.) Yankees starters have only gone at least six innings in two of the last seven games.

4. A day after going 7-for-34 with two walks and 12 strikeouts the Yankees went 9-for-35 with two walks and 13 strikeouts. Every Yankee struck out at least once on Tuesday, Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez both struck out twice and Spencer Jones struck out three times.

5. Fernando Cruz, Brent Headrick and David Bednar combined for 3 2/3 scoreless innings and the defense played a clean game. It was a much-needed win in a game against a really tough opposing starter in Casey Mize. With the Rays losing to the Royals, the Yankees are now two games up in the loss column in the division.

6. Austin Wells provided an RBI double in the sixth inning that ended up being the difference in the game. It was Wells’ second double of the season. Yes, you read that right: his second double of the season in the 78th game of the season.

7. Rice is 0-for-9 with four strikeouts in Detroit and his OPS has dipped under 1.000 as he’s no longer one of two players in the majors with an OPS of at least 1.000. Yordan Alvarez stands alone at the moment. (Rice is now third in the majors behind Alvarez and Nick Kurtz.)

8. The first thing I do when I see a series against the Tigers coming up is figure out if the Yankees will see Tarik Skubal. Unfortunately, they will on Wednesday (and again next week At Yankee Stadium). Skubal missed more than six weeks after needing elbow surgery and has been OK, but nowhere near his Cy Young-winning, dominant self since returning. That doesn’t mean he won’t be that version of himself against the Yankees.

9. There has been a lot of talk about the Yankees going all out for Skubal at this year’s deadline. If it takes some combination of Will Warren/Elmer Rodriguez and other starting pitchers, sure, go for it. If it involves George Lombard Jr., no thanks. Yes, Skubal at his best is the best pitcher in baseball, but he’s not at his best, had surgery last month and can be had for just money after the season. As a Scott Boras client, Skubal is going to free agency no matter what happens between now and the end of the season, so him going to the Yankees and pitching well or enjoying his time there won’t matter. Any team could use Skubal, even with one with the Yankees’ starting pitching, but they don’t need him to win a championship. Starting pitching won’t be the reason the Yankees don’t win the World Series.

10. Ryan Weathers gets the ball in the series finale and will look to build off his most recent dominant start against the White Sox. The last time Weathers was coming off a strong start he proceeded to have three starts in a row allowing five-plus earned runs, so there’s no telling what version of Weathers will show up on Wednesday. For as good as the Yankees’ rotation is and has been, right now, aside from Schlittler, there’s no telling what any of the other four starters will give you. But with Skubal on the mound, Weathers will need to be as good as he’s been all year for the Yankees to win this series.

1. In the last two weeks, the Yankees have gotten two games postponed, one to late August and one to late September. The first postponement came against the Rays when they were hotter than hot. The next day, the Yankees beat them and the Rays are 3-10 since with the Yankees having cut a seven-game deficit in the loss column down to one. The second postponement came against the Red Sox with the Red Sox having the pitching advantage with Ranger Suarez against Will Warren, and the Yankees without Aaron Judge. Instead, the Yankees were able to start Cam Schlittler against Suarez, won the game and prevented a game without Judge from being played. In the moment, these postponements sucked because postponements suck. In the big picture, these two postponements were blessings.

2. Before Max Fried got hurt, it looked like Ryan Weathers had saved his rotation spot in the battle to be the fifth starter over Will Warren with Carlos Rodon returning. Then Fried went on the injured list and the battle ended with the Yankees needing both Weathers and Warren in the rotation. There’s still a chance the Yankees need both when Fried returns because someone else could get hurt or they could go to a six-man rotation, but if not, it seems like Weathers could be the one to lose his spot. Friday was Weathers’ third time allowing five earned runs in his last four starts. He gave up two home runs to the Red Sox in Friday’s 5-3 loss.

3. Brian Cashman has been trying to find a young, controllable starter through trade since he became general manager nearly three decades ago and Weathers is his latest attempt to conquer that goal. There’s a chance Weathers will work out and be what so many (Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray, Jameson Taillon, etc.) weren’t, but so far he’s looked an awful lot like all of the other names that have failed to be consistent performers in the role.

4. Here is what I wrote before the weekend series:

The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs … the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

The Yankees scored three runs on Friday and lost. Then they scored six runs on Sunday and won. Five of the six runs on Sunday came in an eighth-inning explosion against the Red Sox’ bullpen that included two home runs from Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm. A loss on Sunday would have been crushing because it would have meant wasting another Cam Schlittler performance (5.1 IP, 1 ER) and with the offense and the injured list what they are, the Yankees can’t afford to waste Schlittler starts.

5. The Yankees can’t afford to give away outs either and they are willingly doing so every time the lineup is posted and Anthony Volpe’s name is in it. On Sunday, Volpe’s weak arm led to the Red Sox’ first run when Volpe was unable to throw the ball home despite having ample time to get the runner on a bad send. It’s a play every major-league shortstop should make, and it’s a play that likely every major-league shortstop other than Volpe does make. While Volpe was letting the Red Sox tie the game at 1 , the Yankees best shortstop was standing in right field watching it unfold.

6. Volpe left the bases loaded in his second at-bat on Sunday and left the go-ahead run in scoring position in his third at-bat. He finished the weekend 1-for-7 with a walk. His OPS is down to .644 on the season. He was undeservingly recalled nearly a month ago and has done nothing to be worthy of remaining in the majors. He can’t hit, he can’t field and he can’t throw. His “hot” start has turned into a mirage just like it did last year and the year before that and the year before that. Without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton (and even Jasson Dominguez), the Yankees need to optimize on the margins as much as possible. They need to squeeze every last percentage point out of their win probability added on offense and defense and playing Volpe at shortstop hurts both. At this point, if you like Volpe, you don’t like the Yankees.

7. J.C. Escarra got sent down before the weekend only to be recalled because Austin Wells went on the injured list with cervical headaches. I’m guessing Wells’ recent change in catcher’s mask is related to the headaches. But if Wells has been experiencing headaches severe enough to send him to the IL, why has he continued to play? Either he didn’t say anything, which hurt him and the team, or he did say something, and the team continued to play him. I think it’s the latter. Given the way past injuries have been handled by the Yankees, it’s likely Wells said something and it was disregarded. When he went to the equipment team and asked to use the hockey goalie mask instead of the traditional catcher’s mask he has always used, didn’t they question the change? Didn’t they want to know why?

8. The headaches aren’t an excuse for Wells, but they will be used as one. He has been catching full games without issue, and he has looked as bad at the plate as he has dating back to last season. So underperformance isn’t anything new for Wells. He has one more hit, as many home runs and seven fewer RBIs than Stanton this season and Stanton hasn’t played since April 24.

9. A six-game road trip to Cleveland and Toronto will be tough. I would sign up for 3-3 right now given the Yankees’ offense and knowing that Boone is going to force idiotic decisions like Volpe at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh in at least half the games on this trip. This is how the probables will likely play out:

Monday: Will Warren vs. Gavin Williams
Tuesday: Gerrit Cole vs. Slade Cecconi
Wednesday: Carlos Rodon vs. Parker Messick
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Ryan Weathers vs. Braydon Fisher/Spencer Miles
Saturday: Cam Schlittler vs. Kevin Gausman
Sunday: Will Warren vs. Patrick Corbin

The Yankees are getting a gift by avoiding Trey Yesavage.

10. The Yankees will open the road trip against Williams, who they hit pretty well last week in the Bronx with three runs in 5 1/3 innings off him. (It didn’t matter because Cole was throwing batting practice.) Warren has only made one career start against the Guardians (last April), so that should play into the Yankees’ favor at least the first time through the order. I expect Warren to pitch well, but I have no expectations for the offense and won’t until Judge returns (and even then I have tempered expectations with the ‘Run It Back’ offense). But the offensive goal remains the same: Score four runs and (likely) win.

1. The Yankees beat a team with a winning record! Their 2-1 win over the Guardians on Thursday marked their fourth win of the season against teams better than .500 (though that stat is somewhat misleading since they lost a series to the Athletics in April when the A’s were over .500). The Yankees are the only team in the majors with fewer than eight wins against winning teams.

2. It wasn’t easy. The Yankees produced only five hits (one for extra bases) and two walks in the game. Slade Cecconi started for the Guardians with the third-worst ERA in the American League, and despite Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill spending multiple innings talking about how bad Cecconi has been and how he can’t strike anyone out, Cecconi threw six innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts. Unfortunately, that’s going to be life for the Yankees’ offense without Aaron Judge.

3. Judge is likely to be out for more than two months with a stress fracture in his ribs that the Yankees needed multiple days to diagnose. That’s not anything new for the Yankees when it comes to diagnosing an injury for Judge. Judge punctured a lung in September 2019 and it wasn’t diagnosed properly until spring training in 2020. The Yankees’ offense has gone as Judge has gone for the last decade and now it’s hard to see it going anywhere often without him.

4. The idea Judge is “expected to return this season” inspires very little confidence. The Yankees are batting close to 1.000 in being wrong on injury diagnoses and injury timelines during the Aaron Boone era. It’s why Boone freaked out on reporters asking him about what the latest specialist Judge is expected to see specializes in. It was a bad look for Boone made worse when he had to check with the team’s public relations head, only for the public relations head to say he didn’t know and would have to look into it. Not knowing what the specialist specializes in who your best player — whom you still owe more than $200 million — is going to visit isn’t a big deal. Nothing to see here. Maybe they can start ramping Judge up in a couple of months without re-imaging him like they did Luis Severino in 2019, only to eventually say in hindsight they should have re-imaged Severino before starting his throwing program.

5. The last time Judge missed an extended period of time was during 2023. Judge got hurt at Dodger Stadium on June 3, wasn’t in the lineup the next day and didn’t play again until July 28. The Yankees went 19-23 in his absence. He went on the injured list on pace to challenge his record-setting home run total from the year before. When he came back, his OPS dropped by 113 points and the Yankees went 27-30 and missed the playoffs.

6. These Yankees aren’t going to miss the playoffs, but they may not win the division without Judge for so long. The Yankees’ roster is built under the assumption that Judge won’t just be a superstar, but an otherworldly, once-in-a-generation player. When he’s anything other than the best hitter on the planet, the Yankees are just another team. It’s not a coincidence the Yankees are 11-12 since May 6 and that during that time Judge has a .677 OPS. He’s the single-most important player on the roster.

7. The Yankees as a whole are better equipped to handle life without Judge than they were in the past. They have the best rotation even without Max Fried. That alone is enough to prevent lengthy losing streaks and keep them in nearly every game. But the way they will have to win now will look a lot like it did on Thursday when they eked out two runs and needed a strong starting effort and a shutdown relief effort. The new expected ceiling of runs for the foreseeable future is four. Anything more than that will be a surprise and anything less than that should be expected. But as I wrote last week, the Yankees are dominant when they score four runs. It didn’t show against Cleveland because Cam Schlittler had the worst start of his career and Gerrit Cole was serving up batting practice, but the Yankees are 32-9 when they score four runs. That’s all they need to do: score four runs and have a 78 percent chance of winning.

8. If you thought the Yankees’ lineup was inconsistent and frustratingly bad before, well, you’re about to see a whole other level of it. The lineup went from three hitters to now two (Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger). There’s possibly a third in Paul Goldschmidt until the clock strikes midnight on his turn-back-the-clock production. Efforts like the one Cecconi had on Thursday are going become the norm. A lineup made up of two-thirds of batters who would do anything to have and maintain league-average metrics is going to be less fun to watch than it has been. The Yankees desperately need Giancarlo Stanton and Jasson Dominguez to return and they needed them back yesterday.

9. Ryan Weathers will get his first taste of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry on Friday night. Weathers has only faced three current Red Sox before, and they have all homered off of him. Weathers has allowed five earned runs in two of his last three starts, and that’s not going to cut it ever, let alone without Judge. Weathers needs to be the pitcher who’s capable of dominating like he did two weeks ago against the Rays or something close to that.

10. Former Yankee Sonny Gray goes for the Red Sox. Gray deserves to be booed endlessly. Not for his performance with the Yankees necessarily (which was good in 2017 before being putrid in 2018), but because of how he would assess his horrible performances with the team, always citing “good stuff” no matter how atrocious he was, and for the way he talked about his time with the Yankees this past winter, saying he never wanted to be traded there in 2017, even though he wrote a piece in The Players’ Tribune following the trade stating the opposite. I’m expecting Gray to pitch extremely well on Friday because that’s what ex-Yankees do against their former team. Weathers needs to be just as good, if not better, for the depleted offense.

1. Aaron Judge sat out with a bone bruise, Cam Schlittler had his worst start in the majors and the Yankees lost again to a team above .500. The Yankees have had some bad losses this season (mostly due to the bullpen), and while Tuesday’s loss wasn’t necessarily a “bad loss,” it was just a bad day.

2. The bad day started when the lineup was posted and Judge’s name wasn’t in it for the first time in 2026. A day off? Odd, considering the Yankees had Monday off. No, it wasn’t just a day off. Apparently, Judge has been dealing with discomfort for some time and it reached the point where he couldn’t play. At least we know why he has a .649 OPS since May 7. The injury seems to be a bone bruise in Judge’s rib cage that he’s feeling in his right shoulder? The last time Judge had a weird injury like this, it was an undiagnosed punctured lung that would have kept him out for the start of the 2020 season, if that season had started on time. I have zero faith that the Yankees will properly diagnose and treat Judge’s injury. The Yankees’ mismanagement of injuries during the Aaron Boone era has been a disgrace, dating back to 2018. Look no further than the Yankees telling us Giancarlo Stanton would avoid an injured list stint the day after hurting his calf in Houston on April 24. It’s June 3 and he hasn’t played since.

3. The bad day continued with Schlittler allowing five earned runs for the first time in 29 major-league starts (postseason included). He allowed his third home run of the season and couldn’t make it through five innings for the first time since last September. Oh well. If anyone deserves a pass for a bad game, it’s Schlittler.

4. The offense wasn’t very good, but that’s no surprise. The 13-run outburst on Sunday made everyone forget or not notice that the team sent the minimum amount of hitters to the plate in the other eight innings. On Tuesday, Paul Goldschmidt — batting second — drove in all four Yankees runs. Goldschmidt went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run. The rest of the lineup went 5-for-31 with no extra-base hits. The Yankees’ offense goes as Judge goes. That has been the case for a long time, and without Judge in the lineup, the offense went nowhere other than to another loss to a team with a winning record. Luckily, for the Yankees, there are only four other teams in the American League with winning records.

5. It does look like the Yankees will eventually get some internal bullpen help to begin to fix the weakest part of the team. Carlos Lagrange will being working out of the bullpen in Triple-A with the plan to join the Yankees’ bullpen and bolster a relief staff that has minimal trustworthy options and several DFA candidates.

6. The “hot” start Anthony Volpe had that allowed him to stay in the majors upon Jose Caballero’s return appears to be the fourth straight mirage to begin the season for him. Volpe went 0-for-4 on Tuesday and his OPS is down to .719. Soon enough he will be back to the mid-600s where he has always been.

7. Austin Wells would give up half of his salary to be in the mid-600s. Yet another 0-for-4 on Tuesday from Wells has his slash line down to .173/.288/.266. He remains at one double (hit on April 7) and seven RBIs (he has two since the end of April) on the season.

8. Jazz Chisholm went on the Tonight Show on Monday and said the Yankees were going to win the World Series. He said the same thing in 2024 and 2025 and then did everything he could in the playoffs to not help them win the World Series. The Guardians’ broadcast team wondering out loud how someone hitting .239 could get on the Tonight Show was pretty funny. I wish I had thought of that.

9. The answer to the Yankees’ shortstop problem may be getting closer to the majors. After going 7-for-55 (.127) with no extra-base hits in his first 15 Triple-A games, George Lombard Jr. is 20-for-55 (.364) with seven extra-base hits in his last 14 games. He’s starting to figure out the top minor-league level and once he does that, the Yankees may have the shortstop of the future they thought they were getting at the start of 2023.

10. Gerrit Cole will make his third start of the season on Wednesday. If he’s as good as he was in his first two, the Yankees will get back in the win column and pick up a win against a team with a winning record. The Guardians will send their best starter to the mound in Gavin Williams, who leads the league in wins (8) and innings pitched (76.1). The Yankees can’t afford to lose both Schlittler and Cole starts in a series.

1. Thankfully, the Yankees won’t visit the West Coast again until the end of August. Not because the teams the Yankees have played on the West Coast this season are any good (the Yankees are 7-2 in the Pacific Time Zone this year), but because 9:40 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. start times aren’t as fun as they were before I had kids.

If you stayed up for the game on Friday night, you got to watch a rather easy 8-2 win. I wrote this about Friday’s game before it:

There will be an opportunity for the Yankees to break the game open on Friday against Severino, and when it does come, they better break it open to negate the unpredictable Rodon.

That opportunity came in the first inning and the Yankees capitalized with a four-run outburst. Carlos Rodon did give one run right back in the bottom of the first, but the Yankees added a run in the second, another in the third, another in the fourth and one in the seventh, and Rodon settled down to allow only that one run over six innings.

2. If you stayed up for the game on Saturday night, you got to watch a frustrating 6-4 loss that ended with the bases loaded and the tying runs in scoring position and the go-ahead run on first as Jazz Chisholm took two 88-mph fastballs down the middle and then was forced to swing at a fastball inside, resulting in a game-ending groundout.

3. Trailing 6-1 in the ninth, the Yankees loaded the bases with two outs and managed to walk three runs in before Chisholm ended the game. If the Athletics’ strategy had been crazy enough to walk Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger with the bases loaded and allow three runs to make Chisholm beat them, it was the right call. No Yankees fan believed Chisholm would come through there. Put runners in scoring position and Chisholm turns into Austin Wells. Chisholm is hitting .183/.242/.300 with runners in scoring position. Wells is hitting .178/.296/.274 on the season. I can’t stand Chisholm’s cockiness in the box when he takes strikes and shakes his head as if he’s Juan Soto. Soto can do that because he’s Soto, a generational talent. Chisholm has no business taking two middle-middle fastballs, both at 88 mph as if he’s going to win the plate appearance anyway.

4. If you watched Sunday’s game, well, you saw one of the weirdest games of all time in a 13-8 win. The Yankees fell behind 3-0 in the first inning because of Trent Grisham’s disgraceful defense, dropping what should have been an inning-ending fly ball. But Grisham’s gaffe didn’t come back to haunt the Yankees because the offense scored 13 runs in the third inning, including 10 before making an out.

The inning went: single, walk, walk, single, double, single, single, walk, single, single, double, walk, strikeout (Paul Goldschmidt should have challenged the third-strike pitch), triple, strikeout, single, single, flyout. Thirteen runs without hitting a home run is absurd.

5. The Yankees took two of three from the A’s to finish the season series 3-3 against them. Not great, not awful. Mediocre, which is what a .500 record is. The Yankees finished their six-game road trip with a 5-1 record (and it was nearly 6-0). They head home the same way they arrived in Sacramento: three games back of the Rays in the AL East loss column. They also head home with two ongoing issues that need to be resolved, one now and one at some point.

6. The one now is the continued use of Grisham as the leadoff hitter. Grisham is hitting .174/.309/.292 when he bats first in the lineup. He’s hitting .125/.300/.188 in the first inning. He’s hitting .172/.351/.241 when he leads off any inning. The Yankees are willingly starting every game with one out and no one on for Ben Rice or Aaron Judge and they are also taking away the guarantee of Cody Bellinger getting a first-inning plate appearance. This isn’t hard. Bat Rice leadoff. Let the guy with the .397 on-base percentage bat first. Or bat Judge leadoff, as he’s at .375. I don’t care which one bats first, but it can’t be Grisham, whether there’s a righty or lefty starting since his OPS has a .001 difference between the two. Stop waiting around for the guy who hit 34 home runs last season and accept it was an outlier season in his career.

7. The one at some point is what to do at catcher, though that doesn’t seem like it will be resolved for two more months. Having a lefty-only-hitting catcher tandem was always a bad idea. Having those two be the worst two hitting catchers still rostered in baseball is amazing. No catcher in the majors has as many plate appearances as J.C. Escarra and as bad an OPS. Only one catcher has as many plate appearances as Wells and a worse OPS and that’s last year’s MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh who got off to a dreadful start before going on the injured list.

8. Wells has one double. ONE! It’s June 1! He has seven RBIs. Anthony Volpe has eight RBIs and has been up for like 15 minutes. Escarra has yet to hit a home run, but has as many home runs as Wells in less than half the plate appearances. Sure, defense is the most important aspect of catching, but at some point there’s a level of offense that’s unplayable and we have passed that. With every pathetic Wells strikeout or weak ground ball, all I can think about is Aaron Boone telling everyone “there’s more” to Wells that they need to get out of him. And with every Escarra weak pop-up, all I can think about is the Yankees telling everyone how he would be a starter on other teams.

9. Next up is a three-game series with the AL Central-leading Guardians. The Yankees will have Cam Schlittler going in the series opener, so good luck to the Guardians with that. The Guardians have never faced Schlittler and we have seen how dominant he is when a team has yet to see him. He dominates teams that have seen him, but it seems to be on another level for teams that haven’t. Joey Cantillo goes for the Guardians, and the Yankees have limited history against him.

10. This should be the lineup on Tuesday night:

Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Paul Goldschmidt, DH
Trent Grisham, CF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Who Cares, C

It won’t be, but it should be. Grisham will be leading off and Volpe will be in there. Though it doesn’t matter what the lineup is since Schlittler is starting.

1. I REALLY LOVE THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS! After sweeping the Royals at Yankee Stadium in April, the Yankees swept them at Kauffman Stadium this week to sweep the six-game season series. The Yankees swept the season series from the Royals last year as well and have now won 14 straight games against them dating back to Game 3 of the 2024 ALDS.

2. The Yankees didn’t just go 6-0 against the Royals this year, they embarrassed them. The Yankees outscored them 50-8. They blew them out multiple times. They beat them in a one-run game. They shut them out twice. They blew two late leads against them only to beat them anyway. If only the Royals were more than a two-bat offense Yankees fans could dream about possibly facing them again in the postseason for an easy path to the pennant, but unfortunately, at 12 games under and in last place in the AL Central, the 2026 Royals aren’t going to the postseason.

3. The Yankees are going to the postseason though and the way I analyze them from Opening Day through Game 162 is with the postseason in mind. How the Yankees get there matters. After last year’s Wild Card Series appearance screwed up their rotation and their lack of home-field advantage screwed up the ALDS, winning the division is imperative. The division race was a in bad place after Friday’s game against the Rays when the Yankees fell seven games back in the loss column, but since then, four straight Yankees wins and four straight Rays losses has them just three games back again. (Thank you to the Orioles for doing to the Rays this week what no other team has been able to do to them this season.)

4. Here is what I wrote about Noah Cameron before Wednesday’s game:

The Yankees faced Cameron back on April 18 at Yankee Stadium in the 13-4 win. In that game, the first time through the order, the Yankees only produced a walk (Aaron Judge). The second time through the order, the Yankees went home run (Rosario), walk (Judge), home run (Cody Bellinger), ground out (Giancarlo Stanton), home run (Rice), double (Randal Grichuk). The Yankees got to Cameron for seven runs between the third and fourth innings.

Cameron had nearly an identical performance in this one. He went nine up, nine down through three innings and then the Yankees went single, triple, sacrifice fly off of him the second time through the order to take a 2-0 lead. While Cameron was better in this start against the Yankees, they made him work, drove up his pitch count and he only lasted five innings.

5. The Yankees got to the Royals’ bullpen for five runs over four innings. The 3-through-6 hitters (Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Amed Rosario and Anthony Volpe) went 0-for-12 with two walks and three strikeouts, but the Yankees got enough out of Goldschmidt (two hits, walk, RBI), Rice (two hits, walk, three RBIs) and Ryan McMahon (two hits, including a two-run home run). Austin Wells once again provided nothing offensively, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. In the seventh inning, the Yankees led just 2-0 and had the bases loaded with one out and Wells up. Wells struck out on three pitches and immediately jumped to the top of the list for the least competitive at-bat of the season with his pathetic approach. I don’t think he will be unseated from the top spot after his embarrassing strikeout.

6. The Yankees provided seven runs of offense, but they didn’t need that many as Gerrit Cole was dominant in his second start of the season. After throwing six scoreless innings against the Rays on Friday, Cole threw 6 2/3 scoreless against the Royals with 10 strikeouts. The dream of Cole, Cam Schlittler and Max Fried going 1-2-3 in a postseason series needs to be realized. Fried needs to get healthy and return to create the new Big Three in the league. The Yankees had the best rotation in the league with Fried and without Cole and still do with Cole and without Fried. But if the Yankees could ever just have them at the same time with Schlittler, lengthy winning streaks will become a normal thing.

7. The Yankees have Thursday off before a weekend series in Sacramento against the Athletics. The Yankees lost two of three to the A’s back in early April and could have been swept if not for the meltdown from old friend Mark Leiter Jr. The A’s are 27-29 with a minus-25 run differential and in the middle of a three-game losing streak. They aren’t good, but they are better than they have been in recent years and the series in early April showed that.

8. Carlos Rodon gets the ball in the series opener for his fourth start of the season and will be going on extra rest. I have zero expectations for Rodon whenever he pitches. It wouldn’t surprise me if he went out and pitched six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s out of the game in the fourth after allowing five runs. The left-handed A.J. Burnett couldn’t get through four innings against the Brewers or five innings against the Mets and then allowed one run in five innings against the Blue Jays. Rodon has yet to give up a home run in three starts, but he has walked 11 in 13 innings. When Rodon pitches, the best strategy is to score runs and a lot of them. And with Luis Severino starting for the A’s, there’s a good possibility of that.

9. Severino got rocked in two starts against the Yankees last year and looked like he was going to in his start against them on April 8 this season at the Stadium. The Yankees had the bases loaded with no outs in the first inning and Ben Rice and Giancarlo Stanton due up, but only managed to score two runs in the inning. Rice and Stanton struck out before Jazz Chisholm and J.C. Escarra drew bases-loaded walks for two runs. Those two runs were the only runs the Yankees scored against Severino in the game. They were the only runs they scored for the remaining 17 1/3 innings in the series. There will be an opportunity for the Yankees to break the game open on Friday against Severino, and when it does come, they better break it open to negate the unpredictable Rodon.

10. With Severino being a righty, we all know Aaron Boone is going to hit Trent Grisham in the leadoff spot and inexplicably move Judge to third to have two lefties at the top of the order. The Yankees don’t have a leadoff hitter. Grisham certainly isn’t one. And because of that I would bat Chisholm leadoff on Friday because of his ridiculous success against Severino: 5-for-11, a double, two home runs, five RBIs, three walks and a .455/.571/1.091 slash line. The goal should be to get Chisholm as many plate appearances as possible against Severino and batting him first would get him at least two. I would go with this lineup:

Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Paul Goldchmidt, 1B (2-for-5 with a double and home run against Severino)
Ben Rice, DH
Anthony Volpe, SS (2-for-5 against Severino)
Trent Grisham, CF
Jose Caballero, 3B
Who cares, C

That lineup puts the hitter with the most career success at the top. It puts Judge second, where the best hitter on the team should hit. It gets Goldschmidt in the lineup. It provides lefty-righty alternation throughout. I would be fine with Rice playing first instead of designated hitter since his numbers when playing first are so much better. I would also be fine with Rosario being in the lineup because he’s 3-for-13 with a home run against Severino. But to get Rosario in there, you have to sit Volpe or Caballero, and I don’t want Caballero to sit, and I know one week of above-average play from Volpe is enough for him to never be benched or sent down again. I also know the lineup won’t look anything like this.

1. I love the Kansas City Royals. The Yankees demolished the Royals 15-1 on Tuesday for their 13th straight win against them, dating back to Game 3 of the 2024 ALDS, including a 5-0 record against them this year.

The Yankees overcame a late-game blown lead by Camilo Doval (shocker) to beat the Royals 4-2 on April 17.

The Yankees pummeled the Royals with four home runs in a 13-4 win on April 18.

The Yankees hit three more home runs against the Royals on April 19 in a 7-0 win.

The Yankees overcame a late-game blown lead with a two-run, ninth-inning rally to beat the Royals 4-3 on Monday and then they blew them out once again on Tuesday.

2. The win was the Yankees’ third straight, and combined with three straight Rays losses, the Yankees are now four back in the loss column in the AL East. Saturday’s rainout may have been a division-changing postponement.

3. Cam Schlittler was awesome once again (6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 1 HR) and made one mistake all night to the one player on the Royals you can’t make a mistake against: Bobby Witt Jr.

“Not the best,” Schlittler said. “My stuff wasn’t as sharp, but I was able to put the team in position to win. That’s all you can ask for.

“Not the best” when you allow one earned run on one pitch over six innings is a 1.50 ERA, which is what Schlittler’s ERA is for the season. He’s averaging six innings and one earned run through 12 starts and didn’t think he was “sharp” in the game. Remember the days of Sonny Gray and Jameson Taillon telling us they had “good stuff” after allowing five earned runs without getting through five innings?

4. Schlittler didn’t need to be as dominant as he was because he had a 4-0 lead to work with before he took the mound, a 5-0 lead after the second and a 9-0 lead after the third. The Yankees pounded opener Bailey Falter for seven runs on nine hits and three home runs in just 2 1/3 innings. I thought the purpose of the opener was to pit an elite reliever against the top of the order to get through the first inning. Apparently, the Royals have a different interpretation of who should open as Falter entered the game with a 9.82 ERA and left with a 13.97 ERA.

5. The game changed in the first inning after Ben Rice’s inning-ending lineout was overturned to a run-scoring single. Without the overturn, the Yankees would have had a 1-0 lead. Following the overturn, Paul Goldschmidt was allowed to score and then Amed Rosario hit a two-run home run to make it 4-0. A 4-0 lead with Schlittler on the mound is game over, as the Cy Young favorite has only allowed four earned runs in two of his 28 career starts, including the postseason. He has only allowed three earned runs in two of 12 starts this season.

6. “Credit to the offense with the performance they put up today,” Schlittler said. “That was awesome to watch.”

Every Yankees starter had multiple hits in the game, including Austin Wells, who followed J.C. Escarra’s three-hit game with one of his own. It was Wells’ first multi-hit game in May. It was the first time in franchise history that nine players recorded at least two hits in a game.

7. The Yankees needed a win like that. Their last win by more than four runs came back on May 7 against the Rangers before their bad run against the Brewers, Orioles, Mets and Blue Jays began. They needed a laugher, mainly to give the bullpen a rest. Leave it to the Royals and the good old AL Central to get everyone feeling good about the Yankees again.

9. Noah Cameron will get the ball for the Royals in the series and season finale between the two teams on Wednesday. The Yankees faced Cameron back on April 18 at Yankee Stadium in the 13-4 win. In that game, the first time through the order, the Yankees only produced a walk (Aaron Judge). The second time through the order, the Yankees went home run (Rosario), walk (Judge), home run (Cody Bellinger), ground out (Giancarlo Stanton), home run (Rice), double (Randal Grichuk). The Yankees got to Cameron for seven runs between the third and fourth innings.

10. Gerrit Cole will make his second start to close out the series. He will be going on normal rest in a spot that lined up for Carlos Rodon, who I’m guessing will go on extra rest in Sacramento on Friday. Cole was great in his season debut on Friday against the Royals, and if he pitches like that again, the Yankees’ winning streak against the Royals will improve to 14.

1. The Yankees went into Memorial Day weekend six games back of the Rays in the loss column and finished the weekend five games back. After losing to the Rays on Friday, the Yankees beat them on Sunday and then beat the Royals on Monday, while the Rays lost to the Orioles. Even with the frustrating 4-2 loss to the Rays on Friday, the holiday weekend was still a positive for the Yankees.

2. It was a positive because they made up two games in the loss column on the Rays. After losing Friday’s series opener (despite Gerrit Cole throwing six scoreless innings in his season debut), it seemed like the weekend could get away from the Yankees, and therefore the division. But after blowing another late lead on Friday, Saturday’s game was postponed, Aaron Judge provided a two-run, walk-off home run on Sunday — his first home run in two weeks — and the team put together a ninth-inning rally on Monday to extend their winning streak to 12 straight against the Royals.

3. It was a positive because Cole looked like his old self in his first start since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. The last time Cole was on the mound in a meaningful game, he blew a no-hitter and a five-run lead in a single inning thanks to his own pitching and defense and the defense behind him. After missing all of last season and the first third of this season, Cole returned and didn’t look like someone who hadn’t pitched on a major-league mound in 19 months. Cole talked his way into starting on Friday at Yankee Stadium (instead of another rehab start in the minors) against the team the Yankees are chasing in what was as big of a regular-season game as the Yankees will play this season, and he passed every test. There are no excuses if you’re playing or pitching and it would have been understandable if Cole looked like Carlos Rodon has to this point, but the criticism would have been fair. Instead, Cole shut down an offense that very few have this season.

4. It was a positive because Saturday’s game was rained out. The team has been bad for more than two weeks, the offense is strictly three bats and the bullpen sucks. The Yankees were fortunate to get Saturday’s game moved to September when they could have Giancarlo Stanton back and a more consistent offense and likely a revamped and new-look bullpen. The Rays have been hotter than hot through two months and getting a game against them moved to four months from now is very welcome.

5. It was a positive because Ryan Weathers bounced back from a letdown start against the Blue Jays to shut out the Rays for seven innings on Sunday. Cole and Weathers combined to throw 13 scoreless innings against the Rays in the two games as the starting pitching continues to carry the team.

It was a positive because Will Warren had another strong start on Monday. Warren lost his control in the second inning and walked the bases loaded before bouncing back in the third and finding his command. The numbers for Warren and Weathers are nearly identical on the season, but I still prefer Weathers to Warren because he has the ability to go out and really dominate in a way Warren can’t.

6. It was a positive because the Yankees won a game in which Anthony Volpe started at shortstop — and provided the go-ahead hit in the ninth inning — and J.C. Escarra started behind the plate and Ryan McMahon and Austin Wells sat. Volpe reached base twice and had the big hit in the ninth, while Escarra had three hits in the game. Entering Monday, there was a better chance a Yankees pitcher would throw a perfect game this season before one of their catchers would record three hits in a game. I would sit McMahon and Wells until the Yankees lose a game.

7. It was a positive because the Yankees are now five games back of the Rays in the loss column instead of the six they were before Friday’s game and the seven they were before Sunday’s game. It’s still a lot of games to be back before the end of May, but it’s better than it was a few days ago.

8. Yes, the weekend overall finished as a positive, but it wasn’t all positive. The offense continues to have too many automatic outs in it. The Yankees scored two runs on Wednesday, no runs on Thursday, two runs on Friday, two runs on Sunday and had two runs on Monday until the ninth inning. That’s not going to cut it. They are wasting so many excellent starts from their rotation by failing to score. The Yankees’ win percentage when they score at least four runs in a game is .824. EIGHT TWENTY-FOUR! Score four runs and have an 82.4 percent chance of winning. Just four runs. That’s 648 runs over 162 games. Only one team in the AL didn’t score 648 runs last season and that was the White Sox and they scored 647. So if the offense could just be as bad as the 102-loss 2025 White Sox every game, they would have an .824 winning percentage. It shouldn’t be hard to score four runs a game when you have Judge, Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger, but rarely does anyone drive those three in unless they drive themselves in, and if they don’t hit, the Yankees don’t score. How many times over the last week did the Yankees fail to score a leadoff double? How many times did they strand a runner on third with less than two outs?

9. Then there’s Aaron Boone. I understand Boone didn’t construct this bullpen, but it’s on him to utilize it as best as possible and put his relievers in the best possible position to succeed. Boone decided not to use David Bednar in the eighth inning with a 1-0 lead on Friday and the top of the Rays’ order due up because it was the eighth inning. Boone loves having set innings for relievers and because of that his decisions of late have cost the Yankees multiple games. It helped cost them the game on Friday. Instead of using Bednar with a one-run lead in the eighth, he used him in a two-run deficit in the ninth. How are we on Year 9 of watching these decisions?

Boone did it again on Monday. Jake Bird wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee after being traded to them last season and wasn’t good enough to be one earlier this season after being sent down again. But a handful of recent appearances in low-leverage situations apparently was good enough for him to pitch multiple innings on Monday in Kansas City and good enough to let him face Bobby Witt Jr. in the eighth inning a 2-2 game. Bird promptly allowed a go-ahead home run to the one feared hitter in the Royals lineup. This decision came a day after the Yankees were postponed when every reliever had Saturday off. Thankfully, the bottom of the order rallied the team to win in the ninth or it would have been another disappointing loss.

10. Tuesday presents an opportunity for the Yankees to win a series for the first time since May 5-7 against the Rangers. Since then the Yankees were swept by the Blue Jays, lost two of three to the Orioles,. lost two of three to the Mets, split with the Blue Jays and split with the Rays. Cam Schlittler gets the ball to try to improve on his league-best WAR, ERA, FIP and WHIP. The Royals will use the left-handed Bailey Falter and his 9.82 ERA to open the game. It’s as big of a pitching mismatch as you can have in the majors with the Royals looking for their first win against the Yankees since Game 2 of the 2024 ALDS. If the Yankees can score four runs, the Royals will still be looking for it, and with Schlittler on the mound they may not even need half of that.

1. I thought the Yankees would win Game 4 of the ALDS last October and send the series back to Toronto for a winner-take-all Game 5. They had the dramatic five-run comeback in Game 3, had Cam Schlittler starting on an extra day of rest and Toronto was going with a bullpen game with a bullpen that had to get 16 outs in Game 3. The Yankees had the momentum and they had a distinct pitching advantage.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The tired and fatigued Toronto bullpen shut the Yankees down. Eight Blue Jays relievers pieced together 27 outs and the Yankees were eliminated after going 6-for-32 with 10 strikeouts. The Yankees’ defense gave the Blue Jays two unearned runs and the always amazing Camilo Doval allowed a tack-on run in the eighth.

I felt like I was watching that same game on Thursday night (complete with the Doval tack-on run) as the Blue Jays went with a bullpen game and stifled the Yankees, shutting them out 2-0 for their ninth loss in their last 13 games. Five Blue Jays relievers pitched in the shutout as the Yankees went 3-for-29 with a disturbing 14 strikeouts. The Yankees struck out 37 times over the final three games of the series. They struck out 33 times in the three games against the Mets and 39 times in the three games against the Brewers. Yeah, this team is different! They definitely won’t do the same thing in the postseason again against only elite starters and relievers every game!

2. “We didn’t muster much,” Aaron Boone said. “The last two nights we’ve been quieted quite a bit.”

Don’t let Boone fool you into thinking it was just the last two nights. The Yankees now have four games this season with three or fewer hits and no runs scored, which is the second most behind the Giants. (Stat from Katie Sharp.) The Giants have the second-worst record in the NL and are trying to figure out how to unload big contracts. Anytime you’re mentioned in the same conversation with the 2026 Giants, you’re doing something wrong.

3. The Yankees’ offense remains three hitters and when those three hitters don’t hit, you guessed it, they lose. Ben Rice hasn’t hit since his wrist injury (.652 OPS since returning), Aaron Judge hasn’t hit for two weeks now (.600 OPS since May 7) and Cody Bellinger doesn’t have enough power to compensate for the other two (Bellinger has six home runs in 50 games this season, but he has two two-home run games, so he has homered in four of 50 games this season). Rice has still hit a few home runs since his return and Bellinger has been hitting overall, but Judge has done nothing of late. Judge has one home run since May 6 and no RBIs in the last 10 games. At one point during the Blue Jays series, Judge struck out in seven straight at-bats.

4. I understand that Judge is immune to criticism from most, but on a team built around his bat that only has two other consistent, productive bats, he can’t be. He can’t be good to great, he has to be otherworldly and generational. He has to be because you have to make up for the automatic outs from the other six spots in the lineup. You have to make up for Jazz Chisholm being the worst situational hitter and worst hitter with runners on in the league. You have to make up for Paul Goldschmidt eventually being exposed now that his playing time has increased. You have to make up for Trent Grisham reverting back to the player he has always been before 2025. You have to make up for Ryan McMahon swinging through every middle-middle fastball he sees. You have to make up for Anthony Volpe undeservedly being an everyday player for the last week-plus. You have to make up for the unmitigated disaster and embarrassment that is the catching tandem of Austin Wells and J.C. Escarra offensively. You have to make up for the injuries to Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Caballero.

5. Two weeks ago today, the Yankees were tied in the loss column with the Rays and a half-game ahead of them overall. Now they are six games back in the loss column with a three-game series against the Rays this weekend. If Judge has another series like these last four, the division could be over before actual Memorial Day. The worst-case scenario is the Yankees are nine back in the loss column after this weekend. The best-case scenario is they are three back. To be three back they are going to need a lot of things to happen to beat a team that never seems to lose.

6. The Yankees need Judge to be himself. Whatever these last four series have been have made Judge look like the right-handed McMahon or a giant version of Volpe. If Judge doesn’t hit, the Yankees’ only chance offensively is if Rice does. If Rice continues the way he has since his wrist injury combined with Judge being lost, well, the Yankees don’t have a chance. No one is going to help Bellinger with any consistency to score runs.

7. The Yankees need length from their starting pitching. I’m talking at least six innings in every game this weekend and even that may not be enough. The bullpen can barely be trusted to get three outs, let alone nine, so asking them to get double-digit outs against this pesky, annoying Rays lineup is a recipe for disaster. The Rays scored six runs against the Yankees’ bullpen in the April series in Tampa. If the bullpen is in the game in the sixth inning or earlier all weekend, it could get ugly.

8. They need Gerrit Cole to be himself. The Yankees can’t afford to have Cole look like Carlos Rodon did in his first two starts coming back from injury. Friday’s game is one of the most important games the Yankees will play this regular season and Cole can’t pitch like someone who hasn’t pitched in a meaningful game since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. It’s not unfair to Cole because he talked his way into having his next start (this start) be in the majors. As Derek Jeter used to say, if you’re out there playing, there’s no excuses.

9. They need Jose Caballero to be the starting shortstop. I don’t want to see Caballero being used at short one game then third another game then somewhere else. He’s the best shortstop on the team, so he should play shortstop. Volpe undeservedly got called up and did nothing to deserve to be kept up. But because Volpe needs to play (he doesn’t but that’s what the Yankees think), he will play shortstop because he has idiotically never been asked to play another position for the Yankees. (The Yankees not sending Volpe down means he’s going to play with some regularity in the majors.) Volpe’s continued issues at shortstop like his error upon getting called up or his messy footwork (like when he went down to his knees to field a ball and prevented a double play on Thursday) or his lack of arm strength all remains problems.

10. If Judge and Rice show up, the starting pitching gives the Yankees length, Cole doesn’t have a Rodon-like return and Caballero plays, the Yankees should have a good weekend. (There’s always the Boone variable in that he will ruin a winnable game with his in-game decisions, but I think that’s a given and to be expected at this point, so there’s no point in writing or worrying about it.) If one or more of these things doesn’t happen for the Yankees this weekend, they will spend the summer trying to climb out of an enormous hole.

1. I can confirm Trey Yesavage is a problem. I thought maybe there was this small chance his performance in Game 2 of the ALDS last October was just a pitcher having the best game possible against the Yankees at the worst time possible and that it wouldn’t equate to future performance. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

2. Yesavage dominated the Yankees on Wednesday in the same way he did seven months ago. He shut them out for six innings, allowing just two hits with one of those two hits being the result of a miscommunication from the Blue Jays defense when they let a routine out fall in for a fake double. Yesavage didn’t walk a batter and struck out eight

“More of the same,” Aaron Boone said. “He was, for the most part, filling up the strike zone tonight.”

To make matters worse, he outpitched Cam Schlittler. Schlittler was very good once again, but allowed two earned runs in the seventh inning after walking in the game’s first run with the bases loaded.

3. I think we can safely assume any game the Yankees play against the Blue Jays with Yesavage starting will be a loss. The Yankees have beaten Kevin Gausman before, they got to Dylan Cease on Tuesday and it’s been seven years since Patrick Corbin was a name worth worrying about, but Yesavage has now thoroughly dominated them twice. The Yankees had their best on the mound against Yesavage and they still lost. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence with three more series between the teams in the regular season and the possibility of a postseason matchup. Yesavage is my most feared pitcher in the league.

4. Again, Schlittler was very good. He had a shutout going into the seventh before an infield single, walk and misplayed bunt loaded the bases with no outs. Schlittler walked in a run with the bases loaded and then was pulled for Jake Bird, who did a nice job limiting the damage to just one more run. Without the infield single and the misplayed bunt, at worst the Blue Jays would have had a runner on second with two outs. Instead they had the bases loaded with no outs.

“Just unacceptable,” Schlittler said of his performance in the seventh inning. “I walked two guys … You can’t walk the bottom of the order. Just unfortunate I couldn’t close that out.”

5. The misplayed bunt is what changed the inning. The Blue Jays were willing to give up an out to move the runners into scoring position. Prior to the misplayed bunt, the Yankees had a mound meeting, led by Paul Goldschmidt, who likely said he was going to come in and be the one to field the bunt. But when the play unfolded, Austin Wells also tried to field the bunt and no outs were recorded. At some point Wells is going to add positive value to the team, right?

6. Trailing 2-0 in the ninth, the Yankees nearly pulled off an unexpected comeback, but left the tying tun on second in the 2-1 loss. The loss dropped the Yankees to 5-11 in one-run games this season. The offense produced one non-defense-aided hit in the first eight innings. Ben Rice went 0-for-4 and has a .654 OPS since hurting his wrist on May 3. Aaron Judge went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts and has a .646 OPS since May 7. Ryan McMahon, Anthony Volpe and Wells combined to go 0-for-9 with four strikeouts. Volpe wrongly challenged a strike call that showed the entire ball inside the strike zone. If you challenge a pitch that shows the ball in the zone, you should automatically be out regardless of the count.

7. Yovanny Cruz made his major-league debut and was electric. Cruz went six-up, six-down with three strikeouts against the Blue Jays’ 4-through-9 hitters. He reached triple digits several times. Is it too early to make Cruz the closer? In that one outing he showed more ability than just about every reliever on the team.

“It was a long road to get here,” Cruz said. “A lot of injuries, a lot of things that I had to overcome.”

8. The Blue Jays will use Braydon Fisher as an opener in the series finale on Thursday. Carlos Rodon goes for the Yankees. Rodon was dreadful in his first two starts and I have zero expectations for him in this one. I don’t trust Rodon. Never have, never will, and after what he showed in Milwaukee and Queens, it’s hard to envision him pitching well against a team that lit him up in three starts last season, including the postseason: 12.1 IP, 17 H, 12 R, 10 ER, 10 BB, 10 K, 1 HR.

9. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has done nothing in this series. Guerrero Jr. remains at three home runs, which is how many home runs Wells has this year. But Guerrero Jr. has hit .588 with a 1.608 OPS against Rodon in his 21 regular-season plate appearances and hit a two-run home run and walked against him in the postseason. I can’t believe there’s a chance Guerrero Jr. could come to the Bronx for a four-game series and not hit a home run, and it’s going to take a lot from Rodon to that make that scenario come true.

10. Judge hasn’t done much of late. He’s 2-for-11 with seven strikeouts in this series and has one home run and two doubles since May 6. The Yankees are 5-9 since May 6. I find it hard to believe Thursday’s game is anything like the low-scoring pitcher’s duel from Wednesday, and because of that, it would be nice if the Yankees’ biggest bat returned.

1. The last time Dylan Cease took the mound at Yankee Stadium (May 7, 2025) he took a no-hitter into the seventh inning. He wasn’t quite as good through the first three innings of Tuesday’s game, but he was still very good, allowing just a broken-bat single to Trent Grisham and a walk to Cody Bellinger. When the Blue Jays scored three runs on four singles and a walk against Will Warren in the fourth inning, it seemed like the Yankees would be destined for another loss.

2. They weren’t. Cease completely unraveled in the fourth inning. He thought he had Aaron Judge struck out to begin the inning, but Judge challenged a 3-2 strike call and started walking to first base before home plate umpire John Tumpane could even announce the challenge. Judge was right and took first base. After a Bellinger flyout, Cease walked Jazz Chisholm. Cease had only walked four batters total over his last three starts and had walked three Yankees in 3 1/3 innings. Trying to rediscover the zone he threw a first-pitch fastball over the plate to Ryan McMahon, and while McMahon has swung through most fastballs thrown over the plate this season, he crushed this over the left-field wall for a game-tying, three-run home run. The next inning, with the game tied at 3, Grisham walked with one out and Ben Rice hit a two-run home run to right field to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead.

“It’s starting to get to the point where you just kind of expect it from Benny,” McMahon said of Rice. “He’s been locked in. He’s an awesome player, and he’s come through for us big time.”

3. With David Bednar and Fernando Cruz unavailable due to recent workloads, the Yankees would have to somehow get 12 outs, while protecting a two-run lead. After blowing a two-run lead nearly every game for the last week and a half, it would be a wild ride to the 27th out.

Tim Hill pitched around a two-out walk in the sixth. Jake Bird and Brent Headrick got through a two-baserunner seventh and Headrick pitched a 1-2-3 eighth. The Yankees were unable to tack on in the sixth, seventh and eighth, and when Camilo Doval emerged from the bullpen to protect a two-run lead in the ninth, I knew nothing good would happen.

4. Before you could blink, Doval walked the light-hitting Andres Gimenez to begin the ninth. (It was Gimenez’s fifth walk in 165 plate appearances this season.) Ernie Clement singled to right and in 15 seconds the Blue Jays had the tying runs on base with no outs. George Springer rocked a line drive up the middle that Doval was able to knock down for an out. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed with a sacrifice fly to make it 5-4 and Daulton Varsho singled to move the tying run to third with two outs and then stole second to put the go-ahead run on second. Somehow, Doval was able to get Kazuma Okamoto to ground out to end the game.

5. Doval could not give up an earned run for the rest of the regular season and I wouldn’t trust him for a second in a postseason game. I will never trust him. I don’t trust anyone who throws 102 mph and has no idea where the ball is going. Look at Doval’s delivery: When he releases the ball he’s not looking at the plate. He’s somewhat looking down and somewhat looking toward the on-deck circle and first-base dugout. The ball does not end up where the catcher sets up, and if it does, it’s not on purpose. When you throw a 103-mph cut fastball and a 91-mph slider and can’t strike anyone out, you know you don’t know where the ball is going and you know you can’t be trusted.

6. “Camilo bent, but he didn’t break,” Aaron Boone said. “To go through the heart of the order there to finish it off, I love that poise.”

What poise? Doval allowed two hits, a walk, an earned run, forgot to cover first base on a ground ball to the right side and had the tying run on third base and the go-ahead run on second base when the game ended. That’s poise?

7. The Yankees are going to lose a lot of games waiting for the trade deadline to improve their bullpen. It’s a strategy that cost them last year as well. There have to be internal options that are better than the options they currently roster. Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough are repetitive as long men who aren’t trusted in high-leverage situations. (Repetitive like having two left-handed catchers, both of whom can’t hit.) Doval can’t be trusted in any situation. Two of those three (if not all three) can be replaced. The problem is they are making a combined $10.6 million and owed money is always the No. 1 determiner in roster spots.

8. Warren was OK: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Five of the seven baserunners against him came in one inning and that can’t happen. He can’t have these one-inning meltdowns and be great in all other innings. The Yankees need him to be more consistent and more economical. He forced the bullpen to get another 12 outs, and through 10 starts, he has failed to go five innings four times and has made it through six innings just three times.

9. Headrick will likely be unavailable on Wednesday. I would make Bednar unavailable again even if that means a cloudier path to 27 outs than the one on Tuesday night. Cam Schlittler better bring his best stuff to the mound on Wednesday and put up zeros, like seven or eight of them.

10. Schlittler will be going against Trey Yesavage who embarrassed the Yankees the last time he faced them in Game 2 of the ALDS. Yesavage has been very good (1.40 ERA) in four starts this season, but nothing like what he was in that game against the Yankees in October. Aaron Judge has one home run and a .699 OPS in the last 12 games. (A big reason why the Yankees went 5-7 in those games.) If there was ever a time for Judge to break out of this power slump, hitting a multi-run home run off Yesavage would be as good a time as any.

1. The Yankees led the Blue Jays 1-0 after another leadoff home run from Paul Goldschmidt. Then they trailed 3-1 after Ernie Clement and his .694 OPS hit a three-run home run. They tied the game up at 3, only to then trail once again after George Springer and his .566 OPS hit a home run. The Yankees were looking at a third-straight loss after being unable to handle the struggling Blue Jays and their struggling offense. The Yankees were getting beat by the Blue Jays the way they got beat by them throughout last season.

2. Trailing 5-3 with two outs and no one on and seven outs away from another defeat, Aaron Judge singled off Yariel Rodriguez and Cody Bellinger followed with a two-run home run off the top of the wall in right-center. After hitting three balls off the top of walls recently for doubles, Bellinger finally got a friendly bounce on one. Tie game.

Trent Grisham worked a pinch-hit walk and then Jazz Chisholm did something I forgot he was capable of and hit an opposite-field home run, a two-run shot off the left-field foul pole. Four two-out runs and a pair of two-run home runs had the Yankees in front 7-5.

3. After a scoreless eighth, a bad loss was on the verge of becoming a good win if David Bednar could get three outs before allowing two runs, a day after he couldn’t get three outs before allowing three runs. I wouldn’t have gone to Bednar on Monday. After allowing a run on 21 pitches on Friday and three runs on 23 pitches on Sunday, there is no way I would have called on Bednar to close out the Blue Jays. But Aaron Boone did, and the decision nearly cost the Yankees the game.

4. Bednar walked Clement and then gave up a double to Jesus Sanchez to make it 7-6. The tying run was in scoring position and Bednar had already thrown 13 pitches without recording an out. Brent Headrick (who I would have used in the ninth) immediately began throwing with intense urgency.

Bednar bounced back to strike out catcher Brandon Valenzuela and then walked pinch hitter Yohendrick Pinango to load the bases and turn the lineup over. Bednar had thrown 24 pitches and gotten just one out and with the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, the Blue Jays had Springer due up and Guerrero Jr. on deck.

5. The best-case scenario was the Blue Jays would tie the game, the Yankees would go down in order with the bottom of the lineup due up in the ninth and then hopefully win it with the top of the order in the 10th. I didn’t think there was a chance Bednar was getting out of the jam given his recent workload, his pitch count, fatigue and who was up.

Bednar fell behind Springer 3-0 and my hypothetical best-case scenario seemed impossible. Bednar’s first two pitches to Springer were low and away and the 2-0 pitch missed by a mile. I figured Bednar was either going to walk in the tying run or groove one for Springer to hit off the Poland Spring sign on the facing of the second deck in left field. Bednar threw Springer a 3-0 splitter at the very bottom of the zone, and Springer, looking to do damage, swung through it. Bednar came back with another splitter on the same plane for another swinging strike and then a third splitter on that same plane for a third straight swing-and-miss. Two outs, miraculously.

6. Guerrero Jr. walked to the plate and after picking up his second extra-base hit since April 28 and with as many home runs on the season as Austin Wells, I started to have nightmarish flashbacks from the ALDS. If you believe in due, no one would be more due than Guerrero Jr. facing an exhausted Bednar in the Stadium that has become his the way the old Yankee Stadium was David Ortiz’s. But instead of humiliating the Yankees like he did last October, Guerrero Jr. got an elevated splitter on 3-2 and did nothing with it, hitting a ground ball to second for the final out of the game.

7. “It’s not gonna happen again,” Bednar said he told himself when he fell behind Springer 3-0, not allowing himself to blow a second straight game.

“There a way out of every situation,” Bednar said.

Too many times this year the Yankees’ bullpen has been unable to find their way out of situations. It’s like they have been trapped in a mirror maze that doesn’t actually have an exit. The bullpen was rocked on the 2-7 road trip and Bednar was the worst of all the relievers during that stretch, allowing 11 baserunners, six earned runs and two game-changing home runs in 5 2/3 innings.

8. “Man, that was awesome,” Ryan Weathers said of Bednar bouncing back to retire Springer after falling behind 3-0.

The reason Bednar was needed in the game and the offense’s seven runs were nearly not enough was because Weathers wasn’t any good in what was easily his worst start of the season. He gave up five earned runs and wasn’t able to give the Yankees length (5 1/3 innings) at a time when they desperately need it. It’s been a crazy few weeks for Weathers with his paternity leave then his illness then getting pushed back a day from Sunday to Monday, so hopefully the next time through the rotation is more of a normal setting and routine for him.

9. It will be Will Warren against Dylan Cease on Tuesday night. Both righties are having great years, but Cease is having an All-Star season with a 2.41 ERA and a league-leading 75 strikeouts. Cease has had three games with double-digit strikeouts this season.

Cease pitched against the Yankees on May 7 last season when he was with the Padres. He took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in that game in what was an eventual 4-3 Yankees win in 10 innings. At the time, Cease was struggling mightily and still went into Yankee Stadium and threw 6 1/3 one-hit innings with nine strikeouts. Right now, Cease is pitching the best he has in his career, so yeah, I’m worried about Tuesday’s game.

10. On a non-game note, Gio Urshela announced his retirement from baseball. Urshela spent three years with the Yankees (2019-2021) and they were easily his three best seasons in the majors. Urshela hit .292/.335/.480 with the Yankees and .270/.314/.407 for his career. Urshela was part of The Replacement Yankees of 2019 (after Miguel Andujar got injured diving back to third base on a pickoff attempt at the start of the season), the Covid Yankees of 2020 and then the Disappointing Yankees of 2021.

Urshela was one of only two Yankees (DJ LeMahieu was the other) to hit (.828 OPS) during the 2019 ALCS loss to the Astros. In the crushing Game 6 loss, he walked in his first plate appearance, homered in his second, singled in his third and singled to lead off the ninth. He was on base when LeMahieu hit the game-tying home run in the ninth that is now just a wasted footnote in Yankees history like Alfonso Soriano’s go-ahead home run in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.

The Yankees traded Urshela way before 2022. The wanted to upgrade third base, so they took on the $51.5 million owed to Josh Donaldson.

“We appreciate what Gio has done,” Brian Cashman said at the time, “but he’s not Josh Donaldson.”

Over the next two years, Urshela hit .290/.335/.413. Donaldson hit .204/.293/.386, was released midseason by the Yankees and then paid $8 million by the Yankees in 2023 to not play baseball.

1. After the Yankees were swept by the Brewers last week, Aaron Boone called his team “really good” and said, “We had a bad series.”

Then they had another “bad series” and lost two of three to the Orioles.

Then they had another “bad series” and lost two of three to the Mets.

The Yankees finished their nine-game road trip 2-7. Boone shrugged off concerns about the team’s back-to-back-to-back “bad series” by saying, “We just had a terrible road trip.”

First, it was one “bad series” and then there was a second one and then another one, culminating in the Yankees’ worst regular-season loss since the day after the trade deadline last August. But sure, it was just a terrible road trip! Nothing more. No reason to be concerned. Nothing in the Yankees’ past under Boone has ever started out this way.

Except it has.

2. In 2022, the Yankees went 22-33 from July 9 to September 9.

In 2023, they went 26-42 from June 6 to August 27.

In 2024, they went 10-23 from June 15 to July 6.

In 2025, they went 27-34 from June 13 to August 23.

In each of the last four seasons the Yankees had a midseason meltdown that either pushed them to nearly blowing a 15 1/2-game division lead (2022), caused them to miss the playoffs (2023), forced the division to go down to the wire (2024) or pushed them into the Wild Card Series (2025).

3. This is what the AL East standings looked like during the Yankees’ day off on May 7 before their nine-game road trip began.

This is what the AL East standings look like now after their catastrophic loss to the Mets on Sunday.

Sunday’s loss was very, very bad. That wasn’t a “That’s baseball, Suzyn” kind of loss. That was a humiliating and demoralizing loss to a last-place team decimated by injuries. A day after the Yankees failed to score a run with the bases loaded and no outs in their comeback attempt against against the lowly Mets, they couldn’t protect a four-run lead against the lowly Mets.

4. The difference between winning and losing on Sunday was as simple as David Bednar needing to retire Tyrone Taylor. Taylor entered the game with a .488 OPS, which would make him the worst hitter on the Yankees, a team that rosters Ryan McMahon, Anthony Volpe, Trent Grisham, Austin Wells, J.C. Escarra and Max Schuemann. For some reason, Wells and Bednar agreed on throwing Taylor a first-pitch breaking ball and Taylor sent it a mile down the left-field line.

Bednar is a problem. He’s not the Yankees’ biggest problem, but he’s certainly one of them. Whenever you have a closer whose best pitch isn’t some kind of fastball, it’s a problem, and Bednar’s best pitch isn’t his fastball, and he’s reluctant to even throw fastballs. Bednar has pitched in 20 games this season. He has allowed at least one baserunner in 15 of those games, has allowed at least one earned run in nine of them and has put 33 runners on in 20 innings. He has a 4.95 ERA and a 1.550 WHIP. Those are awful numbers for any reliever, let alone someone who is supposed to be the closer on a supposed contender. I despise Camilo Doval and want him off the team and he has a 5.19 ERA and 1.038 WHIP. Yes, Doval is currently a better pitcher than Bednar, which makes Bednar the worst reliever on the team. The Yankees have the worst reliever on the team closing out games.

5. Crazy, right? Not at all. This is what the Yankees do. They let the worst statistical middle reliever on the team close out games. They let Alex Verdugo play a full season in left field and Stephen Drew a full season at second base. They build an all-world lineup in the mid-2000s and don’t build a rotation around it. They tell you for three years that Volpe is “fucking elite” despite being the worst bat by every traditional and analytic metric for those three years. They construct a left-handed catching tandem with quite possibly the two worst offensive catchers in the majors. They let Clay Holmes blow 13 saves in 2024 before removing him from the role in September. They tell you there’s no room for Bryce Harper on the team because they already have Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Aaron Hicks and Clint Frazier. They tell you how good Hicks is and then eventually release him. They take on $51.5 million owed to Josh Donaldson and call any fans who don’t believe he can still hit “crazy” before eventually releasing him. They do things like continue to bat Grisham leadoff.

6. I don’t know what more Grisham has to do to prove he shouldn’t lead off. Boone had Grisham right back in the leadoff spot on Sunday, and sure enough, Grisham put up another 0-for-5 to drop his slash line on the season to .166/.293/.338. The Yankees are willingly giving the most possible plate appearances to a player batting a .166, who gets on base less than 30 percent of the time. Grisham’s on-base percentage is one point higher than Wells’. Wells is closer to being sent to Triple-A than he is to leading off, and yet, the Yankees are using a player with an on-base percentage one point higher than Wells’ to lead off. Grisham is hitting .123/.277/.228 in the leadoff spot.

7. Again, the offense is THREE BATTERS. THREE. It’s Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. Get those three the most possible plate appearances. Stop starting every game with one out and no one on, especially when you are already giving up outs when McMahon plays and in the catcher’s spot. And that’s not even counting the days Volpe and Jazz Chisholm are also automatic outs, which is a lot of the time.

8. “The boys are playing hard though,” Judge said after Sunday’s crushing loss. “The biggest thing is guys are playing tough and making the plays they need to, but just coming up a little bit short.”

Phew. I thought the biggest thing in Major League Baseball was winning, but thankfully, it’s not. The biggest thing (from someone who has never won anything) is “playing tough.” Maybe the Yankees can hang a pennant on the facing of the 300 level for that next to their last championship pennant of 17 years ago. “2026 Playing Tough Champions.” They can also toss one up for the 2017 championship Brian Cashman has said he feels they won, even though they didn’t even win the American League and would have had to beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

Judge said “Guys are … making the plays they need to, but just coming up a little bit short.” So then they aren’t making the plays they need to? Did Bednar make the play he needed to when he couldn’t get three outs before giving up three runs? Did the five-man infield make the play they needed to when they collided to allow the winning run to score in the 10th inning? No and no. Instead, the Yankees fell to 0-3 on the year in road extra-inning games as they continue to be the worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020. They fell to 3-10 in one-run games on the season and gave the Mets their first win when trailing after eight innings in 92 chances.

9. If you think the Yankees are a “really good team” like Boone because they are 28-19, wake up. They were 26-12 just 10 days ago. And 10 days ago they were a much different team. The team on May 18 is not the team from May 7. That team had Max Fried and Jose Caballero. That team had Brent Headrick dominating the late innings. That team had Giancarlo Stanton almost ready to start running in his rehab, and that team was about to get Carlos Rodon back and Gerrit Cole soon after Rodon.

Then Fried got hurt. Then Caballero got hurt. Headrick allowed at least one run in every game he pitched in on the road trip. Stanton’s rehab has stalled and he’s still not running, and Rodon has been the left-handed Carlos Carrasco since returning. If Cole comes back and isn’t himself, “It’s right in front of us” won’t be too far behind.

10. The Yankees will play the Blue Jays for the next four days in the Bronx. The Blue Jays are four games under .500 with a minus-11 run differential. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has as many home runs as Wells this season and an OPS lower than Amed Rosario’s. After getting dominated by the Brewers, losing a series to the Orioles and being embarrassed by the Mets, the Yankees getting beat up by the struggling Blue Jays and Guerrero Jr. blasting them like he did in last year’s ALDS would be the least surprising result ever. We’re about to find out if the last nine games were “just a terrible road trip.” If not, the annual Boone Swoon will have arrived much earlier than June this year.

1. Friday’s 5-2 Yankees win was a stereotypical Yankees win: Cam Schlittler started and the back-to-back-to-back trio of Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger showed up. When those two things happen, the Yankees win.

Schlittler earned his sixth win of the season with 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball. The one run came on a Juan Soto solo home run on an 0-2 pitch because sometimes generational talents do things no one else is capable of. (It was just the second home run Schlittler has allowed this season.) And Rice, Judge and Bellinger went 5-for-14 with a double and a home run. They finally received some support from Jazz Chisholm, who had his best game of the season, going 3-for-4 with a two-run double and a walk while wearing Giancarlo Stanton’s pants.

2. Rice, Judge, Bellinger and Chisholm hit in the 2-3-4-5 spots in the order on Friday and combined to go 8-for-18 with all of the Yankees’ three extra-base hits and four of their five RBIs. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-18 with three walks and eight strikeouts. The “2” in the 2-for-18 both came from Spencer Jones, who had his first-ever multi-hit game, drove in a run and happened to break Clay Holmes’ leg with a line drive up the middle.

3. Trent Grisham was a total zero in the leadoff spot on Friday with his latest 0-for-5. Again, here is what I wrote about Grisham recently:

Grisham always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

And here is what I wrote about Grisham after his three-run home run in Baltimore:

After going 1-for-11 with two walks and four strikeouts in the first four games of the road trip, Grisham hit the three-run home run on Tuesday to reset his performance. That was likely his production for the next week. We’ll continue to see Grisham every day from now through the last game of this series and the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series and the four-game Blue Jays series, but we likely won’t see him add positive production again until Memorial Day weekend.

As expected, Grisham is 1-for-11 with five strikeouts since that three-run home run.

4. Anthony Volpe had the second three-walk game of his career on Friday and then a two-walk game on Saturday. Don’t think this is Volpe having good plate appearances or battling up there to earn walks. He did nothing to earn them other than stand there. What do I mean by that?

Volpe’s first walk was a four-pitch walk in which no pitches were close to the zone.

Volpe’s second walk was a five-pitch walk. The only pitch close to the zone was a 3-0 fastball he rightfully took, and even that pitch barely grazed the outside corner.

Volpe’s third walk was a seven-pitch walk in which he fouled off a pitch when the count was 2-2.

Volpe’s fourth walk was a four-pitch walk in which no pitches were close to the zone.

Volpe’s fifth walk was a five-pitch walk in which he never swung the bat.

Volpe swung once in the 25 pitches that produced five walks because every pitch was non-competitive. He didn’t have to battle or grind 0-2 counts into walks. He didn’t have to fight off pitches. Mets pitching made it so he didn’t have to think about swinging.

5. Why does this matter? Because what I wrote a few days ago:

The Yankees desperately want Volpe at shortstop over Caballero and this dumb, freak injury opened the door for them to get what they want without Volpe having to prove it in Triple-A. Any production, any at all will have Caballero on the bench when his injured-list stint is over.

The Yankees love to tell their fans what they have watched isn’t reality even when it is. They will twist and spin any tiny positive about Volpe into reasons why he is breaking out or turning a corner. Five walks that you or I could have also picked up by just standing in the box without a bat on Friday and Saturday should not be used to support Volpe. And yet I’m worried the Yankees will use them to do just that. Volpe remains hitless this season and also left the bases loaded on Saturday with the go-ahead run on base.

6. Volpe wasn’t the only one to leave the bases loaded on Saturday. Amed Rosario and Grisham left them loaded before him. There is no swing-and-miss team among actual contenders like the Yankees, especially in situational-hitting spots. John Smoltz mentioned during the broadcast how it’s unlikely the Yankees will ever win a championship with the amount of swing-and-miss in their lineup. Thanks, John. Yankees fans have only known this for a decade. The Yankees have already struck out 25 times in the series. Forty-six percent of the Yankees’ outs in this series have come via strikeout.

7. The Yankees needed Rosario or Grisham or Volpe to come through with the bases loaded on Saturday because Carlos Rodon was awful for the second straight start. (Reminder, Rodon makes more than $800,000 per start.) So far this season he has produced this line: 8 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 8 BB, 10 K. Welcome back, Carlos! Happy you’re here for this season … and next season … and the season after that.

There should be one more earned run on Rodon’s ledger, but baseball has idiotic scoring rules. Rodon threw a wild pitch with the bases loaded that led to a run on Saturday and he threw away the wild pitch to lead to a second run on the disastrous play. Because the second run came on an error it didn’t count against his line even though it was his error. It was one of the least athletic plays in baseball history as his “throw” home looked like Happy Gilmore’s caddy throwing a rock into the water.

8. Oswald Peraza torched the Yankees when the Angels were in the Bronx a month ago. Ezequiel Duran, who was traded for Joey Gallo, did the same last week. Jake Bauers’ home run off Brent Headrick ignited the Brewers’ comeback last weekend and Gary Sanchez was in the middle of the Brewers’ rallies and throwing out would-be basestealers as the Yankees were swept. Soto is 3-for-5 with a home run and three walks this weekend. The only two home runs Schlittler has allowed this season have been to former Yankees Carlos Narvaez and Soto. Luke Weaver was allowed to leave in free agency because he couldn’t get anyone out at the end of last year and Devin Williams was allowed to leave because he couldn’t get anyone out for nearly all of last year. Those two combined to pitch three scoreless innings against the Yankees on Saturday with Weaver getting out a bases-loaded, no-out jam. The Law of Ex-Yankees performing well against the Yankees never fails.

9. Austin Wells is the luckiest player on the Yankees. Grisham, Chisholm and McMahon being automatic outs this season and the undeserved return of Volpe has kept Wells’ miserable season as a secondary ire of Yankees’ fans. That seems to be changing. Memorial Day is a week away and Wells has one double and five RBIs on the season. Poor roster construction and a lack of options in the minors have protected Wells for this long, but that protection is wearing thin.

10. The Mets have a distinct pitching advantage in the rubber game on Sunday. Freddy Peralta is really good and Elmer Rodriguez’s minor-league command seems to have been greatly exaggerated. The Rangers pummeled Rodriguez in both of his major-league starts over the last two weeks and with the way the Yankees have been hitting on this 2-6 road trip, if Rodriguez has the kind of first inning on Sunday he had last week, the Yankees could be looking at dropping the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series, an unthinkable feat given how bad the Mets have been and are.

Sunday’s game is enormous. It’s not just another game. It’s the difference between going 3-6 or 2-7 on the road trip. It’s the difference between winning the series against the mess that is the Mets or losing a series to the mess that is the Mets. And most importantly, it’s the difference between possibly losing more ground in the AL East or not.

1. It’s beginning to look a lot like last season, everywhere you go …

The Yankees can’t beat good teams, they can’t win one-run games, they can’t win road extra-inning games, they have a top-heavy lineup (because of course they do since they ran it back with the same lineup from last year), an untrustworthy bullpen and now their Opening Day starter could be lost for the season and more. I have written many times that the 2026 season is just a continuation of 2025 and it’s never been more true.

2. The title of this blog was going to be ‘Max Fried Is a Mess’ as the lefty struggled through yet another start pitching out of the stretch, but then Matt Blake got on the phone in the dugout after the third inning and you knew nothing good was going to come from that. It was announced during the game that Fried exited with left elbow posterior discomfort, which will require imaging on Thursday. Sometime around 4 p.m. on Friday, it could be announced that Fried needs surgery.

3. The good news is we now know why Fried hasn’t looked like himself the last two starts and really for most of this season. (It was never the windup vs. the stretch.) The bad news is there’s a very good chance Fried is gone for this season and most of next season (if there is a next season). As I wrote after Tuesday’s game, the supposed rotation crunch would have a way of working itself out.

As Joe Torre would say, “These things take care of themselves,” and it’s possible that between now and Cole returning that someone else in the rotation goes down (knock on all the wood that that doesn’t happen).

I guess I didn’t knock on enough wood.

4. Wednesday’s 7-0 loss in Baltimore was as predictable as a getaway-day game at the end of a six-game road trip leading into a scheduled day off can be. Fried had nothing before exiting after three innings and the offense was lifeless. Most teams light up a starting pitcher they are seeing for the second time in 11 days, especially when they lit him up the first time. Not the Yankees. They allowed Kyle Bradish to throw six one-hit innings against them. The Yankees went 1-for-26 in the game with five walks and seven strikeouts. A truly pathetic effort.

5. Pathetic, but not unexpected. Six of the nine Yankees in the lineup on Wednesday boasted an OPS under .700. The three who didn’t were Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger and they combined to go 0-for-11 with a walk and three strikeouts. Because those three are the offense, when they don’t do anything, the Yankees don’t have a chance. They didn’t do anything on Wednesday and the Yankees didn’t have a chance.

6. Trent Grisham was back in the leadoff spot on Wednesday because why wouldn’t he be? Jazz Chisholm had the Yankees’ only hit in the game. Chisholm briefly went below a .200 average, but the fifth-inning double got him back above the Mendoza Line. Chisholm is 46 home runs and 39 stolen bases away from his 50/50 season. Remember the five minutes when it looked like Ryan McMahon may be coming out of his early-season slump? He went 1-for-18 with seven strikeouts on the six-game road trip. Spencer Jones had three plate appearances, walked twice and didn’t strike out. Progress? J.C. Escarra put up the latest 0-for day at catcher for the Yankees. I don’t know how the team thinks it can win a championship with the worst hitting catcher tandem in the majors.

7. And then there’s Anthony Volpe. Wednesday represented Anthony Volpe’s undeserved return to the lineup, and he responded by going 0-for-3 with a shallow flyout, a strikeout and a pop-up. The strikeout was magnificent. The Yankees trailed 3-0 and Volpe came up with two on and two out. Bradish threw him seven pitches and six of them were outside the zone, and inevitably, Volpe struck out swinging. The one pitch Bradish threw in the zone, Volpe took.

If only an 0-for-3 day at the plate was the worst part of Volpe’s 2026 debut. For the cherry on top, Volpe made an error at short in the eighth inning, booting a routine ground ball. Jose Caballero hadn’t made an error at shortstop since April 13 and then Volpe and Max Schuemann made errors at the position in back-to-back games.

Offensively, Volpe looked like a player who had a .565 OPS in Triple-A. Defensively, he looked like the same player with poor footwork and without the arm strength to make up for his fielding technique. He continues to not be a major-league shortstop (and likely not a major-league anything). At least Yankees fans don’t have to worry about Caballero losing his job because of this injury.

8. The only good to come from the loss was that the bullpen got a break as Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough ate the final six innings. All middle relievers got Wednesday off and will get Thursday off. That sets the Yankees up nicely for the weekend at Citi Field. With two days off and Cam Schlittler going on Friday, there is plenty of rest to be had for Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill and David Bednar.

9. I wish I felt better about this 27-17 team, but with Giancarlo Stanton not yet running, Caballero on the IL with a broken finger and Fried now headed for tests on his elbow, things are much different than they were when they left New York last Thursday. Six days ago, they were 14 games over .500, Volpe was in Triple-A, Fried was working on his command, Jasson Dominguez was getting a chance to bat cleanup and play left field and they were getting Carlos Rodon back. Then Dominguez sprained his shoulder, they got swept by the Brewers, Rodon got rocked in his return, Caballero broke his finger leading to the undeserved call-up for Volpe and Fried is injured. They have lost four games in the loss column to the Rays in the last six games.

10. There’s no better landing place for a team mired in a 1-5 run with a litany of injuries than the Mets. However, I’m now petrified that this banged-up, slumping, shitty version of the Yankees could get humiliated in Queens this weekend and jumpstart the Mets’ season. That can’t happen. I mean it totally could with the way the Yankees have played over the last six days, but it can’t in the sense that it would be demoralizing. I thought I would be able to spend Thursday’s day off relaxing with a night off from watching Grisham, Chisholm, McMahon, Volpe, Wells and Escarra play baseball, but I guess I will just spend it being worried about the possibility of losing to the Mets instead.

1. The Yankees held a 2-0 lead for the fourth straight game, but unlike the previous three games, they won this one. They won this one because they were able to extend their 2-0 lead into a 6-0 lead and held on to beat the Orioles 6-2 and end their four-game losing streak.

Trent Grisham was removed from the leadoff spot with left-handed Trevor Rogers starting, and Paul Goldschmidt — the leadoff hitter against lefties — hit the first pitch of the game out for the earliest 1-0 lead possible.

The Yankees exploded for five runs in the third. Cody Bellinger hit a one-out, bases-loaded RBI groundout to make it 2-0, Amed Rosario produced an RBI single on a ground ball to third and Grisham — batting sixth — hit a three-run home run to break the game open. (The Yankees were held scoreless for the final six innings.)

2. I have ripped Aaron Boone recently for continuing to bat Grisham out of the leadoff spot, and rightfully so. His three-run home run out of the 6-hole doesn’t change that. Let Grisham hit in the middle of the order and run into one every once in a while. If you remember, this is what I wrote about Grisham last week:

Grisham always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

After going 1-for-11 with two walks and four strikeouts in the first four games of the road trip, Grisham hit the three-run home run on Tuesday to reset his performance. That was likely his production for the next week. We’ll continue to see Grisham every day from now through the last game of this series and the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series and the four-game Blue Jays series, but we likely won’t see him add positive production again until Memorial Day Weekend. (But hey, the Memorial Day Weekend series is against the Rays, so it would be a good time for him to provide something offensively!)

3. Will Warren came an out shy of giving the Yankees six innings, but he actually gave the Yankees roughly eight unofficial innings. In the third, the Orioles had a runner on first with no outs and Warren got a double play ball that Max Schuemann threw away. Warren then got a second straight double play ball that Ryan McMahon fielded brilliantly and threw to second where no one was covering and all runners were safe. After getting a shallow fly ball for the second out of the inning, Warren produced his third double play ball of the inning and the Yankees turned it to end the inning unscathed.

In the fifth, Amed Rosario let a two-out ground ball go right through his legs to extend that inning. The Yankees have played extremely sloppy defense in the infield on this road trip, but that’s no surprise. That’s the way it’s been during the entire Boone era.

4. Warren was good, but not good enough for me to pass Ryan Weathers on the starting pitching depth chart. If it were up to me, Warren would be the odd man out once Gerrit Cole returns, but a lot can happen between now and then. As Joe Torre would say, “These things take care of themselves,” and it’s possible that between now and Cole returning that someone else in the rotation goes down (knock on all the wood that that doesn’t happen). But if everyone is healthy, and the Yankees don’t use a six-man rotation, Warren should lose his spot, even though he’s been very good this season.

5. Warren gave up a couple of runs in the sixth, but Fernando Cruz was able to get out of the inning without further damage. Jake Bird could only get out one of the three batters he faced in the eighth as he continues to do everything possible to not become a trusted reliever at a time when the Yankees are desperate for one. Tim Hill cleaned up Bird’s mess to get through the eighth and David Bednar pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to close it out.

6. It wasn’t all positive for the Yankees despite ending their losing streak. Jose Caballero was placed on the 10-day injured list with a broken finger, claiming he will be back after the 10 days are up. To make matters worse, Anthony Volpe was called up to play shortstop in Caballero’s absence.

After finally being sent down three years too late, Volpe is now back in the majors having done nothing to earn it. If Caballero doesn’t slide back on a pickoff attempt on Sunday, Volpe is in Triple-A right now, where he has hit .205/.238/.333 in 42 plate appearances. Volpe is undeserving of the call-up and simply “lucky” that an injury brought him up. I would have called Oswaldo Cabrera up and continued to play Schuemann at shortstop. Schuemann has provided strong at-bats and outside of the botched double play on Tuesday, you know he can make major-league throws from short to first.

7. Boone said “the expectation” is that Caballero will regain his starting role once off the IL, but I wouldn’t trust Boone to tell me what day of the week it is. He said during the offseason that Volpe would be the starting shortstop once he returned and look how that turned out. I know how this plays out. Volpe hits .350 for the next nine days and Caballero returns as a utility player.  Then Volpe goes back to being the non-major-league bat he was in 2023, 2024 and 2025, but the Yankees believe those first nine days with Caballero out were indicative of who he really is, so they continue to start him at shortstop for the rest of 2026. You may be laughing. I’m not. I know how Volpe plays and I know how the Yankees operate. The Yankees desperately want Volpe at shortstop over Caballero and this dumb, freak injury opened the door for them to get what they want without Volpe having to prove it in Triple-A. Any production, any at all will have Caballero on the bench when his injured-list stint is over.

8. With Volpe up, and Boone saying he’s going to play, I could see this being the lineup on Wednesday:

Trent Grisham
Ben Rice
Aaron Judge
Cody Bellinger
Jazz Chisholm
Spencer Jones
Ryan McMahon
Anthony Volpe
J.C. Escarra

It’s not the lineup I would use, but it’s likely the lineup Boone will use.

9. Kyle Bradish goes for the Orioles, and 11 days ago, the Yankees handed him his worst start of 2026: 4 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 2 HR. Bradish rebounded to strike out 10 over seven innings against the Athletics in his most recent start. The Yankees need to get to Bradish the way they did earlier this month because with the way the bullpen has been used since Saturday, the options are going to be limited and not very good on Wednesday.

10. Max Fried can’t have the lack of command he had in his last start against the Brewers or the last time the Yankees faced the Orioles on May 3. He has to give the Yankees length on Wednesday with the start time pushed up and the bullpen on fumes. The Orioles offense is obviously in another stratosphere compared to the shitty Red Sox offense, but the eight shutout innings he gave at Fenway Park back on April 22 would be very much appreciated in the series finale at Camden Yards. If Fried gives six innings and it’s a close game, it’s going to be hard to like the Yankees’ chances with who will be made available in relief.

1. No team blows a 2-0 lead like the New York Yankees. They held a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning on Saturday and lost. They held a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning on Sunday and lost. And they held a 2-0 lead again in the seventh inning on Monday and lost. Not only did they have a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning on Monday, but Ryan Weathers had a no-hitter going in the seventh inning and the Yankees still lost and fell to 0-4 on this nightmarish road trip.

The 3-2 loss on Monday dropped the Yankees to 3-9 in one-run games this season. They are the second-worst team in the majors in one-run games, they are 1-8 against teams over .500, they are 0-2 in road extra-inning games and the worst team in baseball in road extra-inning games since the automatic runner was implemented. But yeah, it’s early! It’s just bad luck! It’s a small sample size! It’s a coincidence! It has nothing to do with the manager, roster construction or history repeating itself.

2. The Yankees wasted six scoreless innings from Cam Schlittler on Saturday and 6 1/3 one-hit innings from Weathers on Monday. They have scored eight runs in the four games in Milwaukee and Baltimore and have lost them all.

Here is what I wrote about the Yankees’ offense on Monday:

The Yankees have a three-hitter lineup (Rice, Judge and Bellinger) no matter who you bat or the order you bat them in the other six spots, so just put those three at the top of the lineup, get them the most plate appearances and hope you score every time their turn in the lineup comes up. It’s the only way this offense can produce. And if they aren’t hitting, well, hope for dominant starting pitching because otherwise the team has no chance of winning.

The Yankees got a two-run home run from Rice and a dominant starting pitching effort on Monday and still lost. They lost because the non-Rice, Judge and Bellinger lineup spots are automatic outs. Those three combined to go 3-for-10 with a double, home run and two walks in the series opener against the Orioles. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-21 with a walk and six strikeouts. Those “2” were a Max Schuemann seventh-inning double and a Paul Goldschmidt ninth-inning single. Schuemann only played because Jose Caballero is dealing with a finger issue and Goldschmidt entered the game as a pinch hitter for Spencer Jones. (I love how Boone has removed Jones for a pinch hitter in two of four games so far. It took him three full years to remove Anthony Volpe for a pinch hitter.) So the regular, everyday starters not named Rice, Judge or Bellinger went 0-for-16 with a walk and six strikeouts.

3. Judge led off the sixth with a double when the Yankees were leading 2-0, but was unable to score after Bellinger moved him over to third. He was unable to score because Jazz Chisholm is the single-worst situational hitter in baseball. There’s no one I want up less than Chisholm with a runner on third and less than two outs. There isn’t a count Chisholm isn’t in an 0-2 hole in, and the combination of him always swinging for the fences and flailing at breaking balls away is maddening. I look forward to the day he is no longer a Yankee, even if that day should have been this past offseason.

For as bad as Chisholm is, Austin Wells is worse. It’s the middle of May and Wells has five RBIs. FIVE! He has one double this season. ONE! Wells needs to be 100 percent right with his challenges and throw out every would-be basestealer to negate how horrific he is at the plate.

4. Wells is awful, and yet, he has a higher on-base percentage than Trent Grisham, the $22 million man who is locked into the leadoff spot no matter how bad he is. Across a season or in an individual game, the leadoff hitter will have more plate appearance opportunities than any hitter on the team. So each day, Aaron Boone is willingly having a player with a worse on-base percentage than AUSTIN WELLS potentially get the most plate appearances on the team. So each game, the Yankees start with one out and no one on in the first inning and take away the guarantee of a first-inning plate appearance for Bellinger. Add in all of the automatic outs at the bottom of the lineup and the Yankees are playing each game with roughly 12 outs to work with offensively instead of the allotted 27.

5. The Yankees’ best chance to score is when Rice is set to lead off an inning because it means Rice, Judge and Bellinger will all bat in the same inning. This happened in the eighth inning on Monday with the Yankees trailing by a run. It was their last chance to tie the game or take the lead. The trio couldn’t have had a less competitive inning as Rice struck out swinging on four pitches, Judge flied out on the first pitch and Bellinger struck out swinging on four pitches against Rico Garcia. Where do other teams find relievers like Garcia when the Yankees are running out Camilo Doval? Oh, that’s right. Garcia was a Yankee last year for one game before being designated for assignment. Opposing hitters are 1-for-57 against him this season. I’m glad they don’t have an arm like that in the bullpen.

6. Garcia has been the Orioles’ closer and best reliever, so Craig Albernaz didn’t hesitate to use him against the Yankees’ best three hitters on Monday even though it was the eighth inning. Get through the eighth and worry about the ninth when you get there is how Albernaz managed. It’s a concept that is impossible for Boone to understand. It’s why you saw Doval face the top of the Brewers lineup in the eighth inning on Saturday instead of Bednar. Because Boone would rather manage to the save stat and not the actual situation, the Yankees lost a winnable game. The closer role is beyond dumb. Use your best reliever when the game calls for it. Maybe Bednar would have blown Saturday’s game. At least Boone would have lost the game making the right call. At least he would have put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Let Bednar face the top of the order in the eighth and worry about the ninth when you get there. Maybe the Yankees would have tacked on, or maybe Doval would have been more successful facing the bottom of the order.

7. After watching the same game unfold on Saturday and Sunday, the Yankees blowing a 2-0 lead once they went to the bullpen was inevitable on Monday. The Yankees failed to tack on, failed to do anything offensively the entire night except for one Rice swing and it was only a matter of time until the Orioles broke through. The breakthrough came on the very first batter the bullpen faced as Brent Headrick allowed a go-ahead, three-run home run to Coby Mayo, who has been so bad this season that he would be the worst hitter on the Yankees. He entered the game with a .495 OPS. To put into perspective how bad that is, J.C. Escarra has the lowest OPS on the Yankees at .567. Even with the three-run home run, Mayo’s OPS is still only .541. So he would still be the worst hitter on the Yankees by 26 points. And yet, he was the difference in the game on Monday.

8. It’s hard to be upset with Headrick for giving up the bomb since he has been overused and overworked. He leads the majors with 22 appearances. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most-used reliever in baseball in the first seven weeks of the season has allowed late-game home runs in his two most recent appearances. Headrick is tired and fatigued and when you’re tired and fatigued, the next steps are underperformance and then injury. We’re at the underperformance portion of Headrick’s season.

9. Boone has no idea how to manage a bullpen in Year 9 on the job as we saw on Saturday, but at some point he needs new options. Headrick, Tim Hill, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar are pitching all the time because Doval sucks, Jake Bird isn’t trusted, Paul Blackburn is the supposed long man and Ryan Yarbrough is like a fan who won a sweepstakes and a year-long experience to be a Yankee and just never appear in a game. The ‘Run It Back’ offense was an ill-advised strategy and remains so, but the ‘Run It Back’ bullpen is problematic. The Yankees’ offense isn’t good enough collectively to score consistently against anything other than No. 4 and No. 5 starters and the bullpen isn’t good enough to hold anything less than a three-run lead. They have the best rotation in baseball and they are going to piss it away with Grisham leading off, Chisholm batting fifth, a catching tandem of Wells and Escarra and a bullpen that lacks triple-digit velocity in an era in which every team other than the Yankees seems to have multiple triple-digit velocity options in the bullpen.

10. After a career year in 2025, Trevor Rogers is back to being a mediocre starter this season. But Rogers throws with his left hand, and if you do that, the talent and ability level barely matters when you face the Yankees, given the lack of right-handed quality bats they can run out there. Rogers will go on Tuesday for the Orioles against Will Warren, who is coming off his worst start of the season, and who is clearly going to be the odd man out of the rotation once Gerrit Cole returns with how good Weathers has looked. Warren needs a big performance on Tuesday to pull himself closer to Weathers in the battle to be the fifth starter. But even if Warren has a big performance, will the offense score more than three runs and will the bullpen be able to hold a late lead? So far on this road trip they have proved they won’t.

1. What a shitty weekend. The only positive from the weekend was that Cam Schlittler put up another scoreless start. Other than that it was the most frustrating, annoying and disappointing series of the season, a season which includes a sweep by the first-place Rays in Tampa. And with the sweep by the Brewers, the Yankees are now two games behind the Rays in the loss column in the division.

2. Max Fried was bad on Friday: 6 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 5 K. It was the second time in nine starts this season that Fried has allowed five earned runs. He allowed five or more earned runs twice in 32 starts last year. He has walked three batters in a game four times this season. He did so just five times last season. The Yankees are only 5-4 in Fried starts this year after going 22-10 when he started last year. As you can tell, Fried is nowhere near as good in 2026 as he was in 2025.

The biggest reason for this is his command. He stopped pitching from the windup a few starts ago to combat a lack of command, and while it may have looked like it helped against inferior lineups in Boston and Texas, it was a mirage. Fried stayed out of the stretch against the Orioles and couldn’t give the Yankees a quality start and stayed out of it against the Brewers and produced his worst start of the season.

Fried was bad, but he could have pitched nine innings of one-run ball and it wouldn’t have mattered because the Yankees were shut out. They had no answer for Jacob Misiorowski and they had close to no answer for the entire Brewers pitching staff all weekend, scoring six runs in three games with one of those six runs being the automatic runner in the 10th inning on Saturday. The Yankees struck out a ridiculous 39 times in the series and are now 1-8 against teams above .500.

3. If you think that stat doesn’t matter, you’re kidding yourself. It was just last year that the Yankees racked up 94 wins by feasting on the league’s worst teams from late August through the end of the regular season and then barely eked by an injury-ravaged Red Sox team and were humiliated by the Blue Jays, two teams they couldn’t beat during the regular season. Beating up on bottom feeders for six months is how the Yankees are built, but getting shut down by the league’s best is also how they are built.

The idea the Yankees were unfortunate to draw Jacob Misiorowski, Kyle Harrison and Logan Henderson in a three-game series is silly. The Yankees had Fried, Schlittler and Carlos Rodon going for fuck’s sake. It’s not like they were trotting out Luis Gil, Elmer Rodriguez and Carlos Carrasco. If anything, the Brewers with their lack of power were unfortunate to draw Fried, Schlittler and Rodon. But the Brewers — a team with limited slug that succeeds on making contact and limiting strikeouts — beat up on two of the Yankees’ starters, came back against their best middle reliever, walked off their second-best middle reliever and also walked off their closer. The only way the Yankees were winning a game in the series was if Schlittler pitched a complete-game shutout in the second game because asking the Yankees’ untrustworthy bullpen to preserve a two-run lead with nine outs to go was too much to ask.

It didn’t have to be that way. The Yankees could have won on Saturday if not for a lack off offense, a lack of Baseball IQ (Judge’s baserunning in the 10th and Hills’ decision to throw to third in the 10th), a lack of defense and a lack of a competent manager in the game. Somehow Aaron Boone is making Year 1 mistakes in Year 9. There is only one person in the world who thought Camilo Doval in the eighth inning of a one-run game against the top of the Brewers lineup was the right call on Saturday. Unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually gets to make the decisions.

4. I don’t blame Doval for coughing up the lead in the second game. Doval sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t keep himself on the roster when he couldn’t get anyone out last year. He didn’t put himself on the roster to begin this year and he hasn’t kept himself on it either. Boone had roughly 57 different ways to navigate the late innings on Saturday and chose an option that wasn’t any of those.

If you’re of the mindset “Blame the pitcher, not the manager,” you’re a fucking fool. If I were asked to get through the eighth inning on Saturday and coughed up the lead, would those same fans be saying “Blame the pitcher, not the manager” after the inevitable result? (Let’s be honest: I would have protected the lead.) The only job a manager truly has is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Boone fails to do that in nearly every close game the Yankees play. It’s why the Yankees suck in one-run games. It’s why they are the worst team in all of baseball on the road in extra innings. Because it takes strategy, creativity and intelligence to win in that setting. Boone lacks all of those things. He has since the day he was wrongfully given the job.

“We’re really good,” Boone said after getting swept, “like, we had a bad series.”

Oh shut the fuck up. You sound just like Brian Cashman calling his 82-80 Yankees “really fucking good” after the 2023 season. You’re a fake good team, Boone. The same kind of fake good you were last year when you were run out of the playoffs and the same kind of fake good you were in 2024 when you were given a red carpet to the pennant through two AL Central opponents before getting embarrassed in the World Series. If you ever wondered how anyone could have used using Nestor Cortes over Hill in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, well, it’s games like Saturday that remind you what Boone is capable of.

5. I should have seen Sunday’s loss coming. I’m still upset with myself for thinking the Yankees coming off back-to-back losses with just two non-automatic runner runs in the series would show up on Sunday. I should have known better with Carlos Rodon starting.

If you’re playing in a Major League Baseball game, there are no excuses for your performance. Rodon missed the first six weeks of the season rehabbing from offseason surgery and was deemed ready to start on Sunday. I don’t want to hear that it was his first start of the season. Whether his first start came in March in San Francisco after not needing rehab starts or on Sunday in Milwaukee after needing them, it doesn’t matter. The games all count and all count the same and Rodon was putrid.

Rodon blew a two-run lead, walked five (three on four pitches), hit a batter and allowed three earned runs in 4 1/3 innings. Welcome back!

6. When the Yankees failed to score in the ninth inning on Sunday the game was essentially over and I’m glad it ended it when it did in the bottom of the ninth. If Bednar didn’t give up the walk-off home run in the ninth, then only one of these two endings was going to unfold with Doval warming up as the next reliever to come in.:

1. The Yankees don’t score in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.
2. The Yankees score one run in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.

The Brewers could have given the Yankees 25 extra innings to score on Sunday and they wouldn’t have. They had no answer for the Brewers bullpen — a staff full of triple-digit fastballs — while the Yankees only triple-digit arm in their pen is Doval, who has no idea where the ball is going once it leaves his hand. The Yankees’ best relievers are Bednar, a closer whose best pitch isn’t a fastball, Tim Hill, a left-on-left ground ball specialist, Fernando Cruz, whose best pitch is a splitter, and Brent Headrick. The Yankees don’t possess a single arm that can come in and miss bats or miss spots and still succeed because of velocity. Their relievers have to have impeccable command because they all rely on trickery and deception to get outs.

7. Fried and Rodon stunk, the bullpen wasn’t very good, Boone proved he’s still an idiot all these years later, but the worst part was the offense. Ben Rice did nothing all weekend and is 0-for-13 since returning to the lineup and Aaron Judge hit a solo home run on Sunday. When those two have a series like that, it’s always going to be hard to win.

To make matters worse, Jake Bauers hit a home run in Friday’s comeback against the Yankees, Gary Sanchez was in the middle of the Brewers’ comeback rally on Sunday and also gunned down Judge trying to steal second late in the game. Here’s what I wrote before the series started:

Ezequiel Duran had a monster series against his former team (5-for-10 with a double, home run, five RBIs, four walks and a steal) because why wouldn’t he? That’s the Law of Ex-Yankees. Oswald Peraza did it to them last month with the Angels. Carlos Narvaez hit the only home run against Cam Schlittler this season. Randal Grichuk will likely get a big hit against them when they play the White Sox. That’s how it goes. The Brewers employ both Gary Sanchez and Jake Bauers, so get ready for that duo to do something special this weekend.

8. It’s disturbing that Trent Grisham is still batting leadoff for the Yankees. Why would anyone want Grisham to theoretically receive the most plate appearances on the team? Why would anyone not want Cody Bellinger getting a guaranteed plate appearance in the first inning? Again, only one person in the world could believe in the Yankees lineup construction, and unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually fills out the lineup card.

9. This should be the lineup against right-handed starters:

Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Trent Grisham, DH
Spencer Jones, CF
Jose Caballero, SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Who cares, C

This should be the lineup against left-handed starters:

Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Amed Rosario, 3B
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Spencer Jones, CF
Who cares, C

Yes, bat Rice leadoff against both, since he hits both. Yes, sit Grisham against lefties. Yes, DH him and play Jones in center field against righties. Yes, pit the catcher ninth, I don’t care which catcher it is, they both suck.

The Yankees have a three-hitter lineup (Rice, Judge and Bellinger) no matter who you bat or the order you bat them in the other six spots, so just put those three at the top of the lineup, get them the most plate appearances and hope you score every time their turn in the lineup comes up. It’s the only way this offense can produce. And if they aren’t hitting, well, hope for dominant starting pitching because otherwise the team has no chance of winning.

10. I’m sure the Yankees will beat the shit out of the Orioles the next three days. Lose to a good team and beat up on bad teams. It’s the Boone era summed up. It’s why he has so many regular-season wins in an era of tanking and limited quality teams. Beating up on the Orioles has been the signature of the Yankees over these last nine years and this week should be no different. Improve the record, inflate the run differential and have everyone thinking being 1-8 against the Athletics, Rays and Brewers isn’t a big deal, when in fact, it’s a huge deal.

1. After Paul Blackburn “opened” Thursday’s series/season finale with the Rangers with a scoreless first inning, the Yankees hit two “triples” in the span of three batters to take a 1-0. lead Paul Goldschmidt hit a defense-aided triple in the leadoff spot, and after an Aaron Judge lineout to third, Cody Bellinger hit a defense-aided triple to right field.

Amed Rosario and Jazz Chisholm both struck out to strand Bellinger at third and from innings 2 through 5 it seemed like the Yankees may have missed their opportunity to get to MacKenzie Gore and take a sizable lead. The Yankees stranded a leadoff double in the second and two runners in the fourth. The Yankees trailed 2-1 in the sixth before Trent Grisham hit a bases-clearing, three-run double off Gore to take a 4-2 lead. They would add three more in the sixth, and another in both the seventh and eighth on their way to a 9-2 win. The Yankees finished the season 4-2 against the Rangers with all six games oddly coming in a 10-day span. The only two losses were in games started by Nathan Eovaldi.

2. It was the Yankees’ sixth straight series win, and because the Rays never lose, the win kept the Yankees a half-game ahead in the division. On a day when the Yankees won once again, it wasn’t all good as Ben Rice was kept out of the lineup for a third straight game, Jose Caballero was held out after getting hit by a pitch on Wednesday and Jasson Dominguez crashed into the left-field wall making a catch to lead off the game. Dominguez suffered a sprained AC joint that will put him on the injured list for some time, but he seems fortunate to have avoided a concussion.

3. Suddenly, the healthy-to-begin-the-season lineup is now without Giancarlo Stanton, Rice has missed three-and-a-half games, Caballero missed a game and Dominguez is headed to the IL. One-third of the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup is injured to some degree and the Yankees’ cleanup hitter throughout this week is now out as well.

4. All of this means Spencer Jones is headed to the majors. The left-handed body double of Judge, Jones has been the minors’ best power hitter for a second straight season, but his power is accompanied by an extreme strikeout rate. I don’t know if Jones will come up and hit a flurry of home runs this weekend in Milwaukee or if he will look like Todd Frazier swinging against Justin Verlander in the 2017 ALCS. All I know is Jones will provide more entertainment and a much higher potential ceiling than if Anthony Volpe or Oswaldo Cabrera — the only other two 40-man position players available — were called up instead of Jones.

5. It’s not ideal that Jones’ major-league debut will come with Jacob Misiorowski on the mound for the Brewers. Given Jones’ biggest flaw (striking out) and Misiorowski’s biggest strength (striking batters out), it’s as bad as a debut matchup as you could ask for. Misiorowski leads the majors with 14 strikeouts per nine innings and 59 in 38 innings this season). Maybe Jones gets missed-spot fastball and puts one in the seats.

6. If I know Aaron Boone, and I think I do as good as any Yankees fan, he will give Jones a soft landing spot in the lineup for his debut. I wouldn’t. I would put him right in the middle of the order. I would bat him cleanup and play him in the outfield.

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

That’s the lineup I would use. But we all know there’s no possibility of that happening. It’s probably more likely that Jones hits cleanup than it is that Boone removes Grisham from the leadoff spot.

7. Grisham had a big day yesterday after I wrote the following about him:

I don’t know what it’s going to take for the Yankees to remove Trent Grisham from the leadoff spot, but with each 0-for-4, I would like to think it’s drawing closer. Grisham is hitting .164/.298/.353 on the season, and always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

Grisham loves to beat up on bad pitching. He had a career year doing it last season, hitting 34 home runs. But none of those 34 home runs came against a pitcher who started a postseason game. He had a big weekend against a bunch of bad Orioles pitchers (5-for-15 with four doubles, a home run and three walks) and then in two games started by Jacob deGrom and Eovaldi, he went 0-for-8. Grisham will always hit bad pitching and then be an automatic out against elite starters, the kind of starters you see in October.

One day doesn’t change how I feel. Grisham did what Grisham does in the series: he went 0-for-8 against deGrom and Eovaldi and then hit the inferior Gore, who entered the game with 4.67 ERA and left with a 5.18 ERA. I want Rice or Judge getting the most possible plate appearances on the team. Not Grisham.

8. For the next three days, not only do Yankees fans need the Yankees to win, they also need the Red Sox to win. It’s a dirty, disgusting place to be, but that’s what’s needed with the Rays hotter than the Yankees. The Red Sox suck. They’re going nowhere. There’s no fear in them winning a couple or a few games against the Rays. The Rays are the real threat and they need to be stopped. After the weekend, Yankees fans can go back to laughing at a team batting Trevor Story’s .528 OPS in the cleanup spot and having Brayan Bello and his 7.44 ERA in the rotation. For now, the Rays need to lose.

9. Ezequiel Duran had a monster series against his former team (5-for-10 with a double, home run, five RBIs, four walks and a steal) because why wouldn’t he? That’s the Law of Ex-Yankees. Oswald Peraza did it to them last month with the Angels. Carlos Narvaez hit the only home run against Cam Schlittler this season. Randal Grichuk will likely get a big hit against them when they play the White Sox. That’s how it goes. The Brewers employ both Gary Sanchez and Jake Bauers, so get ready for that duo to do something special this weekend.

10. There’s nothing like going into a weekend series with Max Fried and Schlittler getting the ball in the first two games. Then in the third game, Carlos Rodon will make his first start of the season. Rodon instead of Luis Gil or Elmer Rodriguez will be a welcome change. Last season the Yankees scored 36 runs in a three-game, season-opening sweep of the Brewers in the Bronx. The year before, the Yankees scored 36 runs in a three-game series in Milwaukee with their only loss coming via a walk-off in Michael Tonkin’s first game as a Yankee. Whenever the Yankees play the Brewers, the bats seem to show up.

1. There was a time when Tuesday’s Yankees-Rangers game would have been over before the Yankees even came to bat. A three-run deficit with Jacob deGrom on the mound used to mean the rest of the game would be a formality. It used to mean game over.

It didn’t on Tuesday. The Yankees erased the three-run deficit, hit two home runs off him and got to him for six earned runs over 6 1/3 innings in a 7-4 win. It was their second win over the former Mets ace in a week.

2. In the series opener, Elmer Rodriguez, making his second major-league start, looked both like a rookie and also a starting pitching facing a lineup for the second time in a week. Known for his control, Rodriguez walked the first two hitters of the game. He then allowed a single on a 1-2 pitch, a sacrifice fly and another single. The Rangers had a 3-0 lead with still two on and just one out. Rodriguez would go on to hit a batter and throw a wild pitch, but managed to get out of the inning with just three runs allowed, despite facing eight batters and throwing 37 pitches.

3. A week ago, the Yankees scored one run in six innings against deGrom and that was good enough in a 3-2 win because Cam Schlittler was dominant. On Tuesday, they got to deGrom right away with back-to-back doubles from Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. Bellinger’s double hit the top of the right-field wall, his third such kind of hit in the last week. In the second inning, the Yankees tied the game at 3 after Ryan McMahon hit a game-tying two-run home run. If there was ever a sign that this year may be different for the Yankees it’s McMahon hitting a game-tying, two-run home run off deGrom.

4. Rodriguez settled in and deGrom reverted back to his normal self, and the game remained tied at 3 into the sixth. Jazz Chisholm broke the tie with a solo home run to right. In the seventh, the Yankees scored two more runs (which were charged to deGrom) to take a 6-3 lead. Paul Goldschmidt hit a solo home run in the eighth to make it 7-3 and the Rangers picked up a meaningless run in the ninth.

“We went up against one of the best pitchers in the game and got down early,” Goldschmidt said, “but we found a way to chip away.”

5. Rodriguez threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings after the messy first, Brent Headrick followed with 1 1/3 scoreless, Tim Hill recorded an out, Fernando Cruz got three outs and Boone went to David Bednar for a five-out save. Rodriguez was optioned back to Triple-A after the game with Carlos Rodon expected to take that spot in the rotation the next time through, so it didn’t matter if Rodriguez threw a perfect game or the game he actually threw. The next time he’s needed he should be in a better place now that the major-league debut and Yankee Stadium debut are out of the way.

6. Trent Grisham (please stop giving the most plate appearances on the team to a career .320 on-base percentage), Jasson Dominguez and Austin Wells combined to go 0-for-11 with a walk, but the rest of the Yankees lineup went 9-for-22 with six extra-base hits and three walks. It was the Yankees’ fifth win a row and 15th in their last 17 games.

7. Jose Caballero went 1-for-4 with a run scored and some nice plays in the field, which is important to keep track of because the better Caballero plays, the longer Anthony Volpe remains in Triple-A. Volpe went 2-for-4 with a double on Tuesday in Worcester and George Lombard Jr. went 0-for-3 with two walks. A so-so night in the quest to keep Volpe in Triple-A and eventually get Lombard Jr. to the majors. (Volpe played shortstop and Lombard Jr. played second base.)

8. The Rays won’t go away. They trailed the Blue Jays 2-0 on Tuesday and tied it 2-2. They trailed again 3-2 late in the game and then took the lead in the bottom of the eighth in a 4-2 win. The Yankees are 10-2 in their last 12 games and have lost a game in the standings because the Rays have gone 11-1. The two teams will see each other on Memorial Day Weekend in the Bronx.

9. The Yankees beat deGrom twice in a week and now they will try to beat Nathan Eovaldi who shut them down (again) a week ago. Eovaldi has allowed nine home runs in 30 2/3 innings this year after allowing 10 in 130 innings last year. He shut out the Yankees for seven innings in Arlington, but I think the Yankees’ power and Eovaldi being due for regression could lead to a different result this time.

10. Will Warren gets the ball for the Yankees. The Rangers missed him in last week’s series, so they have yet to face the newest and best version to date of Warren. Warren is still (supposedly) competing for a rotation spot against Ryan Weathers, and with Rodon about to be back, it’s only a matter of time until Gerrit Cole is back too. Warren going out and pitching well again and outperforming Eovaldi will keep him ahead Weathers on the depth chart.

1. Remember that brief moment when it looked like the Orioles may be the team to beat in the AL East for the foreseeable future? That was back in 2023 when the Orioles won 101 games and the division before getting swept in the ALDS. They followed that up with their win total dropping by 10 games to 91 in 2024 and were swept by the Royals in the Wild Card Series. Last season they won 75 games and right now they are on a 69-win pace for 2026.

2. The Yankees didn’t just sweep the Orioles over the last four days, they embarrassed them. The Yankees won 7-2 on Friday, 9-4 on Saturday, 11-3 on Sunday and 12-1 on Monday. It was the type of series the Yankees had against the Orioles in the early Aaron Boone era days when the Orioles were tanking and the only feared hitter in their lineup was Manny Machado. On paper, the Orioles aren’t a bad team, but the Yankees certainly made them look like one this weekend.

3. The Thoughts on Saturday covered Friday’s win, but since then, Ryan Weathers picked up another win, Max Fried had to grind through a start with nearly nothing and Cam Schlittler allowed just one earned run (a surprising bases-loaded walk) as the rotation continues to be far and away the best in the majors. I have come to expect a stellar performance out of the Yankees’ starter every single game. It’s a place the rotation hasn’t been a long, long time.

4. The bullpen has been able to get a lot of rest of late and it was most noticeable in David Bednar’s only appearance against the Orioles. Bednar pitched on Sunday in an 11-3 game just to get some work in after having five days off and was throwing the hardest he has this season. He was forced in to high-leverage situations as a member of Team USA in the World Baseball Classic and then was seemingly pitching in one-run games every night for the Yankees in the first few weeks of the season, and was getting hit like someone running on fumes. With the five days off, Bednar looked as good as he has a Yankee. Here’s to the bats giving him more days off and more appearances where he just needs to get work in.

4. Offensively, the Yankees got everyone to contribute in the four-game series, it wasn’t just Ben Rice and Aaron Judge outscoring the Orioles 39-10. Trent Grisham’s OPS is up to .696, Cody Bellinger up to .859 and Jasson Dominguez is at .833 after a big series from the right side. Jazz Chisholm, Austin aWells and Ryan McMahon even chipped in to the offensive outbursts and Jose Caballero continued his extra-base barrage and defensive gems to send Anthony Volpe to the minors for the first time in his career.

5. Volpe is where he belongs: playing in Triple-A. It’s a move that is three years to late, but I guess better late than never, even if being late in this instance cost the Yankees over the last three seasons. The idea that the Yankees or anyone has to justify why Volpe is in the minors is rather annoying. Of the 103 hitters with at least 1,500 plate appearances since the start of 2023, Volpe ranks last, second-to-last and third-to-last in every major offensive statistic. He’s not a major-league bat and after last year it’s hard to say he’s even a major-league glove. The videos of his defense on his “rehab” stint were alarming and he should have to earn his way back up like every other Yankee has ever had to do. Keep on hitting, Caballero.

6. Can the Rays chill out? The Yankees would have a 6 1/2-game lead in the Central and a 5 1/2-game lead in the West, but in the East they only have a 1 1/2-game lead because the Ryas won’t lose. The Yankees are 8-2 in their last 10 games and have lost a game in the standings because the Rays have gone 9-1. The Yankees have played one game worse than their expected record, while the Rays have played four games better. (That’s the difference between Boone and Kevin Cash.)

7. The AL as a whole is bad. There are three teams over .500. The Yankees, Rays and Athletics. (Let’s forget the Yankees are 1-5 against those two teams and 23-6 against everyone else.) The Yankees have a plus-76 run differential, the Rays are plus-11 and the Athletics are minus-10. If you believe in math, the Yankees should run away and hide with the division at some point. It doesn’t mean it will happen, but it should. After playing the Royals and Guardians in the 2024 AL playoffs, I didn’t think the Yankees could ever have an easier path to the pennant, but this year is shaping up to possibly be that. The best teams seem to be in the NL and if the Yankees win the pennant, they will only have to face one of them.

8. We’re a long way from that, of course. Yes, things have been great the last two weeks, but we’re only three weeks removed from a disastrous week against the Athletics, Rays and Angels. We’re a long way from June and July when the Boone Yankees tend to go on summer vacation. Maybe this team is immune to that because of the starting pitching. If the starting pitching is going to pitch like it has without Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole then it’s possible they are.

9. Elmer Rodriguez wasn’t very good in his major-league debut last week in Texas, and now he will face the Rangers for a second time in less than a week, which isn’t ideal. It’s also not ideal his counterpart will be Jacob deGrom, who the Yankees were able to beat last week thanks to a superb effort from Schlittler. Rodriguez vs. deGrom seems like a mismatch, but if I have learned anything as a Yankees fan, it’s you can’t predict baseball …

10. When I stopped writing for WFAN and CBS New York and took Keefe To The City out on its own back in 2012, the first post I wrote was A Sunday with John and Suzyn, a live blog recapping the two calling a game against the Tigers. The first blog on keefetothecity.com wasn’t as much about the Yankees as it was the voice of the Yankees.

John Sterling was the man. A character, an original, a legend. I have missed his voice since he left following the 2024 World Series (after leaving initially earlier that season) and long for him calling games. I miss his stories, his exuberance and his creativity. Who cares if he called a fair ball foul or a flyout a home run every once in a while? It’s baseball. It’s entertainment and he was as entertaining as any voice that ever has or ever will call a baseball game.

1. There’s a pretty simply flowchart you can use to determine if the Yankees won or lost on a given night.

Did Ben Rice or Aaron Judge hit a home run?

If yes, the Yankees won. If no, continue.

Did the starting pitcher pitch into the seventh inning and allow two runs or fewer?

If yes, the Yankees won. If no, the Yankees lost.

That’s it. That’s all you need to determine if the Yankees won. On Friday against the Orioles, Rice hit a three-run home run in the second inning and Will Warren gave them 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball. So yes, the Yankees won, beating the Orioles 7-2.

2. “The stuff has been excellent,” Aaron Boone said of Warren. “The strike-throwing is there … You see all the swings and misses.”

Warren struck out nine Orioles and walked one. The only run he allowed came on a Pete Alonso solo home run in the second inning. In terms of American League ranks, Warren is now seventh in ERA (2.39), 17th in innings pitched (37.2), 22nd in hits (32), 17th in home runs (4), sixth in walks (8) and fourth in strikeouts (46). Not bad for a “third” starter who is about to become the team’s “fifth” starter and is still battling for that role every time he takes the mound.

3. “I think we are going to have the best staff in all of baseball,” Warren said about the return of Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole. “When they come back, the best pitchers are going to pitch the majority of the innings. I have to make sure I can go out there and do my job.”

The Yankees already have the best staff in all of baseball, 1 through 4. Cam Schlittler, Max Fried and Warren are all in the top 7 in the majors in ERA. Schlittler, Warren and Ryan Weathers are all in the top 9 in the majors in strikeouts. The Yankees have the lowest team ERA in the majors.

4. Again, the Yankees continue to stack wins and have an AL-best record of 21-11 because of their starting pitching. The offense remains the Rice and Judge show with some Jose Caballero and Amed Rosario mixed in and moments from Cody Bellinger. On Friday, it was Rice’s latest blast off a lefty that carried the offense, while Judge reached base four times, Caballero had a solo home run, Rosario had an RBI single and Bellinger added a pair of doubles. Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm, Austin Wells and Trent Grisham combined to go 3-for-15 with two walks. The evaluation of the offense checks out.

5. There is this narrative that the Yankees are operating with urgency this season compared to past seasons. The examples being used are the quick benching of Ryan McMahon, the increased playing time for Rosario and the recent DFA of Randal Grichuk. I don’t believe any of those moves represent urgency. McMahon looked like a random fan picked out of the stands swinging a bat against major-league pitching in the first two weeks of the season and could no longer be played with regularity. Rosario earned his playing time with timely hits and home runs in place of McMahon. Grichuk was always going to be the odd man out unless he went completely off against lefties and he didn’t. I don’t think this is urgency; it’s more of favoritism. The reason the Yankees delayed a benching of Josh Donaldson a couple years ago and were quick to bench McMahon is because they loved Donaldson and because this time they had a worthy option in Rosario. The reason Grichuk was DFA’d instead of Goldschmidt, who provides no value, is because Goldschmidt was a Yankee last season and despite proving to be washed since the start of May last year through the start of May this year, the Yankees clearly value his veteran presence, and it’s possible he’s a Judge guy the way Anthony Rizzo, Alex Verdugo and DJ LeMahieu were.

6. We’ll find out just how much urgency the Yankees are operating with on Monday when Anthony Volpe’s rehab is over and the Yankees have to choose between bringing him up or sending him now. If the Yankees bring him up, we’ll know there’s no urgency and they’re operating the same as they ever have. If they send him down, we’ll know the Yankees are finally willing to make a decision they failed to make in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Caballero leads all shortstops in defensive runs saved. He makes throws from the deepest part of the position effortlessly and doesn’t need to put his whole body into every throw just to get it across the infield. He leads the league in steals and has been an above-league-average hitter with a 102 OPS+. If Volpe had the kind of late-March, April and early-May start that Caballero had, we would be hearing about nine-year extension talks.

7. Meanwhile, Volpe has a .733 OPS at Triple-A and a .646 OPS at Double-A during his rehab games. He has one extra-base hit in 40 plate appearances. This isn’t a proven major leaguer working on things to get ready for his activation. This is a failed major leaguer trying to figure things out because he still needs to figure things out. Not only is Volpe not hitting in the minors, but video of his defense is startling and the video of him getting picked off at first base by a catcher is disturbing.

There will be plenty to write about what could be a disastrous and detrimental decision to the 2026 Yankees depending on what is actually decided on Monday. But there’s only two days left between now and then and I’m already preparing myself to accept that nothing has changed with Volpe and how the Yankees treat him compared to every other player in the organization.

8. Jasson Dominguez — who has had to earn every second he has been a part of the major-league roster — appears to have avoided injury after the inconclusive X-rays taken in Texas were followed by a conclusive CT scan in New York. Boone said Dominguez was available off the bench on Friday, so I’m thinking he’s going to start against the right-handed Ryan Bradish on Saturday.

9. Bradish is a good pitcher and has always been tough against the Yankees. Look at last September when the Orioles had nothing to play for and the Yankees were trying to win the division. He threw six scoreless innings with nine strikeouts against them on September 21 and then a week later struck out eight Yankees in four innings with them clearly unable to make an adjustment despite having seen the same pitcher twice in seven days. Bradish has been OK in six starts this season, but he did get roughed up a little by the abysmal Red Sox offense in his last start and allowed 13 baserunners in 5 1/3 innings to the also-abysmal Royals offense in the start before that. (That likely means he’s going seven scoreless against the Yankees on Saturday.)

10. Ryan Weathers gets the ball for the Yankees. Weathers has been very good and is still likely to lose his rotation spot soon, unless someone else gets injured or the Yankees decide to use a six-man rotation to keep everyone as fresh as possible. Weathers’ job on Saturday will be to keep Alonso and Tyler O’Neill in the park, and if he can do that and either Rice or Judge go deep, I like the Yankees’ chances.

1. Nearly a year ago, on May 22, the Yankees won a 1-0 weekday afternoon, getaway day game over the Rangers at Yankee Stadium. The one run in that game was a Jorbit Vivas solo home run — the only home run of his career. It came against Nathan Eovaldi, who otherwise shut the Yankees down for six innings.

Wednesday’s 3-0 loss to the Rangers felt a lot like that game in terms of Eovaldi’s performance and the Yankees’ offense being lifeless against him. The Yankees managed five hits — all singles — in the shutout loss, further proving that if Ben Rice and Aaron Judge don’t hit the ball over the wall, the offense is in a world of shit.

2. Rice had three of the Yankees’ five hits, Cody Bellinger had one and Jose Caballero picked up an infield single. The rest of the Yankees went 0-for-26 with a walk and eight strikeouts. If that sounds familiar it’s because in Tuesday’s game, the Yankees not named Bellinger, Judge and Austin Wells went 0-for-26.

3. Even with the loss, the Yankees finished their nine-game road trip with a 7-2 record, winning all three series against the Red Sox, Astros and Rangers. In seven of the nine games the offense scored four runs or fewer. The wins were stacked because of the starting pitching, not the bats.

4. I thought Wednesday’s game was a good spot for Elmer Rodriguez to make his major-league debut, considering the Rangers’ offense isn’t very good. But it was Rodriguez who wasn’t very good. Not everyone can come up and be Cam Schlittler and it’s not like he was Greg Weissert-debut bad walking and hitting everyone, throwing balls to the backstop and committing balks. The scouting report on Rodriguez was a great fastball and extremely good command. Instead, Rodriguez walked four, hit Alejandro Osuna and nearly hit Osuna twice (the Rangers unsuccessfully challenged the near-hit by pitch). There was traffic on the bases throughout Rodriguez’s four-plus innings and after escaping jams in the first and second innings, he wasn’t able to escape a third jam in the fifth. He left the game with two runs in and two on and no outs in the fifth.

“Obviously, not the results [I wanted],” Rodriguez said. “I feel like I needed to execute a little bit better.”

5. It didn’t matter if Rodriguez recorded just the 12 outs he recorded, or if he pitched into the eighth inning because the offense gave a textbook getaway-day-at-the-end-of-a-nine-game-road-trip effort. Eovaldi got blasted by the Athletics five days earlier and had pitched well in just two of his six starts this season, but that didn’t stop him from mowing down the Yankees like he always has since leaving them.

6. Eovaldi didn’t go to a three-ball count in the game until he faced Trent Grisham with two outs in the fifth. Grisham did nothing with that count on his way to another 0-for-4 day. Grisham finished April with two multi-hit games in the month. His on-base percentage is down to .298, and yet, there’s no end in sight of him batting leadoff ahead of Rice and Judge. Why not just move Rice and Judge each up one place in the lineup? That makes too much sense for someone as dense, stubborn and clueless as Aaron Boone. The idea that the Yankees are giving the most possible plate appearances to Grisham and his .610 OPS is rather ridiculous.

7. With Randal Grichuk getting designated for assignment it seemed like this really may be the chance for Jasson Dominguez to steal playing time from Grisham. Unfortunately, Dominguez got drilled by Eovaldi and had to leave the game. More reason to despise Eovaldi. Dominguez has had some really bad injury luck. If not for tearing his elbow near the end of the 2023 season, he would have gone into 2024 as a starter, and the Yankees don’t idiotically trade for and play Alex Verdugo. Now seemingly about to be a part of the team after spending an unnecessary month in Triple-A, Dominguez gets hit by a pitch that forces him out of a game and who knows the extent of the injury after initial X-rays were “inconclusive.” Who reads the Yankees’ X-rays? A radiologist or Boone?

8. Not only did Grichuk get DFA’d, but George Lombard Jr. was promoted to Triple-A. Lombard hit .312/.400/.571 in 20 games at Double-A this season. The resolution to the failed Anthony Volpe experiment is now one level away from the majors. That’s a good thing because the Yankees need capable bats and Lombard Jr. looks like he could really be one.

9. The Yankees aren’t winning a championship with Grisham reverting back to his pre-2025 self, Jazz Chisholm swinging for the fences with every swing in any count and any situation and Ryan McMahon having a better chance of reaching base if he goes to the plate without a bat. Add in the inevitable benching of Jose Caballero for Volpe and the Yankees will be playing with close to half of the lineup being an automatic each game. Rice and Judge will have to really replicate the Juan Soto-Judge combination of two years ago to make up for all of the dead wood in the lineup.

10. I don’t expect anything to change with the lineup this weekend against the Orioles because Boone makes the lineup and he likely sees a 20-11 record and thinks nothing needs to change. He doesn’t see that record for what it is, which is the Yankees boasting the best 1-2 rotation punch in the league with Schlittler and Max Fried and the best 1-2 lineup punch in the league with Rice and Judge. Will Warren and Ryan Weathers have been good, Caballero (who again is about to be benched) is playing above his career slash line and Tim Hill and Brent Headrick have been reliable, but that’s about it in terms of secondary contributions throughout the roster.

1. Jacob deGrom had to be feeling like he was still a Met on Tuesday night against the Yankees. The soon-to-be 37-year-old righty went six innings, allowed three baserunners and one earned run and took the loss in a 3-2 Yankees win. He took the loss because Cam Schlittler was better than deGrom, as he continues to have the type of early-career success deGrom once had.

“He embraces every opportunity,” Aaron Judge said of Schlittler. “He wants to be in the moment. He’s not scared. There’s no fear.”

2. It was Schlittler’s fourth start with no earned runs in seven starts this year. His ERA is down to 1.51 and he leads the league in strikeouts (49) and the majors in FIP (1.52), WHIP (0.744), walks per nine innings (1.3) and strikeouts per walk (8.17).

“He’s a superstar,” Fernando Cruz said. “What he’s doing is really impressive — throwing three pitches at one speed — but they’re going in different directions.”

3. Last week, Michael Kay made a comment about the Yankees’ rotation and how once Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole come back that Schlittler will be quite the No. 4 starter. No. 4? He’s the No. 1. He’s the best pitcher on the team. He’s the best pitcher in the league! I don’t care who has more service time or what anyone’s salary is, Schlittler would be my choice to get the ball for Game 1 of the playoffs right now. We saw what he did in the playoffs last year, and we have seen what Max Fried, Rodon and Cole have done in their careers in the playoffs. It’s no contest. To think Schlittler is the team’s No. 4 is simply a joke.

4. The Yankees won for the second straight night against the Rangers the way they always seem to win: dominant starting pitching and the long ball. Schlittler gave them six scoreless innings and the Yankees hit two home runs: one from Austin Wells and one from Judge. Their other run came on a first-inning double from Cody Bellinger that hit the highest part of the wall in right-center. The offense was the double from Bellinger and the home runs from Wells and Judge. The Yankees went 5-for-33 in the game with no walks and those three had all five hits. The other six hitters in the lineup went 0-for-26.

5. Here is how the Yankees have scored their seven runs in Arlington:

Two-run home run
Solo home run
Solo home run
Double off the highest part of the wall
Solo home run
Solo home run

The Yankees lead the American League with 48 home runs (the next closest team is the Angels with 40) and also lead the majors (the next closest team is the Dodgers with 45.) The Bronx Bombers, indeed.

6. The Rangers had their chances to take a lead in the game and win it late. They drew two walks against Schlittler, which is impressive considering he had walked four total in his six other starts, they put two on against Brent Headrick, two more on against Cruz in the eighth and scored a run and had the winning run on base against David Bednar in the ninth. The play Cruz made on the really dumb sacrifice bunt attempt from Joc Pederson was amazing. It wasn’t amazing that he slid during the play, but it was amazing that he was able to make an accurate throw to third in time to get the lead runner for the first out of the inning and likely save the game.

7. As for Bednar, here is what I wrote about him after Monday’s game:

Michael Scott describing Andy Bernard is how I would summarize my confidence level with Bednar: “Pros: I trust him … Cons: I don’t really trust him.”

Bednar delivered nearly the same performance on Tuesday that he produced on Monday, including being hurt by another infield error as well. Instead of having two outs with no one on, Bednar was faced with one out and one on after Ryan McMahon bobbled a ground ball and then made a poor throw. If you’re going to post a .539 OPS, you’re going to need to make every play at third base. Danny Jansen followed with a run-scoring triple because why wouldn’t he as someone who has made a career off of big hits against the Yankees. Bednar then hit Brandon Nimmo with a 1-2 pitch to put the tying run on base. He threw five straight splitters to Josh Jung and Jung hit the fifth one for an RBI single to make it 3-2. With Corey Seager up with one out and the winning run on base I envisioned a double in the right-center gap or a three-run home run for a Rangers walk-off win. Bednar managed to get a ground ball from Seager for a 4-6-3 double play to end the game.

8. Bednar finished the game throwing seven straight splitters and 10 of his final pitches were splitters. Just five of his 22 pitches were fastballs. I hate having a closer whose best pitch isn’t a fastball. We just went through this last season with Devin Williams. The Yankees’ philosophy that if you have an elite non-fastball pitch you should throw it over and over and over is tiresome. We saw what happened with Tommy Kahnle throwing only changeups in the 2024 World Series. We saw Williams lose his closer role because of the same approach and now we’re watching Bednar throw mostly splitters with some curveballs and almost no fastballs. Bednar will undoubtedly be unavailable on Wednesday and with the day off on Thursday he won’t pitch against until the Orioles series if he’s needed. Hopefully he’s not needed because the Yankees have blown out the Orioles, but if he is, hopefully he has better command or is more willing to go to his fastball.

9. Elmer Rodriguez will make his major-league debut on Wednesday against the Rangers. His line in four Triple-A starts this season: 21.1 IP, 12 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 7 BB, 20 K, 1 HR. I’m excited to see what someone from the minors can do that isn’t named Luis Gil. It’s a great spot for the righty to make his debut, coming against a Rangers team with an extremely top-heavy lineup. It’s a good way for him to get his feet and for the rest of the rotation to get an extra day of rest built into this time through.

10. The Yankees will face Nathan Eovaldi who is always the starting pitcher on my annual All-Animosity Team. Here is what I wrote about Eovaldi for last year’s team:

Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and has trouble striking hitters out, which is what Eovaldi was with the Yankees and has mostly been in his career. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him. The Yankees thought they could be the ones to hone his incredible velocity, but they weren’t.

As a Yankee in 2015, Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per start or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings because he needed 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a 4.76 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him walk after the season.

Eovaldi returned to the mound in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays and was traded to the Red Sox. He went on to shut out the Yankees in an important August series for the division lead and shut them out again in September. He did it again in October (even if he received more run support than any opposing starter had received in a postseason game at Yankee Stadium in history).

In 2018, Eovaldi beat the Yankees and Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series (even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run). Eovaldi helped the Red Sox win the World Series and five years later helped the Rangers win it all after earning five wins in six starts in the 2023 postseason.

The only thing that could possibly make ending a nine-game road trip on a three-game winning streak and with an 8-1 going into a scheduled day off, even better is if it were to come at the expense of Eovaldi. The Yankees have the chance to board the plane home happy and put a smile on the faces of all of their fans going into the weekend by beating “Nasty Nate” who was never “nasty” as a Yankee.

1. I miss watching Juan Soto play for the Yankees every day, but Ben Rice is doing all he can to fill that void. Rice hit his 10th home run of the season on Monday night in Arlington to give the Yankees a two-run lead in the third inning in an eventual 4-2 win over the Rangers.

“It’s must-watch TV at this point, when he steps to the plate,” Aaron Judge said of Rice. “He’s going to put something in play hard, or he’s going to take his walk and pass the baton. It’s impressive to watch.”

2. Rice is up to 10 home runs, 23 RBIs and a .322/.447/.744 slash line with 21 walks in 28 games. He has become what Soto was for the Yankees in his lone season in pinstripes. He has become the offensive force to complement Judge that the Yankees were missing before Soto arrived and again last year after he left.

“I get a front-row seat hitting right behind him now,” Judge said. “It makes my job easy.”

3. Judge followed Rice’s two-run homer with a solo shot of his own as part of a 3-for-3 night that also included a pair of doubles.

“I couldn’t let him catch me in homers,” Judge said of his 11th immediately following Rice’s 10th. “I had to make sure I got one after that.”

Judge is tied for second in the majors in home runs with Yordan Alvarez and Rice is right behind them. They have the most home runs of any two teammates in baseball and are second (Rice) and third (Judge) in OPS behind Alvarez.

“I’m glad I don’t have to face them,” Max Fried said. “Those are two of the best hitters in the game.”

4. Fried put together another scoreless start (6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 5 K) to lower his ERA to 2.09 and extend his league-leading innings total to 47 1/3 innings. He continued pitching out of the stretch after abandoning his windup in Boston last Wednesday.

“It’s not like I’ll never do it again,” Fried said of his windup, “but we’ll give it some time.”

5. Camilo Doval entered in relief of Fried for the seventh and allowed a home run to make it a 4-1 game. Doval has allowed earned runs in three of his last four outings and home runs in those three outings. A four-run game is too close of a score for him to be pitching in.

Tim Hill pitched the eighth and walked two — his first two walks of the year — before eventually getting out of a bases-loaded jam.

6. David Bednar closed it out in the ninth but made it uncomfortable the way he seems to always do, though he did need to get four outs in the inning, thanks to a Jazz Chisholm error. Michael Scott describing Andy Bernard is how I would summarize my confidence level with Bednar: “Pros: I trust him … Cons: I don’t really trust him.” The Rangers scored an unearned run off Bednar.

7. Trent Grisham went 1-for-4 with a walk, Jazz Chisholm added his third home run of the season (all coming over the last five games), Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4 (he has a .488 OPS over the last eight games), Jasson Dominguez went 1-for-4 in his return to the majors, Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with a walk and Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero both had singles. As long as Rice and Judge recreate what Soto and Judge did two years ago, there’s no need for anyone else to do much, and they haven’t, other than chipping in here and there. But aside from Bellinger who hasn’t hit much since the Saturday blowout of the Royals, everyone is the lineup is trending in the right direction.

8. It was good to see Dominguez back in the bigs. He ripped a line drive just foul down the right-field line in his first at-bat before eventually picking up a single in his third at-bat. Dominguez belongs. He belongs playing every day in the majors and batting leadoff (at least against right-handers), but instead, he’ll likely go back to Triple-A after Wednesday’s game.

9. Caballero went into Saturday’s game against the Astros 9-for-9 in stolen base attempts before getting caught twice in that game. He had a steal on Sunday and then got caught twice again on Monday. He’s now 11-for-15 this season, but for 1-for-5 since Saturday. The opposition seems to be aware he’s going to run on the first pitch and they’re getting him. Jack Leiter’s pickoff of him was the first of Leiter’s career.

10. Tuesday’s game features Cam Schlittler against Jacob deGrom. Schlittler is off to a deGrom-like start to his career, while deGrom is having a typical outstanding season as he approaches his 37th birthday. The Rangers have never faced Schlittler, and while it hasn’t mattered if a team has faced Schlittler or not so far in his career as he has been dominant against everyone, teams that have yet to face him really struggle against him. There are a few Yankees with decent numbers against deGrom: Bellinger, McMahon and Randal Grichuk have all homered off him twice and Chisholm has also homered off him. It’s too bad Giancarlo Stanton is now on the injured list as he is 9-for-27 with four home runs in his career against deGrom.

1. Allowing Luis Gil to start against the Astros was very much a wave-the-white-flag, eat-some-innings game. After fooling some with his performance at Fenway Park on Monday, all of the underlying numbers suggested Gil would get blasted by an offense that doesn’t have the worst team OPS in the American League. Sure enough, the Astros teed off on him and ended the Yankees’ eight-game winning streak.

2. Immediately after allowing eight baserunners, six earned runs and two home runs in just four innings (without recording a strikeout), Gil was sent back to Triple-A with a 6.05 ERA, diminished velocity and no way to get major-league hitters out unless their high-exit-velocity line drives are hit right at a fielder. For the fourth straight start, Gil had no clue where the ball was going when it left his hand and for the second straight start he only generated three whiffs.

3. “He struggled to get swing-and-miss again,” Aaron Boone said. “He’s just been struggling to get consistency with his delivery and fastball profile.”

And yet, the Yankees let him start four games this season. In the four-game stint, Gil allowed six home runs in 19 1/3 innings with 11 walks to just nine strikeouts. The Yankees managed to go 2-2 in the four starts because of their miracle walk-off win against the Angels built off a dropped pop-up and because Gil got to face a team that fired their entire dugout staff, partly because they were unable to hit him.

4. I don’t know what’s next for Gil. The pitcher we saw in 2024 seemed to have disappeared when he returned from the lat injury at the end of 2025, and the pitcher he is in 2026 is nowhere close to who he was last year, let alone two years ago. He’s buried on the starting pitching depth chart now and will be further buried when Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole return. And if the Yankees need a spot starter or a rotation member at some point this season, it would be appalling if it’s him with his current stuff.

5. Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough ate up the final four innings in a blah game that saw the offense fold against the only good starter in the Astros’ rotation. Trent Grisham and Ben Rice went 0-for-7 with a walk at the top of the order, Aaron Judge failed to get the big hit in the third inning with two on and two out but did manage to hit a meaningless home run down seven runs in the sixth, Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4, Jazz Chisholm went 2-for-4 and lost another ridiculous challenge, Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles to ensure he won’t be the odd man out when a roster spot is needed, J.C. Escarra went 1-for-4 with an RBI double, Ryan McMahon went 1-for-4 with an RBI single and Jose Caballero went 0-for-3. It was one of those all-around crappy games that’s part of a 162-game season.

6. Chisholm’s challenge privileges need to be revoked as he’s now 1-for-7 this year with them. Caballero’s privileges should be called into question as well and Rice isn’t too far behind. Offensively, the Yankees challenge pitches in extremely low-leverage situations and it needs to be resolved. Too many times they are challenging pitches that are blatant strikes and too many times they are wasting their challenges in the early innings in ill-advised spots.

7. Jasson Dominguez was called up after the game, presumably to be the designated hitter the next three days against the Rangers and three right-handed starters. Dominguez has hit .326/.415/.478 at Triple-A with five doubles, three home runs and 15 RBIs in 24 games. He has an .889 OPS over 77 games and three different seasons at Triple-A. There’s nothing left for him to accomplish in the minors offensively. He’s a major leaguer and will once again be one on Monday night against the Rangers.

8. The Yankees will face Jack Leiter, who has struggled of late. After two strong starts against the Orioles and Reds to begin the season (11 IP, 3 ER, 17 K), Leiter has pitched to a 6.91 ERA over his last three starts against the Dodgers, Athletics and Pirates, allowing 27 baserunners in 14 1/3 innings. Like Arrighetti on Sunday, Leiter has a penchant for walks, and the Yankees will need to take advantage of that, which they didn’t do in the series finale in Houston with just one walk in the game.

9. Max Fried gets the ball for the Yankees, coming off his eight-shutout-innings performance against the Red Sox. The Rangers aren’t very good offensively (fourth-worst team OPS in the AL), and like the Yankees, they have a very top-heavy lineup. Fortunately, for Fried, the Rangers’ best hitters are left-handed in Corey Seager and Brandon Nimmo, but Josh Jung and Jake Burger are potential problems.

10. We’re still waiting to see the best version of Fried this year, which is crazy to think, considering he’s the league leader in innings pitched, has a 2.40 ERA and a sparkling 0.774 WHIP, but it’s true. Fried has struggled with his command, especially out of the windup, and prior to shutting down the Red Sox (which is no real feat given Gil shut them out for 6 1/3 innings), the Yankees had lost his three previous starts. I expect Fried to pitch well on Monday because I always expect him to pitch well and because he’s too good not to make the necessary adjustments that have him somewhat off this season.

1. The Yankees have been waiting all season for the bottom of the lineup show up. Prior to this last week there had been a few moments here and there, but nothing consistent. Then Payton Tolle went and started Jazz Chisholm’s season for him, Jose Caballero decided he wanted fans on his side when Anthony Volpe returns, Ryan McMahon started making contact and hitting the ball hard and Austin Wells started to get on base regularly. Again, the last week of games has come against the Royals, Red Sox and Astros — three last-place teams — but these signs of life from the bottom of the order have been encouraging.

“[We’re] being patient when we need to, being aggressive when we need to,” Ben Rice said. “Guys are just delivering.”

2. On Friday, the Yankees routed the Astros 12-4. The top of the order gave them an early lead in the first inning, but the bottom of the order put the game out away in the later innings. Chisholm, McMahon and Caballero all homered and the 6-through-9 hitters went 8-for-17 with three home runs, seven RBIs and a walk.

On Saturday, it was Caballero who gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning and it was Wells who gave them a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning. The combination of Wells, McMahon and Caballero went 7-for-13 with two home runs, four RBIs and two walks.

3. Caballero is heating up at the right time for the fan base to be distraught when Volpe is automatically the starting shortstop again. Caballero is hitting .280/.316/.430 on the season with three home runs, 11 RBIs and 10 steals in 12 attempts. He has a .746 OPS and a 107 OPS+. If Volpe had those numbers the Yankees would be offering him a nine-figure extension. In his rehab games, Volpe has a .636 OPS in three games at Triple-A and a .780 OPS in four games at Double-A, while playing the infield like he has a blindfold on. Seriously, the video of his errors and misplays at short in the seven games is startling. Caballero could homer in every at-bat from now until Volpe is activated and it won’t matter: Volpe will get his job back. If Volpe doesn’t get off to a great start (and his career suggests he won’t), the calls for Caballero to be the starter will be as loud as ever and the Stadium boo birds that booed Volpe into getting pinch-hit for in his last at-bat of 2025 will be waiting for him.

“Just a tough out,” Boone said of Caballero. “Just a gritty, tough player. You kind of want him up there in certain situations.”

The complete opposite of the player who is going to take his job this week.

4. Caballero is a fun watch and the ideal “you hate him when he’s on another team, but love him when he’s on your team” player. However, he’s also reckless in both his challenges at the plate and basestealing decisions. Both of his attempts to steal third base on Saturday were ill-advised. The first was with no outs in the inning and the second was with Rice and Judge due up. I understand Caballero entered the game 9-for-9 in attempts this season and was likely thinking he’s invincible as the reigning league leader in steals, but he needs be a little smarter about when to try to take third.

5. The Yankees are riding an eight-game winning streak, having gone 8-0 against the three last-place teams, which is what they need to do. Beat up on the bad teams and play .500 against the good teams and you’ll wind up with a win total in the mid-90s, a division title and a bye to the division series. The one caveat there is that there aren’t really any other “good” teams at the moment in the AL. The Yankees and Rays are the only teams over .500 in what was supposed to be the best division in baseball and only five teams total in the AL are over .500. This season feels a lot like 2024 so far in that the AL is the Yankees to lose. Considering where they are without Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon and the rotation production and depth they have, and yes, it’s definitely theirs to lose.

6. And since its theirs to lose, Boone’s seat should be hotter than ever, especially after what just unfolded in Boston. Boone called the 2025 roster the best he has managed and the 2026 roster is the same, so he’s once again managing the best roster he has had in his eyes. Given that and the level of ineptitude around the AL and if the Yankees don’t reach the World Series this season, Boone should finally be shown the door. (Sadly, we all know his future is safe as long as he reaches the division series.)

7. Will Warren was good again on Friday and has now allowed two earned runs or fewer in all six of his starts this season with 37 strikeouts to seven walks in in 31 1/3 innings.

Ryan Weathers was also good on Saturday, considering he and his wife just had a baby a few days ago. For as good as Weathers was through five innings I would have taken him out in the sixth inning given he was going to face the the lineup a third time and the Yankees’ bullpen is as rested as it will ever be until the offseason. But Boone let Weathers go back out for the sixth and he gave up a leadoff home run then a single then a loud out to the deepest part of the park before taking him out.

“Obviously, I wish I would have been a littler sharper in the sixth,” Weathers said.

I don’t know why simple decisions continue to be so difficult for Boone. Luckily for Boone the Astros bullpen is so bar the Yankees were able to retake the lead and then tack on five more runs to avoid him having to manage a close game for the final three innings.

8. The battle for the fifth spot in the rotation once Rodon and Cole return (and if all starters stay healthy) continues to be close.

IP Weathers 33.2, Warren 31.1
H: Warren 29, Weathers 33
ER: Warren 9, Weathers 13
BB: Warren 7, Weathers 8
K: Weathers 40, Warren 37
HR: Warren 3, Weathers 5
ERA: Warren 2.59, Weathers 3.21
WHIP: Warren 1.149, Weathers 1.218

The fact these two are battling to be the fifth starter on the team when they would be No. 1s on a lot of teams and no worse than No. 2s on the majority of teams is absurd. The Yankees’ rotation is good and so deep (knock on all the wood) that it won’t matter most of the time how many below-league-average bats they roster and play.

9. Aaron Judge continues to take his walks (five in the first two games of the series), but when he does swing the bat, he’s not doing much. The Yankees are 18-9 and in first place with Judge being just really good and not otherworldly to this point and that’s encouraging because at some point he will get hot and carry the offense.

10. It would nice if that point was on Sunday. The Yankees will face Spencer Arrighetti who is currently the best starter in the Astros’ rotation. Arrighetti walks a lot of hitters (eight in 13 innings), which plays right into the Yankees’ best offensive attribute, but so far this season he has been able to limit the damage despite a lot of baserunners ( 19 in 11 innings). If regression comes for Arrighetti’s strand rate, Sunday is a perfect storm for it to happen.

Luis Gil gets the ball for the Yankees. The box score shows Gil was outstanding against the Red Sox, but he only got three swings-and-misses and had little command of his pitches against a truly awful lineup. The Red Sox have the worst team OPS in the AL, while the Astros have the best. If Gil was only able to generate three whiffs against the Red Sox, it’s possible he generates zero against the Astros. The Astros are going to put the ball in play, and if Gil misses his spots, the Astros will make him pay. If not, the Yankees will be on their way to their 12th win in their last 13 games in Houston.

1. My only fear going into the series finale on Thursday was that Cam Schlittler might be so amped up for his first start at Fenway Park that he may overthrow early, walk a few batters and possibly leave one over the middle of the plate for the Red Sox to add to their league-worst team home run total. That fear was put to rest when Schlittler dominated the Red Sox early and continued to dominate them through eight innings of one-run ball with one mistake pitch mixed in.

“It was good. I don’t think emotions were too high,” Schlitter said.

2. However, another fear was created with Payton Tolle pitching like Brendan Fraser’s character Steve Nebraska from The Scout. In the movie, Nebraska famously threw a perfect game in the World Series, striking out all 27 batters and it looked like Tolle might do the same against the Yankees. Tolle wasn’t very good in limited major-league action last year and was pretty good, but nothing special in Triple-A this year. That seemingly didn’t matter as he struck out the side in the first inning, the first two batters in the second inning and the first batter in the third inning. He was doing to the Yankees what Schlittler did to the Red Sox in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series last October.

3. While Tolle was embarrassing the Yankees, the Red Sox took a 1-0 lead on an unearned run in the second after a Rosario throwing error. In the fourth, the Yankees loaded the bases with no outs for the 4-5-6 in the lineup, but unfortunately, the 4-5-6 in this one was Giancarlo Stanton who looked lost all game, Randal Grichuk and Trent Grisham. The trio left the bases loaded, failing to plate a single run.

The Yankees managed to tie the game in the next inning when Jazz Chisholm hooked his first home run of the season around the Pesky Pole in right field. (Chisholm also singled in his next at-bat. Maybe this is him finally joining the 2026 season? With the next six games indoors in Texas, the weather excuse is gone.) But in the bottom of the inning, Schlittler missed badly with a 1-2 pitch to Carlos Narvaez and Narvaez gave the Red Sox the lead again with the team’s 14th home run of the season. It’s always an ex-Yankee or someone previously in the Yankees’ system who seems to get the big hit against them.

4. In the seventh, the Yankees looked like they might repeat their leaving-the-bases-loaded act. With them loaded and one out, Austin Wells got ahead of Danny Coulombe 3-0. He took a strike and ripped a line drive foul to run the count full. Coulombe then left a sweeper over the heart of the plate, but Wells waved through it for the second out. With Rosario due up, Alex Cora went to former Yankee and right-hander Greg Weissert and Aaron Boone countered with Cody Bellinger off the bench, Bellinger got ahead 2-0, and took a middle-middle sinker for a strike. Weissert came back with a four-seamer up in the zone and Bellinger lined it to left field to score two and give the Yankees a 3-2 lead. Aaron Judge followed with an RBI single to make it 4-2, and that’s how this one stayed.

5. For as good as Tolle looked, Schlittler outlasted him by two innings. Sure, Tolle struck out 11 to Schlittler’s five, but Schlittler gave the Yankees two more innings and allowed the same amount of earned runs in the game (1). Schlittler was able to to hand the ball off to David Bender to close the game out, while Tolle forced the Red Sox use four relievers to get through three innings and they blew the lead and the game.

“He’s just getting really, really good out there,” Boone said. “That’s an ace-like performance.”

He’s already really, really good, Boone. He has a 1.77 ERA and 41 strikeouts to four walks in 35 2/3 innings. He is your ace.

6. It’s always enjoyable to beat the Red Sox, so when the Yankees sweep them at Fenway Park it’s an indescribable high. The Red Sox scored three runs in the series: one on a single following a defensive indifference, one after an error on a throw that should have ended the inning and a solo home run. I don’t care if the Red Sox suck, if their entire lineup lacks a single star, that they are in last place and headed nowhere and couldn’t even sell out two of three home games against the Yankees. I used to pay hundreds of dollars for standing room tickets to sit in awful obstructed view seats for Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park. The fact that two games in this series weren’t sellouts is disturbing. At least the Fenway crowd got their “YANKEES SUCK” chants in as they fell to seven games under .500.

7. A six-game winning streak is a six-game winning streak, but these six wins came against the Royals and Red Sox, the two worst offenses in the AL. The Yankees swept the Red Sox, but also scored 12 runs in three games in hitter-friendly Fenway Park. The bottom of the lineup remains a disaster and the top of the lineup seems to never be clicking at the same time. Tuesday’s offense was Stanton, Wednesday’s was Amed Rosario and Thursday’s was primarily Bellinger’s pinch-hit single. I expect more from the offense in Houston because the Astros have the worst team ERA (5.81) in the majors, which is why they are 10-16 and the third straight last-place team the Yankees will face. The reason their last-place record isn’t worse is because they have an AL-best team OPS of .783. They can mash.

8. Yordan Alvarez, especially, can mash. It’s going to be nearly impossible to keep him from doing damage unless you pitch around him or throw up four fingers, which I’m fine with. Throw up four fingers every time he comes up and let someone else beat you. Do to another superstar what the opposition has done to Judge in recent years. Don’t let the league leader in hits, home runs, RBIs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, OPS+ and total bases beat you.

9. The Yankees will face three righties this weekend, so that means no Paul Goldschmidt or Randal Grichuk. It will be interesting to see what Boone does at third base. I bet he gives Ryan McMahon the start on Friday and then goes from there the next two days based on how McMahon looks on Friday. There’s a chance Anthony Volpe joins the Yankees after this series, which means someone (likely Grichuk due to money owed and reputation within the team) is going to lose their roster spot. We may have already seen Grichuk’s last at-bat as a Yankee.

10. It will be Will Warren against Lance McCullers Jr. on Friday. Warren pitched well in his last start, but that came against the Royals. The Astros will be the best offense Warren has faced this season and could be the best one he faces all season.

McCullers Jr. has been very bad this season, pitching to a 6.20 ERA in four starts. He had a 6.51 ERA last season after missing all of 2023 and 2024 with injuries. The last time McCullers Jr. was himself was back in 2022, four years ago. But for as bad as he has been, I only think of McCullers Jr. as the kid throwing breaking ball after breaking ball in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS to stifle the Yankees.

1. I will never not enjoy a Yankees win over the Red Sox, but wow, these Red Sox suck. It’s sad, really. Not sad in the sense that I feel bad for them, but more sad in the sense that they are a disgrace and have ruined the rivalry. Their lineup is anchored by Trevor Story and, I guess, Wilyer Abreu? Their ace leads the league in earned runs allowed and hit by pitches. There is no one on the injured list they’re waiting for to return. They are outside the top 10 in payroll, behind teams like the Tigers and the small-market Padres and their fans have been chanting “SELL THE TEAM” to the owner who ended their 86-year championship drought. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been glorious to watch their demise, but Yankees-Red Sox certainly doesn’t feel like Yankees-Red Sox when my biggest fear as a Yankees fan is that the Red Sox’ offense will draw a couple of walks and follow them up with multiple seeing-eye singles through the infield to score runs.

2. The humiliation of getting completely shut down by Luis Gil (whose velocity was down on his fastball and the break on his off-speed pitches was in decline on Tuesday as he only got three swings-and-misses) was followed by Max Fried dominating the Red Sox for eight shutout innings without nearly his best stuff. Fried was so off on Wednesday that he resorted to pitching out of the stretch for most of the game because of a lack of command out of the windup. He still managed to get through eight scoreless on 100 pitches with nine strikeouts.

3. “Playing the Red Sox is always a little different, there’s a little bit more of an intensity to it,” Fried said. “We want to play our brand of baseball to try to win as many games as we possibly can.”

Last season, the Yankees started 1-8 against the Red Sox and finished 4-9. Their play against the Red Sox (and the Blue Jays) is the reason they lost out on winning the division, forcing them to play in the Wild Card Series and forcing Fried to start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on extra rest instead of Game 1 of the ALDS on extra, extra rest. In the last two nights, the Yankees have as many wins against the Red Sox as they had in their first 10 games against them last season.

4. Fried taking care of business against the Red Sox is how I expect him to take care of business against arguably the weakest lineup in the league. The only team with less runs scored in the AL is the Royals, but at least they have Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia, Vinnie Pasquantino and the chance Salvador Perez will run into one every once in a while. The Red Sox have hit 13 home runs in 24 games, four fewer than Aaron Judge and Ben Rice have combined.

5. The old adage that a game is never over at Fenway Park until the final out has been destroyed by this Red Sox team. Wednesday’s game was over in the first inning after Amed Rosario connected for a three-run blast over the Green Monster. It was going to take the Red Sox stringing together a lot of hits to score three runs off Fried, which they never did.

“He’s had some huge, huge games for us,” Giancarlo Stanton said of Rosario. “He directly gave us some wins.”

Rosario is single-handedly responsible for the April 7 win over the Athletics and now the April 22 win over the Red Sox, at least from an offensive perspective.

6. It’s a good thing Rosario sent that ball to the moon because the Yankees didn’t do much after that, scoring just one run over the final 8 1/3 innings. Rosario drove in a fourth run with a sacrifice fly in the third and that was it. A night after Stanton was responsible for three of the Yankees’ four runs, Rosario was responsible for all four. Rosario 4, Red Sox 1.

Paul Goldschmidt was back in the lineup against a lefty starter batting leadoff, but went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Judge had a single and two walks. Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. Stanton had a pair of doubles. Randal Grichuk and Jose Caballero each had a single. Jazz Chisholm had another 0-for-4 night and Austin Wells another 0-for-3. Ben Rice, Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon all went hitless as well, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

7. Everything is great when the starting pitching is as good as it has been of late, but not every opponent is going to be the Royals and Red Sox, again the two worst offenses in the AL. The bottom half of the order needs to start doing something, anything, especially Chisholm who is as close to reaching a 50/50 season on the home run side as you and me are. For as rough as Chisholm’s start to last season seemed to be through April, he still had three doubles and seven home runs to go with his abysmal .181/.304/.410 slash line. As of now, Chisholm has five doubles, no home runs and is at .173/.264/.235. Every Yankee other than McMahon has a higher OPS+ than Chisholm, but at least McMahon won them the game last Friday against the Royals. Chisholm has done nothing, other than make excuses about the weather (and then not hit in Tampa or when it was 85 degrees every day during the Angels series), wrongly challenge called strikes and pop up balls in the infield.

8. It seems like Grichuk is going to be the one to lose his roster spot when Anthony Volpe returns, but I’m not so sure it shouldn’t be Goldschmidt. Obviously, Goldschmidt is a borderline Hall of Famer, was a Yankee last year and is making $4 million to Grichuk’s $2.5 million, but Goldschmidt plays one position, doesn’t play it nearly as well as he once did and his season to date has been one three-run home run off of George Kirby three weeks ago. After starting out 0-for-13 with a walk, Grichuk is 5-for-13 with three doubles in his last five games. His at-bats look improved and he’s hitting the ball hard. Goldschmidt was washed after last April and aside from his 10-pitch at-bat against Ranger Suarez to lead off Wednesday’s game (which resulted in an out), he’s been so bad since his home run in Seattle. Grichuk will get picked up by another team if his Yankees tenure comes to an end when Volpe is back. Goldschmidt won’t play Major League Baseball again, just like the Yankees’ last failed, veteran first baseman signing.

9. The Red Sox couldn’t score against Gil and couldn’t do anything against Fried and now they will face Cam Schlittler who shut them down in the win-or-go-home Game 3 in the Wild Card Series. There’s a chance Schlittler overthrows early on Thursday night with how pumped up he will be to face the Red Sox again, given everything that has gone on with their fan base against him on social media over the last six months, but even if he does, I can’t envision the Red Sox getting to him. The Red Sox will counter with Payon Tolle, a 23-year-old left-hander who has been in Triple-A this season. In 16 1/3 innings in the majors last season, Tolle allowed 26 baserunners and five home runs and pitched to a 6.06 ERA.

10. This is the lineup the Yankees should deploy in the series finale:

Amed Rosario, 3B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Ben Rice, 1B
Randal Grichuk, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Austin Wells, C

Give me that lineup, give me a third straight dominant starting pitching performance and give me a three-game sweep of the Red Sox heading into the weekend.

1. I wasn’t worried about Giancarlo Stanton hitting on Tuesday night even though he had been in a horrific slump overall, including 0-for-17 against left-handed pitching this season. When the games are big and the crowds are bigger and the atmosphere is more pressurized, that’s when Stanton is at his best. To no surprise, he led the Yankees to a 4-0 win over the Red Sox in the series opener. Stanton has always hit well against the Red Sox, just like he has always hit well in the postseason. The bigger the game, the better ‘Big G’ is.

“It’s always a fun rivalry game,” Stanton said. “And you’ve got to raise your game in those types of situations.”

2. Stanton went 2-for-4 in the game with a double, a home run, three RBIs and was robbed of a second double by Ceddane Rafaela. Stanton had been 8-for-55 with one double, one home run and a .448 OPS in April until last night. And because Stanton is as streaky as it gets in the game, you can expect it to continue in Boston (and hopefully throughout the road trip).

3. This is what the offense should look like. Stanton carries them one game, Aaron Judge another, Ben Rice another and so on with everyone else having their moments in between. What can’t happen is what happened against the Athletics and Rays where the entire lineup disappears for days at a time. One or two top-half-of-the-lineup bats need to always be producing for the team to have a chance with how weak the bottom half is.

4. It’s been a long time since Luis Gil was good, except when he faces the Red Sox. Even when Gil can’t be trusted to throw five good innings, he can always be trusted to shut down the Red Sox. Gil entered his start on Tuesday with a 0.99 ERA across 27 1/3 innings in five career starts against the Red Sox and then threw 6 1/3 scoreless in his sixth and latest start.

5. “Hopefully that’s something he builds on,” Boone said, “because we know how good he can be when he’s right.”

I don’t know that Gil will “build on” the performance since he still doesn’t seem to know where the ball is going once it leaves his hand. His success on Tuesday came from the Red Sox being so bad, more than him being good. He only struck out two and was effectively wild enough to keep the Red Sox off balance. Most major-league starters are going to have success against a lineup that has Masataka Yoshida batting third.

6. Every time Tim Hill enters a game and gets a few ground balls and makes lefties look foolish I immediately begin to think about Boone going to Nestor Cortes over Hill in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series. Hill has been exceptional this season with one earned run and no walks allowed in 10 innings. He needed just 10 pitches to get the Yankees out of the eighth inning after needing just eight to get through his last appearance six days prior. He’s the most trustworthy reliever the Yankees have.

7. Brent Headrick has increased his level of trustworthiness though and had another strong outing in this one. David Bednar looks like a completely different pitcher when he has some rest, which he didn’t have for most of the first few weeks of the season coming off the World Baseball Classic and then being thrown into so many close and one-run games immediately.

8. Ben Rice was allowed to start against a lefty again and hit third, but was the only Yankees starter to not reach base. Rice went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, but got screwed on a few outside pitches called strikes he was unable to challenge because Aaron Judge and Jose Caballero blew the Yankees’ challenges on ill-advised challenges. Caballero and Jazz Chisholm should be banned from challenging pitches.

9. I don’t want Rice to sit ever and because I never want Rice to sit, there’s no place for Paul Goldschmidt on the Yankees, just like there wasn’t before they unnecessarily re-signed him. Goldschmidt should only play against lefties, but that means either Rice or Stanton doesn’t play. And if Goldschmidt isn’t going to play against lefties, he has no role. Goldschmidt is 3-for-20 on the season (his one important hit came against a righty in George Kirby in Seattle) and has started once in the last four games with all four games against lefties.

10. It will be Max Fried against Ranger Suarez on Wednesday. I was unhappy when the Red Sox signed Suarez because I envisioned him doing to the Yankees what lefties have done to the Yankees this season prior to the last three games. I expect Fried to pitch well because the Red Sox’ offense is abysmal and because the Yankees have lost his last three starts with his last win coming on March 31. He will need to pitch well with how well Suarez has pitched in his last two starts (14 shutout innings). For the Yankees to extend their winning streak to five they will need to win a fourth straight game started by a lefty.

1. With how poorly things were going for the Yankees from their Easter Sunday loss to the Marlins through the Athletics series to Tampa and for the four-game Angels series, I almost forgot how truly awful the AL Central is. The Royals couldn’t have come to the Bronx at a better time, with the Yankees desperately needing to play better and stack some wins after the way the previous 12 games had gone.

2. The Yankees overcame a Camilo Doval letdown on Friday and won 4-2 thanks to a go-ahead, two-run home run from Ryan McMahon in the bottom of the eighth.

“I know he hasn’t had the results,” Aaron Boone said about McMahon after his first extra-base hit of the season, “but we do feel like he’s moved the needle this last week with what he’s working on.”

(McMahon didn’t record a hit in the rest of the series, so like Boone’s evaluation of Nestor Cortes’ bullpen sessions before Game 1 of the 2025 World Series, all of his evaluations are meaningless bullshit.)

On Saturday, they pummeled the Royals 13-4 for their first lopsided win since the home opener on April 3.

“These are nice for sure,” Cody Bellinger said about blowout wins. “We’ve had a few close ones recently”

(Just a few! Just 14 of the last 20 games decided by two runs or fewer. Just a few!)

On Sunday, they put up their second straight blowout win with a 7-0 victory behind a trio of home runs and 7 1/3 scoreless innings from Ryan Weathers.

“It’s awesome,” Weathers said. “Every time I pitch, I want to win for the New York Yankees.”

(Weathers struck out 18 in his last 12 1/3 innings and aside from a rough outing against the Marlins on a frigid night and the first-inning debacle against the Angels, he has been very good as a Yankee.)

3. The Yankees outscored the Royals 25-6 in the three games. The sweep makes the Yankees 3-0 against the Royals in 2026 after they went 6-0 against the Royals in 2025. They went 8-3 against the Royals in 2024, including the postseason. They are 17-3 against the Royals over the last three seasons. I love the Kansas City Royals.

4. Just last week, Aaron Boone didn’t think Ben Rice was good enough to play against left-handed starters, citing his nonsensical thinking that he could “cherry-pick” when to use Rice in games started by lefties. On Saturday, Boone started Rice against a lefty and Rice homered off him. On Sunday, Boone batted Rice leadoff against a lefty who led the league in strikeouts per nine innings in 2024 and Rice homered off him. So in the span of a few days, Rice went from not being allowed to face lefties to now batting leadoff against them. Never change, Aaron Boone, you idiot. Never change.

“The bottom line is, he’s turning into – or even is – one of the really outstanding hitters in this league,” Boone said.

That must be why you were platooning him at first over the first few weeks of the season.

5. Rice has homered in four straight games. He leads the league in batting average (.338), on-base percentage (.476), slugging percentage (.800), OPS (1.276) and OPS+ (259). He has achieved 77 percent of his 2025 WAR in just 14 percent of the season. The Yankees entered 2026 with a long list of things they needed to hit on when they decided to run it back with the same team and needing Rice to be their second-best bat was one of them, and so far it’s the only thing the team has hit on from that list.

“It’s just quality at-bat after at-bat,” Judge said of Rice. “It doesn’t matter who’s on the mound or what the situation is when he’s going up there.”

6. Judge homered on Sunday and has six in his last eight games. The offense over the last few days has been what it’s expected to be: Judge and Rice and then everyone else chipping in at various times. Bellinger has picked it up offensively, but the Yankees are still waiting on Giancarlo Stanton to get going after his hot start in the first week of the season, some consistency from Trent Grisham, signs of life from Jazz Chisholm an anything from the bottom of the order other than its one big game on Saturday.

7. When the starting pitching is as good as it was over the weekend, 13-run explosions aren’t needed.

Cam Schlittler (6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K) shut down the Royals, Will Warren (7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 11 K, 1 HR) had his best start of the season and Ryan Weathers (7.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K) finally got his first runs of support this season to go along with his dominant start. The Yankees held Bobby Witt Jr. to just one extra-base hit (and two singles) in the series as the face of the Royals is still looking for his first home run of the season.

8. The bullpen was only needed for 6 2/3 innings over the weekend and the only time it was needed in a close game, it blew a one-run lead when Doval allowed a game-tying home run on Friday before McMahon’s go-ahead homer. The bullpen remains the biggest weakness of the team. Outside of Tim Hill and Brent Headrick, no one can be trusted, including David Bednar, who has put runners on in seven of nine appearances. Doval has no idea where the ball is going when it leaves his hand, no one knows which version of Fernando Cruz is going to show up on a given night, Angel Chivilli is a project and no one wants to see Paul Blackburn or Ryan Yarbrough unless the game is out of hand. The Yankees likely need three good to great relievers to make the bullpen trustworthy.

9. A day off on Monday before a three-game series at Fenway Park. The Red Sox are reeling. They are 8-13, they have hit 13 home runs in 21 games, Garrett Crochet has been a disaster and Roman Anthony has been a disappointment. Nearly half of their lineup consists of players you have never heard of. Put it all together and you have a team the Yankees should be able to handle this week, considering they will have Max Fried and Schlittler going in the second and third games of the series and they will miss facing Crochet.

10. That doesn’t mean I expect it to be easy. It’s never easy, no matter what that Red Sox’ roster is. They started Nathaniel Lowe, Nick Sogard and Nate Eaton in the Wild Card Series in October and the Yankees barely got out of that series alive. (In hindsight, the Yankees were better off enduring another playoff loss against the Red Sox because it would have prevented the ALDS humiliation and there would be someone else managing the Yankees at this moment.) I do expect the Yankees to win the series this week against the weakest Red Sox lineup in decades without Crochet going and with Fried and Schlittler going.

1. You know what I want on Thursday afternoon? I want Fried to go out and pitch seven-plus dominant innings, the offense to put up five-plus runs and a nice, clean, easy win to end this series and send Yankees fans into the weekend happy. Remember nice, clean, easy wins? The Yankees haven’t had one since the home opener back on April 3 against the Marlins. And after these last two weeks, April 3 feels like it was from a different season.

That’s how I ended yesterday’s Thoughts: wishing for a nice, clean, easy win to end the series against the Angels. What did I get in return? Max Fried’s shortest outing of the season (5 1/3 innings) as the ace failed to go at least 6 1/3 innings for the first time, another blown lead to the Angels, another dismal offensive performance, another bullpen implosion and another loss.

2. “We obviously haven’t been playing to our standards, but we know the kind of club that we are, especially the way we started off,” Fried said. “That standard that we have, we’re going to get back to it.”

The Yankees have now lost Fried’s last three starts as he couldn’t make a one-run lead stand up for the second straight start. Fernando Cruz couldn’t strand the baserunners he inherited from Fried, Angel Chivilli proved why the Rockies were willing to part with a 23-year-old with his velocity and Ryan Yarbrough got blasted for four earned runs in 2 1/3 innings.

The offense decided to take another day off as they have nearly every day for the last two weeks. Aaron Judge provided a solo home run in the first, Giancarlo Stanton crushed a two-run home run in the third and Ben Rice hit a solo home run in the sixth and that was the entirety of the Yankees’ offense as they were outhit for the 10th time in their last 12 games, falling to 4-8 in that span.

3. When Aaron Boone’s daily plan of getting seven innings from his starter or a bunch of three-run home runs from his offense failed once again, he turned to the only move he knows: getting ejected. The Yankees were already trailing by three runs and the balk call had no impact on the game, but Boone needed to hang his hat on something.

Boone called the 2025 Yankees “the best team” he has had as manager of the Yankees. Yes, he thought the “best team” he had was the one that had to play in the Wild Card Series and lost in four games in humiliating fashion in the ALDS. Not the 2024 team that featured Juan Soto and went to the World Series or the 2019 team that won 103 games. So if Boone believes the 2025 team was his best team and the Yankees ran it back this season with the same roster then that means he feels the 2026 team is also the best team he has been given to manage. At 10-8 with losses in eight of 12, a struggling offense, a top-heavy rotation and a bullpen full of fringe major leaguers, things aren’t going so well.

4. The Law of Ex-Yankees was on peak display this week as Oswald Peraza returned to beat up on his former team. Peraza hit a first-inning, two-run home run off of Fried and hit a game-tying double in the sixth inning. He went 5-for-10 in the series with a double, two home runs, four RBIs, two walks and two stolen bases. It may take his replacement Ryan McMahon until the Fourth of July to achieve those stats.

“He looked like what we were excited about several years ago,” Boone said. “He absolutely hurt us.”

It’s possible it was just one series for Peraza, but it’s also possible he has figured it out and put it together in his age 25 season. With the Yankees, he was never given consistent playing time, was asked to play three different positions, and unfortunately, wasn’t born in New York City and raised in New Jersey as the organization’s Golden Boy Anthony Volpe was. Could you imagine if Volpe had the kind of series Peraza just had against any team? His eventual place in Monument Park would already be roped off.

5. Volpe started his rehab assignment in Double-A and he’s 1-for-5 with three strikeouts, so he’s right on track. Meanwhile, George Lombard Jr., who is Yankees fans’ way out of the Volpe experience is hitting .415/.478/.707 in Double-A with eight extra-base hits in 10 games. Lombard will turn 21 in June and then he will be the same age Volpe was when the Yankees made him their everyday shortstop despite having only played 22 games at Triple-A with just a .718 OPS there. Here’s to hoping Peraza goes on to have an awesome career and that Lombard Jr. is the real deal and the future at shortstop for the Yankees.

6. If it’s true that Judge is responsible for the in-between-every-pitch music and sound effects at Yankee Stadium then it tops his postseason performances, dropping the ball in Game 5 of the World Series and continuing to vouch for Boone as manager as the worst thing he has done in his career. The Stadium music and sound effects have ruined attending games. You can’t hear the person next to you, kids are covering their ears and I can’t imagine any elderly person enjoys it. I can’t imagine anyone enjoys it, other than Judge who wants Yankee Stadium to present a preposterous NBA atmosphere where music is played while the play is going on. Does anyone really want to hear the Backstreet Boys shouting “EVERYBODY! YEAHHHH! ROCK YOUR BODY! YEAHHHH!” while Trent Grisham waits for a 2-2 pitch?

7. Next up is a three-game series with the Royals, who are off to a horrendous 7-12 start, so for them, they are coming to the right place at the right time. Need to get your season on track? Come play the Yankees! The Yankees launched a five-game winning streak for the Athletics, a six-game winning streak for the Rays and let the Angels achieve a .500 record through 20 games, which is like winning the pennant in Anaheim.

8. The Royals have one player with an OPS above .747 and that’s their 9-hitter Kyle Isbel (.822) who famously hit the ball that was wind-aided in the Yankees’ favor to prevent Gerrit Cole from blowing Game 4 of the 2024 ALDS. Maikel Garcia is at .747 and Bobby Witt Jr. is a miserable .709 with no home runs this season. No home runs, Bobby? No problem! The Yankees just set a franchise record against the Angels for the most home runs allowed in a series, so the player who many believe can stop Judge’s MVP run is coming to the right place to fix his season.

9. The Royals arrive in the Bronx riding a four-game losing streak after being swept by the Tigers. The Royals can’t hit. Only the White Sox have scored fewer runs than the Royals in the AL this season. They can pitch though and that’s what scares me about this series because the Angels’ pitching is a laughingstock aside from Jose Soriano, and the Yankees missed facing Soriano in a four-game series and still had trouble scoring against the Angels outside of Monday’s 10-run outburst.

10. It will be Cam Schlittler against Michael Wacha on Friday. No Royal has ever faced Schlittler. The Yankees have seen Wacha a lot from his time in the AL East the numbers are ugly. No Yankee has an OPS higher than .778 against Wacha and Judge has a .393 OPS against him without a home run. On Saturday and Sunday, the Yankees will face back-to-back lefties, so get ready for a weekend full of Ben Rice sitting on the bench, Jazz Chisholm flailing at sliders low and away and Randal Grichuk enhancing his case to be designated for assignment the second a roster spot is needed.

1. After overcoming a two-run deficit to beat the Angels on Monday, the Yankees overcame a one-run deficit to beat the Angels on Wednesday for their second walk-off win in three games. A win is a win, but the reason the Yankees were trailing in those two games (and were shut down in the other game in the series) remains a disturbing trend for the Run It Back Bombers (who no longer hit bombs).

2. Again, a win is a win, and the Yankees need as many as they can get right now and all season. Their opportunity to build a massive early-season lead in the division when they were 8-2 has been destroyed and now they need to survive the muck and cluster that is the AL East. The entire division is separated by 3 1/2 games now and they are 0-3 in the division, which is reminiscent of how they played against the division last season.

3. “It’s a grind for us right now,” Aaron Boone said. “But I felt like there were a lot of tough, winning things that happened tonight for us.”

I’m not sure what “winning things” Boone is talking about? The Yankees scored three runs in the first two innings and didn’t score again until the ninth and needed the left side of the Angels’ infield to not catch a routine pop-up to give them a chance to win. Luis Gil blew a three-run lead and the offense let the starter with the highest ERA among all starters with at least 100 innings pitched from last season go 6 2/3 innings against them. But sure, “a lot of tough, winning things” happened!

4. Amed Rosario and Jordan Romano have single-handedly kept the last nearly two weeks from catastrophe. Here are the Yankees’ last 10 games:

April 5: Blow three-run lead with Max Fried on the mound for a loss
April 7: Rosario hits two home runs to carry offense
April 8: One hit over the final eight innings in a loss
April 9: One-hit for the game in a loss
April 10: Blow early two-run lead in a loss
April 11: Blow three different leads in a loss
April 12: One-hit through first six innings in a loss
April 13: Blow three different leads, thankfully Romano blows the game
April 14: Two-hit over the first seven innings in a loss
April 15: Blow three-run lead, thankfully Romano blows the game

The only thing standing between the Yankees and an eight-game losing streak is Romano. The only things standing between them and a 10-game losing streak are Romano and Rosario. There haven’t been signs of “tough” things or “winning things” from the Yankees of late and there certainly weren’t on Wednesday.

5. The offense remains the team’s biggest problem, but then again, who could have seen this coming? Who could have imagined Trent Grisham wouldn’t replicate his one outlier season and that Jazz Chisholm playing for a contract wouldn’t crumble and that Austin Wells wouldn’t take the next step in his development and that a bunch of right-handed bench bats who are grateful to still be in the majors wouldn’t turn back the clock? No one could have imagined any of this.

6. Aside from Ben Rice’s stunning .333 batting average, Giancarlo Stanton is the next highest at .274 as he’s in a 4-for-33 slump and still sitting on one home run for the season. There are eight Yankees hitting .191 or below and seven Yankees have an OPS below .652. Chisholm used the “It’s cold” excuse for his disastrous start last week, but since they the Yankees have played indoors in Tampa and in mid-80s weather in the Bronx and he’s still not hitting.

7. The Yankees were outhit again (7-6). Since April 3, the Yankees have been outhit in nine of 11 games. They outhit the Angels on Monday and were tied in hits with the Marlins on Easter. Giancarlo Stanton went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. His OPS is down to .709 and he’s still sitting on one home run, so I guess it’s true that poor hitting is contagious. Ryan McMahon also put up another 0-for as his OPS is down to an impossible .379.

8. The bullpen combination of Tim Hill, Fernando Cruz, Brent Headrick and David Bednar threw four scoreless innings after Gil laid another egg. Gil either throws non-competitive pitches outside the strike zone for easy takes or throws the ball over the heart of the plate. He couldn’t hold a three-run lead and allowed three home runs. For a pitcher whose career has been marred by injuries and a high walk rate, it’s still amazing the Yankees didn’t move him after his 2024 Rookie of the Year campaign when they needed offense and when his stock would never be higher.

9. The only good thing about Gil starting is it means Fried starts the next game. And after watching Will Warren fail to get through four innings with a four-run lead on Monday, Ryan Weathers get blasted for back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning on Tuesday and Luis Gil blow a three-run lead on Wednesday, I desperately need to watch a Fried start. The Yankees desperately need a Fried start.

10. You know what I want on Thursday afternoon? I want Fried to go out and pitch seven-plus dominant innings, the offense to put up five-plus runs and a nice, clean, easy win to end this series and send Yankees fans into the weekend happy. Remember nice, clean, easy wins? The Yankees haven’t had one since the home opener back on April 3 against the Marlins. And after these last two weeks, April 3 feels like it was from a different season.

1. If I were manager of the Yankees, I would want the major-league leader in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+ playing every single game, but that’s just me. Instead, Aaron Boone has kept Ben Rice out of the starting lineup in three of the last five games. (He also was held out of the lineup completely in the second game of the season.)

“Having the ability to cherry-pick when I fire Benny Rice in a big spot, I like that,” Aaron Boone said before sitting him on Tuesday.

2. So Boone would rather have Rice for one plate appearance of his choice instead of four-plus plate appearances throughout the game. Why stop there? Why not have Aaron Judge do the same? Why not use Max Fried and Cam Schlittler as middle relievers? Not only is Boone giving potential Rice at-bats to players whose careers would likely be over if the Yankees released them today, but he also let Ryan McMahon start against a lefty and not Rice.

3. Now Rice not playing on Tuesday night isn’t why the Yankees lost to the Angels, even if Rice did drive in the Yankees’ only run in his only plate appearance. A day after the best win of the season in which the Yankees blew three different leads before overcoming a two-run deficit in the ninth, they reminded everyone that momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. And when the next day’s starting pitcher allows back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning, well, anyone who thought Monday’s win would get the Yankees on a roll was sorely mistaken. Ryan Weathers gave up four home runs and five earned runs in five innings. But hey, he struck out 10 batters, which is what the Yankees’ front office will be proud of.

“Three misfires to a really good low-ball hitting team is not a good start,” Weathers said. “I wish I could go back and re-do the first, but I’ve just got to take it and roll with it.”

4. Paul Blackburn allowed an earned run and four baserunners in an inning of work and Yerry de los Santos proved why he was in Triple-A up until Wednesday. The pitching was bad, as it has been a lot lately, and the offense was even worse, as it has been a lot lately.

5. The offense had two singles through the first seven innings, which is double what they had through seven innings in multiple games recently. The offense went 5-for-31 with no walks and 12 strikeouts against Reid Detmers, Chase Silseth and Ryan Zeferjahn. Detmers had only made it through five innings once in three previous starts this season and couldn’t be trusted to start a single game last season for a 72-win Angels team. But there he was dominating the Yankees at Yankee Stadium just like another household name lefty in Jeffrey Springs did last Thursday.

6. “Didn’t mount much” has a commanding lead in terms of Boone-ism usage this season. Boone used that phrase after Tuesday’s loss and he has had the opportunity to use the phrase to explain the offense’s performance against Drew Rasmussen and Steven Matz and Jeffrey Springs and Luis Severino and nearly every starter the Yankees have faced since they surprisingly got to Logan Webb on Opening Day.

7. Former Yankee Oswald Peraza went 3-for-3 with a walk and solo home run in the game for the Angels. He has an .838 OPS this season and in one game produced half as many hits as McMahon has this year. That’s notable because the Yankees were willing to take on the roughly $38 million owed to McMahon through 2027, so they wouldn’t have to play Peraza anymore.

“He killed us,” Boone said. “He stung three balls and then works a 12-pitch walk in his last at-bat. He was right in the middle of hurting us tonight.”

8. It’s startling that the Yankees were nearly shut out by the Angels, but even more startling that they have allowed 17 runs to the Angels in 18 innings. The Angels have averaged 4.6 runs per game in all of their other games.

“We’ve played a lot of close games and lost,” Paul Goldschmidt said, maybe not realizing 7-1 is not a close game. “We’ve been one play or pitch away in a lot of these games.”

.9 The Yankees are simply not a good team right now. Good teams don’t lose to bad teams with this kind of regularity. The Yankees have played six opponents to date and five of them didn’t reach the postseason last year and they are a loss away from being .500 against the Giants, Mariners, Marlins, Athletics, Rays and Angels. They don’t purposely bench the best statistical hitter in the league through three weeks. They don’t have a bullpen with a single trusted arm or a rotation with only two reliable starters. They don’t have a lineup with roughly five automatic outs in it every night and they certainly don’t have a manager still learning on the job now in his ninth season after spending his entire life around the game.

10. The Yankees are average, which is why they are 9-8 on the season and just one game over .500 with a chance to fall to .500 on Wednesday with their worst starter going. I knew the Boone Swoon that comes with every Yankees season under this manager would come at some point. I baked it into my projection for this team, I just didn’t think it would come so early, especially against this part of the schedule, which was supposed to be an easy part of the schedule.

1. Things are bad. Really bad. The Yankees have lost five straight and six of seven since Easter. If not for the help of Mark Leiter Jr. and the meltdown he had last Monday, things would be even worse. I can’t think of a worse possible second week of the season to endure, especially following what went on during the first week.

But that first week was clearly a mirage, just like most of the Aaron Boone era has been. This is the ninth season of waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Yankees under his management. The big Game 2 win at Fenway Park in the 2018 ALDS was immediately met by humiliation and elimination. The 2019 ALDS sweep of the Twins and Game 1 rout of the Astros in the ALCS were followed by a team-wide inability to hit for the remainder of the series. Minutes after DJ LeMahieu’s game-tying home run in Game 6 of that ALCS, Jose Altuve walked off the season. A season-saving win in Game 4 of the 2020 ALDS came a day before the Yankees scored a single run in a Game 5 loss. The 13-game winning streak to save the 2021 season was undone when they failed to finish as the first wild card in the final weekend of the season, had to go to Fenway and lost the one-game playoff. The 61-23 start in 2022 was followed by a 38-40 finish. The comeback in the 2022 ALDS against the Guardians was met with a sweep at the hands of the Astros in the ALCS. The re-signing of Aaron Judge that offseason was followed by him missing two months of the next season as a team that was 11 games over .500 in June finished two games over .500. A 49-21 start to 2024 led to a 45-47 finish, and the first World Series appearance in 15 years led to the most embarrassing inning and demise in World Series history. A 42-25 start to 2025 was followed by a 23-31 stretch as the team blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays and then was eliminated by the Blue Jays in the ALDS. So when the Yankees ripped off eight wins in their first 10 games in 2026, a week like this last week should have been expected.

2. The issue isn’t that the Yankees ave lost five straight and six of seven. Losses are going to happen. It’s how they have lost these games. The team is 0-6 in one-run games this season. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you think it’s a small sample size or bad luck? Or do you think it’s because the Yankees are managed by someone who uses J.C. Escarra and Randal Grichuk in game-changing, ninth-inning at-bats and someone who still hasn’t figured out how to utilize a bullpen? Do you think instead of blaming it on luck and chance maybe the blame should be placed on a roster constructed with a complete lack of situational hitters whose only way to score runs is to hit the ball over the fence?

3. Five of the Yankees’ nine everyday players have below-league-average OPS+ for the season and two of their four bench bats do as well. Trent Grisham has been 42 percent worse than league average, Austin Wells 45 percent, Jazz Chisholm 53 percent, Ryan McMahon 86 percent and Jose Caballero 87 percent. Escarra at -74 percent and Grichuk at -100 percent are breaking the laws of mathematics with their ineptitude. If Grichuk were to now play 100 percent better than he has, he would still be 100 percent worse than league average. You reading this right now have provided more value to the Yankees at the plate this season by simply watching the games from your home than Escarra or Grichuk have.

4. The lineup is a recipe for disaster on good days when the top of it is hitting because the bottom is full of automatic outs. At best, the Yankees give away one-third of their outs every game by employing the players they do. On a bad day, when the top of the order isn’t hitting (which it hasn’t been), the lineup is an atrocity.

This isn’t a mistake. This is by design. The Yankees purposely ran it back with the same position players to create this lineup. This isn’t the product of injuries to starters and more injuries to the best backups. This isn’t the 2019 Replacement Yankees relying on Mike Tauchman to carry them for weeks. The lineup you see is the lineup the Yankees wanted this season. So when I wrote endlessly about my fear of running it back all offseason, the worst possible scenario is what I envisioned, and that’s what the Yankees are providing.

5. It would help if the Yankees had more than a couple trustworthy relievers in the bullpen to win close games, but they don’t have that either. Brian Cashman let his two best relievers from this time last year leave through free agency and replaced them with in-house options he didn’t feel were good enough to be on the major-league roster at the end of last season. But even if the Yankees had better bullpen options, it’s hard to imagine Boone properly using them given the way he let Ryan Yarbrough face Chandler Simpson on Sunday after the Yankees cut the deficit to one run. Why not Tim Hill there in the seventh? Hill had thrown one pitch (yes, one pitch) over the previous four days.

6. Unless the Yankees can outhit Boone or outpitch him with efforts like Max Fried and Cam Schlittler gave the first two times through the rotation, it’s going to be very hard for the Yankees to win close games, just like it has been in the past. When you have a manager who thinks Grichuk should bat instead of a borderline Hall of Famer in Paul Goldschmidt with the game on the line, only to admit after the game that Goldschmidt should have hit, you get the type of results the Yankees have produced in the last five games, games in which hits have been harder to come by than logical Boone decisions. After getting their asses kicked by their own division last season, the Yankees are 0-3 to start this one.

7. You would think the least the Yankees could do is play error-free, clean baseball in the field since they can’t manage, hit or pitch with any reliability. But they can’t do that either. The way they pissed away the late innings on Saturday and then let the Rays tack on two runs on Sunday was appalling. But that’s Boone baseball. Being a laughingstock defensively when the ball is put in play is how this team has always played under Boone. The difference between the Yankees and Rays aside from hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll is that Kevin Cash squeezes every last bit of talent and strategic options out of his team, puts his players in the best possible position to succeed and manages a game by utilizing the individual skillsets of his players. Boone has trouble filling out a sensible lineup card, seems to pull relievers out of a hat for the order in which they are used and sits around waiting for a three-run home run or a shutout from a starter so the Yankees can shake hands at the end of a game.

8. What went on with Chisholm to end Saturday’s game is something I would rather not think about again for the rest of my life, and yet, it’s the only thing I can think about when I see Chisholm’s name or face. His admission that he doesn’t know the rules of force outs as a professional baseball player seeking a nine-figure contract was mystifying. But for as crazy and truly unbelievable as it was to hear those words come out of Chisholm’s mouth, it was even more so to hear Boone say that Chisholm does know the rule after Chisholm told everyone he didn’t. There’s sticking up and defending your players, and then there’s whatever Boone is now doing. It’s one thing to tell everyone a starter had “good stuff” on a day he was pulled in the third inning, but to basically tell everyone you know the inner workings of Chisholm’s brain better than Chisholm does, well, we’ve officially gone off the deep end. I have also said Boone will defend his players to no end, but saying a player knows something they said they don’t know when the players provided that information on his own volition is really to “no end.”

(Chisholm went 2-for-13 in the three games in Tampa in a dome after saying he hasn’t hit yet because of the cold weather.)

9. “Good compete today as far as finishing,” Boone said after Sunday’s loss.

The Yankees didn’t finish anything. They lost another one-run game.

Boone got testy when asked about McMahon’s continued offensive struggles, telling the media they “love to bring up his name.”

Yes, people tend to love to bring up a player the team targeted with a trade, agreeing to take on the $40 million owed to him. A player who is 4-for-35 on the season with no extra base hits through mid-April. The funniest moment of Sunday’s game came when McMahon was up with two outs in the ninth and the tying and go-ahead runs on base and Joe Girardi said, “This could turn his whole season around.” McMahon then swung at the first pitch and weakly grounded out to first to end the game.

“We’re going to hit,” Boone said, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”

There should be some doubt.

Boone also called this team “a new group” as the organization-wide stance to never reference “running it back” from 2025 to 2026 seems to be still alive and well.

10. It’s back to the Bronx to host a four-game series against the Angels. The Angels are 8-8, aren’t any good and seem destined for another last-place finish in the AL West. And because of that, every Yankees fan should be worried about this matchup. When you get nearly swept by the A’s at home and then get swept by the Rays, it’s hard to have any confidence in this team. And if the top of the order doesn’t hit the ball over the fence, they’ll make the Angels look as good as they made the A’s and Rays look.

1. On Friday in Tampa, the Yankees faced a left-handed starter for the second time in as many days, and for the second time in as many days they lost in embarrassing fashion, falling 5-3 to the Rays.

On Wednesday, the Yankees had one hit after the first inning. On Thursday, they were one-hit for the game. On Friday, they were held hitless from the end of the first inning until Ben Rice’s pinch-hit home run with one out in the eighth. The Yankees have five runs, 10 hits and 35 strikeouts over their last three games. They lost all three and have lost four of their last five. The enjoyment of the first week-and-a-half of the season has been completely undone by the offense.

2. “We’ve got to hit,” Austin Wells said.

Nice of Wells to chime in on the state of the offense, considering he has five hits this season in 38 plate appearances, with just one going for extra bases (a double). He has yet to drive in a run through the first 13 games.

“It’s going to happen sometimes from the offense,” Aaron Boone said, as the manager went into his Mary Poppins-like bag of annual bullshit clichés to describe his offense. “They’re going to get it rolling and some people are going to pay the price.”

This comes one day after Boone said, “Hopefully we’ll get things going.” Who exactly are the Yankees going to make pay? I know. The No. 4 and 5 starters on the worst teams in baseball and 26th-man-on-the-roster relievers, that’s who. That’s what these Yankees do. Lose close games (0-4 in one-run games this year) and then beat the shit out of fringe major leaguers to prop up their personal stats and the team’s run differential to make everyone say things like, “Oooo, the Yankees led the league in runs last year!” Then come the postseason, when it’s cold and only elite pitchers take the mound, they revert back to the team we have seen these last few days: a team that survives on the long ball, can’t score leadoff doubles and can’t get runners in from third with less than two outs.

3. It wasn’t cold in Tampa on Friday because the game was played indoors in a controlled environment. But that didn’t stop Jazz Chisholm from continuing to suck. On Thursday, Chisholm said his “swing is great” and the only reason he isn’t producing is because it’s cold outside in New York City. In Friday’s game, Chisholm popped up to third with Rosario on third in the first inning, struck out in the fourth inning (and wasted another challenge in the process), grounded out in the seventh inning and grounded out for the first out of the ninth with the tying run on base. Another stellar 0-for-4 night for Mr. 50/50.

4. It was another hitless night for Randal Grichuk, Jose Caballero and Wells as well. Grichuk was brought in because of his career success against lefties and he struck out two more times and remains 0-for-the-season. Caballero has been so bad he has fans yearning for Anthony Volpe and the only reason everyone isn’t calling for Wells to be benched is because the alternative is J.C. Escarra, who is also 0-for-the-season.

During the offseason, in an interview with Kevin Durant, Aaron Judge said three players he was excited about were Chisholm, Wells and Ryan McMahon.

“He can be one of the greats in the game,” Judge said of Chisholm. “I think this will be a big year for him to take that next step.”

Chisholm is hitting .170/.235/.234.

“I think this will be a big year for him,” Judge said of Wells, “he’s really going to take that next step.”

Wells is hitting .152/.263/.182.

“I think there’s just so much more potential,” Judge said of McMahon. “I think what he’s about to do with the bat this year, he’s going to take off for us.”

McMahon is hitting .069/.250/.069.

Judge is as bad at this as his front office. That’s how you end up with a new contract for Anthony Rizzo, an extended leash for DJ LeMahieu and going on a ninth season with Boone as manager.

5. The bottom of the lineup sucks, but so does the top. Trent Grisham served as a pinch hitter with two outs in the ninth and the tying runs on second and third and he popped up to first to end the game. If there’s a Yankees fan out there who thought Grisham would drive those runs in to extend the game, I would like to meet you. The $22 Million Qualifying Offer Man has been a disaster to this point with a .445 OPS and no home runs after hitting 34 last year. No one could have seen that coming! No one!

6. Judge continues to look lost, afraid to use the ABS system in his favor while the opposition continues to strike him out with it. The common narrative around Judge is “Hey, he started out this way two years ago and went on to win MVP!” Yeah, you know what else happened two years ago? The Yankees had Juan Soto to carry the team while Judge slumped. The only hitter capable of carrying the team right now is Rice, who didn’t even start on Friday despite career success against Jeffrey Springs, and in his one plate appearance of the night, he homered. I don’t know, if it were me I would play the current best bat on the team every game. But then again, I care about winning and winning every game.

I’m sure Judge will get it going at some point, though one of these seasons he won’t get it going and will no longer be the generational, all-time talent he has been in his prime. Maybe that’s this year? Maybe it’s next year? Maybe it’s in 2030. I don’t know when it will be, but the Yankees need to stop taking for granted his Hall of Fame talent with the idea that it will never end and stop being so reliant on one bat.

7. Cody Bellinger set a precedent at the end of his time in Los Angeles that there are seasons when he’s awful. It’s too early this season to say that, but with each passing game he looks like a player the Yankees paid for his past rather than his future, and now that he has his massive, guaranteed payday, it’s never out of the question that he may turn back into the guy the best organization in baseball — the Dodgers — were willing to non-tender after his age 26 season.

(Giancarlo Stanton has been pretty good and gets a pass.)

8. The last three games represent the first time in franchise history that the Yankees had any three-game span with 15 or fewer total bases and at least 35 strikeouts. (Stat from Katie Sharp.) Another line to add to the Boone era Yankees history! The Yankees have the fewest hits in the majors and are third-worst in batting average at .201.

9. “I don’t think there’s any concern,” Rice said.

Spoken like a true Boone Yankee. There’s never any concern. Not on April 10. Not in mid-July. Not in September. Not when facing elimination in October. Not when stifled by a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen in a bullpen game with the season on the line.

10. One of these days, and maybe as early as Saturday, the Yankees will explode for 15 runs, have a laugher of a win where they hit against a position player at the end of the game and everyone will say, “There they are! There’s the Bronx Bombers!” But for a team that has 12 home runs in 13 games and for a team that has a bench player with as many home runs this season as everyday hitters in the 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 spots combined, a laugher here and there against shit teams to improve the run differential isn’t going to fool me. It’s not early because this isn’t a “new” team, and while it’s technically a “new” season, it’s really just a continuation of last season. The only difference being this year we might hear “It’s right in front of us” much earlier than the summer if the Yankees continue to play this way.

1. The Athletics showed up in New York giving up nearly six runs a game and the Yankees eked out a win on Tuesday because one of their bench bats hit two home runs, then they got one-hit from the second inning on in a loss on Wednesday and got one-hit in a 1-0 loss on Thursday.

2. The ‘Run It Back’ offense is doing exactly what I feared it would. It’s heavily reliant on the top of the order carrying it, and when the top of the order isn’t hitting (as it currently isn’t) then the Yankees can’t win. At 8-4, the start of the season looks great, but the Yankees are a Paul Goldschmidt home run, an eighth-inning rally against the Marlins and the Amed Rosario game from it being much different.

3. Getting one-hit from the second inning on in Wednesday’s loss was embarrassing enough, but the Yankees took embarrassing to a new level on Thursday when they were one-hit for the entire nine innings, and if not for a seventh-inning single by Ben Rice, the Yankees may have been no-hit by Jeffrey Springs.

The Yankees stocked their bench with right-handed bats that have a history of destroying left-handed pitching, so that they couldn’t be shut down by left-handers anymore. So much for that. All of the platoon bats were stifled by Springs. The Yankees have faced two left-handed starters this season in Springs and Robbie Ray and both have shut down the platoon bats.

4. It’s been October and postseason weather in the Bronx since the Yankees returned home last week and they have played like they do in October and the postseason. Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm are nowhere to be found, Aaron Judge hasn’t done anything since his first-inning home run against the Marlins a week ago, the bottom of the order remains automatic outs, the starting pitching has been spotty, the bullpen shaky and Aaron Boone is making questionable choices.

5. “Look, we got shut down today,” Boone said.

Actually, you got shut down on Wednesday and Thursday and everyone aside from Rosario got shut down on Tuesday.

“We didn’t generate much,” Boone said. “We have a few guys struggling to get on track a little bit.”

A few guys? Let’s check in on each player’s OPS so far this season with their career OPS in parentheses.

Ben Rice: 1.155 (.803)
Paul Goldschmidt: .967 (.882)
Amed Rosario: .941 (.709)
Giancarlo Stanton: .811 (.873)
Aaron Judge: .758 (1.025)
Cody Bellinger: .746 (.817)
Trent Grisham: .597 (.719)
Jazz Chisholm: .511 (.764)
Austin Wells: .486 (.709)
Jose Caballero: .362 (.646)
Ryan McMahon: .319 (.735)
J.C. Escarra: .100 (.579)
Randal Grichuk: .000 (.762)

Just a few guys!

“Hopefully, we’ll get things going,” Boone said.

“Hopefully?” Boone is one to tell you they will get things going. That a corner will be turned. That everything is always right in front of them. Now he’s resorting to “hopefully” after 12 games? That’s not a great sign.

6. Boone talked about the weather in New York impacting the offense. I guess the A’s were playing in different weather when they were batting. While the A’s may have not been lighting up the scoreboard with runs, they were still able to generate hits. They outhit the Yankees 17-5 in the last two games of the series and 16-2 from the second inning of Wednesday through the end of Thursday.

7. “I can’t feel my hands right now,” Chisholm said. “And when you can’t feel your hands, it’s hard to swing.”

Chisholm also talked about how he told the media last year he isn’t good until the weather warms up.

“I’m not using that as an excuse,” Chisholm said.

Sounds like an excuse to me.

“I said the same thing last year,” Chisholm said. “As soon as the weather heats up, I heat up. That’s what it is.”

The Yankees play half of their games in New York and New York weather is typically cold for all of April and sometimes most of May. They plan to play games in October when it’s also very cold. So Chisholm is saying he’s worthless for at least the first month of the season at home and also in the postseason since it’s cold during both months. Yes, please give him a long-term contract after this season.

8. Ryan Weathers (8 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 7 K) was great for the first time as a Yankee, but his superb outing was wasted by the offense. At least he was able to give the bullpen a break since no starter had given any real length over the last week and the bullpen is fatigued and showing it.

9. The loss on Thursday moved the Yankees to 0-4 in one-run games this season and 8-0 in all other games. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this team, which lacks smart, situational hitters, has a shaky bullpen and has a manager in his ninth season of having in-game difficulties is 0-4 in one-run games. Just bad luck!

10. The Yankees head to Tampa where the games are played inside in a controlled environment. So the “Boohoo, it’s cold!” excuse is gone for the next three days. If the Yankees’ bats can’t wake up at Tropicana Field, they won’t have Mother Nature to blame.

The Rays are starting Steven Matz on Friday and Shane McClanahan on Sunday, so that’s two more lefties for the Yankees’ righty-heavy lineup to show they can actually hit left-handed pitching. Luis Gil will make his season debut on Friday after being left out of the rotation and off the Opening Day roster. If he wants to remain in the rotation ahead of Weathers and Will Warren when Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole are healthy (and if everyone else remains healthy) then pitching well immediately would be a good idea.

1. The Yankees had a 1-0 lead with the bases loaded and one out against former Yankee Luis Severino (who they have destroyed twice in two starts since leaving the organization) in the first inning on Wednesday night. It looked like the game could quickly become a laugher. It didn’t. The Yankees scored one more run in the inning and then only produced one more hit for the rest of the game in an eventual 3-2 loss to the Athletics.

2. It was a dismal offensive performance, but nothing uncommon to this team this season. Yes, the Yankees are 8-3 with the best record in the American League and tied for the best record in baseball, but as I have written many times in these Thoughts, when I write about the Yankees, it’s not simply based on the last game or the last week, it’s with the big picture in mind. And right now, the big-picture perspective for this offense is why the ‘Run It Back’ lineup construction kept me up many nights this offseason.

3. It’s not good that Amed Rosario hit as many home runs in three at-bats on Tuesday as Trent Grisham, Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton, Jazz Chisholm, Austin Wells, Ryan McMahon and Jose Caballero have combined for this season. I’m not worried about Bellinger or Stanton finding their power. I’m very worried about Chisholm’s mental state as an impending free agent and a player who says he’s chasing a 50/50 season. I’m very worried about Grisham who was paid $22 million because of one outlier season. I’m worried that the Yankees’ plan to hope Wells (and Anthony Volpe when he returns) could take the next step offensively isn’t working out and that the team’s internal belief they could be the ones to unlock McMahon as a hitter was a foolish task to take on.

4. McMahon isn’t just bad, he’s pretty much the worst hitter in baseball right now. There are 256 players in the majors with at least 30 plate appearances this season and McMahon ranks 255th in batting average, 255th in slugging percentage, 251st in OPS and 250th in strikeout percentage. (Stat provided by Katie Sharp.) McMahon is 2-for-the-season. Two! It’s not much better for the other guys at the bottom of the order either: Chisholm has eight hits, Caballero has six, Wells has five and J.C. Escarra has zero. ZERO! And yet, in the Yankees’ last two losses (on Sunday and Wednesday), Escarra was allowed to hit in the bottom of the ninth in one-run games. But Escarra aside, of all the automatic outs in the Yankees’ lineup, right now McMahon is the most automatic.

“If I knew, I don’t think I’d be in the slow start,” McMahon said after he went 0-for-2 with a walk and two strikeouts on Wednesday. “I’m grinding. I’m not happy about it.”

I’m not mad at McMahon for being unable to hit because that’s who he has always been. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He doesn’t put himself in the lineup every day. He has come to the plate 4,042 times in the regular season over his decade-long career and is a .238 hitter, who has been nine percent worse than league average during that time. He’s never been able to hit, so while he’s been worse this season than at any other point in his career, he’s not going to suddenly figure it out and become even an average hitter. At some point he will do better than he is now as the worst hitter in baseball, but his ceiling is that of a below-league-average hitter.

What I am mad about is that he will be given a frustratingly-long leash because he’s a veteran, he’s making $16 million this season and the Yankees are stubborn about personnel choices that make their trade and free-agent choices look bad. Rosario could start hitting like Judge when he plays (the MVP version of Judge, not the version of Judge we have seen this year) and it wouldn’t matter. McMahon is going to play. Even though I thought Boone would bench Rosario after his two-homer game for McMahon on Wednesday, even Boone knew he couldn’t do that. So instead, he benched Caballero and put McMahon right back in there to do nothing.

This isn’t an “It’s early!” or “It’s only been 11 games!” case either. You can use that for explaining why Judge hasn’t looked like himself or why Stanton only has one home run. It’s not a valid reason for McMahon or the rest of the bottom of the order sucking. They have always sucked! This isn’t small-sample-size noise. This is who they are. The Yankees believed they could be better, and they aren’t.

5. The Yankees losing two of their last three and needing late-game rallies to avoid additional losses on Friday and Tuesday isn’t all on the offense. It’s on the starting pitching too. Ryan Weathers was bad (for the second time in as many Yankees starts) on Friday, Max Fried struggled against a weak Marlins offense on Sunday, Will Warren once again couldn’t give length on Wednesday and it took Cam Schlittler 84 pitches to get through five innings on Tuesday. The starters need to be better because over the last week their lack of length is forcing the Bullpen of Question Marks to be overworked and it’s showing. After pitching in multiple games in the World Baseball Classic and then being needed for nearly two 40-pitch saves in the last week, David Bednar is struggling to put away hitters. He’s been shaky this season and on Wednesday he allowed the A’s to break the 2-2 tie in the ninth.

“I was able to get ahead of guys, but I wasn’t able to put them away,” Bednar said. “It can’t happen.”

6. There is very little trust in the bullpen right now. I don’t trust Bednar because he’s been overworked over the last month. I don’t trust Camilo Doval because he’s been untrustworthy since the moment he became a Yankee. I don’t trust Fernando Cruz because he could strike out the side on nine pitches or walk the bases loaded on 12. I trust Tim Hill the most and Brent Headrick the second most. That’s not a great place to be.

7. It’s also on the defense. The Yankees will tell you Escarra could start for a lot of other teams in the league even though he can’t. Yes, he’s so good that the Yankees were OK with sending him down for a lot of last season and going with Rice as their backup catcher. He’s so good that he’s hitless this season and takes swings like he’s blindfolded. On Wednesday, not only did he put another 0-for, but he was unable to block a Warren breaking ball in the dirt that led to the A’s tying the game.

Rice, who has looked much better in the field this season, looked like his old self on Wednesday. He booted a routine ground ball, couldn’t pick a ball that any major-league first baseman should be able to pick and also dropped a pickoff throw with the runner caught leaving early.

Add in the couple of miscues from Caballero at short so far, McMahon’s new habit of throwing every ball in the dirt to first and Chisholm’s nonchalant play last Friday (which he negated with his amazing diving catch on Wednesday) and you have the type of defensive baseball the Yankees have always played during the Boone era.

8. Yes, the Yankees are 8-3. Yes, they are still waiting for Judge to really get going and for Stanton to start hitting the ball over the wall. Yes, they are getting closer to having Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole in the rotation. But there are still a lot of flaws on this team. Flaws that existed last season, weren’t addressed in the offseason and haven’t gotten better this season. Even when Judge and Stanton get going (and hopefully Grisham and Chisholm too), the bottom of the order is still going to be a problem. Even when Rodon and Cole come back, the trustworthy options in the bullpen still won’t exist. Again, it’s not early and it’s not only 11 games because when you run it back with the same team from one year to the next, one year to the next becomes a continuation, not something new.

9. The Yankees will face their first left-handed starter on Thursday since last Tuesday in Seattle. That means the righty-heavy lineup will be used. Boone didn’t come close to using the best possible lineup I provided on Wednesday to face Severino, but here’s the best possible lineup to go against Jeffery Springs on Thursday.

Amed Rosario, 3B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Randal Grichuk, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Austin Wells, C

(In reality, Boone will use Goldschmidt to lead off instead of Rosario.)

10. Weathers gets the ball for the third time as a Yankee. He has done nothing to prove he should keep his rotation spot once Rodon is ready, and I don’t have high expectations for him on Thursday. I don’t have any expectations for him as a hard-thrower who has no idea where the ball is going when it leaves his hand. It’s going to be cold again like it was in his start on Friday, which clearly rattled him, and the A’s have a lineup that can make you pay if you’re not careful. It’s going to be a tough rubber game to win before the Yankees head to Tampa.

1. Through 10 games this season, Aaron Boone has pushed the right offensive lineup change button twice, which I think equals his total from his first eight seasons as manager.

In the fifth game of the season, Boone gave Giancarlo Stanton the day off against George Kirby in Seattle despite Stanton being 10-for-20 at the time. Boone played Paul Goldschmidt and hit him fifth in the lineup even though one of the best right-handed starters in the game was on the mound. It was an odd decision since Goldschmidt has been bad against righties for a long time now and because Boone chose not to play Goldschmidt against Tyler Mahle four days earlier, a lesser right-hander than Kirby and one Goldschmidt has absolutely owned in his career. Goldschmidt looked overmatched against Kirby in his first two at-bats — striking out both times — before hitting a long, three-run home run in his third at-bat, which was the difference in a Yankees win.

On Tuesday against the Athletics, Boone started Amed Rosario over Ryan McMahon at third base despite the right-handed Aaron Civale starting. Rosario hit a solo home run in his first at-bat to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead and hit a go-ahead, three-run home run in the eighth inning to carry the Yankees to a 5-3 win.

2. The three-run blast came against former Yankee Mark Leiter Jr. who owed the Yankees a meltdown like that (and a few more) for his performance as a Yankee over the last two seasons. It felt really good to be on the positive end of a Leiter Jr. appearance, especially one that decided the game.

“Although I’m not playing every day, I try to not let that affect me mentally,” Rosario said. “Over the years, I’ve been able to create a routine to help me do my job.”

3. McMahon was on the bench because he has been atrocious this season, going 2-for-23 with 11 strikeouts. He drove in two runs on Opening Day with a seeing-eye single and hasn’t done anything since. Even his defense has been shaky with nearly every throw of his across the infield bouncing in the dirt. But all Yankees fans know how Boone and the team operates and you can bet McMahon will be back in the lineup on Wednesday and Rosario — the hero from Tuesday — will be back on the bench.

4. Rosario should continue to play until he stops playing well because that’s how playing time should work and be earned. Boone mentioned “competition” being “a good thing” after the win, but we all know it’s bullshit. He said the same thing last September about shortstop and then Jose Caballero doubled Anthony Volpe’s OPS for the month and still found himself on the bench for the entire postseason. The Yankees think they can be the ones to fix McMahon at the plate (they aren’t) like they always think they can fix everyone and McMahon makes $16 million this season and Rosario makes $2.5 million. That’s why Rosario will go back to not playing and McMahon will go right back into the lineup as if he isn’t one of the worst everyday bats in the majors.

5. Cam Schlittler allowed his first runs of the season in what was his shortest start of the season: 5 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 7 K. (Still no walks this year.) Schlittler retired the first six A’s of the game with three strikeouts, but ran into trouble in the third after a leadoff, swinging-bunt single, a line-drive single and a two-strike sacrifice bunt put runners on second and third with one out. The A’s then went double, strikeout, double against Schlittler and took a 3-1 lead. Schlittler kept the damage there and retired six of the next seven batters to end his night with a season-high 84 pitches. The combination of Jake Bird, Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar threw four scoreless innings in relief and the Yankees improved to 8-2 on the season.

6. Rosario had the two home runs, Aaron Judge had a walk, Cody Bellinger had a hit, Ben Rice was on base three times, Giancarlo Stanton had a big line-drive single in the eighth, Jazz Chisholm had a hit and Austin Wells and Jose Caballero both had doubles. Trent Grisham (0-for-5 with a now-.561 OPS) was the only Yankees starter to not reach base.

7. Grisham is the next guy that I want to see take a seat on the bench. Even the biggest Grisham fan (if those exist?) knew he wouldn’t hit 34 home runs again, but many were upset by the qualifying offer to him, which would cost $22 million, prevent the team from spending the money elsewhere and block a non-injury path to the majors for Jasson Dominguez and Spencer Jones. Grisham is hitting .147/.326/.235 with no home runs, and while the on-base percentage isn’t the worst at .326, it needs to be much better for the hitter being given the most at-bats on the team, and for the hitter who bats in front of Aaron Judge. It’s time for Grisham to take a seat for at least a game.

8. Old favorite (of mine) Luis Severino will start against the Yankees on Wednesday. Severino has made two starts against the Yankees since leaving as a free agent after the 2023 season and they have both been disasters. Here are his lines from those two starts:

May 11, 2025: 4 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 2 K

June 29, 2025: 3.2 IP, 5 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 2 HR

Put them together and you get: 7.2 IP, 14 H, 15 R, 13 ER, 5 BB, 5 K, 2 HR

9. Based on matchups and success against Severino, this is the best possible lineup for Wednesday with each player’s career numbers against Severino in parentheses:

Jazz Chisholm, 2B (5-for-11, 2B, 2 HR, BB)
Aaron Judge, RF (3-for-5, 2B, HR, BB)
Cody Bellinger, CF (3-for-9, 2B)
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B (2-for-5, 2B, HR, 3 BB)
Ben Rice, DH (0-for-3)
Randal Grichuk, LF (2-for-6, HR)
Austin Wells, C (1-for-2)
Amed Rosario, 3B (2-for-11, HR)
Jose Caballero, SS (0-for-1, 2 BB)

That puts Grisham on the bench and keeps McMahon on the bench. Again, this is the best possible lineup the Yankees could have on Wednesday, so the lineup Boone will construct will look nothing like this.

10. Will Warren gets the ball for his third start of the season. It’s funny because I would classify his first two starts as just OK, and yet, he has a 2.70 ERA and 1.100 WHIP. (Max Fried and Schlittler set the bar so high for what is considered “good.”) Warren faced the A’s twice last year and put together this line: 12.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 5 BB, 14 K. He may not need to pitch that well if the Yankees continue their dominance over Severino, but if he does, the Yankees should have their fourth straight series win to begin the season.

1. The Yankees erased a four-run deficit to beat the Marlins 9-7 on Saturday and then blew a three-run lead to lose to the Marlins 7-6 on Sunday. The Yankees won the series, have won all three series to start the season and are an AL-best 7-2. Their two losses were both one-run losses: one in which they were walked off with their second-to-last reliever on the mound in Seattle and one (on Sunday) in which they had the tying run on second and the winning run on first when the game ended. The Yankees have either won or nearly won all nine games this season. You can’t ask for much more than that.

2. What you can ask for though is for Aaron Boone to not use J.C. Escarra as his pinch-hit option like he did on Sunday with two outs in the ninth inning of a one-run game with the tying run on second and the winning run on first. I don’t care about lefty-righty in that spot. There’s no way Escarra was a better option than Jose Caballero (who he hit for) or Paul Goldschmidt (who hit a three-run home run off one of the best right-handed pitchers in the majors four days earlier) or Randal Grichuk or Amed Rosario. Escarra wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee for a lot of last season when the Yankees sent him down to use Ben Rice as the backup catcher. He’s only on the team now because Rice is the everyday first baseman. He is the last position player on the roster and the worst offensive player on the roster. And yet, Boone decided he was better than the starting shortstop, a borderline Hall of Famer and two other veteran bats because of what hand he hits with. Escarra struck out on three pitches against Anthony Bender and the swinging strike to end the game was a tier below Todd Frazier’s famous swing from the 2017 ALCS.

“Our lefties put some tough at-bats on Bender,” Boone said.

That’s why Boone used Escarra, because he watched other lefties have good at-bats against Bender. Here are the lefties that had good at-bats against him: Cody Bellinger, Ben Rice and Jazz Chisholm. Now which one of these things is unlike the others: Bellinger, Rice, Chisholm, Escarra. Three middle-of-the-order, major-league bats and a guy who is barely on the roster.

3. Chisholm hit a two-run double off Bender for his second hit of the series and his second and third RBIs of the season. Chisholm is now hitting .194/.237/.278 on the year as an impending free agent looking to get paid and someone who claimed he was going for a 50/50 season.

“We don’t think the game is over until the last out,” Jazz Chisholm said. “We always go out there battling until the last minute.”

Odd quote there from Chisholm, who the night before took his sweet time on a ground ball in the ninth inning that led to an infield “single” and nearly cost the Yankees the game. (Also, there are no “minutes” in baseball, Jazz.)

“He just kind of laid back on it,” Boone said of Chisholm’s lackadaisical effort. “When he’s got to close on it, we’ve got to make that one.” (It was about as critical as it gets for Boone, considering he first “credited” the runner for running hard instead of saying anything negative about his second baseman’s effort.

4. The Yankees trailed in the ninth because Max Fried had his worst start of the season following a three-hour-and-35-minute rain delay. He couldn’t throw strikes, walked three and allowed three earned runs in 6 2/3 innings. Following Fried, Fernando Cruz also couldn’t throw strikes and then Jake Bird couldn’t throw the ball anywhere near home plate.

“I gave them freebies,” Jake Bird said. “That’s not big league baseball. It’s not good.”

After the Yankees traded for Bird and he was awful, he was sent to Triple-A for the remainder of last season. After the Yankees traded for Camilo Doval, he was awful and was knocked way down the bullpen pecking order. Both guys went into this season with advanced roles and so far they have both been the same disappointments they were last season. Bird ruined Sunday’s game and Doval has allowed four earned runs on five hits and a walk over his last two outings and one inning total.

5. Since the dominant showing in San Francisco, the Yankees’ Bullpen of Question Marks is starting to show why no Yankees fan had trust in them going into the season. Doval looks like the pitcher the Giants gave up on and Bird looks like the pitcher the Rockies gave up on. David Bednar is being forced to throw 40-pitch saves and then is shut down for multiple days because of it. Cruz looks unhittable one moment and then like the 36-year-old who didn’t break into the league until he was 32 the next. Nothing can be expected from Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough as veteran innings eaters. The trustworthy names in the bullpen are Bednar (until the World Baseball Classic and early-season workload catch up with him), Brent Headrick (who should be the eighth-inning guy moving forward since Boone needs set innings for his relievers) and Tim Hill. It’s not great.

6. But it could be better. At some point you have to think Carlos Lagrange will be added to the bullpen to solidify this messy corps. And if the starter who loses out on the fifth spot ends up there, then that’s another arm and right now that arm looks like Ryan Weathers.

On Saturday, Weathers showed how you can be a left-handed, 26-year-old, who throws 100 mph and be on your third team in four years. He lasted only 3 2/3 innings against the Marlins, giving up three earned runs and putting nine runners on. He has put 15 runners on in eight innings across two starts, and Brian Cashman’s 0-for-his career in trading for a young, controllable starting pitcher who pitches well will remain an 0-for.

“I was ahead in the counts and just couldn’t put guys away,” Weathers said, summing up his career.

7. Because of Weathers’ short start, the Yankees used six relievers to get them to a win. The Marlins greatly outhit the Yankees 15-6, but the Yankees drew 10 walks, a day after drawing 11 in the home opener. They drew another nine on Sunday for a series total of 30, the franchise’s most ever in a three-game series.

“It’s a scoring competition,” Boone said, “not a hit competition.”

8. The Yankees drew 30 walks and scored 23 runs in the series (and somehow didn’t sweep), but it wasn’t a total team effort offensively. The offense is still limited to the first five hitters in the lineup. Chisholm’s ninth-inning double on Sunday was nice and hopefully the start of him breaking out, but it was pretty much his offense for the season. As for 7 through 9 in the lineup, well, it’s the worst 7 through 9 in the entire majors. That’s not sarcasm. Statistically, it’s the worst bottom-third of any lineup in all of baseball.

Austin Wells has a .452 OPS, Ryan McMahon a .363 and Jose Caballero .335. Boone pretty much said in spring training that even if Caballero hit like Judge while Anthony Volpe was out, Volpe would still be the starting shortstop when he returned. With the offensive output Caballero has provided so far, unfortunately, it will be easy for him to return to the bench once Volpe is ready. Getting pinch hit for by Escarra was as bad as it gets.

As for McMahon, so much for the Yankees fixing his swing in the offseason and unlocking a player who has never finished as even a league-average hitter. It’s great that McMahon is great defensively (and so far he hasn’t even been that with every throw to first in the dirt), but at some point, defense isn’t enough. With each 0-for, “some point” draws closer.

9. I’m not worried about Wells because I don’t have any expectations for him. I figure he’ll end up with 20-ish home runs and will be a just-below-league-average hitter. So be it from your catcher in this era of baseball. But the Yankees can’t have three automatic outs in the lineup every game. At some point the top of the order will go cold and other parts of the lineup will need to carry the team offensively. As of now, no other part of the lineup other than the top half is capable of carrying the team, or even providing a big hit or RBI. McMahon had two RBIs on Opening Day and none since. Caballero drove in the first run of the season and none since. Wells hasn’t driven in a single run.

10. The Yankees won’t need to score more than a few runs if the starting rotation gets back to utterly dominating the opponent like they did in the first two series of the season. Who better to do that than Cam Schlittler? Schlittler will get the ball on Tuesday to open the series against the A’s and as enjoyable as it was watching Fried pitch when he’s at his best, watching Schlittler pitch is another level of enjoyment. The Giants had never seen him and he blew them away on a limited pitch count. The Mariners saw him in his first major-league start and he did the same to them on a limited pitch count. The A’s have never seen him, so I expect another masterpiece from him on what should be an 85-plus pitch limit.

1. I was worried about this home-opening series with the Marlins because everything has been going a little too well for the Yankees and because the Marlins have been as good as any team in the majors since last September. Add in the trauma from last August’s disastrous sweep in Miami and my concern seemed valid. It took a Trent Grisham walk and an Aaron Judge two-run home run to quell those fears. After Will Warren allowed the first home run against Yankees pitching in 2026 with one out in the first, the Yankees answered right back with Judge’s third of the season to take a 2-1 lead and never looked back.

2. The Yankees loaded the bases from walks in the second and scored twice to increase their lead to 4-1 without putting the ball in play as Grisham drew a bases-loaded walk and Judge was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. The Marlins got a run back in the fifth with another solo home run off Warren, but the Yankees responded with a run on a wild pitch in the sixth, a Ben Rice solo home run in the seventh and a Rice two-run double in the eighth to carry them to an 8-2 win. The Yankees’ cleanup hitter has lived up to expectations through the first week-plus of the season.

3. “Benny can really hit,” Boone said. “I think he’s a middle-of-the-order hitter and is going to be for a long time.”

Well, I’d hope you think he’s a “middle-of-the-order hitter” since you hit him fourth in the lineup.

Rice is hitting .409/500/.864 through six games with four doubles, two home runs and a league-leading eight RBIs. The Yankees went into this season believing he could be the second-best hitter on the team and he has been that. His defense also appears to be much improved from where it was last year. He has already made a handful of plays I was stunned to see him complete after watching his defense in the past.

4. Tim Hill, Jake Bird, Brent Headrick and Ryan Yarbrough closed out the game with 3 1/3 hitless innings as the bullpen full of question marks continues to impress. Hill only threw two pitches to end the sixth in what was still a two-run game at the time. Three games ago, Camilo Doval only threw two pitches in what was a tie game at the time.

5. Grisham drew three walks, Judge had a single, home run and walk, Cody Bellinger had a double, Rice had the big day with the home run and double, Jazz Chisholm had a double and a walk and Austin Wells, Jose Caballero and Ryan McMahon combined for five walks. The only Yankee to not reach base was Giancarlo Stanton, which was inevitable after he was cooled off with a day off on Wednesday in Seattle. The Yankees had only six hits in the game but a ridiculous 11 walks (and a hit by pitch). They went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position and still managed to score eight runs.

7. The Yankees are now 6-1, and with the Blue Jays losing to the White Sox (they are 1-3 against the Rockies and White Sox), the Yankees have a two-game lead in the division with the best run differential in the AL at plus-24. The next-best run differential in the AL is the Astros at plus-6. I would like for the team to run away and hide with the division and make this summer as easy and enjoyable as possible. (Unlike last summer when they blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays.)

“It’s early, but you love the fact that you get off to this kind of start,” Aaron Boone said after another easy day of managing. “Wins are precious. The guys are obviously pitching as well as they are, but I think they’re also playing well, the all-around game.”

8. Warren was pretty good: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 2 HR. As David Cone said during the broadcast, “You want to have a Catfish Hunter mentality pitching in the Bronx where solo home runs won’t beat you,” and Warren followed that.

“Solo homers aren’t going to beat us,” Warren said.” If we attack early, the odds are in our favor.”

Warren limited the damage to a pair of solo home runs, which wasn’t nearly enough to beat the Yankees. Here is Warren’s line through two starts: 10 IP, 9 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 9 K, 2 HR, 2.70 ERA, 1.100 WHIP.

9. When Carlos Rodon is healthy, someone is coming out of the rotation — if everyone else is also healthy. At the moment that someone is Luis Gil, considering the Yankees didn’t think enough of him to have him in the rotation out of spring training. But when Gerrit Cole returns, someone else will come out of the rotation — if everyone else is also healthy. That someone will be Warren of Weathers.

10. I would think Warren is the front-runner to keep his spot because the Yankees pitched him in the third game of the season ahead of Ryan Weathers. But Brian Cashman has never successfully traded for a young, controllable starting pitcher in his career and desperately wants Weathers to end that narrative instead of being the latest in the long list that includes Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray, James Paxton and Jameson Taillon. Weathers will have his second opportunity to showcase his ability on Saturday against his former team in his first start wearing pinstripes.

1. It’s possible the Yankees have four No. 1 starters when healthy in Cam Schlittler, Max Fried, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon. It’s also possible Schlittler — the youngest and least experienced of the group — is the actual No. 1 among them.

Schlittler pitched to a 2.96 ERA with 84 strikeouts in 73 innings in 14 regular-season starts last year. He then went on to have a historical performance in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series to eliminate the Red Sox and proved to be the only Yankees starter capable of handling the Blue Jays in the ALDS. He has returned this year to throw 5 1/3, one-hit, scoreless innings against the Giants on a limited pitch count and then another 6 1/3, two-hit, scoreless innings against the Mariners on a limited pitch count. He doesn’t walk anyone (none in his last four starts spanning 26 innings with two of those coming in the postseason), doesn’t allow hits (three in 11 2/3 innings this season) and averages more than a strikeout per inning. Simply put: He’s the fucking man.

“The biggest thing is just pitching with a lead, making sure I’m taking care of what I need to do, being efficient,” Schlittler said. “Limiting the walks, hits and strikeouts is a good way to put the team in a position to win.”

2. Schlittler allowed a double on the first pitch of the game and then allowed one more hit — a single — on his other 78 pitches. He has been dominant in two starts and given the Yankees as much length as he could while building up his pitch count.

“It’s exciting to see how dominant his stuff is, just filling up the strike zone,” Aaron Boone said. “He got some early outs and that allowed him to get pretty deep into the game with a pitch count. He’s throwing the ball incredibly well. He set the tone for us.”

Schlitter had a one-run lead to work with after the Yankees put together another two-out rally in the first. With two outs, Cody Bellinger worked a six-pitch walk and stole second base before Ben Rice hit his second double down the first-base line in as many games to score Bellinger.

3. The score remained 1-0 with George Kirby pitching nearly as well as Schlittler and then Boone’s odd lineup decision of the day paid off. After giving Giancarlo Stanton — the hottest hitter in the universe — the day off with a day game after a night game leading into a scheduled day off, Boone decided to put Paul Goldschmidt into the lineup at first and make Rice the designated hitter. It was somewhat odd because Goldschmidt didn’t play against Tyler Mahle — a righty he destroys — in the Giants series, but here he was playing against a much better right-hander in Kirby.

4. Goldschmidt looked overmatched and struck out in his first two at-bats against Kirby, but in the fifth, he hunted a fastball, got a 97-mph one slightly elevated and crushed a 406-foot, three-run home run to make it a 4-0 game.

“I love being a Yankee,” Goldschmidt said. “I love to play, but if I’m not in there, I love to root these guys on.”

Who wouldn’t love to root for the Yankees for $4 million with up to another $2 million in incentives? It helps when you can hit 406-foot three-run home runs to break open games. It was Goldschmidt’s first home run against a right-handed pitcher since last June.

5. Leading 4-0 in the seventh, Boone pulled Schlittler at 79 pitches and Fernando Cruz got the last two outs of the inning.

Still leading 4-0 in the eighth, Boone turned to Camilo Doval. Doval was very bad as a Yankee after being traded to them last July, but he improved late in the season. He was good in his first three appearances of the season, but there’s always the threat of the bad version of Doval rearing its ugly head at the worst time and that’s what happened on Wednesday.

Doval loaded the bases with two outs in the eighth and Cal Raleigh coming to the plate, forcing Boone to go to David Bednar for a four-out save. With how bad Raleigh has been in the early season, I figured he would hit a game-tying grand slam to completely erase Schlitt’er great day, but instead, he just lined a single to right to score two. Bednar then battled Julio Rodriguez (Rodriguez fouled off four straight two-strike pitches) and thankfully won the battle to end the inning.

6. Rice came through again in the top of the ninth, hitting his first home run of the season to get one run back. That ru was enormous because it made a two-run game a three-run game and halted the momentum the Mariners had created. The run became crucial when the Mariners scored a run in the ninth and had the tying run at the plate, which would have been the potential winning run if not for Rice’s home run.

7. Bednar ended up throwing 40 pitches in the game, including 10 to get the final out against Cole Young. A scheduled day off for travel is coming at the perfect time. I can’t imagine Bednar is available until Saturday at the earliest considering Boone said it was “an uncomfortable place to be as a manager, especially at this point of the season.”

8. The Yankees finished the season-opening West Coast road trip 5-1 and outscored the Giants and Mariners 24-6. for a plus-18 run differential. The Blue Jays are 4-2 with a minus-1 run differential. Based on run differential, the Yankees should be 6-0 and the Blue Jays 3-3. I hate the Blue Jays, but it was beautiful to see them lose a home series to the Rockies.

9. I used to love late-night West Coast games … before I had kids. Now I dread them. It’s always good to get them out of the way, especially when it includes a 5-1 record. The Yankees won’t go back to the West Coast until the end of May (and then again at the end of August). They don’t have to play the Mariners again until the middle of August.

10. On Friday, the Yankees return home for the first time since Game 4 of the ALDS to play the 5-1 Marlins. The Marlins’ hot start isn’t an anomaly. They finished the season 13-4 last September, including taking two of three from the Mets to keep them out of the postseason in the final weekend. And let’s not forget the Marlins’ three-game sweep of the Yankees from August 1-3 last summer immediately following the trade deadline. The Marlins have great starting pitching and good young hitting and are a pain overall. This weekend will be a very tough home-opening series.

1. Before Max Fried took the mound on Tuesday night in Seattle, Michael Kay mentioned how the Yankees were turning to their ace “at the moment,” insinuating that Fried is just a placeholder ace because of injuries to the rotation. Kay couldn’t be more wrong. Fried is the ace. He was in 2025 and still is in 2026.

After throwing 6 1/3 scoreless innings on Opening Day in San Francisco, Fried threw seven scoreless innings in the middle game of the three-game series in Seattle. His line through two starts this season: 13.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 10 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.525 WHIP.

2. “There weren’t times where I was just fighting to throw strikes,” Fried said. “I felt like I was actually able to locate today, which made things a lot easier.”

Fried was referring to his start against the Giants where he struggled at times to find the zone. But, again, in that start he still managed to throw 6 1/3 scoreless innings without a feel for his pitches at times. On Tuesday, he had everything working.

“I can’t go wrong with what I call when he has all these pitches going,” J.C. Escarra said. “It makes it easy for me and easy for him.”

3. Before Fried threw a pitch the Yankees had a 2-0 lead. After Trent Grisham and Aaron Judge were retired and Cody Bellinger quickly fell behind 0-2 to Logan Gilbert, it seemed like the Yankees were destined for an easy 1-2-3 inning. But Bellinger fought back to run the count full and then singled up the middle. Ben Rice followed with a double down the first-base line to score Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton continued his hot start to the season with a flare to right field to score Rice. What had been a strike away from a quick first for Gilbert turned into a 28-pitch, two-run inning.

4. Gilbert settled down after that to throw a scoreless second, third, fourth and fifth, but the Yankees chased him in the sixth with a three-run outburst made possible by the same trio of Bellinger, Rice and Stanton. Stanton had his fifth straight multi-hit game to open the season, Bellinger, Rice and Grisham all had a pair of hits and Jazz Chisholm added an RBI single. Judge, Escarra, Jose Caballero and Ryan McMahon combined to go 0-for-16 with seven strikeouts.

5. Brent Headrick and Tim Hill combined to throw two scoreless innings in relief of Fried as Paul Blackburn remains the only reliever to allow a run this season. It was a nice, tidy win in a place the Yankees have had trouble scoring runs against a team many feel is one of the few true contenders in the AL this year.

6. Not only is Stanton hitting .500/.500/.750 with 10 hits in five games, but after scoring from second on a base hit to left field on Opening Day and then taking second on a ball that barely got away from Cal Raleigh on Tuesday, he looks like he has turned the clock back. You never know when an extended slump or injured list stint is going to take Stanton down, so for now, I’m enjoying every moment of this vintage showing.

“I’m just staying back, being on time for heaters and keeping my barrel through the zone as much as possible,” Stanton said.

7. The Yankees are 4-1 despite hitting only three home runs (Judge 2, Stanton 1) on the year. They’re 4-1 with Judge having a .190 on-base percentage and essentially no power throughout the lineup. When you get the type of production the Yankees are getting from their pitching staff, you don’t need to do much offensively to stack wins. I will always take a team with a great pitching staff over a team with a great offense.

“Everyone has contributed,” Aaron Boone said. “Max has gone into the seventh or completed the seventh in back-to-back ones. Everyone else from the starting rotation has gone out and held them down, and then the bullpen has been excellent.”

8. The offenses of the Giants and Mariners aren’t exactly the Dodgers or Blue Jays, but there are very few good offenses across the league. Most of the opponents the Yankees will face will have offenses similar to what they have seen in San Francisco and Seattle and that bodes well for the best rotation in the league and what’s emerging to be a strong and exciting bullpen.

9. “We’ve been waiting for this opportunity, to have the season start and go compete,” Fried said. “We want to go win, and we’re leaving everything out there.”

Those words from Fried closely resemble Judge talking about the importance of each game, as if the idea of all 162 games mattering is a new concept to the Yankees. But I’m glad they finally understand it and are playing and acting like it.

10. No matter what happens on Wednesday in the series finale, the season-opening road trip has already been a success as the Yankees have clinched a winning record on it. But there’s something to be said for winning a road series against one of the AL’s best and for boarding the flight back to the East Coast following a win and for going into a day off before the home opener following a win. And with Cam Schlittler on the mound, the Yankees have a very good chance of that happening.

1. I finished the most recent Thoughts with this:

The Yankees and Mariners always play weird, tight, low-scoring games, especially in Seattle, and I’m expecting the same over the next three days.

And that’s what we got on Monday night in the series opener as the Yankees lost a 2-1 game in walk-off fashion.

2. I also wrote this in the most recent Thoughts:

It’s hard to believe I could feel any better about the Yankees after their season-opening series than I do right now. Three games, three wins and one run allowed to begin the season is about as good as anyone could ask for.

What I should have written was “It’s hard to believe I could feel any better about the Yankees’ pitching” because that’s really what I feel. I feel good about the pitching, not the ‘Run It Back’ offense. Aside from one surprising inning on Opening Day when the Yankees ambushed Logan Webb with first-pitch swings, the ‘Run It Back’ offense has been doing ‘Run It Back’ offense things with seven runs over the last three games. (I’m sure they will have a one-game explosion soon to prop up their run differential.)

Giancarlo Stanton had a double and single, Aaron Judge and Jose Caballero each had a single and a walk and Ben Rice had a single and that was the entire Yankees’ offense. Trent Grisham went 0-for-4. Cody Bellinger went 0-for-4. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-4. Austin Wells went 0-for-3 and Ryan McMahon went 0-for-2. The $22 million qualifying offer, the big free-agent signing, the man who says he can have a 50/50 season, the catcher who made the all-World Baseball Classic team and the guy who supposedly changed his swing have all somewhat struggled to open the season.

3. Again, it’s not “just” four games. This season is a continuation of last season because the roster and lineup are the same. So Wells and McMahon sucking doesn’t qualify for “give them time” because they sucked last year and were both below league average. I’m not worried about Wells and McMahon because I expect nothing from them offensively. I’m the least worried about Bellinger because he has the career track record of being very good (though there is precedent for him completely falling off like he did in 2021 and 2022). I’m very worried about Grisham and was all winter because the back of his baseball card is the ultimate ‘One of These Seasons Doesn’t Look Like Any Other’ and because if he does suck he will continue to bat leadoff and start for months before he’s removed from his spot atop the lineup or his starting outfield spot. I’m also worried about Chisholm because anyone who claims they want to have a 50/50 season when their name isn’t Shohei Ohtani or Ronald Acuna is going to do things at the plate they shouldn’t do to try to reach that goal. Chisholm already had a habit of swinging for the fences in counts and situations he shouldn’t and now with the 50/50 proclamation in his head, he will likely do it even more than he already does. Add in the pressure of being an impending free agent and supposedly wanting to get paid $35 million per year on an eight-plus-year deal, and well, yeah, there’s a lot to be worried about with Chisholm.

4. Aaron Boone went away from his lefty-righty alternation with his linuep and tried to stack lefties together against Luis Castillo, who always pitches well against the Yankees, especially since they chose to not trade for him in 2022 and instead traded for Frankie Montas. Boone’s construction didn’t work, Castillo was able to throw six scoreless innings and then when Seattle when to the bullpen, they had beautiful lefty lanes built for them to breeze through.

5. After having a rather easy series and needing to make pretty much zero difficult decisions in San Francisco, Boone was more involved in Monday’s one-run game, and Yankees fans were reminded why they fare so poorly in one-run games with Boone at the helm. Boone chose to let Paul Blackburn pitch a second inning on Monday and inevitably the Mariners walked off the Yankees in that second inning of work.

“I liked him through the bottom of the order there,” Boone said. “They found a couple of holes and beat us.”

Blackburn was allowed to face Brendan Donovan and Cal Raleigh in the ninth. Donovan was batting first in the lineup and Raleigh pinch hit in the 2-hole. Not exactly the bottom of the order, Boone. So if Boone liked Blackburn against 5-6-7 in the eighth and then 8-9 in the ninth, OK. But once the lineup turned over to actual hitters he should have removed him.

6. Or maybe he could have used Camilo Doval for more than two pitches? Boone claims he didn’t want Doval to sit after ending the seventh and then get back up to pitch in the eighth, but he is OK with him doing that exact thing later in the season … after Doval has thrown hundreds of pitches and didn’t just have five-plus months off.

“I’m sure eventually he’ll have plenty of two-ups,” Boone said. Eventually, just not on Monday, two days after Judge mentioned how important every game is after the 2025 season was ruined by the Yankees not valuing every game with equal importance.

7. Knowing Ryan Weathers is a hard-throwing lefty trying to make a strong first impression in his Yankees debut, it made sense he would open the game overthrowing and having trouble throwing strikes.

“I definitely want to be more efficient and be in the zone a little bit more,” Weathers said. “I don’t want to hang my hat on 4 1/3 innings. I want to get deeper into the ballgame, and a lot of that comes from managing the pitch count myself and not falling behind in counts.”

8. Weathers gave 4 1/3 innings after Will Warren gave the same on Saturday. For two guys pitching for rotation spots once Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole return, that little of length even with minimal damage isn’t going to cut it. Add in Luis Gil who will have a chip on his shoulder once he gets called up as the fifth starter, and Warren, Weathers and Gil will also be competing for one available rotation spot. (That is if everyone else stays healthy).

But for as erratic as Weathers was at times, he still only allowed one run over 4 1/3 innings. The offense provided one run on five hits, and they only scored the one run because the sacrifice fly opportunity that scored the run was created from a wild pitch.

9. There were two huge potentially big moments early in the game both involving Grisham and Caballero. The first came in the third inning when Caballero walked with one out following two successful ABS challenges. Grisham came up and didn’t give last season’s league leaders in steals a chance to go because he got a first-pitch, middle-middle fastball. But rather than hit it into the seats or in a gap, Grisham grounded out and erased Caballero on the bases. The next situation with these two came in the fifth. Caballero reached on an infield “single” with two outs in the inning and the Yankees still trailing 1-0. He could potentially steal and get driven in by Grisham or he could stay on first and see if Grisham could hit his first home run of 2026. Instead, Caballero got picked off of first with too much of a lead. Caballero on base with the lineup turning over is supposed to create offense, not destroy it.

10. Three of the six games the Yankees and Mariners played last year were one-run games and so was Monday’s. With Max Fried and Logan Gilbert going on Tuesday, it would be the least surprising result of all time if another one-run game took place. With the way the Yankees have looked offensively since Webb was removed on Opening Day, the confidence level is low that they will break out against a starter who averaged 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings in 25 starts last season in a place where they seem to struggle to score runs.

1. It’s hard to believe I could feel any better about the Yankees after their season-opening series than I do right now. Three games, three wins and one run allowed to begin the season is about as good as anyone could ask for. Yes, the opponent was the destined-to-be-.500 Giants, but beating up on mediocre and bad teams is how you win the division and avoid having it settled on a tiebreaker.

2. “One thing from the past couple of years we’ve struggled at was finishing series and sweeping series,” Aaron Judge said. “Pregame, we talked about it … That’s what’s going to make the difference between winning the division or ending up tied. Every game matters.”

Well, well, well. All it took was the Yankees losing the AL East on a head-to-head tiebreaker and then getting humiliated in the ALDS because of that tiebreaker for them to realize every game matters. I have always believed a game on March 28 is as important as September 28 and have always wanted the Yankees to operate with the same mindset and urgency and it seems like they may finally be doing that.

4. Ben Rice gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the third with a booming double to right field. The Giants got one run (their first of the season) back in the bottom of the third to make it 2-1, but Judge hit his second home run in as many games to increase the lead to 3-1 in the fifth and that’s how it would stay as the Yankees swept the Giants, outscoring them 13-1 in the series. It’s amazing the Dodgers get to play 52 games against the Giants, Rockies, Padres and Diamondbacks.

5. Max Fried, Cam Schlittler and Will Warren threw 16 innings of one-run ball in the series and the bullpen put up zeros in the other 11 innings. That will work. Please keep doing that.

“Our starting rotation came out there and attacked the zone,” Judge said, “and really just dictated the ballgames.”

6. The Giants had 12 baserunners to the Yankees’ nine, but four inning-ending double plays kept the Giants off the board except for their lone run.

“You can’t get enough of those,” Rice said. “I’m just happy to be on the end of each one of those and finish it off.”

7. What a day behind the plate for Chad Whitson who had seven ABS calls overturned against him. Yes, the ones that barely graze the zone are hard to fault an umpire for, but some of his calls were really bad, and the ones that went in the Yankees’ favor changed the game.

8. Warren was OK for 4 1/3 innings. He put seven runners on, but kept the damage to a minimum, allowing just one run. It was a respectable outing for his first of the year.

“My command was a little wonky today,” Warren said. “They did a good job fouling stuff off and making me work.”

9. Brent Headrick, Jake Bird, Tim Hill and David Bednar combined to throw 4 2/3 scoreless innings, and the bullpen has been unbelievable so far. The bullpen was easily the biggest question mark going into this season since we knew the rotation would be great (if healthy) and we knew what to expect from the same offense, but the bullpen is full of mysteries. (Again, the Giants aren’t very good, so everything needs to be taken with boxes worth of salt.)

10. “I love that we played well,” Aaron Boone said, “but it’s March.”

Yes, it is. But to me these games are just a continuation of last season because it’s the same roster. So while it may be March on the calendar, everything happening is an extension of last season, and so far the first games of 2026 are much better than the last games of 2025, even if the opponent was the Giants for the first three games.

10. The next opponent won’t be as easy: the Mariners. (The Yankees went 5-1 against the Mariners in 2025). Many have the Mariners finally getting to the franchise’s first World Series in 2026. I don’t see it, but what I do see is a very strong rotation that is likely second in the AL to the Yankees this year. Ryan Weathers will get the ball for his Yankees debut in the series opener against Luis Castillo, who has always been a problem for the Yankees. The Yankees and Mariners always play weird, tight, low-scoring games, especially in Seattle, and I’m expecting the same over the next three days.

1. The last time we saw Cam Schlittler in a real, meaningful game he was proving to be the only Yankees starter capable of success against the Blue Jays in the ALDS (6.1 IP, 2 ER). That Game 4 start came after he saved the Yankees’ season with his historical start against the Red Sox (8 IP, 0 ER, 12 K) in win-or-go-home, Game 3 in the Wild Card Series. On Friday in San Francisco, he picked up right where he left off in October, dominating the Giants with 5 1/3 scoreless, one-hit innings, needing only 63 pitches to get 16 outs.

“I was trying to be as efficient as possible, seeing how far I could get,” Schlittler said. “[The pitch count] was out of my control … but I’ll just keep building from this week to next week.”

2. The Yankees were supposedly keeping Schlittler to a 70-pitch limit in his first start of the season after his setback in spring training. He had no problem giving them decent length with that number, hitting 100.1 mph in the game and blowing fastballs by Giants hitters.

3. “He located all three fastballs, threw a bunch of curveballs and just pounded the zone,” Cody Bellinger said. “He’s been really fun to watch.”

“Really fun” is an understatement. Schlittler has been exceptional in 17 career starts (including the postseason.) What if he continues to be this good? The Yankees already have two proven No. 1s in Fried and Gerrit Cole, and while I don’t like Carlos Rodon, he would be a No. 1 for a lot of teams. It’s possible Schlittler is another No. 1, and there has been nothing to suggest he isn’t so far. Everyone please pray daily for the health of the rotation because there isn’t another like it in the league.

4. The relief combination of Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill, Camilo Doval and David Bednar added 3 2/3 hitless innings and the Yankees shut out the Giants for a second straight game with a 3-0 win.

“The pen was outstanding,” Aaron Boone said. “Each guy, I thought, did a really nice job. It was a really good win.”

5. Doval has looked very good in the first two games, both at his former park. He pitched a perfect ninth on Wednesday and then struck out the side in a perfect eighth on Friday. Doval never looked good as a Yankee until the end of the season and because of his early struggles with them after the trade I never had any trust or confidence in him. But for at least these first two games he has looked like the once-dominant Giants closer and the pitcher the Yankees thought they were getting when they traded for him.

6. Through five innings, Robbie Ray was as good as Schlittler, which wasn’t a surprise since he has had good success in his career against the Yankees. Through five innings, the Yankees had three singles and no runs. Paul Goldschmidt opened the sixth with a double down the right-field line and Aaron Judge followed with a 405-foot, two-run home to left field to the give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. After Cody Bellinger grounded out, Jose Butto relieved Ray and promptly gave up a 414-foot home run to Giancarlo Stanton to make it 3-0, and that’s how it would stay. (Something I forgot to mention in the Thoughts following Opening Day was how surprising it was to see Stanton score from second on a ball hit to left field in that game. It was shocking.)

7. Goldschmidt had the double, Judge a two-run home run, Bellinger a single and walk, Stanton a solo home run, Jazz Chisholm a single and Jose Caballero a pair of singles. Amed Rosario didn’t reach base in his season debut and neither did Randal Grichuk in his Yankees debut. The Yankees went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left eight on.

8. Thankfully, what has gone on with the Giants through two games hasn’t gone on with the Yankees. The Giants have no runs and four hits across 18 innings in the series. It’s one thing to get shut out and be lifeless at the plate in back-to-back games in the middle of the season, but to start the season? I may need to check out some Giants blogs to see how the first two games are being handled by that fan base. I know how it would be handled by me and other Yankees fans if it were going on here.

9. It feels great to be 2-0 to start the season, especially with the two starts the Yankees got from their rotation and the two very different types of wins in these games. It doesn’t matter that it’s against the Giants because the the AL East as a whole is 5-1 and every win matters like always. Look no further than last season when the Yankees pissed away so many games, lost the record tiebreaker to the Blue Jays and then had to go on the road to start the ALDS and their season ended. A game on March 25 or March 27 is just as important as a game on September 25 or September 27 and last season was the most useful example of that.

10. On Saturday, it will be Will Warren against Tyler Mahle. Mahle has only started one game in his career against the Yankees and that came in 2023, so it’s irrelevant to this lineup. One interesting piece of lineup information is that Goldschmidt has a double, three home runs and a .379/.441/.793 slash line against Mahle in 34 career plate appearances. Would the Yankees let Goldschmidt start against a righty? I would with those kind of numbers as he has faced Mahle 18 times more than any other Yankee and hits like he’s facing a position player against him. If Goldschmidt doesn’t start against Mahle, it will tell us that he won’t start against any righties this season. Warren started against the Giants last April and was pretty good: 5 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 1 HR. Only five Giants (Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos) have faced Warren before and they are a combined 1-for-9 with two walks against him, and they have never seen the supposedly new-and-improved Warren, who now pitches from the other side of the mound.

1. Playing their fourth elimination game in eight days, the Yankees produced two hits through the first six innings of their 5-2 loss in Game 4 of the ALDS. It was the kind of weak offensive performance the Yankees have provided so many times over the year in the postseason and the kind of offensive performance Yankees fans have come to expect from the Yankees in the postseason.

2. The Yankees scored one run in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series and one run in Game 1 of the ALDS. They were being no-hit and shut out into the sixth inning of Game 2 of the ALDS until the Blue Jays removed their starter after just 78 pitches because they were sitting on a 12-0 lead. The Yankees’ bats came to life late in Game 2 of the ALDS, but once the Blue Jays decided enough was enough and brought in their high-quality relievers, the Yankees’ stat-padding fun ended.

3. Thanks to two defensive miscues and Aaron Judge hitting a three-run home run against a pitch that physics says shouldn’t be able to be hit for a home run, the Yankees were able to win Game 3 and save their season. But the offense that eked out a three-game series win against the vastly inferior Red Sox and got stifled in Toronto showed up for Game 4 and the season ended.

4. Cam Schlittler was much better against the Blue Jays his third time facing them this season and deserved a much better line than two earned runs over 6 1/3 innings, but his defense failed him, specifically Jazz Chisholm who committed a game-changing error at second base that led to the Blue Jays’ third and fourth runs and put the game out of reach.

5. John Schneider went to eight relievers across the nine innings in Game 4 in a full-blown bullpen game, and aside from a short porch home run by Ryan McMahon off Mason Fluharty and an RBI single from Judge off of Jeff Hoffman, an overworked and fatigued bullpen shut down the Yankees with ease.

6. In what should be his final game as a Yankee, Trent Grisham made everyone realize it wouldn’t have mattered if he played over Alex Verdugo last postseason. Grisham went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts in Game 4. He finished the postseason 4-for-29 with 10 strikeouts. He didn’t drive in a single run in the seven games.

After saving the season with his three-run home run in Game 3, Judge went 2-for-4 with a walk in Game 4. Judge finally showed up for a postseason and no one else did. I don’t feel sorry for Judge’s postseason going to waste given his postseasons performances before this year. This was an enormous missed opportunity for him to finally win it all and he will be 34 a month into next season. He will have to do the same thing next October and maybe a single everyday-playing teammate will join him.

Cody Bellinger entered this postseason with a .661 OPS for his postseason career after six trips to the playoffs with the Dodgers. Bellinger stayed true to who he has been in October as he posted a .651 OPS this October, failed in every big moment and the only ball he hit out was in the meaningless late innings of Game 2. No one should be surprised Bellinger was awesome in the regular season and bad in the postseason, considering he put up nearly an identical OPS this October as he had in 69 previous postseason games. He has been a bad performer in now 76 playoff games.

I can’t say anything critical of Giancarlo Stanton for hitting .192/.267/.269 without a home run this postseason. In all of his postseasons with the Yankees, Stanton has always been the one bat you can count on with a career postseason OPS of .926, 52 points higher than his career regular-season OPS. He gets a pass for this October for what he did last year and previous years.

Chisholm’s glove cost the Yankees a realistic chance of coming back to win Game 4, but it was his bat that cost them the entire postseason. It will be hard to find a player who talks more and backs it up less than Chisholm who went out of his way to tell every microphone put in front of his face this season that the Yankees would win the division and go to the World Series. They failed to win the division and they were eliminated two rounds before the World Series. Chisholm pouted about being benched in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series and then was in the starting lineup the rest of October and hit .182/.280/.318, after he hit .182/.250/.309 last October. The lone run Chisholm drove in this October came on his solo home run in Game 3. In Game 4, Chisholm hit into a double play after Stanton led off the fourth with a walk and grounded out with two on to end the sixth.

Paul Goldschmidt gets a pass as he went 4-for-9 with a walk in limited playing time.

Ben Rice doesn’t get a pass. If opposing pitchers don’t throw Rice a fastball, all of his astonishing Statcast metrics become worthless. Rice didn’t stand a chance against the splitters of Kevin Gausman and Trey Yesavage in Games 1 and 2 and went hitless in Game 3 before being benched in Game 4. The only hits Rice provided in the series came in the meaningless innings of Game 3 when every Yankee improved their series slash lines from atrocious to abysmal.

Austin Wells continues to not be any good. After striking out in 22 of 55 plate appearances and hitting .120/.200/.460 in the postseason last year, Wells hit .227/.261/.227 in the postseason this year. Five hits, none for extra bases.

Remember with a few weeks left in the season when Aaron Boone told everyone the starting shortstop competition would be a daily thing? I do. Remember when Jose Caballero hit .306/.405/.500 during the competition, as he started at shortstop during the Yankees’ 12-game gauntlet against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox? I do. Remember when Boone strategically let Volpe only play against the Twins, Orioles and White Sox over the last couple weeks of the season to boost his performance, and he posted an OPS of .601 more than 300 points lower than Caballero’s .905? I do. And remember despite all of that, Boone still made Volpe the starting shortstop for every game of the postseason? I do.

Volpe represents everything wrong with the Yankees from what he stands for organizationally to his actual play. They passed on the deepest shortstop free-agent class in the history of the game during the primes of most of their roster because of him. He has been immune to a demotion or even a benching (it’s only ever a day or two off). He is shielded from the media and protected to no end by the manager and front office in a way no other Yankees prospect or Yankee period has ever been. Volpe didn’t get removed for a pinch hitter in the ninth inning of Game 4 because Boone thought it would give the Yankees a better chance to stage a four-run comeback. Boone hit for Volpe because he didn’t want him to be exposed to a ruthless, angry crowd if he were to strike out for a fourth time after the crowd booed him in a way typically reserved for opposing players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Jose Altuve after Volpe’s third strikeout of the game.

Volpe may be a major-league baseball player, but he doesn’t possess the ability or talent needed to be one. Any bit of success he achieves is a product of him playing every day no matter what. If you were to take a Double-A player and give them the endless leash and everyday playing time Volpe receives, they too would have flashes of success. But like Volpe, they too would look overmatched the majority of the time. Volpe went 1-for-15 in the series with 11 strikeouts. The Blue Jays as a team struck out 13 times in Games 1, 2 and Game 4 combined. Before Volpe’s third strikeout in Game 4, John Smoltz mentioned how Volpe was swinging three weighted bats in the on-deck circle and he had never seen something like that. FOX then showed Volpe’s bizarre preparation and he went on to strike out on four pitches.

Volpe has been the worst everyday offensive player in the majors since his debut, and yet, there’s a better chance the Yankees stop wearing pinstripes at home in 2026 than there is that Volpe isn’t the starting shortstop on Opening Day 2026.

McMahon gets a pass. The Yankees knew they were trading for a below-league-average hitter in McMahon, but arguably the best defensive third baseman and he fit that billing during the regular season. In the postseason he had impressive at-bats, only struck out twice in 15 plate appearances and provided an .833 OPS.

Schlittler’s Game 3 performance against the Red Sox in the Wild Card Series and Judge’s home run in Game 3 of the ALDS were the two highlights of the very short postseason, but right up there with them was Jasson Dominguez’s pinch-hit, leadoff double in the ninth inning of Game 4, which served as a nice ‘Fuck You’ to Boone and the front office for not using him until there were three outs left in the season. The Yankees did everything they could to screw up Dominguez’s development and future this season by moving him to a position he never played, then pulling him early for defensive purposes for the first part of the season, then not allowing him to play against left-handed pitches and finally benching him outright as he started just four games in September. I hope the Yankees trade him in the offseason and he goes somewhere else and becomes the star we were told he would be with the Yankees. If he’s not, the Yankees will screw with his development again next season.

7. The bullpen did its job in the postseason, and again in Game 4, but the starting pitching outside of Schlittler was a disaster in the ALDS. After Max Fried shut down an anemic Red Sox lineup in the Wild Card Series, he was blasted by the Blue Jays in Toronto. He came to the Yankees with a 5.10 career postseason ERA and pitched to a 6.75 ERA this postseason.

When Carlos Rodon went down in spring training in 2023 and said if it were the playoffs he would pitch and not go on the injured list, I laughed. If you need seven shutout innings against the Angels in July, Rodon is your guy. If you need to win a start against a team with a winning record or a postseason game, he’s the last guy you want. Rodon pitched to a 5.60 ERA in the postseason last year, pitching well in just one game (Game 1 of the ALCS) and pitched to a 9.72 ERA this postseason. He now has a 7.53 ERA in his postseason career.

Luis Gil was only able to last 2 2/3 innings in his only postseason start after lasting only four innings in both of his postseason starts a year ago. Last offseason, Gil was coming off the only healthy season of his career and had won Rookie of the Year. His value was never higher and the Yankees decided to not move him. He made only seven starts this season due to injury, walked batters at a higher rate than last season when he led the league in walks and stopped striking anyone out. His value has crumbled and he will turn 28 during next season.

8. So who was good in the Yankees’ brief postseason appearance? Aaron Judge, Cam Schlittler, Jasson Dominguez, Ryan McMahon, Paul Goldschmidt, Amed Rosario and the relievers not named Luke Weaver or Paul Blackburn. When the good from your offense is one everyday player, three platoon players and one player who was buried on the bench, it’s a problem. When the good from your rotation is a single starter, it’s a problem. When a bullpen that’s performing well only pitched with the lead in one of four games in the ALDS, it’s a problem. When you put it all together, you get a team whose postseason lasted seven games with four of them being elimination games.

9. The Boone Yankees were unable to do what his two predecessors were able to in erasing an 0-2 ALDS deficit and Boone’s unbreakable Yankees record of most seasons allowed to manage the team without a championship has added another year to it. Instead of the Yankees playing on Friday in Toronto, they now won’t play until March 25 in San Francisco.

10. The Yankees spent the majority of the season showing they weren’t good enough to compete with the league’s best, but they did just enough to fool everyone for as long as they could. It’s no longer “right in of front of them” because there’s nothing left in front of them. The “tomorrow” the manager and his players always refer to after each loss isn’t coming. The 2025 Yankees’ season ended the same way every Yankees season has for the last 16 years, including every season under Boone: eliminated.

1. I thought it was gone, but I wasn’t sure. It was high enough and far enough, but would it stay fair? From my vantage point, I had a clear view down the third-base line and the ball was starting hook. If it stayed fair it would be the biggest postseason moment of Aaron Judge’s postseason career. If it went foul, it would be just another what-could-have-been moment in Judge’s postseason career.

“When the ball is in the air, it’s kind of silent,” Judge said. “You’ve got a lot of unknown.”

The ball clanged off the left-field foul pole, as high up the pole as any ball has ever been hit to left field at this version of Yankee Stadium. Three-run home run. Tie game.

“But then right when it hits the pole, I’m looking straight at my teammates,” Judge said, “all the guys that have been battling with me all year long, battling for this moment.”

2. The moment was Judge’s. It was the kind of moment Yankees fans have waited for him to have, praying he would have it each time he has stepped to the plate in this postseason and past postseasons in big spots. The kind of moment I thought he would have this postseason when I wrote this last week:

I truly think Judge will have his signature postseason if the Yankees’ season continues past Game 3 of the Wild Card Series. In past postseasons, Judge has looked lost from his first at-bat. He has only hit singles in this series, but he got one each off of Crochet, Chapman and Bello — three household names. He’s been on base four times in eight plate appearances and has only struck out twice against top-tier arms. If the monster hit doesn’t come for Judge in Game 3 and the Yankees are able to advance, the Blue Jays are in for a world of shit in the ALDS. For someone who has been as critical of Judge in the playoffs as anyone in the world, I really believe this postseason could be his 2009 Alex Rodriguez postseason.

3. The absurdity of the pitch — a 99.7-mph fastball more than a foot inside — being hit for a long home run is still hard to process. Louis Varland had just thrown a 100-mph fastball past Judge with ease on the pitch prior and was also ahead 0-2 in the count. But like Derek Jeter said after the game, Judge is the only person in the world capable of hitting that pitch for a home run.

“He made a really good pitch look really bad,” Varland said.

4. Judge had the opportunity to change Game 1 and he struck out. In Game 2, the Yankees never had a chance because of how bad Max Fried was. In Game 3, Judge saved the Yankees’ season and possibly changed the series, considering it’s hard to believe the Blue Jays can be feeling too good about themselves right now without a traditional starter for Game 4 and having blown a five-run lead in an elimination game.

The home run capped a five-run come back for the Yankees, who trailed 6-1 in the third after Carlos Rodon provided his latest big-game, letdown effort. Rodon recorded one more out in the game (7) than earned runs allowed (6) as the Blue Jays put eight baserunners on against him in 2 1/3 innings. Rodon has now made six postseason starts for the Yankees and one has been good (Game 1 of the 2024 ALCS). Tuesday night was more of the same from Rodon in October against a good team: awful.

5. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. opened the game with a two-run home run in the first for his third of the series. The Yankees answered in the bottom of the first with a run on an RBI single from Giancarlo Stanton after a Blue Jays error extended the inning. The Blue Jays put up a four-run third, and trailing 6-1, I started to think about how many innings I would give the Yankees offense to put a dent into the deficit before leaving Yankee Stadium for the last time in 2025.

The Yankees scored twice in the bottom of the third to make it 6-3 and Judge’s heroics came in the fourth to tie the game. The Yankees added two more in the fifth and one in the sixth to go to an eventual 9-6 win.

6. Judge deserves all of the credit and recognition for Game 3 for saving the Yankees’ season, but the bullpen deserves the same. Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Devin Williams and David Bednar combined for 6 2/3 scoreless innings of relief after Rodon pooped his pants in another postseason game. Outside of Luke Weaver and Will Warren (who isn’t a reliever), the bullpen has been exceptional in the postseason. Now that the Yankees have figured out Weaver is unusable, the level of trust in what was supposed to be the Yankees’ downfall has completely changed.

7. Aaron Boone had to press a lot of right buttons to navigate the game following Rodon’s failed start, and the only wrong button he pressed all night was letting Rodon stay in with runners on second and third and Anthony Santander up in the third. Rodon had nothing, and sure enough, Santander plated both runs with a line-drive single. Once Boone got Rodon out of the game, he made a career-high five correct bullpen decisions. His move to pinch hit Amed Rosario for Ryan McMahon as early as he did in the third inning was also the right call even though it didn’t work out. The Yankees had the tying run at the plate at the time and trailing by three in an elimination game, it wasn’t certain they would get the tying run to the plate again. Outside of letting Rodon pitch as long as he did, Boone managed with the urgency one needs to manage with the season (and possibly his job) on the line and he was successful. The Boone Yankees are now 9-6 in elimination games and the Yankees as a whole kept their never-been-swept-in-the-ALDS streak alive.

8. The Yankees will face elimination against on Wednesday for the fourth time in eight days. It will be Cam Schlittler against a Blue Jays bullpen game, a day after the Blue Jays used all but two relievers to get through Game 4. The Yankees have a massive advantage on the mound, though it does come with its worries.

I don’t expect Schlittler to have anywhere need the kind of outing he had in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series because outings like that happen close to never in the postseason and also because the Red Sox suck and the Blue Jays don’t. Schlittler faced the Blue Jays in his second career start back on July 22 in Toronto and allowed two earned runs over five innings with a whole lot of traffic (10 baserunners). The next time he faced the Blue Jays on September 5 at Yankee Stadium, he got lit up. He didn’t make it through the second inning and allowed four earned runs and eight baserunners in 1 2/3 innings. In Schlittler’s 15-start career, the Blue Jays have given him the most trouble.

The Blue Jays handle high velocity and they don’t strike out and Schlittler throws high velocity and tries to get strikeouts. It’s not a good matchup for him, but a bullpen game against the Yankees isn’t a good matchup for the Blue Jays. The Yankees need Schlittler to go out there and have a normal start in terms of innings, as in five-plus innings. They can’t have what Max Fried gave them in Game 1 or what Rodon gave them in Game 2, which was 5 1/3 innings and 13 earned runs from their two highly-paid lefties. Schlittler needs to go out and return the rotation and starting pitching in the postseason to normalcy have three straight bad starts from Luis Gil, Fried and Rodon.

9. I have to think John Schneider will use a lefty to serve as either the opener or bulk reliever in Game 4. He wants to make Boone have to make decisions on playing his lefty bats and when to go to his bench. The Blue Jays bullpen had to get 16 outs in Game 3 and the Yankees have now seen and gotten to their two biggest non-closer arms in Mason Fluharty and Louis Varland. The Blue Jays went into this season with their bullpen as their weakest facet and now its fatigued and has been exposed. The only Blue Jays relievers to not pitch in Game 3 were Seranthony Dominguez and Jeff Hoffman and I wouldn’t be worried about the Yankees facing either.

If the offense shows up on Wednesday like it did on Tuesday then Schlittler won’t need to come close to the version of himself he was against the Red Sox. Judge finally broke through. Maybe Chisholm finally broke through with his go-ahead home run. Now it’s time for Stanton, Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham to do the same.

10. “Tonight was special, but there’s still more work to be done,” Judge said. “Hopefully we have some more cool moments like this the rest of the postseason.”

How long the rest of the postseason lasts for the Yankees will be determined on Wednesday. I expected the Yankees to win Game 3, and I expect them to win Game 4. I expect the Yankees’ season to survive a fourth elimination game and I expect there to be a Game 5 on Friday.

1. After a 68-hour break from being on the brink of elimination, on Sunday afternoon, the Yankees returned to where they spent last Wednesday and Thursday: a loss away from their season ending.

So much for winning this series in four games with a starting pitching edge in Games 2 through 5. The only way for the Yankees to survive the ALDS and the Blue Jays and advance to the ALCS for the third time in four years is to win three straight games against a team they are 5-10 against this season.

2. Game 2 was over quickly. The Blue Jays led 2-0 in the second, 5-0 in the third and 11-0 in the fourth. The final six innings of the game were a formality and the seven runs the Yankees scored in the sixth and seventh innings were as meaningful as Luke Weaver finishing the season with six straight scoreless appearances against the Twins, Orioles and White Sox. The Yankees scored seven runs against the back end of the Blue Jays bullpen. It doesn’t mean the Yankees finally woke up in the series. It doesn’t set them up to explode in Game 3. It means nothing and won’t serve as some kind of momentous connection to Game 3 on Tuesday. Momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher and the Yankees don’t hit postseason starting pitching unless the opposition’s defense helps them out.

3. Trey Yesavage did to the Yankees what Cam Schlittler did to the Red Sox. In fact, Yesavage’s start was more impressive than Schlittler’s. Schlittler faced an anemic, banged-up, two-hitter lineup, while Yesavage faced the Yankees at full strength. Schlittler had 12 strikeouts over eight innings. Yesavage had 11 strikeouts in 5 1/3 no-hit innings. The Blue Jays pulled him in the sixth because the game was out of hand and there was nothing to gain by having him continue to waste pitches in a blowout or he likely would have struck out 15-plus.

It was Yesavage’s fourth major-league start and in his other three starts (two against the Rays and one against the Royals) he had traffic against him throughout each of them. But not against the Yankees on a postseason stage. Not against a group of left-handers who swung at his splitter like they were blindfolded, the same way they swung and missed at Kevin Gausman’s splitter the day before. It was a putrid performance from the offense.

4. Max Fried matched the offense’s putridness. The starting pitcher with the 5.10 career postseason ERA the Yankees gave $218 million to pooped his pants on the Rogers Centre mound, allowing seven earned runs and 10 baserunners in three innings. He couldn’t retire Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Ernie Clement or even the only left-handed bat in the lineup in Daulton Varsho. When Fried was mercifully pulled from the game after the third inning, Will Warren did his best Fried impression by allowing six earned runs of his own over 4 2/3 innings, including four home runs.

5. The Blue Jays went into this series without Bo Bichette, Chris Bassitt and Jose Berrios and hold a 2-0 lead and have outscored the Yankees 23-8 and 11-1 while both teams were still managing, playing and operating as they would in a normal game setting. All of the Yankees’ offensive stats over the final 3 2/3 innings of Game 2 can be disregarded.

The trio of Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton failed to do anything meaningful again. Well, unless, you consider Judge misplaying a double into a triple in the second inning or the three of them padding their stats in the late innings when the game was already over to be meaningful. While Guerrero Jr. and company were teeing off on Fried and Warren, the Yankees’ Big 3 continued to swing and miss and hit singles.

The Red Sox’ few great players lived up to expectations in the three-game series (Garrett Crochet, Trevor Story, Alex Bregman and Aroldis Chapman) and through two games the Blue Jays’ best players have done the same. Through five postseason games, the only Yankees to live up to expectation were Fried in his start against the Red Sox (which has since been negated by his start in the ALDS) and Cam Schlittler. No Yankees bat has been consistent and I don’t want to hear that Judge is hitting .444 with a 1.024. Could there be a more empty .444 batting average and 1.024 OPS in the postseason?

6. The narrative the Yankees are running out of time to win with Judge is now circulating as the Yankees are a loss away from watching their season end and it’s sickening. The Yankees haven’t won in the postseason in Judge’s career because of Judge! He has driven in two runs in the playoffs: the first was an incorrectly-scored base hit and RBI that Jarren Duran dropped and the second was a single on Sunday with the Yankees trailing by 11 runs in the seventh inning. How about Judge does what Story did in the Wild Card Series, or what Guerrero Jr. has done in the ALDS? How about he does something, anything at the plate to drive in a run that doesn’t fall out of a fielder’s glove or isn’t when the score is a double-digit difference.

7. The Aaron Boone era has been a collection of postseason disasters.

2018: Lose both home games in the ALDS, including the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 4.

2019: Lose four of the last five games in the ALCS and get walked off on by Jose Altuve.

2020: The Deivi Garcia/J.A. Happ debacle.

2021: Embarrassed at Fenway Park in the wild-card game.

2022: Swept by the Astros after Boone uses video of the 2024 ALCS as a motivation tactic.

2023: Missed postseason.

2024: Nestor Cortes vs. Freddie Freeman and the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series.

2025: 23 runs allowed in first two games of the ALDS.

Every postseason elimination has come with humiliation for the Boone Yankees and while the results of the first two games of this series aren’t on him at all, they still happened during his tenure. His Yankees lost 10-1 after he called out Buck Martinez for calling out his Yankees when he didn’t need to. His Yankees allowed 13 runs and were no-hit until the Blue Jays had enough bullying the Yankees after he said he expects his team to show up and play well in Game 2. How about he keeps his mouth shut before Game 3, but that wouldn’t be very Boone Yankees-like if he did.

8. The Boone Yankees have set preposterous franchise records, ranging from the most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS) to allowing double-digit runs in back-to-back postseason games for the first time in franchise history. After seven failed attempts to win a championship as Yankees manager, Boone is now a loss away from an eighth. With each passing year, Boone’s record for most seasons managing the Yankees before winning a championship grows closer to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak in terms of how likely it is to ever be broken.

9. The Yankees will return home for Tuesday’s Game 3 and will play for their season for the third time in their last five games. The Yankees at home against the Blue Jays are a much different team than the Yankees in Toronto against the Blue Jays. The Yankees won four of six at home against the Blue Jays this season, while they have lost eight of nine in Toronto. I expect the Yankees to send this series back to Toronto solely because they are home and have the starting pitching advantage in Games 3 and 4.

10. If the Yankees’ season ends in this series, you will hear about how great a year they had winning 94 games and tied for the best record in baseball. You won’t hear about how they went 9-17 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays and blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays and how if they had won the division, then Games 1 and 2 of this series would have been at Yankee Stadium. You will hear from Boone about how sweet it will be once they finally win it all and you will hear Brian Cashman refer to the postseason as a crapshoot, a phrase the organization didn’t use when they used to win. It wasn’t until the Yankees stopped winning that the playoffs became the result of randomness with no skill or ability needed to succeed. It’s hard to believe anyone could believe postseason success is tied to chance or luck when the reason the Yankees are eliminated every year is the same. I guess the organization has just been unlucky for the last 15 years (going on 16) and in 23 of the last 24 years (going on 25) and the Boone Yankees have just been unlucky the entire time.

Maybe the Boone Yankees will get lucky and erase an 0-2 ALDS deficit like the Joe Torre and Joe Girardi Yankees did. Maybe their highest-paid players will act and play like it for the remainder of this series. If not, the Yankees can run it back next year with the same manager and roster and issues and see if the same manager and roster and issues can finally get lucky and win it all.

1. Bases loaded, no outs and Aaron Judge at the plate. It’s a dream scenario for Yankees fans at any time other than October. Trailing the Blue Jays 2-0 in the sixth inning of Game 1 of the ALDS with Anthony Volpe on third, Austin Wells on second and Trent Grisham on first and no outs, Judge struck out on a splitter from Kevin Gausman and that was the game.

“I wouldn’t say I was overanxious,” Judge said despite him swinging at a 3-2 splitter well off the plate suggesting otherwise. “But in the end, I didn’t get the job done. That’s what it comes down to, just not doing your job.”

Judge has rarely ever done his job in the postseason, as shown by his career postseason OPS being 252 points lower than his career regular-season OPS. He may be the most dominant right-handed regular-season bat in the history of the game, but when the calendar turns to October, his abilities annually disappear.

2. This is what I wrote about Judge after Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series.

I truly think Judge will have his signature postseason if the Yankees’ season continues past Game 3 of the Wild Card Series. In past postseasons, Judge has looked lost from his first at-bat. He has only hit singles in this series, but he got one each off of Crochet, Chapman and Bello — three household names. He’s been on base four times in eight plate appearances and has only struck out twice against top-tier arms. If the monster hit doesn’t come for Judge in Game 3 and the Yankees are able to advance, the Blue Jays are in for a world of shit in the ALDS. For someone who has been as critical of Judge in the playoffs as anyone in the world, I really believe this postseason could be his 2009 Alex Rodriguez postseason.

It turns out it’s the Yankees who are in a world of shit because of Judge’s bat in the ALDS, not the Blue Jays. Judge went on to hit a meaningless double in his next at-bat with no one on and the game already out of hand. It was his first extra-base hit of the postseason and his one RBI remains the ball that was incorrectly scored a hit off of Jarren Duran’s glove in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series.

Judge’s swing decision on the splitter from Gausman on Saturday was disturbing. The pitch was never a strike. Not when it left Gausman’s hand, not when it traveled toward the plate and not when it reached the plate (since it never really reached the plate and finished in the other batter’s box). If Judge takes the pitch, it’s a 2-1 game with the bases still loaded and no outs and Bellinger up. If Judge drive any of the pitches in the zone in the at-bat, the Yankees likely take the lead in that spot and may have already accomplished getting a split of the first two games in Toronto. Instead, they need to now do in Game 2 what the Blue Jays did in Game 1 and win a game they are expected to win.

3. Judge isn’t alone in the offensive blame for Game 1. The entire offense failed, and their game plan to swing early against Gausman worked brilliantly in the Blue Jays’ favor, producing first-pitch outs on weak ground balls and lazy fly balls.

This is what I wrote about the Yankees’ offense after Game 2 of the Wild Card Series:

The one thing that gives me optimism in the offense is that Judge, Bellinger and Stanton haven’t done anything yet. … The longer the Yankees go in the postseason without those three hitting the ball in the gap or over the fence, the more optimistic I become about the Yankees’ chances this October.

This still holds true. Stanton had the double off the wall in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series that he admired and was nearly thrown out at second on. Bellinger had the bloop double in that game that should have been caught. Judge had a double in Game 1 of the ALDS, and in typical Judge fashion, it came when the game was over. And that’s all they have done with the bat. The trio has done close to nothing through four postseason games, and yet, the Yankees have already won a round and are in a great position with how the starting pitching lines up for the remainder of this series to win this round. But at some point, these three, or even one of these three is going to need to start hitting like they are capable of. Every other team’s stars and middle-of-the-order bats are hitting like they are expected to in the postseason, but not the Yankees.

4. The Yankees have scored 10 runs in four postseason games. Here is how they have scored those runs:

Run 1: Solo home run
Runs 2-3: Two-run home run
Run 4: Dropped fly ball
Run 5: Runner scores from first on a single inside the right-field line
Run 6: Ground ball through the left side
Run 7: Ground ball through the right side
Runs 8-9: Ground ball off the first baseman’s glove
Run 10: Bases loaded walk

The “best offense in baseball” isn’t hitting the ball over the wall and isn’t drawing walks. Instead, they are doing what they do every October, but this time Stanton isn’t carrying everyone else like he normally does, and Juan Soto isn’t there to make up for Judge.

5. Lose 2-1, 5-1, 6-1, 10-1, who gives a shit? A loss in the playoffs is a loss, and the Yankees were actually better off losing 10-1 than 2-1 in Game 1 of the ALDS because they didn’t have to unnecessarily burn Devin Williams or David Bednar in a loss, like they did in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series.

I’m actually OK with the loss because it was the only game in the series the Blue Jays had to have. They had six days off, had their No. 1 starter going on extra rest and were home. The Yankees used their No. 4 (or even No 5. starter) had played three games in the previous four days — two of which were elimination games — and had to travel from New York to Toronto after finishing an elimination game just 41 hours prior. If the Blue Jays were to lose Game 1 given everything set up in their favor I would be writing about the potential for a Yankees sweep in these Thoughts.

6. I don’t think the Yankees will lose another game in this series. The Blue Jays lack a left-handed starter and in the next two games will throw Trey Yesavage and Shane Bieber and have no true starter to use in Game 4 with Jose Berrios and Chris Bassitt both injured. Yesavage has started three games in his career — totaling his entire major-league workload — and those starts came against the Rays twice and the Royals. Bieber made seven starts this season after missing most of this year and nearly all of last year following surgery (and the Yankees have prior postseason success against him). Even if this series goes five games, the Yankees would have Fried in that winner-take-all game against Gausman, which is a much different scenario than having Luis Gil.

7. Gil allowed two solo home runs and four hits total in his 2 2/3 innings of work on Saturday and Aaron Boone was right to take him out when he did. Gil, Tim Hill and Camil Doval combined to throw what was essentially a six-inning, two-run start and most games that would be good enough to win. But not when the offense doesn’t show up and not when Luke Weaver is the first guy out of the bullpen in a one-run game.

In using Weaver in the seventh inning of a 2-1 game, Boone was able to find out if he can use Weaver moving forward in a game the Yankees were already losing, and he quickly found out he can’t. Weaver faced three batters and didn’t retire any of them, just like he did in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. He went from the fourth-most trusted reliever in the bullpen to likely needing to be left off of the ALCS roster, if the Yankees reach the next round. Weaver said, “I don’t really feel like myself” after the game and you simply can’t let a guy pitch again in the postseason who says that.

8. Boone going to Weaver in that spot wasn’t his only blunder of the night. With the Yankees trailing 2-1 in the top of the seventh, Ryan McMahon singled to put the tying run on base. McMahon remained on first base for the first three pitches of Volpe’s at-bat before being removed for a pinch runner in Jose Caballero. Why did Boone wait to use Caballero as a pinch runner? “I changed my mind,” Boone said. So Boone wasted three pitches Caballero might have had a chance to steal on and then Caballero never even attempted to steal as Volpe struck out. Caballero did run on an 0-1 pitch to Austin Wells, but Wells grounded out to first to end the inning. So Boone wasted his most valuable pinch runner for a spot in which he didn’t get a chance to steal. For anyone who wants to praise Boone for letting Cam Schlittler go eight innings in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series, just know the real Boone still exists and is still in there.

9. Just like in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, I expect Max Fried to pitch well. If he doesn’t then nothing else matters and the Yankees are the frauds I have thought the Blue Jays to be all season. This type of game is why the Yankees signed Fried and this very game is the kind the Yankees could always count on Andy Pettitte to win. Joe Torre always thought Game 2 of a series was the most important because you either have a chance to go up 2-0 or tie the series at 1. If the Yankees tie the series at 1 going back to New York for Games 3 and 4, they will have turned the best-of-5 into a best-of-3 and possess the home-field advantage they pissed away when they failed to win the division

10. The offense and mainly Judge, Stanton and Bellinger will likely determine the outcome in Game 2. If it’s a fifth straight postseason game with the trio doing nothing then the Yankees will likely be right back on the brink of elimination after a 68-hour break from the brink. It the trio or any one of them decides to show on Sunday then the Yankees will head home in control of the series.

I thought the Yankees would win this series in four before it started and the lopsided loss in Game 1 doesn’t change my mind. If the Yankees are to stay on track to win this series in four games, the offense will have to do something it hasn’t done this postseason: get production from its highest-paid bats.

1. It started with a late-game, two-out walk. That’s how the Red Sox’ began their improbable comeback in the 2004 ALCS to defeat the Yankees, becoming the first team in history to erase a 3-0 series deficit. And it was a late-game, two-out walk in this series that led to the winning run in Game 2 as the Yankees staved off elimination on back-to-back nights to become the first team in the Wild Card Series era to survive the round after losing the first game of the series.

The fact it was a Massachusetts native, Northeastern alumnus and former Red Sox fan who ended the Red Sox’ season made it that much sweeter. After being eliminated by the Red Sox in 2004, 2018 and 2021, the Yankees have once again flipped the rivalry back in their favor. After losing nine of their last 10 games postseason games to the Red Sox following the disappointing Game 1 loss, the Yankees have now won their last two postseason games against the Red Sox.

2. Cam Schlittler. He is the reason the Yankees’ season is alive and the reason they are going to be playing on Saturday (where they always should have been playing if they didn’t blow an eight-game division lead to the Blue Jays). What a performance for the rookie making his 15th major league start: 8 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 12 K. He dominated the Red Sox from the first batter of the game until the final out of the eighth inning. Schlittler destroyed the region he is from and the fanbase he was once part of with the most brilliant performance anyone could ask for. No one is talking about what Garrett Crochet did in Game 1 anymore. No one cares what Crochet did in Game 1 anymore. Schlittler is the story of this series. On a night in which Bucky Dent threw out the ceremonial first pitch and Aaron Boone was in the Yankees dugout, Schlittler became the latest Yankee to have his middle name changed to the F-word by Red Sox fans.

3. While the Game 1 loss sucked, it ended up being a very important loss. The way Game 1 played out and the moves that backfired on Boone led to him completely changing his managerial style in Games 2 and 3. The reason Boone left Carlos Rodon in so long in Game 2 was because of the backlash he received for pulling Max Fried when he did in Game 1, while Alex Cora let Crochet pitch into the eighth inning. The reason Ben Rice and Jazz Chisholm got to start against a lefty in Game 3 is because of the heat Boone took for benching two of his best players for platoon reasons in Game 1. The reason Schlittler got to go back out for the eighth in Game 3 was because of what Boone watched Cora let Crochet do in Game 1. You can count on one hand the times Boone has managed to the game unfolding in front of him rather than from some predetermined script in his career and you’ll likely have a couple of fingers left over. Thursday was one of those times as Schlittler kept appearing on the mound at the start of each late inning. I would have sent him back out for the ninth because he was throwing strikes and hadn’t lost any velocity. His delivery is so effortless that it looks like a 57-mph lob from a position player in a lopsided game is going to leave his hand and instead it’s 102 four-seam fastballs, 100-mph two-season fastballs and 99-mph cutters. Schlittler lost nothing over eight innings.

4. The Red Sox’ infield defense is why they struggled at times this season and that infield defense reared its head at the most opportune time for the Yankees. The Red Sox’ fourth-inning defensive meltdown was beautiful. Watching it as a Yankees fan is what I imagine Dodgers fans experienced watching the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series last year.

The beloved center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela decided to not chase down Cody Bellinger’s leadoff bloop in the fourth in a straight line and his diving attempt to make up for his odd route was unsuccessful leading to a leadoff “double.” Giancarlo Stanton followed with a walk before Rice had an ugly strikeout. Amed Rosario’s sole purpose on the Yankees is to hit left-handed pitching and he failed in Game 1 going 0-for-3 against Crochet and made an out against Connelly Early in his first at-bat in Game 3. But Rosario came through this time, pulling an outside 1-0 changeup through the hole on the left side to score Bellinger and gives the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Chisholm hit a line-drive single to right to load the bases with one out and Anthony Volpe pushed a ground ball through the right side to make it 2-0. Austin Wells then provided the biggest at-bat of the game. With the bases still loaded and one out, Wells fell behind 0-2 only to grind out a nine-pitch at-bat and then hit a 100.3-mph ball to first. Wells’ ball could have been an inning-ending double play, but it instead turned into two runs off the glove of mid-August waiver claim Nathaniel Lowe. 4-0 Yankees.

5. The Yankees didn’t score again in the inning. They didn’t score again in the game. They didn’t need to because Schlittler kept throwing fastballs past the Red Sox’ bats. Schlittler threw 90 percent fastballs in the game and never once tried to fool the Red Sox with his secondary pitches. It was the ultimate “Here it is, hit it” game and the Red Sox couldn’t. They had one baserunner reach as far as second base the entire game.

The win saved the Yankees’ season and possibly saved Boone’s job. But if he were to manage with more feel for each live game and less “Luke Weaver is coming into the game in this predetermined spot no matter what” then no one would have a problem with his decision making. If Boone plays his ‘A’ lineup each game in the postseason and isn’t quick to go to his shaky bullpen the Yankees will be just fine. They will be more than fine.

6. As I wrote before the postseason, the Red Sox in a best-of-3 series was the worst possible draw for the Yankees. I would have felt comfortable and confident playing the Red Sox in a best-of-5 or best-of-7 and I would have felt the same playing any other AL team in any series length. The Yankees survived their worst possible matchup and now the path back to the World Series is right there for them. I expect them to reach the World Series.

7. Because I expect them to reach the World Series, that means I expect them to eliminate the Blue Jays in the ALDS, and I do. The Blue Jays aren’t better than the Yankees. It doesn’t matter that they finished with the same 94-68 record. It doesn’t matter that the Blue Jays won the season series 8-5. When the Yankees were swept in four games in Toronto from June 30-July 3, the combination of DJ LeMahieu and Oswald Peraza was the Yankees’ starting second baseman; Chisholm was playing third base; Geoff Hartlieb, JT Brubaker, Clayton Beeter and Ian Hamilton came out of the bullpen. The Yankees are a much different team today than they were midseason when they blew their big division lead. And so are the Blue Jays. Bo Bichette and Chris Bassitt are hurt and Jose Berrios’ season fell apart. While the Yankees’ bullpen is a collection of highly-talented, yet highly-untrustworthy arms, it looks like the late-’90s Yankees bullpen compared to the Blue Jays’. The Yankees are a better, deeper team than the Blue Jays, and in one of the rare occurrences, the Yankees have the managerial advantage. John Schneider makes Boone seem like Joe Torre or Bruce Bochy.

8. The Blue Jays don’t have a single lefty in their rotation, which means the Yankees can deploy their ‘A’ lineup every game and not have to worry about matchup bullshit. Boone can write out Grisham, Judge, Bellinger, Rice, Stanton, Chisholm, Wells, Volpe, McMahon each game and not have to worry about it. The Yankees are set up to go Luis Gil in Game 1, Fried in Game 2, Rodon in Game 3, Schlittler in Game 4 and they can go back to Fried on normal rest for Game 5. The Yankees have the rotation advantage. They have the lineup advantage. They have the bullpen advantage. They have the managerial advantage. If they don’t run the bases like drunks like John Sterling famously said during the World Series last year and don’t beat themselves on defense, they will beat the Blue Jays and advance to the ALCS. I expect the Yankees to advance to the ALCS. It will be a massive failure if they don’t win this series.

9. It’s been 22 years since I had this feeling of the Yankees being responsible for the end of the Red Sox’ season and I forgot how good it feels. Seeing the lost looks on the faces of the Red Sox watching the Yankees celebrate on the Yankee Stadium field last night was the kind of warm feeling only this matchup can provide. It brought me back to watching Pedro Martinez with his hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head depressingly watching the Yankees’ Game 7 celebration in the 2003 ALCS. I missed this glorious feeling.

10. I’m going to spend Friday enjoying the win over the Red Sox, watching Schlittler’s 12 strikeouts on a loop and consuming as many Game 3 postgame reactions from Red Sox fans who watched their season end at the hands of one of their own as possible. I will start to worry about the Blue Jays and ALDS on Saturday. Today is a day for celebration. Tomorrow afternoon in Toronto, it’s back to work.

1. I thought it was gone. I think most people did. When the ball left Ceddanne Rafaela’s bat on an 0-2 pitch from David Bednar in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, it looked like the game would improbably be tied at 4. But Aaron Judge raced back to the warning track, paused and waited for the ball in what turned out to be nothing more than a game-ending out. Ballgame over, Yankees win, season saved … for a day.

The Yankees were successful in staving off elimination for the first time this postseason not necessarily because of what they did, but because of what the Red Sox didn’t do. Brayan Bello failed to to erase a sluggish finish to the season by continuing to be bad; Jarren Duran slid for a ball off the bat of Judge that he didn’t need to slide for to give the Yankees a temporary lead; Rafaela popped up a bunt to the mound with runners on first and second and no outs in the seventh and Nate Eaton didn’t race home to give the Rd Sox the lead when Jazz Chisholm tried to make a hero play on an infield single. The Yankees tried to give the Red Sox the game. They did everything they could to do so and were fortunate to win and keep their season alive.

2. There’s nothing Carlos Rodon hates more than an early lead and after Ben Rice hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the first, Rodon gave up a single to Duran to lead off the third and then walked Rafaela. Rafaela had the fifth-worst walk rate in the league this season and yet it was his 11-pitch walk against Luke Weaver that changed Game 1 and it was his walk against Rodon in the third inning that eventually led to two runs to tie the game.

When the Yankees took the lead in the fifth on the ball Duran unnecessarily slid for, Rodon gave it right back on the third pitch of the next inning, a 2-0, middle-middle fastball that Trevor Story crushed over the left-field wall. I figured Aaron Boone would take Rodon out then, but Boone let Rodon face Alex Bregman and Rodon walked him on four pitches. OK, now Boone would take him out, right? Nope. Boone went to the mound and left the mound without Rodon. Rodon rewarded him by getting out of the inning.

3. Boone is a reactionary manager. He took so much heat and will continue to do so if the Yankees don’t win this series for removing Max Fried in Game 1 that he wasn’t going to remove Rodon in Game 2. This is what he does. He tries to make up for a mistake by doing the inverse even if the inverse isn’t the right decision. That’s why Boone let Rodon go back out for the seventh. And Rodon walked Eaton on four pitches and still got to stay in the game. He then fell behind Duran 3-0 before drilling him. Had the ball not hit hit Duran, it would have been ball 4 to the backstop and Eaton would have been on third with no outs.

Finally, Boone took the ball from Rodon in favor of Fernando Cruz. After fouling the first pitch off on a bunt attempt, Rafaela tried to bunt again and popped it up right back to Cruz. Thank you for the free out, Cora! Nick Sogard followed with a flyout to left. Game 1 pinch-hit hero Masataka Yoshida then came up and hit a 3-2 pitch up the middle that Chisholm laid out for and gloved. There was no way Chisholm was going to get Yoshida at first to end the inning, but in typical Yankees’ middle-infield fashion, he tried. Chisholm threw a hopper to Ben Rice that Rice couldn’t handle, but thankfully Eaton stayed at third. If Eaton had run home as soon as Chisholm throws the ball to first, he scores. Even if Rice fields it cleanly, he scores. But Eaton did the Yankees a favor by staying put and Cruz got Story to fly out to the deepest part of the park with the bases loaded to end the seventh. After getting the last out of the inning, Cruz went wild, and did every process of transforming into the Hulk except for turning green. To Red Sox fans and anyone watching who doesn’t watch the Yankees throughout the season, they were likely astonished at his reaction, but he has acted like that all season. He’s a 35-year-old reliever who didn’t make the majors until he was 32 and finally became an elite arm this year. He can do whatever he wants.

After Cruz got out of the seventh, the Yankees stranded a one-out double from Trent Grisham. Devin Williams worked around a leadoff single by Bregman in the top of the eighth and the Yankees took the lead in the bottom of the eighth. Chisholm worked a two-out, seven-pitch walk off of former Yankees prospect Garrett Whitlock and came around to score on an Austin Wells single just inside the right-field line. If Wells had hit that same ball at any time in the at-bat other than on a 3-2 pitch, Chisholm doesn’t score on the play. Thankfully, he did.

The Yankees loaded the bases against Whitlock before he was removed for rookie lefty Payton Tolle. With Grisham up, I would have removed Grisham and pinch hit with Jose Caballero. Scoring again was much more important than having Grisham in center field in the ninth when you could move Bellinger over to center and have Caballero play left. Grisham can’t hit lefties and he didn’t again, grounding out against Tolle. Cora knew Boone would value having Grisham in center in the ninth rather than scoring again and knew he wouldn’t have to worry about Boone using a righty bat once Tolle came into the game.

After falling behind Wilyer Abreu 2-0 and then going to 3-2 to begin the ninth, Bednar blew away Abreu with a 97-mph fastball. Bednar then went full again against Duran before striking him out looking with a 98-mph fastball on the inside corner. Bednar got ahead of Rafaela 0-2 and then Rafaela put a drive into the ball I thought was gone (and I think most people did) before Judge put it away to end the game.

4. For once, an ex-Yankee-tuned-Red Sox helped the Yankees to a postseason win. In 2018, the ex-Yankee trio of Nathan Eovaldi, Steve Pearce and Eduardo Nunez helped end the Yankees’ season and lead the Red Sox to a championship. Eovaldi was an awful Yankee, capable of throwing triple digits and incapable of striking anyone out. Nunez was supposed to the heir at short to Derek Jeter and the Yankees wouldn’t part with Nunez for Cliff Lee in 2010 because of that only to eventually release Nunez in 2014 to keep Yangervis Solarte out of spring training. Pearce had 30 plate appearances for the 2012 Yankees and hit .160/.300/.280. Eovaldi pitched the Red Sox to an ALDS Game 3 win over the Yankees in 2018 and became a World Series hero against the Dodgers. Nunez made an unbelievable play to save Game 4 in the ninth inning in the ALDS (a play he never would have made as a Yankee) and hit a huge home run in the World Series. Pearce was named World Series MVP.

But finally, on Wednesday, Whitlock — a pitcher the Yankees didn’t protect in the 2020 Rule 5 draft so they could protect Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske — came through for the Yankees by walking Chisholm with two outs in the eighth. Through Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees had been 11-4 against the Red Sox in postseason history. But from Game 4 of the 2024 ALCS through Tuesday’s Game 1, the Red Sox had gone 9-1 against the Yankees. Maybe that walk will be the turning point in righting the postseason rivalry in favor of the Yankees. It was a walk — Kevin Millar against Mariano Rivera — that started that 9-1 run, so maybe it’s a walk that starts a Yankees-favored future.

5. No one knows what to expect in Game 3. I think everyone knew Fried and Garrett Crochet would provide ace-like performances in Game 1 and they did. I think Yankees fans knew Rodon wouldn’t put the team on his back and pitch them to a season-saving win in Game 1 and he didn’t, and I think Red Sox feared Bello’s bad September would carry over into October and it did. In Game 3, you’re getting a 24-year-old rookie starter for the Yankees with 14 career starts going against a 23-year-old rookie starter for the Red Sox with four career starts. They could both poop their pants in the first inning and this could become a bullpen game, or they could both show the impressive dominance they possess and why they are in the spot they are to start a win-or-go-home playoff game at this stage of their career.

Schlittler will be the first right-handed starter the Red Sox have faced in the series, so that means a lineup we haven’t seen yet from the Red Sox. With Early being a lefty, it makes things interesting for the Yankees and Boone will do with his lineup.

6. As I wrote earlier, Boone is reactionary. He had to deal with a shitstorm for pulling Fried on Tuesday, so he let Rodon go too long on Wednesday and it nearly ended their season. He had to steal with the shitstorm of not playing Rice and Chisholm on Tuesday, so I guarantee you both will be in the lineup on Thursday. I would put out the ‘A’ lineup with the only change being Amed Rosario for Ryan MacMahon. I would use righty-lefty alternation throughout to avoid giving Cora perfect lanes for his relievers if Early doesn’t go long.

Trent Grisham, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Ben Rice, 1B
Amed Rosario, 3B
Jazz Chishom, 2B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Austin Wells, C

The only back-to-back lefties in that lineup are Wells to Grisham, but there’s a chance Early never gets to that part of the order. Either he’s dominant and gets to stay in or he starts off like Bello and Cora removes him immediately. Cora only let Bello throw 28 pitches and if he had thrown more, the Yankees may have exploded and put the game away early. Cora will have an even quicker hook in Game 3 than he did in Game 2 (and 28 pitches is as quick as it gets) because the season is on the line and it wasn’t for the Red Sox yesterday and he still removed Bello in the second. Boone will have to have an equally quick hook with Schlittler if things aren’t going well.

Boone’s plan for every game is laid out in his brain well before the game, and if he has to deviate from the plan, he doesn’t know what to do. We saw it in Game 1. His plan was to get exactly what he got from Fried and then go Weaver to Williams to Bednar to end the game. Once Weaver fucked it up, Boone wasn’t sure what to do, so he stayed with the plan even with the Yankees trailing.

If the Yankees had taken the lead in Game 2 earlier than the bottom of the eighth, it’s likely Boone would have screwed it up . But because they scored so late in the game and there was just one inning of outs to get, he was able to go to Bednar and not have to think. For the Yankees to win, they need Boone to not have to think because is he has to, he will make the wrong decision nearly every time. Boone would lose the lottery if you gave him the winning numbers.

7. Because Boone used his best relievers in Game 162 on Sunday (when he didn’t need to since the Blue Jays were routing the Rays by the time the Yankees’ late innings began), Cruz, Williams and Bednar have now all pitched three times in the last four days. Here are their pitch counts each day. Weaver threw on Sunday and Tuesday, but not Wednesday. I don’t think there’s any Yankees fan who wants to see Weaver in Game 3, but it’s high likely he will be in there unless Schlittler goes out gives six or seven innings.

Even if Schlittler does go out and give six innings, there will still be nine outs to get. In theory you could go Cruz, Williams Bednar and I think thats what the Boone would do, but the Red Sox have now seen these three multiple times in a short span. They have seen everything they have to offer.

Cruz has faced Story twice, Bregman twice, Rafaela twice, Sogard twice and Yoshida twice. I would be hesitant to let Cruz face any of them a third time.

Williams has faced Narvaez twice, Abreu, Duran, Rafaela, Bregman and Nathaniel Lowe.

Bednar has faced Sogard, Yoshida, Story, Bregman, Lowe, Abreu, Duran and Rafaela. He has faced nearly the entire Red Sox’ lineup once.

Cruz’s splitter, Williams changeup and Bednar’s curveball/fastball mix will undoubtedly have less effect in Game 3 than they did in Game 1 or Game 2. That’s what happens with relievers in short series. They get fatigued and hitters know their release points and pitches. Go look at the quotes from Yankees relievers following the 2019 ALCS when they couldn’t get any length out of their starters and the Astros started to hit Chad Green, Zack Britton, Adam Ottavino and Aroldis Chapman as the series went on. They all mentioned being fatigued in that series loss.

Weaver is going to pitch in Game 3. Tim Hill or Mark Leiter Jr. could appear Everything is on the table, including getting outs from Camilo Doval. The easiest path to a win and advancing is for Schlittler to go out and throw the ball like he did in his last two starts of the season, both against the Orioles. (12.2 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 15 K, 1 HR). The difference is the Orioles had nothing to play for in those games and are home for a reason, while the Red Sox have everything to play for on Thursday to avoid going home.

I don’t like the Yankees having to face a lefty, especially one that has 29 strikeouts to just four walks and no home runs allowed in his first 19 1/3 career innings, considering the Yankees offense lives off of walks and home runs. Yes, three of Early’s four starts came against the A’s (twice) and Rays, but he pitched well against the Tigers on Saturday (5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7K) when the Tigers still hadn’t clinched a postseason berth.

8. The one thing that gives me optimism in the offense is that Judge, Bellinger and Stanton haven’t done anything yet. Sure, Judge has four singles and Bellinger has a pair of singles as well, but the trio has combined for zero extra-base hits. Stanton doesn’t even have a hit yet. The longer the Yankees go in the postseason without those three hitting the ball in the gap or over the fence, the more optimistic I become about the Yankees’ chances this October. Especially, Bellinger and Stanton. Those two have come up in enormous spots in the first two games of this series and have failed each time. Bellinger and Stanton in the first inning in Game 1. Stanton in the ninth inning in Game 1. Bellinger in the third inning in Game 2. Stanton in the sixth inning in Game 2. Bellinger in the seventh inning in Game 2. The biggest moments in both games have found the duo and each time they haven’t done anything. I really believe that will change in Game 3. If it does, the Yankees will be guaranteed to play on Saturday in Toronto. If it doesn’t, someone else will have to do it.

9. I truly think Judge will have his signature postseason if the Yankees’ season continues past Game 3. In past postseasons, Judge has looked lost from his first at-bat. He has only hit singles in this series, but he got one each off of Crochet, Chapman and Bello — three household names. He’s been on base four times in eight plate appearances and has only struck out twice against top-tier arms. If the monster hit doesn’t come for Judge in Game 3 and the Yankees are able to advance, the Blue Jays are in for a world of shit in the ALDS. For someone who has been as critical of Judge in the playoffs as anyone in the world, I really believe this postseason could be his 2009 Alex Rodriguez postseason.

10. This series is playing out exactly as I expected and it’s why I would have had enormous confidence playing the Red Sox in any other format other than a best-of-3. They have arguably the best starting pitcher and closer in the game, but nothing else. Their second-best starter lasted 28 pitches, their third-best starter is out with an elbow injury. They are turning to a kid with four career starts to save their season and their lineup is full of names and players who could be sitting next to you right now and you would have no idea who they are. They are built for a three-game series and nothing else, and if the Yankees fail to advance against an inferior and banged-up roster with all games in the series in their own building, it will be more humiliating than any postseason loss under Boone, including the 2018 ALDS embarrassment, the 2022 ALCS sweep or the 2024 World Series disaster.

The Yankees have to save their season and end the Red Sox’ in Game 3. They have to.

Every fear of the Yankees having to play in the best-of-3, Wild Card Series against the Red Sox came to fruition in their Game 1 loss on Tuesday night. The worst-case scenario for the Yankees this postseason was not winning the division and drawing the Red Sox and the result for the series opener was predictable. The way the game played out was predictable. Every weakness the Yankees possess made an appearance in Game 1 and now they will play for their season in Game 2.

Let’s go through what I wrote about Game 1 leading up to it (italicized) and what transpired in Game 1.

If the Yankees had to play the Red Sox in a best-of-5, my confidence would be much greater than it is now. If they had to play them in a best-of-7, my confidence would be through the roof. But in a three-game series? I don’t know if there is any measurable confidence in this situation. That’s not because the Yankees are an inferior team. Quite the opposite. When they’re not beating themselves, the Yankees are a much better team than the Red Sox, especially with Rafael Devers in San Francisco and Roman Anthony on the injured list. The difference is the Red Sox have Garrett Crochet and the Yankees don’t.

I was right to have little confidence in the Yankees winning Game 1, but as I sat in my seat at Yankee Stadium prior to first pitch, I let myself think they could win, and when the Yankees led off the game with two hits against Crochet and Anthony Volpe hit a solo home run off him in the second, the thought grew. Maybe Crochet wouldn’t be his regular-season self in his first postseason start. Maybe he would endure the kind of postseason struggles other dominant lefties had to start their postseason careers like his counterpart on Tuesday in Fried.

Unfortunately, Crochet didn’t become pre-Yankees Fried or Clayton Kershaw. The Yankees couldn’t get to Crochet with two on and no outs and the heart of their order due up in the first and the Volpe home run wasn’t a sign of things to come, it was a wake-up call for Crochet. After the Volpe home run, the Yankees didn’t have a baserunner until Volpe singled in the eighth.

There are two ways to beat Crochet: multi-run home runs or working the count. The first is extremely hard to count on, but Crochet can be prone to the long ball. Run into a three-run home and you can win Game 1. Try to string together walks and singles and you will be playing for your season on Wednesday. Because planning for or counting on home runs isn’t wise, the Yankees’ best course of action is to tire Crochet, get his pitch count up and hope he’s out after six innings. Crochet had a 3.55 ERA in September, which was his highest ERA for a month this season and after leading the league in innings and strikeouts, there has to be some level of fatigue involved.

The Yankees couldn’t get baserunners against Crochet after the first inning and a solo home run was never going to be enough to win the game. Working the count didn’t go well either because you have to be able to make contact and foul off pitches to do that and the Yankees racked up 11 strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings against Crochet. Crochet retired 17 straight Yankees from the Volpe home run in the second until the Volpe single in the eighth. His pitches by inning: 13, 16, 20, 14, 18, 13, 6, 17. The sixth and seventh innings were the missed opportunities to get to Crochet or get him out of the game, and six Yankees were retired on 19 pitches. Crochet was every bit as good as I feared he could be. The Yankees went 0-5 in games started by Crochet in 2025.

I expect Fried to pitch well because he has to pitch well. If he doesn’t then nothing else matters. The career 5.10 postseason ERA version of Fried can’t show up. He needs to go out and set the tone and have a clean first inning and give the top of the order a chance to put the pressure on the Red Sox. This type of game is why the Yankees signed Fried and because of that he should be expected to go out there and either best or match Crochet.

Fried did his job. He got through the first inning unscathed and gave the Yankees a chance to take an early lead just like I asked, but Cody Bellinger struck out and Giancarlo Stanton hit into an inning-ending double play.

The decision to pull Fried was obviously the wrong one, not just in hindsight, but in real time as well. Fried looked like he may be tiring at the end of the sixth, but he got an inning-ending double play, returned to the mound in the seventh and got the first out there as well. Ceddane Rafaela and Nick Sogard were due up. Rafaela owns a career .685 OPS. Nick Sogard has a career .656 OPS. The fact Sogard was starting in a postseason game was preposterous. The fact that Boone was scared to let his high-priced ace face him was even more so.

Boone couldn’t wait to get his hands on the game. He couldn’t wait to hop out of the dugout and do his strut to the mound and call on his shitty bullpen, and the first shitty reliever he called on was Luke Weaver. Weaver got ahead of Rafaela 0-2 and then nine pitches later walked him. He couldn’t retire Sogard and pinch hitter Masataka Yoshida drove in two runs on the first pitch he saw. Weaver faced three batters, retired none, erased the Yankees’ lead and put them in a one-run deficit in a matter of minutes after Fried had worked so hard over 6 1/3 innings to keep the Red Sox off the board.

The Yankees lineup producing in the postseason 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.

Aaron Judge continued his postseason run of being a singles hitter; Paul Goldschmidt proved he has no power left in his bat to hit for extra bases (one extra-base hit since August 26); Cody Bellinger continued his career of being a bad postseason hitter (.817 career regular-season OPS and .658 career postseason OPS); Amed Rosario’s sole purpose for being on the team is to hit left-handed pitching and he went 0-for-3 with three groundouts to the left side; Trent Grisham may as well have batted without a bat, going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts; Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and Jose Caballero went 0-for-3 with one strikeout. Chisholm was the only bench player to get an at-bat and he hit a lazy fly ball against Chapman that Goldschmidt couldn’t score on because Boone forgot to pinch run Jasson Dominguez for Goldschmidt.

Stanton had a bad game. He had the most important at-bat of the game and struck out. Stanton strikes out a lot. He always has. But he has been the one Yankee to consistently show up in every postseason in this era, so I can’t be upset he didn’t come through in Game 1.

Then there’s the managerial mismatch between Boone and Alex Cora. Boone is 1-4 in the postseason against Cora and after being worried about Crochet pitching against the 2025 Yankees like 2009 Cliff Lee and the Yankees’ offense performing their annual postseason disappearing act, I’m most worried about Boone and what he’s capable of in the postseason.

Make that 1-5. Crochet pitched just like Lee, the offense didn’t show up and Boone did what he has done for eight years and seven postseasons: failed to put his players in the best possible position to succeed.

From the minute Boone filled out the lineup card until the very last out of the game, he blew every decision he had to make. Starting Grisham was foolish. Leaving Rice on the bench was idiotic. Pulling Fried against the bottom of the order was moronic. Inserting Jazz Chisholm into the game for defense instead of potential pinch-hit opportunity was shortsighted. Never letting Rice take a swing in the game was insane.

Every move Boone made, Cora was sitting there waiting to counter it. Boone pulled Fried, so Cora went to his bench against Weaver and Fernando Cruz. Boone didn’t start Rice, so Cora made sure he never got into the game by only using lefties. Boone put Chisholm into the game, so Cora made sure Chisholm didn’t get an at-bat against a righty. Cora knew if he tried to bridge Crochet to Aroldis Chapman with Garrett Whitlock that Rice would immediately hit, so he never allowed it. He was going to use Crochet for as long as he could and then go to Chapman and let those two decide the game. He wasn’t going to let Rice or Chisholm or any Yankees lefty bat decide the game against a righty.

I don’t know how many championships the Yankees would have since 2018 if Boone hade been the Red Sox’ manager and Cora the Yankees’ but I know it’s more than zero. Boone’s in-game management is always poor whether it’s late April or early August, and in the postseason when every decision is heightened, everyone can see just how bad he is at his job.

I like to say 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 many consecutive correct decisions, which is what it takes to win in October.

The Yankees can’t slug their way to wins in the postseason because there are no bad teams or bad pitchers in the postseason. And because they can’t slug their way to wins, they can’t outhit their manager or their bullpen. And because they can’t outhit their manager or their bullpen, managerial decisions and relief appearances become that much more important, and the Yankees failed to provide offense, make correct personnel decisions or get outs once Fried left the game.

For six months and 162 games the Yankees told us all that they are a team that beats up on bad teams, can’t beat good teams or hit great starting pitching, can’t properly strategize and can’t get outs from the bullpen and Yankees fans somehow thought the 48 hours from the end of the regular season to the start of the postseason would change their identity. Fans bought into their 11-2 finish to the regular season despite the Twins, Orioles and White Sox not being part of the postseason. Maybe now after 163 games everyone will believe the Yankees when they show they are nothing more than bullies who beat up on bad pitching on bad teams and nothing more.

It took one postseason game for the Yankees to be put on the brink of elimination. Maybe this season will serve as a lesson to the organization that all 162 games matter, as had they won one more game from March through September they would be waiting to find out who their opponent is on Saturday instead of potentially being three days into their offseason on Saturday.

Following the game, Boone was reminded that the team that has lost Game 1 in the Wild Card Series has never won the series. He got a big smirk on his face and with a sarcastic tone responded, “We’re going to show up tomorrow and I expect us to do pretty well,” as if this team or any team under him has ever proven to do anything other than lie down in a postseason series against a non-AL Central team.

Carlos Rodon gets the ball in Game 2 and will pitch to save the season. If he can’t save it, at least Max Fried will be well rested for Opening Day.

1. Here are facts that should be used to build the Yankees’ Game 1 lineup against Garrett Crochet:

• Paul Goldschmidt hasn’t hit lefties (or anyone) in months. He has one extra-base hit (a double) since August 26.
• Amed Rosario is 3-for-6 with a home run against Crochet, which is as good as it gets against the lefty. Rosario should get the most possible plate appearances until Crochet is removed and then he can be removed as well.
• Ryan McMahon hit .184/.271/.263 against lefties this season. All lefties. Not just Crochet. So if he put up a .534 OPS against lefties with bad lefties included, he can’t play against Crochet. It doesn’t matter how good his glove is or that Max Fried is on the mound. He’s unplayable against lefties.
• Ben Rice is 1-for-8 against Crochet with a double, which may not seem very good, but of the seven outs Rice has made against Crochet, none have been strikeouts. As a lefty, being able to put the ball in play every time against Crochet is impressive. He should be playing.
• Austin Wells homered and doubled off Crochet back in June at Yankee Stadium, so there’s the possibility of success for him against the dominant lefty. Because of the Red Sox’ potential running game, Wells has to play for defensive purposes.
• Jose Caballero had an .813 OPS against lefties this season. He has to play.
• Jazz Chisholm is a putrid matchup against Crochet, even before you factor in the hit by pitch Chisholm suffered on Saturday that kept him out of the lineup on Sunday.

2. Because of all these facts, this is the lineup I proposed for the Yankees for Game 1, knowing full well the actual lineup won’t come close to it:

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

This lineup may seem insane because I’m stacking three lefties in a row at the bottom of the order against Crochet, which sets up a magnificent lane for him to get outs, but the disparity in numbers for righties against him and lefties is so great that you need all righties at the top to get them the most plate appearances possible. (Righties have a .654 OPS against him and lefties have a .455 OPS against him.) Get the righties as many plate appearances against him as you can, and then remove them as you see fit. Trent Grisham for Rosario when a righty comes in. McMahon for Caballero or Volpe when a righty comes in. Goldschmidt for Rice for defense when Rice is guaranteed to not bat again.

3. Following the Yankees’ workout at the Yankee Stadium yesterday, it looks like Goldschmidt will be in the lineup, and that means he will likely bat leadoff. This is a problem because Goldschmidt hasn’t hit Crochet (2-for-15) and hasn’t hit anyone — lefties or righties — for months. The narrative he hits lefties well hasn’t been true for a while, and any positive stats he has against lefties are propped up by his early-season performance. Goldschmidt has been on a personal free fall since the beginning of May, and he’s not someone you want to be giving the most plate appearances in a game to at the top of the lineup.

4. The Red Sox’ lineup is full of guys who have never done this before. Here is the Red Sox’ postseason experience for position players:

Alex Bregman: 99 games and 434 plate appearances from 2017 through 2024
Nathaniel Lowe: 18 games and 75 plate appearances in 2020 and 2023
Trevor Story: Five games and 22 plate appearance in 2017 and 2018
Abraham Toro: One game and one plate appearance in 2020
Rob Refsnyder: One game and three plate appearances in 2015

So there’s Bregman, who has been a postseason staple since 2017, Lowe, who had one run two years ago, Story, who hasn’t been in the playoffs in seven years, Toro, who played in one game in front of an empty stadium, and Refsnyder, who last appeared in the playoffs as the starting second baseman for the Yankees in the 2015 wild-card game. Not one position player on the Red Sox played in the 2021 postseason for the Red Sox, which was the last time they played in the postseason.

5. Crochet has never pitched in the playoffs and neither has Game 2 starter Brayan Bello. Aroldis Chapman’s postseason career is defined by losing Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS and Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS for the Yankees.

The Red Sox are a roster of inexperienced postseason players and pitchers. The biggest games most of the roster has ever been involved in were the games this past week when they were trying to clinch a wild-card berth. That’s not to say they won’t play well in the postseason, it’s just that no one knows if they will or not because they have never done it before.

6. Then again, no one really knows if the Yankees will play well in it either. The only bat that can be trusted to show up is Giancarlo Stanton since he always shows up. He can’t be the only one to show up though because Juan Soto isn’t here to carry the club with him. Aaron Judge has to show up.

I keep hearing about how eventually Judge will have the kind of postseason run Alex Rodriguez had after years of struggling to duplicate his regular-season performance in the postseason. If not now, when?

7. The reason Judge is a 33-year-old future Hall of Famer and arguably the greatest right-handed hitter of all time without a championship to his name is because of himself. We know the Yankees go as Judge goes and when Judge doesn’t go, the Yankees don’t go. Look no further than this season:

From Opening Day through June 12, Judge hit .392/.488/.776 from and the Yankees went 42-25 and were atop the American League.

From June 13 through August 23, Judge hit .236/.378/.533 and the Yankees went 23-29 and for a moment fell out of a postseason spot.

From August 24 through the end of the season, Judge hit .349/.513/.743 and the Yankees went 25-8 and finished tied for the best record in the AL with the best run differential in the AL.

The fact that Judge could have a .911 OPS from June 13 through August 23 and the Yankees go 23-29 and fall down the standings is because the Yankees can’t afford for Judge to be just a superstar, he has to be an all-time great. That’s how this roster and lineup are constructed and have been for nearly his entire career. So again, if Judge hits, the Yankees win. If he doesn’t they lose. (Last season was the exception and not the rule because Soto was here to make up for Judge’s postseason shortcomings alongside Stanton.)

8. Judge is going to be put to the postseason test immediately in Game 1. Here are his plate appearances in order against Crochet this season:

Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Home run
Strikeout
Strikeout
Flyout
Strikeout
Strikeout
Home run

9. I haven’t written much yesterday or today about Fried because I expect him to pitch well because he has to pitch well. If he doesn’t then nothing else matters. If Fried goes out and has a 24-pitch first inning and the Red Sox have a two-run lead before the Yankees bat in the game then just pack up the bats and balls and try again on Wednesday in Game 2. The career 5.10 postseason ERA version of Fried can’t show up. He needs to go out and set the tone and have a clean first inning and give the top of the order a chance to put the pressure on the Red Sox. This type of game is why the Yankees signed Fried and because of that he should be expected to go out there and either best or match Crochet.

10. I’m nervous. How can you not be if you’re a Yankees fan? When I sit down in my seat at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night I will feel the type of feel only postseason baseball can bring out in baseball fans. I expect the Yankees to win this series because I don’t want to envision this series ending any other way. At the end of today, the Yankees will either be playing for their season tomorrow or playing tomorrow to play on Saturday. It better be the latter because I can’t handle the former.

1. The Yankees are the best team in the American League, but they didn’t play like the best team in the AL from mid-June to mid-August and it cost them the division. During those two months, they lost series to the Angels, Reds, Mets, Marlins, Rangers and Astros and went 1-6 against the Red Sox and 1-6 against the Blue Jays. They kept DJ LeMahieu on the roster and played him at second base over Jazz Chisholm, let Devin Williams blow games at a 2024 Clay Holmes-like pace and allowed Anthony Volpe to play every day as arguably the worst everyday hitter in the league for a third straight year. That’s why the Yankees lost the division, not because of anything that happened on Sunday.

The Yankees have no one to blame other than themselves for having to play a best-of-3 against their worst possible matchup this week. Not the Rays, who sat their three best hitters in Game 162 on Sunday with the Yankees needing them to win to win the division. Not the Tigers, who sat their best players as well with the Yankees needing them to win to avoid the Red Sox. The Yankees did this to themselves when they started the season 2-8 against the Red Sox and when they got swept in a four-game series in Toronto during the first week of July.

Even though the Blue Jays kept the Yankees in the division race until the last game of the season, and even though the Tigers had a chance to win the second wild card over the Red Sox, in the end, it’s Yankees-Red Sox, the scenario we all figured it would be for the last nearly three months. The worst-case scenario.

2. If the Yankees had to play the Red Sox in a best-of-5, my confidence would be much greater than it is now. If they had to play them in a best-of-7, my confidence would be through the roof. But in a three-game series? I don’t know if there is any measurable confidence in this situation.

That’s not because the Yankees are an inferior team. Quite the opposite. When they’re not beating themselves, the Yankees are a much better team than the Red Sox, especially with Rafael Devers in San Francisco and Roman Anthony on the injured list. The difference is the Red Sox have Garrett Crochet and the Yankees don’t.

3. Crochet made four starts this season against the Yankees and the Red Sox won all of them. In 27 1/3 innings against the Yankees, Crochet allowed just four walks to 39 strikeouts. The Yankees hit .200/.231/.370 against him for a .601 OPS. J.C. Escarra had a .629 OPS this season, so Crochet turned the Yankees collectively into a worse hitter than Escarra.

If Crochet goes out and dominates the Yankees like he just did the Blue Jays in his final start of the season with eight scoreless innings, the Yankees will face elimination in Game 2 with Carlos Rodon pitching for their season. Rodon may have had a great year, leading the league in hits per nine innings with a measly 6.1, but I have seen enough Rodon over three years to know I don’t want him on the mound with the season on the line.

4. Enter, Max Fried. Fried was signed to win the exact game he will start on Tuesday, and he has to be as good as Crochet on Tuesday for as long as Crochet. Rob Refsnyder and Connor Wong can’t be hitting doubles down the left-field line against Fried. He has to be at his absolute best to avoid needing to trust the emotionally-unstable-on-the-mound Rodon to save the season on Wednesday.

5. Two weeks ago, the Yankees lost to Crochet at Fenway Park, and in that game, Aaron Boone had Austin Slater bat leadoff. Slater repaid him by going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. Slater is 3-for-25 with a .240 OPS as a Yankee. He’s not a major-league player, let alone someone who should be on the postseason roster or playing in a postseason game. In Crochet’s other starts, Jasson Dominguez, DJ LeMahieu, Oswald Peraza and Pablo Reyes started games. The former doesn’t get to play anymore and the latter three aren’t even on the team. But it’s not like the Yankees’ regulars hit Crochet. No one hits Crochet.

After looking at every Yankees individual plate appearances against Crochet this season, this is the lineup I believe would give them the best chance to win on Tuesday:

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

This lineup may seem insane because I’m stacking three lefties in a row at the bottom of the order against Crochet, which sets up a magnificent lane for him to get outs, but the disparity in numbers for righties against him and lefties is so great that you need all righties at the top to get them the most at-bats possible. (Righties have a .654 OPS against him and lefties have a .455 OPS against him.) Get the righties as many at-bats against him as you can, and then remove them as you see fit. Trent Grisham for Rosario when a righty comes in. Ryan McMahon for Caballero or Volpe when a righty comes in. Paul Goldschmidt for Rice for defense when Rice is guaranteed to not have another at-bat.

I’m willing to bat three lefties in order against Crochet because Rice has never struck out in eight at-bats against him and has a double. Seven groundouts in eight at-bats with a double and no strikeouts is impressive against Crochet. Maybe Chisholm can work a walk and use his legs or go the other way for a single and not think he’s going to plant one in the second deck off Crochet? And Wells has a home run and double off Crochet, so the ability to get to him is there.

I realize the Yankees would never use this lineup. It makes too much sense for an organization and front office that started Kevin Brown in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS and used Deivi Garcia as an opener and J.A. Happ as a bulk reliever n Game 2 of the 2022 ALDS. Instead, Boone will bat Goldschmidt at the top of the order (despite the narrative Goldschmidt hits lefties well being untrue for months now) and use lefty-right alternation throughout the bottom half and Crochet will carve them up just like he did twice in June, once in August and once in September.

6. There are two ways to beat Crochet: multi-run home runs or working the count. The first is extremely hard to count on, but Crochet can be prone to the long ball. Run into a three-run home and you can win Game 1. Try to string together walks and singles and you will be playing for your season on Wednesday. Because planning for or counting on home runs isn’t wise, the Yankees’ best course of action is to tire Crochet, get his pitch count up and hope he’s out after six innings. Crochet had a 3.55 ERA in September, which was his highest ERA for a month this season and after leading the league in innings and strikeouts, there has to be some level of fatigue involved. Here are Crochet’s innings by season:

2021: 54.1
2022: 0
2023: 12.2
2024: 146.0
2025: 205.1

That’s quite the year-over-year jump since he missed all of 2022 due to injury. This is the farthest into a season Crochet has ever pitched and this will be the biggest game he has ever pitched. He wouldn’t be the first all-world starter to poop his pants in his first taste of the postseason.

7. Fried knows a lot about pooping his pants in the postseason with a 5.10 ERA in 67 postseason innings. His postseason history was my single-biggest when the Yankees signed him. I hope he’s past it. He knows what to expect on Tuesday, having pitched (and pitched well) in a World Series clincher. The moment won’t be too big for him, and if he’s locating, he should have no problem going through the weak Red Sox lineup.

8. The Yankees lineup producing in the postseason 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 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: .205/.318/.450

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. Unfortunately, he’s not the only Yankee whose postseason OPS is nowhere near their regular-season OPS, and not in a good way as the only two Yankees who have a higher postseason OPS than regular-season OPS are Stanton and Volpe. They are the two hitters on the Yankees I trust most going into the postseason because Stanton always shows up and Volpe will do enough to make everyone think 2026 will be his year and then he will go on to post a .680 OPS while playing every day next season.

9. Then there’s the managerial mismatch between Boone and Alex Cora. Boone is 1-4 in the postseason against Cora and after being worried about Crochet pitching against the 2025 Yankees like 2009 Cliff Lee and the Yankees’ offense performing their annual postseason disappearing act, I’m most worried about Boone and what he’s capable of in the postseason.

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 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 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 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.

Last year, his decision to have Nestor Cortes face Freddie Freeman will be part of postseason promos and lore for as long as baseball is played.

The Boone Yankees are 22-23 in the postseason. His Yankees have never won a series against a non-AL Central team. A lot of it is because of the offense’s annual disappearing act, but Boone hasn’t done anything to elevate the chances of his previous six postseason teams. If anything, he has hindered their chances of winning.

I like to say 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 many consecutive correct decisions, which is what it takes to win 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. “The top of the mountain” as he likes to say. Just win for the first time in his eight-year tenure and the first time in 15 years for the franchise, so I can stop dreaming about the day he’s no longer employed by the team.

10. The only way for Boone and every Yankee other than Bellinger and Fried to do what they have never done is to now do what they couldn’t do over the last six months: beat the Red Sox and Blue Jays. The reason the Yankees are playing their first postseason game on Tuesday instead of Saturday is because they couldn’t beat the Red Sox and Blue Jays. They’re only guaranteed Tuesday and Wednesday as of now. To get to Saturday they’ll have to make the best of the worst-case scenario they created for themselves.

1. Sometimes I think about what kind of record the Yankees would have annually if they were a part of the AL Central. It seems unfair the Central gets an automatic postseason bid. It seems ridiculous the Tigers and Guardians both only have 86 wins at the moment when they play 39 games against the Royals, Twins and White Sox.

2. The White Sox played like the 101-loss team they are this week in the Bronx and the Yankees finished the regular season 6-1 against them. Add in the 6-0 record against the Royals and 4-2 against the Twins and the Yankees went 16-3 against the Central’s three-worst teams.

3. The Yankees’ postseason situation is no more clear today than it was before the White Sox series. If anything, it’s more confusing. The Yankees could finish as the first wild card or they could finish with the best record in the AL. They could host the Red Sox on Tuesday in a best-of-3 or the Guardians or the Tigers or the Astros. They could not play at all on Tuesday and host the winner of the AL Central-third wild-card team next Saturday in Game 1 of the ALDS at Yankee Stadium. The possibilities are seemingly endless for when the Yankees will play next week and who they will play against. I have given up trying to figure out who to root for this weekend other than to root for the Yankees and against the Blue Jays and Red Sox. But maybe not too hard against the Red Sox, since you want them to not be the Yankees’ wild-card opponent, but you also want to make sure they end up in whichever side of the bracket the Yankees aren’t in.

4. I still don’t feel good about rooting for the Red Sox from Tuesday through Thursday against the Blue Jays, and if the Yankees are unable to pull off the division comeback and end up playing the Red Sox in the wild-card series next week I will feel worse about it. As I have written of late, the Red Sox in a three-game series are the only team I fear in the AL playoffs. The Yankees against any other team in a best-of-3, best-of-5 or best-of-7 would have me confident in the Yankees advancing in every scenario.

The dream scenario for the next week is the following:

The Yankees win the division and finish with the best record in the AL … and … the Blue Jays and Red Sox play in the ALDS and go the full three games with the Blue Jays winning the series … and … the Guardians and Tigers play in the ALDS and go the full three gams with the Guardians winning the series.

5. Those results would set up the two ALDS to be the Yankees against the Guardians and the Mariners against the Blue Jays. The Yankees would draw the best possible opponent in the entire AL field in the ALDS and then either play a Mariners team they went 5-1 against this season (and swept at a point in the season when they couldn’t beat anyone) or a Blue Jays team that has lost seven of nine to give the Yankees division life, is without Bo Bichette, has a weak rotation and a bad bullpen and employs one of the few managers who makes me appreciate Aaron Boone.

6. As of this moment the Yankees are the best team in the AL. They are the healthiest of the field with the deepest rotation and best overall roster. That doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t lose or that they won’t be eliminated in two games if they end up in the wild-card series. Anything can happen in a short series and when you have the baserunning and defensive history of these Yankees coupled with their bullpen trust issues and a manager who has shown no signs of progress in eight years, it’s easy to see how their season could be over a week from now. But it’s just as easy to see them returning to the World Series for the second straight year.

7. The only playoff scenario that worries me is the Yankees facing the Red Sox in the wild-card series. That’s it. Give me the Red Sox in the ALDS or ALCS and I will feel completely confident. If the Yankees aren’t eliminated in the wild-card series by the Red Sox then I don’t think they have a chance at elimination until the World Series.

8. If the Yankees play and lose to the Red Sox in the wild-card series it will hurt as bad as any postseason elimination in my lifetime because it will come at the hands of the Red Sox and because of how weak the AL field is. Having to think about what could have been all offseason had the Yankees managed or played with even a hint of urgency from mid June to mid August will be depressing. If the Yankees lose the division it will be hard not to think about every runner left on third with one out, every leadoff double stranded, every Devin Williams meltdown, every nonsensical Boone decision or the 17 games that were started by Marcus Stroman, Carlos Carrasco, Ian Hamilton and Allan Winans. If the Yankees don’t end up as the 2025 AL East champions it will be because they blew it, not because the Blue Jays won it.

9. Even with the same 90-68 record as the Blue Jays, it’s unlikely the Yankees win the division this weekend. They still need to win one more game than the Blue Jays do and facing the Orioles’ best three starters in Trevor Rogers, Tomoyuki Sugano and Kyle Bradish won’t be easy considering Rogers and Bradish thoroughly dominated the Yankees last weekend. With Max Fried and Carlos Rodon done for the regular season, the Yankees will have to win the division against two of the best starters in the league with their 3-4-5 starters. Yankees fans need to hope the Orioles offense spends the last weekend of the season in Manhattan as one would spend a weekend in Manhattan before embarking on a four-plus month vacation. The offseason awaits the Orioles on Sunday around 6 p.m. and they should get the party started by taking advantage of the city’s favorable 4 a.m. bar closures.

10. Give me Yankees wins and Blue Jays losses on Friday and Saturday and the Mariners having one less win than the Yankees at the end of play on Saturday. That would give the Yankees the East and the best record in the AL and it would make Game 163 on Sunday meaningless. Give me one meaningless day from this stressful season before the real season begins. Is that too much to ask?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Please don’t let Slater lead off.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Here are my current Bullpen Trust Rankings:

David Bednar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. On Saturday, Jazz Chisholm called the Yankees “the best team in the league.” Well, that’s not all Chisholm said. He also added, “Any team that thinks they’re better than us, they should know that when we step on the field, we’re coming with relentlessness. We’re coming to step on necks. We’re not here to play around.”

Ah yes, the relentless Yankees, who went to Minnesota and got two-hit, while striking out 14 times in a 7-0 loss on Monday. “The best team in the league” with the third-best record in the American League and the seventh-best record in the majors. (Chisholm is 0-for-8 with three strikeouts since his outrageous comments on Saturday. He also couldn’t complete a double play that led to the Twins’ first run on Monday.)

2. While the Yankees were getting blown out by the 18-games-under-.500 Twins, the Blue Jays staged yet another late-game comeback against the Rays and won in extra innings. If you didn’t think the division was over after Sunday with the Yankees falling to four games back in the loss column (and five overall), well, it’s definitely over now at five games back (and six overall) with 12 games to play.

3. Since Chisholm gave his latest take on the 2025 Yankees, the team is 0-2 after losing on Monday. Not only did the Yankees lose, they were dominated. Simeon Woods Richardson provided his longest start since June 21 and recorded a career-high 11 strikeouts. He entered the game with a 4.85 ERA.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” Ryan McMahon said. “I think a lot of guys think that we should have been a lot better tonight, but you got to tip your cap sometimes.”

Yes, sometimes you have to tip your cap, like when you’re facing Garrett Crochet like the Yankees did and lost to on Sunday. But Woods Richardson? In a playoff race? There’s no time or excuse to be tipping your cap to fringe major leaguers in Game 150 of the season.

4. It was the first time in franchise history the Yankees’ offense had a two-game span in the regular season with at least 30 strikeouts and fewer than 10 hits (stat from Katie Sharp). “Best team in the league,” indeed!

Here is how the Yankees’ 14 strikeouts on Monday were dispersed: Giancarlo Stanton 4, Cody Bellinger 2, Jazz Chisholm 2, Ryan McMahon 2, Trent Grisham 1, Paul Goldschmidt 1, Austin Wells 1 and Ben Rice 1.

The Yankees were two-hit by the Twins. Two hits against Woods Richardson and no hits against the very hittable bullpen trio of Kody Funderburk, Travis Adams and Pierson Ohl. The Yankees have now lost their last two games to the Twins.

5. Carlos Rodon was fine (6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR), but Luke Weaver wasn’t. Weaver was blasted for five earned runs on three hits and two walks, while only recording one out. All three hits were doubles. In September, Weaver has allowed earned runs in four of six games, pitching to this line: 3.2 IP, 12 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 2 HR, 24.52 ERA, 4.087. WHIP. It’s possible that between Weaver’s last month and Fernando Cruz’s latest issue with home runs that Devin Williams is somehow the team’s best non-David Bednar reliever. The postseason should be fun.

“That was trash,” Weaver said of his performance. (I’m sure Aaron Boone thought his stuff looked good.) “Felt like I was fighting myself the whole time.”

6. Trent Grisham went 1-for-the Blue Jays series, 1-for-the Tigers series and 0-for-the Red Sox series. Not great. Maybe Grisham will show up for this series, considering he’s being given the most plate appearance opportunities of anyone on the team by batting leadoff every game.

7. After going 0-for-7 with six strikeouts against the Red Sox, Austin Wells was right back in the lineup going 0-for-3 with another strikeout on Monday. His OPS is back under .700 at .699.

8. I need this lineup against righties until the Yankees’ postseason spot has been finalized:

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

And this lineup against lefties:

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

9. The three-game lead the Yankees took in the loss column over the Red Sox on Saturday for the first wild-card spot is now back down to one. In two days the Yankees have erased everything they earned on Friday and Saturday. The Yankees can’t tie the Red Sox with the same record because the Red Sox own the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Here is the Yankees’ remaining schedule: Twins (2), Orioles (4), White Sox (3), Orioles (3)

Here is the Red Sox’ remaining schedule: A’s (3), Rays (3), Blue Jays (3), Tigers (3)

(Maybe none of this end up mattering and the Yankees host the Astros or Mariners in the wild-card series or go to Houston or Seattle for the wild-card series.)

10. The Yankees better have gotten their effortless, no-show performance for the series out of their system on Monday because they need to win on Tuesday and Wednesday with the Red Sox hosting the A’s. The Yankees have the starting pitching advantage in both games. They have the offensive advantage and bullpen advantage. The Yankees are a far superior team to the Twins and they better act like it and play like it the next two nights or they will be setting themselves up to go on the road for the wild-card series.

1. The Yankees did enough on their end over the weekend at Fenway Park by winning two of three, but the Blue Jays swept the Orioles to end the division race. The Yankees are four games back in the loss column and five overall because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, and with 13 games to play, the AL East is no longer a possible postseason path for the team Jazz Chisholm called “the best team in the league” after Saturday’s win.

2. The Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1 on Friday and 5-3 on Saturday with their old “Score early and then hang on for dear life” formula. It was enough to create three games of separation in the loss column for the first wild card, but that lead was cut to two after Will Warren pooped his pants with yet another first-inning meltdown and the Yankees lost 6-4 on Sunday.

3. We all know Chisholm talks too much and rarely ever backs it up, so it came as no surprise that he decided to give his latest “the Yankees are the best” rant a night before Warren would oppose Garrett Crochet.

On June 25, after salvaging the third game of a series Cincinnati, Chisholm said, “I feel like we got a great team and I feel like we’re going to make the World Series again.” At the time the Yankees had lost nine of 12 and after that win they would lose 22 of their next 39.

Three weeks ago after beating up on the AL-worst White Sox, Chisholm said, “We want to win the division. Right now, it’s just like, we’re going to go out there and win that and then we’re going to go and win the World Series.”

Then on Saturday, he said, “We’re the best team in the league. Any team that thinks they’re better than us, they should know that when we step on the field, we’re coming with relentlessness. We’re coming to step on necks. We’re not here to play around.”

So in the three instances in which Chisholm ran his mouth this year, the Yankees went on to lose 22 of 39, lost a fourth game to Crochet this season and are now out of the division race. And who could forget when Chisholm called the Royals’ ALDS Game 2 win “lucky” in the postseason, while Chisholm went 2-for-15 in the ALDS, 3-for-19 in the ALCS and 5-for-21 in the World Series.

4. As long as the Yankees’ postseason position is unknown, if Anthony Volpe starts another game this season at shortstop over Jose Caballero, I will actively root against the Yankees. After going 3-for-6 with a walk and two stolen bases in the second and third games of the Tigers series, Caballero had two doubles, a home run and another stolen base against the Red Sox. Caballero is a tough at-bat at the plate, a menace on the bases and surehanded in the field. He does everything better than Volpe and if Volpe plays again in a meaningful game or in the postseason, I will have to go against the Yankees.

5. Austin Wells better never commit catcher’s interference or allow a passed ball or a stolen base because he needs to be the best defensive catcher in the game to justify his bat. Wells went 0-for-7 with a walk and six strikeouts against the Red Sox and is down to .210/.267/.437 on the season. We know he can’t hit postseason pitching since we watched him go down swinging on elevated fastballs in each round last year, so if he’s going to play (and he is) then he better be amazing behind the plate.

6. I criticize Aaron Judge for his performance in big games, and rightfully so, but he was awesome over the weekend: 5-for-10 with two home runs and four walks. Hopefully this is Judge returning to his pre-mid-June-Royals-series self since that version of Judge hit. 394/.490/.779 in 66 games before Aaron Boone gave him his only non-injured list day off of the season. Since Boone’s lineup decision, Judge has hit .258/.412/.575 in 74 games. The .987 OPS Judge has in the lsat 74 games of his “slump” would be the third-best OPS in the majors this season. But when you build an offense reliant on your star needing to be an all-time, historic great and not just Hall-of-Fame great like Brian Cashman has then the Yankees can’t afford to have Judge being anything less than one of the best right-handed hitters in history.

7. I don’t know if Luis Gil’s six no-hit innings on Friday were the most painful six no-hit innings of all time, but they have to be up there. Gil had runners on all game because of his lack of control with four walks and added in a balk and two wild pitches and somehow came away from the game unscathed: 6 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 4 K. Gil’s ERA is down to 2.83 in eight starts this season despite having put 58 runners on in 41 1/3 innings.

8. The Yankees will likely have to overpay for Cody Bellinger to re-sign him and the end of whatever deal he gets will likely be ugly like all free-agent contracts end up being, but the Yankees have no choice but to sign Bellinger. His RBI double off of Aroldis Chapman in the ninth inning on Saturday was one of the biggest hits of the season and it seems like Bellinger always comes through when needed, whether it’s at the plate or in the field. His ability to hit left-handed pitching like he’s Hideki Matusi and his versatility to play over the outfield and at first base makes him so valuable to the Yankees. Here’s to Bellinger being a Yankee for the rest of his career.

9. The 12-game gauntlet against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox is over and the Yankees finished 7-5. I wrote two weeks ago they needed to do no worse than 6-6 and they played one game better. It was the first time this season the team exceeded expectations. Unfortunately because the Blue Jays seemingly come back in the late innings every day the division race is over, so now the Yankees need to ensure they have home-field advantage in the best-of-3 wild-card series.

Sunday’s game was a glimpse into what could happen in said best-of-3. Face and lose to Crochet in Game 1 and you’re facing elimination immediately in Game 2. The Yankees didn’t miss Crochet in any of their four series this season against the Red Sox and went 0-4 in games he started. His 2025 line against them: 27.1 IP, 20 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 4 BB, 39 K, 5 HR, 3.29 ERA, 0.878 WHIP. The home run ball was their saving grace against him like it has been in nearly all of their wins this season, and it still wasn’t enough to win any of the games he started. Add in that they went 1-2 in games started by Brayan Bello and you’re looking at a 1-6 record in games against the starting pitchers the Red Sox will use in Games 1 and 2 of the wild-card series.

10. The Yankees need to use the glorious schedule they have over the last 13 games to stack wins and make sure they are playing at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, Sept. 30. They already pissed away a once-eight-game lead over the Blue Jays to lose the division. They can’t lose the first wild-card spot too.

1. No one beats up on bad pitching like the Bronx Bullies and when A.J. Hinch decided to use Sawyer Gipson-Long as his bulk reliever in a bullpen game on Thursday, the actual game became a formality as the Yankees blew out the Tigers 9-3 after getting blown out themselves on Tuesday and Wednesday.

2. Aaron Judge went 3-for-4 with two home runs, Giancarlo Stanton homered, Ben Rice had two doubles, Jazz Chisholm, Paul Goldschmidt and Jose Caballero each had a pair of hits and Austin Slater and Cody Bellinger each added a hit as well. Nine runs on 14 hits and five walks with seven of the runs coming in 2 1/3 innings against Gipson-Long.

3. Once Gipson-Long was removed the game, the Yankees didn’t score again. That’s unsurprising because after Gipson-Long was removed, Hinch went to his actual major-league-quality relievers as they all needed work because they weren’t needed in the first two games of the series. So nine runs against a bad, left-handed opener and an even worse bulk reliever, and then no runs over 5 2/3 innings against actual major-league-relievers.

4. Cam Schlittler bounced back from his career-worst start last Friday against the Blue Jays by holding the Tigers to one run over six innings with seven strikeouts. Max Fried and Carlos Rodon will undoubtedly be the Game 1 and 2 starters for the Yankees in the playoffs, but I would have to think Schlittler would be in line for Game 3. I get that Luis Gil has more experience, but Schlittler has been better than him this season and until Gil gets his walk issue under control, he can’t be used in a postseason setting unless a fourth starter is needed, and even then, it’s uncertain if he would be the fourth option.

5. I don’t know what to make of the Anthony Volpe labrum and cortisone shot news. I think it’s convenient for all of this to leak and then be announced by the Yankees after the leak considering it’s obvious Volpe is no longer the starting shortstop for the 2025 Yankees. It’s possible the injury has led to a third straight bad season to open Volpe’s career, but he was exactly as bad in 2023 and 2024 as he has been in 2025, so it’s hard to pin his awful 2025 on just this. It’s not like he was an All-Star the last two years and drastically regressed and therefore a labrum tear that grew worse could be the reason why. He’s always been bad, but now the Yankees have a real excuse for why he’s bad. Expect the Yankees to tell you about the labrum and cortisone shot with every opportunity they get to speak about Volpe from now through end of this season and throughout the offseason and in spring training and through next season. Caballero will be the starting shortstop for as long as this season goes, and then come 2026, It will be right back to Volpe with no competition or accountability needed.

6. I thought the Yankees needed to go 6-6 in these 12 games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox and so far they are 5-4 with three to go. The three to go will be the hardest of the 12 given the setting, the opposing starting pitchers (at least on Saturday and Sunday) and what’s at stake.

7. This weekend will be the fourth and final time the Yankees and Red Sox play this season. Here is how the two teams spent the day before the start of each series against each other this season.

Thursday, June 5 (day before three-game series at Yankee Stadium)
Yankees play night game in New York
Red Sox have day off after finishing home series on Wednesday

Thursday, June 12 (day before three-game series at Fenway Park)
Yankees play night game in Kansas City
Red Sox have day off after finishing home series on Wednesday

Wednesday, August 20 (day before four-game series at Yankees Stadium)
Yankees play night game in Tampa
Red Sox have day off after finishing home series on Tuesday

Thursday, Sept. 11 (day before three-game series at Fenway Park)
Yankees play night game in New York
Red Sox have day off after finishing West Coast trip on Wednesday

So for all four Yankees-Red Sox series this season, the Yankees played a game the day before playing the Red Sox, and not just a game but a night game in all four instances, while the Red Sox had the day completely off all four times.

That’s not an excuse for why the Yankees are 2-8 against the Red Sox this season, it’s just an observation. The Red Sox have been able to rest and reset their bullpen for crucial games against the team they are fighting for postseason position against, while the Yankees have had roughly 20 hours between the end of their most recent game and the first game of each series against the Red Sox.

8. My path to winning the division from August 30 is still on track and this weekend presents the last difficult challenge for the Yankees to pulling it off: three games against the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Not just three games to keep them in the division race, but three games to potentially decide where the best-of-3 wild-card series will be played if the Yankees don’t pull off the division win. And two of the three games will be started by Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello and the Red Sox are 5-0 in games started by that duo against the Yankees this season.

9. When I first put together a path to the division for the Yankees two weeks ago, I said they needed to go at least 6-6 against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox, and so far they are 5-4. But I also said the Blue Jays had to go 4-5 against the Reds, Astros and Orioles, and so far they have gone 4-2. It’s highly unlikely the Orioles sweep the Blue Jays this weekend, so if the Blue Jays go 2-1 against them, the Yankees need to go no worse than 2-1 against the Red Sox. The Yankees can’t lose a game in the standings this weekend. They either need to stay where they or pick up ground. If the Yankees manage to come out of this weekend two games back in the loss column (which would really be three games back because of the tiebreaker) then I believe they will win the division. If they come out of the weekend still three back in the loss column, it will be very hard for them to win the division and if they come out four or more games back then the division is over.

10. It’s never been more “right in of them” for the Yankees this season than it is now. They could do to the Red Sox what the Red Sox have done to them all season and put themselves in a commanding lead for the first wild card while also putting immense pressure on the Blue Jays for the division, or they could play the way they have all year against the Red Sox and piss away the first wild card and eliminate themselves from the division. This weekend is the most important of the season and by the end of it we will likely know which round of the playoffs the Yankees will open in.

1. Remember when the Yankees won back-to-back series against the Astros and Blue Jays and had everyone thinking they were finally capable of beating good teams and no longer reliant on beating the crap out of bad teams? That was fun for the day it lasted.

The good mood the Yankees had all fans in on Monday’s day off has been erased. The Tigers showed up in the Bronx, overcame a two-run deficit on Tuesday en route to a 12-2 win and then humiliated the Yankees for a second straight night on Wednesday with an 11-1 win. The Yankees are 1-4 against the Tigers this season, having been outscored 37-9, and Tarik Skubal only started one of those five games. They are 11-23 against the Tigers, Blue Jays, Red Sox and Astros.

2. Three solo home runs in 18 innings. That’s what the Yankees offense has provided against the Tigers this week. But as Buck Martinez said when he shit on the Yankees during the Blue Jays’ game on Tuesday, the only way the Yankees win is if they hit home runs. It’s hard to win when you rely solely on home runs and solo home runs aren’t going to cut it on their own, certainly not just three of them over two full games.

It’s also hard to win when your bullpen is a complete joke. The Yankees have one trustworthy reliever in David Bednar, and that’s it. Luke Weaver has turned back into pre-2024 Luke Weaver and Fernando Cruz is either lights out or a mess with no middle ground. Bednar stands alone and he only pitches in save situations.

Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. combined to allow nine earned runs without recording an out in the seventh inning on Tuesday after Will Warren blew a 2-0 lead by allowing a game-tying two-run home run to Parker Meadows and his .568 OPS.

When asked about the seventh-inning bullpen implosion, Aaron Boone answered, “It happens.” No, Boone, it doesn’t. In fact, it was the first time in franchise history two relievers allowed four-plus earned runs without recording an out in the game.

To make matters worse, the Blue Jays came back to walk off the Astros and drop the Yankees to three games back in the loss column and four games overall again.

3. Tuesday’s loss was depressing. Wednesday’s loss was demoralizing. The offense took the night off against Jack Flaherty and his 4.85 ERA, gave lazy and effortless at-bat after at-bat and struck out 13 times in the game with the one run coming on an eighth-inning solo home run from Austin Wells.

4. Carlos Rodon couldn’t get through the bottom of the order in the fifth, loaded the bases for Gleyber Torres and had to throw Torres a strike when the count ran full and Torres lined a two-run single to center. Of course it was going to be Torres at some point during this series since that’s the way the Law of Ex-Yankees works. 2024 Yankee Jahmai Jones had a hit in the game as well and I’m expecting Tommy Kahnle to close out a win for the Tigers on Thursday to complete the trifecta.

5. The Yankees were still in the game down 2-0 in the fifth and sixth and down 3-0 in the seventh. Well, they were “still in the game” but every Yankees fan who watches this team every day knows they weren’t really in the game and weren’t going to come back and win. That’s not who they are. The Yankees’ only path to winning is to jump out to an early lead and then spend the rest of the game hanging on for dear life to that lead. They did it on Sunday and Saturday and Thursday and Wednesday.

6. The Tigers blew the doors off the bullpen with nine runs in the final three innings, including five in the eighth. They scored a run off Leiter Jr., three off Camilo Doval, two off Tim Hill and three off Weaver. The only Yankees reliever to not allow a run was outfielder Austin Slater who got two outs without allowing a run in the ninth. I don’t know if it’s worse that Slater was the Yankees’ best reliever or that Slater was used to pitch in Game 145 of the season with a playoff berth on the line because the Yankees were getting blown out so badly.

7. After going 3-for-the Astros series and 2-for-the Blue Jays series, Aaron Judge is 1-for-the Tigers series. Judge is 6-for-26 in September against the three teams with five singles and a solo home run. When Tuesday’s game was tied at 2 in the sixth, Judge struck out. After Trent Grisham led off Wednesday’s game with a single, Judge struck out. With the game tied at 0 in the third inning on Wednesday and runners on first and second with one out, Judge hit into a double play. With the Yankees trailing by two in the sixth on Wednesday and the tying run on base, Judge hit into another double play. Every game is a big game for the Yankees and Judge has a .740 OPS in September. I wish I were surprised, but I’m used to this level of performance from Judge in big games.

8. Someone else is going to have to step up and carry the offense, whether that’s Giancarlo Stanton getting hot again or Cody Bellinger. It would be nice if the offense as a whole could collectively produce, but we all know that’s only going to happen against last-place teams. So for now I will just hope the Yankees can keep games close enough for Grisham to hit a game-tying, go-ahead or walk-off home run since that seems to be the offensive strategy.

9. The Blue Jays and Red Sox both lost on Wednesday, so the Yankees missed a huge opportunity to make up ground on the Blue Jays and create more separation from the Red Sox. Lance Berkman used to go to the plate with the mindset he was going to make an out, so that when he didn’t he was pleasantly surprised, and that’s how I’m treating the playoff standings. I’m mentally preparing for the Yankees finishing as the second wild card and going on the road to Fenway Park for a best-of-3 in what will end with a humiliating series loss to Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello. That way if the Yankees somehow win the division despite being four back with 19 games to play or finish with the top wild-card spot or don’t play Boston in a best-of-3 I’m pleasantly surprised.

10. I think we all know how this season is going to end. I have desperately tried to talk myself into it not ending in a similar fashion to the last 15 seasons, but the last two nights were the latest reminder of who these Yankees are in the biggest of games against the best of opponents and how their big-name and highest-paid players perform in the biggest of games against the best of opponents. I would like to think they still have an opportunity to change my mind over the next two-and-a-half weeks, but they have been showing us and telling us who they are for 143 games and 88 percent of the season. Thinking or believing they are going to completely change their identity from here on out beginning on Thursday night is the kind of delusional, fairytale mindset Boone lives by. I wish for once Boone would be right and everything would be right in front of them, but nearly every day and every game the Yankees remind you why it’s not.

1. I was disgusted when I left the Stadium on Friday night following a putrid 7-1 loss. Cam Schlittler couldn’t put anyone away as he needed 66 pitches to get five outs and the offense provided one hit (a Giancarlo Stanton solo home run) through the first six innings.

Prior to the series-opening game, I wrote: That’s not to say Schlittler may not overthrow on Friday night. It’s going to be a loud crowd at the Stadium for the series opener with nice weather expected, the Blue Jays in town and the division on the line. If Schlittler stays composed and throws strikes, he will be just fine and the Yankees will be just fine.

Schlittler wasn’t fine. He laid his first egg and turned in his worst outing in 10 career starts, allowing more than three earned runs for the first time as well. He put eight runners on in 1 2/3 innings and the Blue Jays fouled off pitch after pitch after pitch, tiring Schlittler out until they got something to barrel. It was startling to see him struggle given how good he’s been. Maybe it was the Blue Jays seeing him for a second time this season or maybe it was what I feared in him pitching in the most important game of his career to date. Whatever it was, it was a disaster and the Yankees fell to four back in the loss column in the division.

2. Things went much better on Saturday as the Yankees won 3-1 with a nearly-two-hour rain delay mixed in.

Luis Gil continued his 2025 escape act as he walked four in six innings but managed to hold the Blue Jays to just one run thanks to Cody Bellinger throwing out Bo Bichette at home to end the sixth right before the tarp came out.

The Yankees took an early lead in that one thanks to a second-inning walk, error, single and sacrifice fly sequence and added a third run after the rain delay on another sacrifice fly. Both sac flies came off the bat of Austin Wells, who leads the majors with 11.

Luke Weaver, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar combined to throw three scoreless innings and pull the Yankees once again within three of the Blue Jays in the loss column.

3. On Sunday, the game started out beautifully with Max Fried retiring George Springer, David Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on eight pitches followed by a Ben Rice three-run home run off of Max Scherzer in the bottom of the first (which was apparently the product of Scherzer tipping his pitches). Maybe the Yankees would win a laugher against a good opponent, blow out the Blue Jays and let Paul Blackburn eat up innings at the end of the game so the bullpen could get an extra day of rest with Monday’s scheduled day off? Maybe not.

The Blue Jays immediately fought back. Alejandro Kirk walked to lead off the second and Ernie Clement doubled. With runners on second and third and one out, Fried got old friend Isiah Kiner-Falefa to hit a ground ball to short. It was hit far enough in the hole that it would score one run, but Anthony Volpe couldn’t even knock it down or get his glove on it to prevent a second run from scoring.

Leading 3-2 in the third, Fried gave up a leadoff double to Springer and then Schneider reached on a throwing error from Volpe as the “fucking elite” shortstop continues to dazzle in the field. Guerrero doubled in Springer to tie the game at 3. Cody Bellinger drove in the go-ahead run in the bottom of the third to give the Yankees a 4-3 and the score stayed that way for the rest of the game to get the Yankees within two games in the loss column in the division.

4. Aaron Judge was back in right field on Sunday and back to lobbing in throws to the outfield. It’s obvious Judge is doing barely a step above Smalls running back the ball to the infield in The Sandlot as Aaron Boone gets testy with the media and tries to tell everyone what they are seeing isn’t what they are seeing. It’s the same approach he has used in handling discussing his shortstop the last three years.

I have spent a lot of words in these Thoughts on Volpe, especially this year, and I’m running out of ways to portray just how bad he is for those who can’t comprehend how bad he is. He does nothing well. I think that’s the best way to summarize him as a player: He does nothing well. He can’t hit for average and he doesn’t hit for power (at least not regularly). He’s been caught stealing in 48 percent of his 23 attempts and is a poor situational hitter. He has a weak arm and atrocious fielding technique. He lets every ball play him, fails to charge routine grounders, plays balls on his back hand when he doesn’t need to and seemingly wants to put himself in position to be off-balance when he throws to first base.

Volpe went 1-for-37 with 14 strikeouts leading into the White Sox series then went 6-for-14 against the worst team in the American League and is 2-for-21 with 12 strikeouts since. Remove his weekend against the league’s worst and he’s 3-for-58 with 26 strikeouts dating back to August 15. He went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts, an error and couldn’t knock down the Kiner-Falefa ball on Sunday.

Volpe’s slash line for the season is an improbable .207/.269/.396 in 556 plate appearances. Improbable because no one with those kind of numbers gets to have 556 plate appearances on a team that claims it’s goal is to win the World Series. It would be one thing if he had the type of defense at shortstop that Ryan McMahon does at third base because then you could at least try to argue his importance in the everyday lineup, but instead, I look away when any ball is hit to short and pray it results in an out.

Volpe is a problem. A big problem. An enormous problem. Because the Yankees continue to tell us he’s something he’s not, even after 460 regular-season games and 1,846 plate appearances. There isn’t a single stat — traditional or modern — that suggests he’s even remotely close to being a valuable part of the team even if Boone says there’s no planet in which Volpe isn’t an elite player already and believes he’s a superstar in the making.

5. Watching Jose Caballero play shortstop in person on Friday night was refreshing. Routine plays are made like they’re routine plays and throws from short reach first in the air and on target. I don’t care if Caballero has no power and limited ability at the plate. He puts together tough at-bats and when he does reach he’s a menace on the bases. He can impact the game so much more than Volpe can on both sides of the ball.

Here are the offensive stats for both since Caballero became a Yankee:

There isn’t a person in the world not named Aaron Boone or Brian Cashman who could look at those numbers and think Volpe should be playing every day and that’s without factoring in the disparity in their defense.

Unfortunately, Volpe is going to keep playing every day and the Yankees will continue to tell us everything we have been watching from him over the last three full seasons is an illusion and that he’s “fucking elite” and we’re all “losing our minds” when it comes to evaluating him.

6. A similar story has unfolded with Devin Williams with Boone acting as though everything we have seen from Williams isn’t real. It was outrageous Williams pitched against the top of the Blue Jays lineup in the eighth inning of a one-run game on Sunday. I don’t give a fuck how many pitches Weaver or Cruz or Bednar had thrown of late. It was the biggest moment in the biggest game of the season to date and a situation Williams has proven he can’t handle since the very first game of the season. And yet, Boone still used him. It doesn’t matter that Williams got out of the inning without allowing either of his two baserunners to score. It was ridiculous he was allowed to impact that game given the stakes, with the stakes being the division race being over if the Yankees had lost. (Also, has the opposition not watched enough video of Williams to understand if you never swing against him, you will never make an out? He has no fastball command and his changeup is never in the zone. If hitters weren’t so selfish and greedy in thinking they can get an extra-base hit off of Williams, he would walk every batter he faces.)

7. The Yankees are doing their best to shed the Bronx Bullies moniker. After beating the crap out of last-place teams in August, the Yankees have opened September with back-to-back series wins over the Astros and Blue Jays. The idea the Yankees can’t beat the top teams in the league is slowly starting to fade after back-to-back series wins over the Astros and Blue Jays, though there is still a long way to go with six games this week against the Tigers and Red Sox.

8. Winning the division is still unlikely. The Yankees are two games back in the loss column, but they are really three games back overall because of the head-to-head tiebreaker after losing eight of 13 to the Blue Jays this season.

Here is what needs to happen for the Yankees to win the division:

I stopped at 8-11 because it’s hard to expect the Blue Jays to play worse than that when it’s hard to expect them playing under .500 at all. The Blue Jays’ remaining schedule is much more difficult than the Yankees, but I think the worst any Yankees fan can wish for from the Blue Jays is 10-9, which means the Yankees will have to go 13-6, which is very doable if the Blue Jays cooperate.

9. Here is what I wrote about the Yankees winning the division on August 30:

Let’s make it as hard as possible for the Yankees to win the division. Let’s say they are three games back of the Blue Jays after Sunday, Aug. 31.

The Yankees were three games back after Sunday, Aug. 31.

The Yankees will have to go at least .500 in the 12 games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox to have a chance. So let’s say they go 6-6, which is the floor of what they can do. Two of those six wins have to come against the Blue Jays …

The Yankees are 4-2 in the 12 games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox. They won two against the Blue Jays.

Let’s say the Yankees drop one of their two games this weekend (against the White Sox) and so do the Blue Jays (against the Brewers). The Yankees would be 76-61 at the end of play on Sunday and the Blue Jays 79-58.

This is what happened and the Yankees were 76-61 and the Blue Jays were 79-58 at the end of play on Sunday, Aug. 31.

The Yankees then go 6-6 against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox and are now 82-67. The Blue Jays have lost two of three to the Yankees during that time, so they are 80-60. In their other nine games, the Blue Jays have gone 4-5 against the Reds, Astros and Orioles and are now 84-65.

Again, the Yankees won two of three from the Blue Jays and are 4-2 in the 12 games, needing to go just 2-4 to meet 6-6. The Blue Jays went 2-1 against the Reds, so in order to get to 4-5, they will need to go 2-4 against the Astros and Orioles. Not likely, so the Yankees will need to do better than 2-4 against the Tigers and Red Sox. Go 3-3 and the Blue Jays can then also go 3-3. Again, very doable.

The Yankees need to get through this week still two games back in the loss column to have a chance. If they are two games back in the loss column or better at the end of play on Sunday then I do think they will win the division given the opponents in their 13 remaining games and the Blue Jays’ opponents in their 13 remaining games.

10. The Yankees did their job over the weekend by winning the series against the Blue Jays, and they are right on track with what I laid out 10 days ago in terms of what they need to do and what the Blue Jays need to do for the Yankees to win the division. The difference between winning the division and not is getting a bye straight to the ALDS or having to play a best-of-3 with Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello (whom the Yankees are 0-5 against this year) pitching Games 1 and 2. The day off on Monday is much needed given the use of the only three trustworthy relievers of late. It’s also needed to give me (and likely all Yankees fans) a rest from the emotional, mental and physical stress and anguish the 2025 Yankees have caused over the last five-plus months.

1. I didn’t feel good at the end of the seventh inning on Thursday night. The Yankees had built a 4-1 lead against the Astros through five-and-a-half innings but gave a run back in the sixth thanks to some of the worst collective umpiring you’ll ever see and then gave up another run in the seventh. The 4-1 lead had become a 4-3 lead and I felt like I was watching the previous night’s game unfold again. On Wednesday, the Yankees watched a 4-1 lead turn into an 8-4 deficit when the combination of their manager and bullpen couldn’t keep the Astros off the board in the fifth, sixth, seven or eighth innings and a nearly identical occurrence was brewing on Thursday.

The Yankees weren’t able to add on to their lead or protect it on Wednesday. On Thursday, they were able to do both.

Ryan McMahon delivered an RBI single that increased the lead from 4-3 to 5-3 in the eighth and Trent Grisham delivered the game-opening blow with a three-run home run to extend the lead to 8-3.

A five-run lead with six outs to go and Fernando Cruz and David Bednar available should be more than enough to coast to the postgame handshake line. But it nearly wasn’t as Bednar went out of his way to give the Astros a chance to shock the Yankees and hand them their latest worst loss of the season. Bednar had pitched just once in a nine-day period (throwing 22 pitches against the White Sox back on August 30) and looked like more like Camilo Doval than himself. He allowed a single, double, lineout, single and walk before finally striking out Carlos Correa (Correa helped him out by swinging at ball 4 on a 3-2 pitch) and Christian Walker to end the game. Had Correa walked, Walker would have come to the plate as the tying run, a scenario which seemed unimaginable with a five-run lead and three outs from a win with a more-than-rested Bednar on the mound.

The Yankees did their job in Houston, winning two of three and keep their place in the standings the same on Thursday with the Blue Jays and Red Sox both idle. They are now 2-1 in this 12-game stretch in which they need to go at least 6-6.

2. Carlos Rodon was very good (6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 HR) in the biggest game of the season to date. There were times when it seemed like the game would get away from him (and in the past it definitely would have), but Rodon successfully navigated his way through each jam. If only that version of Rodon would come to pitch in every big game.

3. Cruz’s strikeout of Jose Altuve with two outs and two on in the seventh on a 3-2 pitch was one of the biggest moments of the season. Altuve went into that at-bat hitless in the series and if there was ever a time for him to be due and get yet another last laugh at the Yankees it was there. I kept envisioning him hitting a three-run home run over the left-field wall all the way until he waved through Cruz’s high-and-away splitter. Cruz, Luke Weaver and Bednar are the only relievers I trust in the Yankees’ bullpen and my trust in Weaver is fading.

4. With every Grisham home run — and there have now been 30 of them this season — I can’t help but think about what could have been if he had played over Alex Verdugo last season, especially in the playoffs and World Series. Every Grisham home run seems to come in an enormous moment. He’s either homering to lead off a game, tie a game or give the Yankees a late or extended lead. It’s unlikely the Yankees sign Grisham with Cody Bellinger also a free agent and Jasson Dominguez and Spencer Jones waiting to inexpensively fill everyday roster spots, but if the Yankees decided to sign Grisham, he has earned it. Whether it’s with the Yankees or not, the Grishams and many generations of them will be taken care of because of this season.

5. What a game for McMahon. He gave the Yankees an early 1-0 lead with an RBI single, homered to give them the lead back at 2-1 and drove in an important run in the eighth to extend the lead from 4-3 to 5-3. He was also the focal point in the bizarre situation that unfolded at third base when he clearly caught a batted ball in the air and then dropped the transfer to throw but was deemed to not have caught the ball all by the entire umpire crew. I don’t think we’ll be seeing anyone from that crew in October.

6. Aaron Judge did what he does against the Astros in the three games, which isn’t much. Three singles, three walks and no extra-base hits for Judge in the series. In the six games against the Astros this season he went 5-for-21 with four walks and all five hits were singles. That’s exactly who Judge has always been against the Astros. Judge also went 2-for-14 with two walks and six strikeouts against the Red Sox in August and 1-for-10 (though the one was a home run) with one walk and four strikeouts against the Blue Jays at the end of July. There’s a reason the Yankees have such an abysmal combined record against the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tigers and Astros this season and it’s because Judge hasn’t been at his best against those teams. Those are the teams the Yankees will play in the postseason, so if this is Judge foreshadowing what’s to come next month then I’m ready for it since I’m used to it from him.

7. If you remove Anthony Volpe’s 6-for-14 against the White Sox — the worst team in the American League — last weekend, the run he’s on is preposterous. He was 1-for-38 before the 6-for-14 and is 1-for-11 since. If there were consequences for underachieving within the Yankees organization and if either Brian Cashman or Aaron Boone had to fear for their jobs then Volpe wouldn’t be playing every day with a .208/.271/.397 slash line, an 83+ OPS and shaky defense. Unfortunately, the White Sox series is enough to carry him through the rest of the season and into next season as an everyday regular for the Yankees. The Yankees have had three years to do something to improve his play and development and they have scoffed (laughed, really) at every chance and every criticism. Jose Caballero’s sound play and peskiness isn’t enough to get playing time except for occasionally against lefties and as an injury or defensive replacement. George Lombard Jr. remains Yankees fans’ only hope to unseating Volpe as the Yankees’ starting shortstop.

8. It will be interesting to see what lineup Boone comes up with against Kevin Gausman on Friday. I would have to think Jazz Chisholm (0-for-10 against Gausman) will be held out after leaving Thursday’s game early (but not before he unnecessarily wasted an at-bat and an important out). McMahon is 5-for-14 with a home run and 1.186 OPS against Gausman, Jose Caballero is 5-for-7 with a 1.714 OPS and Amed Rosario is 4-for-14 with two home runs and a 1.047 OPS. Those three have to play. Giancarlo Stanton is 8-for-27 with three home runs and a 1.034 OPS against Gausman and Paul Goldschmidt is 10-for-19 with a home run and 1.362. Cody Bellinger is only 2-for-19 and Trent Grisham is 5-for-21 against him, but you can’t not play those two. None of Volpe, Dominguez, Austin Wells or Ben Rice have even respectable numbers against him. Here is what I would do:

1. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
2. Aaron Judge, DH
3. Cody Bellinger, LF
4. Giancarlo Stanton, RF
5. Ryan McMahon, 3B
6. Amed Rosario, 2B/SS
7. Trent Grisham, CF
8. Jose Caballero, 2B/SS
9. Austin Wells, C

Play Caballero or Rosario at short and the other at second. Keep Rice on the bench to hit for someone later. That lineup keeps the overall balance for once Gausman is out of the game, while making sure those with impressive career numbers against him get to face him at least two times. Will Boone do any of that? No. Don’t be surprised to see Volpe in there and one of Caballero or Rosario on the bench.

9. It’s possible the lineup and offense won’t need to do much with Cam Schlittler on the mound. In nine starts, Schlittler has allowed three runs or fewer every time. He hasn’t allowed multiple runs in a start since August 8 and has allowed just one run total over this last three starts. The Blue Jays have seen him once in his second start back on July 22 and he pitched well in that game (5 IP, 2 ER) despite it being his second start and going 13 days between starts. Schlittler is much more comfortable now having been in the majors for two months and has looked better each time out, which seems odds to say for someone with 54 strikeouts in 48 1/3 innings and a 2.61 ERA.

That’s not to say Schlittler may not overthrow on Friday night. It’s going to be a loud crowd at the Stadium for the series opener with nice weather expected, the Blue Jays in town and the division on the line. If Schlittler stays composed and throws strikes, he will be just fine and the Yankees will be just fine.

9. I don’t expect any easy, blowout, or lopsided wins this weekend because how can you ever expect those, especially in what will be postseason-like games in September. Close games means Boone is heavily involved. Schlittler has only given the Yankees more than six innings in one start, so six innings is about all you can ask from him. That means the Yankees need to plan to get at least nine outs from the bullpen (and possibly more). At this point in the season the bullpen budget and the “can’t pitch three days in a row” bullshit needs to be thrown out the window. If Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is up in a big spot on Friday, it can’t be Camilo Doval or Devin Williams facing him just because others pitched on Wednesday and Thursday. If the Yankees manage like that this weekend then the division is already over before any of the game are played. These are the most important games of the season, and with the two teams meeting, the Red Sox will gain or lose ground on one of the two every day this weekend. I don’t care what Cruz or Weaver had to do the last two days in Houston. If the situation calls for it, they need to be used.

10. I don’t trust Boone to manage like that because I wouldn’t trust Boone to tell me what day of the week it is. We have eight years of games proving when given the opportunity to manage with urgency he won’t . Whether it’s Opening Day, a game in the middle of July or an elimination game in the World Series, Boone will always make the unfavorable decision that doesn’t put his team in the best possible position to succeed. It’s who he is and there’s no changing that. The only way the Yankees overcome their own manager is to outhit him (which is going to be hard against the Blue Jays or in the postseason) or for the relievers he calls on to get outs (which is going to be even harder since the bullpen is full of bums). Schlittler could be awesome on Friday, the offense could do enough against Gausman and the Yankees could still lose because of Boone and his bullpen management, just like they did on Wednesday in Houston.

The Yankees have to win at least two of three this weekend to have a chance at the division and likely need to win all three. If they win two, they will still be three games back because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, and even if they sweep, they will be in second place because of the tiebreaker. By late Sunday afternoon Yankees fans will know if the AL East and a bye to the ALDS are a real possibility again or if Yankees fans should start planning for the team’s first appearance in the best-of-3, wild-card series.

1. With a 4-1 lead over the Astros and 12 outs to go on Wednesday night, the Yankees were on their way to a second straight win over the Astros. If they could add to their lead or hold on to it, they would win back-to-back games against one of the other Top 5 teams in the American League for the first time since they swept a doubleheader from the Blue Jays on April 27.

The Yankees never added to their lead and couldn’t hold it either.

2. Will Warren went back out to the mound for the bottom of the sixth inning and with a three-run lead he threw a first-pitch, get-me-over breaking ball and Jeremy Pena destroyed it over the left-field wall to make it a 4-2 game. Aaron Boone immediately removed Warren from the game following the home run in favor of Fernando Cruz. If Warren’s leash was a single pitch, what was he doing on the mound to begin the sixth inning? If Boone was willing to remove Warren from the game after 67 pitches and get 12 outs from the bullpen, why not just go right to the bullpen to start the sixth rather than give the top of the Astros’ order a third look at Warren? Stealing outs, that’s why. No matter the situation or the importance of the game, Boone will always try to steal an out or two or an inning from his starter. Yordan Alvarez greeted Cruz with a double and after a wild pitch and a groundout, the Yankees’ lead was down to 4-3.

3. The Yankees went down 1-2-3 in the seventh and the Astros tied the game when Luke Weaver couldn’t navigate the bottom of the order, needing 22 pitches to get through the seventh, while giving up the game-tying run.

The Yankees went down 1-2-3 again in the eighth and the Astros once again went to work, lighting up Devin Williams for four earned runs as the righty was only able to get one out. Camilo Doval relieved Williams and did his best Brooks Kriske impression, allowing two runs to score on a single, another run to score on a balk and another run to score on a wild pitch. When the eighth was over, the Yankees trailed 8-4, having allowed one run in the fifth, two in the sixth, one in the seventh and four in the eighth. It was a magnificent implosion by the entire bullpen as Cruz, Weaver, Williams and Doval combined to allowed 10 baserunners and six earned runs in four innings.

The Yankees did their best to come back in the ninth with a three-run outburst against Bryan Abreu (who they always hit), but came up a run short in an 8-7 loss. Instead of starting off this 12-game stretch against the Astros, Blue Jays Tigers and Red Sox at 2-0, they’re now 1-1. They need to go at worst 5-5 over the remaining 10 games against the four teams to have a chance at the division and to put themselves in a position to host a best-of-3 wild-card series.

It was an enormous missed opportunity for the Yankees as the Red Sox lost and a win would have moved them to two games up in the loss column on the first wild-card spot. Instead, they remain one game up there and are now again three games back in the loss column in the division (though it’s really a four-game deficit with the Blue Jays having clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker).

4. Yes, home-plate umpire Brian Walsh was atrocious, and yes, he made egregious calls, most of which screwed the Yankees, but that can’t be an excuse for the loss. Walsh didn’t force Williams to throw an 0-2 fastball to Carlos Correa, which resulted in a leadoff double in the eighth inning with the scored tied at 4. He didn’t force Williams to throw a 3-1 changeup clearly out of the zone to 9-hitter Taylor Trammell with the bases loaded and the score tied at 4 in that same inning.

I’m not upset with Williams. He sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t ask to be the closer at the start of the season. He didn’t ask to remain the closer when he started blowing games. He didn’t ask to return to being the closer when Weaver got hurt. He didn’t name himself the closer even after the team traded for David Bednar. He isn’t the one who continues to put him in high-leverage situations he’s set up to fail in. What is he supposed to do? Not play Major League Baseball and not make millions of dollars to do so?

Boone’s loyalty over the years to players he shouldn’t be loyal to is extremely odd. It doesn’t matter what his relationship is with Williams, he has no reason to use him or believe in him the way he does and whenever this season winds up ending, Williams will no longer be a Yankee. Boone owes him nothing, and yet, he treats him like he owes him everything.

“When you’re making good pitches, which I was, not getting those calls really changes the course of an at-bat,” a delusional Williams said. Does he think Walsh is responsible for the Correa double and all three walks?

“I said, ‘I had four that you missed,’ and he threw me out for it,” Williams said. “Never been ejected in my career.”

Both Boone and Williams were ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Boone has openly said he is not for an automated strike zone and believes the game should still be called by the home-plate umpire. So why then does he complain about balls and strikes more than anyone in the game? Because it’s all he has. Boone doesn’t know how to motivate his players or what to do to get the best out of them. The only move he has or thinks he he has is to argue balls and strikes and get tossed when his team is playing poorly or losing. If the entire game became automated calls, Boone would lose his only motivational tactic, which does nothing to motivate.

5. Many times last year I said Clay Holmes would be allowed to ruin the season in the postseason and he was and nearly did when he allowed a walk-off home run in Game 3 of the ALCS and almost blew a four-run lead in Game 4. The same goes for Williams. He will ruin the season if he’s allowed to in the playoffs, and from everything I have seen this season and how Boone has used and treated him, Boone will undoubtedly put Williams in a position to ruin the season.

6. The loss on Wednesday was a one-run game. The Yankees lost a one-run game to the White Sox on Sunday. They came an inch away from losing what would have been a one-run game if that ball in Chicago landed fair instead of foul on Saturday. They lost a one-run game to the Red Sox two weeks ago. There’s a reason the Yankees lose so many close games and it’s because of Boone. The closer the game, the more important he becomes as the bullpen, pinch-hit and baserunning decision maker. His bullpen management was every bit as bad as the bullpen pitched on Wednesday. Not only that, but with the game tied at 4 in the eighth and a guaranteed at-bat against a lefty available, Boone let Ben Rice hit instead of using Paul Goldschmidt. Rice weakly grounded out to first. What’s the point of having such platoon depth on the roster if the manager is incapable of utilizing it?

7. “The Astros are one team Aaron Judge does not excel against,” Michael Kay said during Wednesday’s game. No shit, Michael. That’s why the Yankees were eliminated by the Astros in 2017, 2019 and 2022. Judge went 6-for-24 with 11 strikeouts in 2017, 6-for-25 with 10 strikeouts in 2019 and 1-for-16 with four strikeouts in 2022. For all of the regular-season success the Yankees have had against the Astros, including the lengthy winning streak in Houston which ended on Wednesday, the Yankees went 4-12 against them in those three ALCS. Judge went 1-for-5 on Wednesday, while the Astros’ star slugger in Alvarez went 4-for-5 as his bat single-handedly ignited the Astros come back, tied the game and took the lead.

8. It was another stellar night for Anthony Volpe. Through the first two games of the series, Volpe botched a routine double play and is 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. His 6-for-14 series against the White Sox was enough for him to never be benched again this season even though it succeeded a 1-for-38 and preceded the now 0-for-7. I’m glad Volpe will continue to play every day because of what he did one weekend in Chicago against the worst team in the AL and the second-worst team in the majors.

9. The series and regular-season finale between the Yankees and Astros will feature Carlos Rodon against Christian Javier. No pitcher has owned the Yankees in recent years like Javier and even though he has only made 11 starts over the last two seasons due to injury, I can’t say I feel even a hint of confidence with him going on Thursday. Add in Rodon and the Crawford Boxes in left field and the near-zero confidence decreases even more.

10. Thursday’s game is immensely important. The Yankees have a game in hand on the blue Jays and two games in hand on the Red Sox. Those games in hand need to be wins. A loss puts the Yankees four back in the loss column on the Blue Jays and five overall because of the tiebreaker and essentially ends all division hope without a Yankees sweep of the Blue Jays this weekend. A loss would tie the Yankees again with the Red Sox in the loss column for the top wild-card spot and because the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker the Yankees would be back in a position to go on the road for the first best-of-3. A win on Thursday keeps them right where they are, in comeback distance of the Blue Jays with the three-game series this weekend in the Bronx and ahead of the Red Sox in the wild-card standings. Thursday is the newest most important game of the season for the Yankees.

It was an enjoyable week of Yankees baseball as the Bronx Bullies beat the crap out of the Nationals for three days and then the White Sox for two days before winning an extra-inning game against the White Sox on Saturday and losing a one-run game to the White Sox on Sunday. Despite the frustrating loss in the series finale, the Yankees went 6-1 against two last-place teams and outscored them 53-19, which is what good teams — contending teams — are supposed to do.

The Yankees began August with five straight losses, six in the first seven games and seven in the first nine. After starting the month 2-7, they then won seven of eight and lost three straight before going 7-1. They finished the month 16-12 with 14 wins over the final 19 games of the month.

It’s great the Yankees stacked wins in the second half of the month and now only trail the Blue Jays by two games in the loss column and lead the Red Sox by one game in the loss column. But don’t forget what put them in this situation in which they had to run off 14 wins in 19 games to get to this point: playing the worst baseball in the majors for one-third of the season.

In August, the Yankees went 13-5 against teams currently boasting a losing record and 3-7 against teams currently posting a winning record. The problem is the Twins, Cardinals, Nationals and White Sox won’t be playing in the postseason. The bigger problem (for now) is the Yankees won’t see any of those teams or any team like them over the next 12 games.

The next 12 games will determine if the Yankees make a miraculous comeback to overtake the Blue Jays and win the AL East after once leading the Blue Jays by eight games, if they will end up in the top wild-card spot and host a best-of-3 series or if they will go on the road in that best-of-3. And standing in their way are the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox — four teams the Yankees are 7-19 against this season.

Over the the next three days the Yankees will play in Houston where Framber Valdez, Jason Alexander and Christian Javier await. The Yankees got to Valdez in the Bronx last month, but he’s never someone you want to see them face, Alexander one-hit the Yankees over six shutout innings in that same series and Javier has owned them in a way no one else in the majors has over the last four years.

The thing is the Astros aren’t that good. They are actually a half-game worse than the Yankees if you can believe that. Since the teams met three weeks ago, the Astros have lost a home series to the Orioles, were swept by the Tigers and over their last eight games against the Orioles, Rockies and Angels, they went 4-4. The Astros can be beat, it’s just a matter of if the Yankees can beat them.

Tuesday is as big of a regular-season games as you can have, considering where the Yankees are in both the division and wild-card standings and because they have played so poorly against the league’s best this season. The Yankees’ bullying ways of destroying bad teams won’t be able to get them through this stretch. They will have to play their best to survive these 12 games. They will need the offense to get leadoff doubles in and to score runners from third with less than two outs. They will need the rotation to give them length and for the bullpen to be sound. They will need their manager to make countless correct decisions because he won’t be able to go on cruise control following a nine-run outburst in an early inning. They will need to play clean baseball in the field and be flawless on the basepaths. They will need to do things they struggle to do daily and things they fail at frequently and they will need to do them over and over from Tuesday through two Sundays from now if they want to create the most favorable postseason for themselves.

1. After putting up a 10-spot on Thursday, the Yankees did the same on Friday, blowing out the last-place White Sox 10-2. It was the third straight game the Yankees scored double-digit runs, the fourth time in five games they have done so and the sixth time in less two weeks. If only under-.500 teams were part of the postseason the Yankees would be all set.

2. Yes, these wins against bad teams are needed and every one of the 162 games in a season are valuable, but again, the stench left from the Red Sox series and from series against teams currently holding a playoff spot as a whole throughout the season lingers like a skunk waiting for you when you open your garage door. It’s going to take a lot more than tomato baths to remove the smell of this Yankees team, and there’s nothing they can do this weekend to do so. It’s going to take winning games and series over the next two weeks against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox to change my perception of a team that pads its stats, run differential and win total against the league’s worst and is humiliated by the league’s best. I’m going to need see the offense show up against pitchers the Yankees didn’t put on waivers earlier this season. I’m going to need to see Jazz Chisholm get a runner in from third with one out against a reliever who will be pitching in October, not flipping his bat during a blowout of a bad team.

3. Again, these games against the lowly White Sox are important, just as the ones against the Nationals, Rays, Cardinals and Twins earlier this month were. But after the Yankees beat the crap out of those teams, they erased everything they accomplished by losing two games in the standings in a single weekend to the Red Sox. That can’t happen again. If the Yankees want to win the division like Chisholm talked about on Thursday, or even win home-field advantage for the wild-card series, they can’t poop their pants next week when they play the best competition in the American League.

5. While the Yankees were lighting up their former teammate in Yoendrys Gomez, the Red Sox lost a home game to the Pirates and the Blue Jays did the same to the Brewers. The Yankees are now one game up in the loss column on the Red Sox for the first wild-card berth and three games back of the Blue Jays in the AL East.

6. As I wrote yesterday, in terms of winning the division, the math is very bad for the Yankees. Possible? Yes. Likely? No. At least from a statistical perspective. But that perspective is based on the teams’ winning percentage to date and their run differential. If you look at the remaining schedules, I do think it’s doable.

If the Yankees are able to pull off a four-game sweep of the White Sox, there’s a very real possibility they could be one game back of the Blue Jays at the end of play on Sunday. (The Brewers have a starting pitching advantage over the Blue Jays on both Saturday and Sunday.) If the Yankees are one game back as of Sunday with 25 games to play, yes I do think they will win the division. Even if they are still three games back as of Sunday, I think they could win the division. I know that sounds crazy, and yes, it is, but hear me out.

Disclaimer: Winning the division isn’t possible if the Yankees’ 12 games over the next two weeks against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox play out like the 26 games against those opponents have so far this season: the Yankees are 7-19 against those teams.

7. For this exercise, let’s make it as hard as possible for the Yankees to win the division. Let’s say they are three games back of the Blue Jays after Sunday. The Yankees will have to go at least .500 in the 12 games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox to have a chance. So let’s say they go 6-6, which is the floor of what they can do. Two of those six wins have to come against the Blue Jays and two more have to come against the Red Sox. That means 4-2 against the Blue Jays and Red Sox and 2-4 against the Astros and Tigers.

Let’s say the Yankees drop one of their two games this weekend and so do the Blue Jays. The Yankees would be 76-61 at the end of play on Sunday and the Blue Jays 79-58.

The Yankees then go 6-6 against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox and are now 82-67. The Blue Jays have lost two of three to the Yankees during that time, so they are 80-60. In their other nine games, the Blue Jays have gone 4-5 against the Reds, Astros and Orioles and are now 84-65. There are now 13 games left and the Yankees are two games back in the loss column (82-67 to 84-65), but they are really three games back from taking over the division because the Blue Jays already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The Yankees’ 13 remaining games are against the Twins (3), Orioles (4), White Sox (3) and Orioles (3).

The Blue Jays’ 13 remaining games are against the Rays (4), Royals (3), Red Sox (3) and Rays (3).

That Yankees series against the White Sox is crucial because with the Blue Jays and Red Sox playing each other at the same time, every win means the Yankees gain ground on one of the two and every loss means they lose a game on one of the two. The Blue Jays’ seven remaining games against the Rays are also crucial because they have struggled against the Rays this season, going 1-5.

If the Yankees go 9-4 in those 13 games (one loss in each series) and the Blue Jays go 6-7 in their 13 games, the Yankees win the division. If the Yankees go 8-5, then the Blue Jays need to go 5-8. Unlikely. If the Yankees go 7-6, the Blue Jays need to go 4-9. Very unlikely. I think 9-4 is the floor of what needs to happen, and that may not be good enough.

8. That is a not-so-far-fetched path to winning the division. It could be made a lot easier if the Yankees would just rip off 10 straight wins (like the Blue Jays and Red Sox have both done this season) and the Blue Jays and Red Sox both fall apart. That would be much easier with no math and scoreboard watching involved. Just a good, old-fashioned, double-digit win streak coupled with simultaneous collapses from the Blue Jays and Red Sox. But that’s an abundance of wishful thinking, considering a great deal of wishful thinking is already needed for the Yankees to play well against the league’s best and continue to beat up on the league’s worst. (All of this would be meaningless if the Yankees could have just not blown their eight-game lead over the Blue Jays.)

9. As of now, here is how the pitching matchups line up for the next two weeks:

Saturday: Cam Schlittler vs. Shane Smith
Sunday: Luis Gil vs. Martin Perez
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Max Fried vs. Jason Alexander
Wednesday: Will Warren vs. Christian Javier
Thursday: Carlos Rodon vs. Spencer Arrighetti
Friday: Cam Schlittler vs. Kevin Gausman
Saturday: Luis Gil vs. Max Scherzer
Sunday: Max Fried vs. Chris Bassitt
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Will Warren vs. Casey Mize
Wednesday: Carlos Rodon vs. Chris Paddack
Thursday: Cam Schlittler vs. Jack Flaherty
Friday: Luis Gil vs. Lucas Giolito
Saturday: Max Fried vs. Brayan Bello
Sunday: Will Warren vs. Garrett Crochet

Based on this, the Yankees do miss Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, Shane Bieber and Tarik Skubal, but having to face Bello and Crochet is as bad as it gets, considering what those two have done to the Yankees this year (the Yankees are 0-5 in games started by those two). It could haven’t been Giolito, Dustin May and rookie Payton Tolle?! Pitchers get hurt and teams adjust their rotations around scheduled days off for important series, so this could all change, but as of now, it’s a better schedule of opposing starters than I figured it would play out to be.

10. Before I get too far ahead of myself and start planning for the strong finish, division title and best-of-3 bye, the Yankees can’t go out and lose on Saturday and Sunday with the Blue Jays winning both days to fall five games back. If that happens, the division is over. And because a Yankees extended winning streak into next week isn’t likely given the opponents and it’s less likely the Blue Jays implode, the deficit can’t go higher than three again. The Yankees have to maintain the deficit or gain on the Blue Jays from here on and out (and oh yeah, also have the Red Sox cooperate and not sneak in win the division themselves).

1. Another game against a last-place team and another bullying performance from the Yankees offense as they pummeled the White Sox 10-4 on Thursday.

Cody Bellinger gave the Yankees an early 2-0 lead in the first inning with a two-run home run on an 0-2 count and a Jazz Chisholm solo home run and a Ben Rice RBI single in the second had the Yankees ahead 4-0. But in the bottom of the second, Miguel Vargas hit a game-tying grand slam off Will Warren after an egregious Anthony Volpe fielding error extended the inning.

2. The game remained tied until the fifth when the Yankees scored twice to take 6-4 lead and they added three more in the eighth and one in the ninth. Trent Grisham homered again, Rice had a pair of hits, Bellinger had three hits and even Volpe had two hits to break up a 1-for-38 run in the second half of the month. Do I think this is the start of something for Volpe and he’s now going to go on a run to get his numbers back to respectability (if it’s even possible for him to get back to respectability with 28 games left)? No, I do not. I think it was the result of someone getting to play every day having a random day with a pair of hits and nothing more than that. I expect him to continue to struggle at the plate because that’s what he has done for three full years and expect him to screw up routine plays in the field because that’s what he does now.

3. None of the four White Sox runs were earned, so Warren’s ERA was unscathed by the second-inning grand slam as he went five innings. Fernando Cruz, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams combined to throw three perfect innings, striking out six of the nine hitters they faced and Mark Leiter Jr. managed to put up a scoreless ninth.

4. It was a rather easy win outside of the second-inning scare as a result of the Volpe error and grand slam that followed. It was the fifth time in the last 13 games the Yankees scored double-digit runs, though those games came against the Cardinals, Rays, Nationals and White Sox. The Yankees are now 12-4 in their last 16 games even if it doesn’t feel like it after the demoralizing series against the Red Sox.

5. “There’s real length to the order, and there’s places that can hurt you up and down the order,” Aaron Boone said.

Maybe you want to let Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello know where those places are? Again, how about winning a series against a good team, an actual contender before talking about how good you?

6. “We want to win the division,” Chisholm said. “Right now, it’s just like, we’re going to go out there and win that and then we’re going to go and win the World Series.”

It’s comments like those that make it hard to like Chisholm. Chisholm said something similar back on June 25 when the Yankees salvaged the third game of a series in Cincinnati, saying, “I feel like we got a great team and I feel like we’re going to make the World Series again.” At the time the Yankees had lost nine of 12 and after that win they would lose 22 of their next 39.

7. Yes, the Yankees have currently won 12 of 16, but 11 of those 12 wins have come against the Twins, Cardinals, Rays, Nationals and White Sox. In the other four games, they went 1-3 against the Red Sox. I don’t know why Chisholm feels the need to run his mouth when the Yankees have been humiliated by the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tigers, Astros, Phillies and Dodgers this season and blew an enormous division lead to the Blue Jays and an even bigger wild-card lead to the Red Sox. Maybe wait until you actually win the World Series before talking about it? Maybe wait until you improve upon your 10-for-55 performance from last postseason before you act like you were on the Dodgers last year and not the Yankees?

8. Let’s look at Chisholm’s lofty goal of winning the division and see if it’s possible.

The Yankees are four games back of the Blue Jays with 28 games remaining. If the Blue Jays were to go 14-14, the Yankees would have to go 19-9 to win the division since they can’t have the same record because the Blue Jays hold the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Blue Jays do have series left against the Brewers, Reds, Astros and Red Sox aside from their series against the Yankees, but it’s hard to believe they would play .500 baseball with 13 games left against the Orioles, Rays and Royals. Let’s say the Blue Jays go 16-12. The Yankees would then have to go 21-7. The math just isn’t there because for the Yankees to win 21 of 28, they would have to play exceptionally well against the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Astros and Tigers, which they haven’t done all year.

9. Maybe eight years of Boone telling everyone the Yankees’ best baseball is still in front of them will cash in. Maybe they will go on an unforeseen run and win 21 of 28 or something crazy and the Blue Jays will stumble and the Yankees can win the division and get a bye into the ALDS. It’s extremely unlikely, but I guess there is a small chance it could happen. It would have happened if the Yankees could have protected their eight-game lead over the Blue Jays earlier this summer.

10. Friday is another opportunity for another win against the White Sox with Carlos Rodon going against former Yankee Yoendrys Gomez. The Yankees’ goal right now should be to get out of the second wild-card spot and into the first to make sure they aren’t on the road for the entirety of a best-of-3. Once that is accomplished then they can worry about the Blue Jays and the division. The Blue Jays are hosting the Brewers this weekend with the Red Sox hosting the Pirates. Get ready for a month of scoreboard watching.

1. Three games against the last-place Nationals and three easy wins for the third-place Bronx Bullies in what was the most predictable series ever. After losing three of four at home to the Red Sox to fall to 5-15 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays this season and 7-19 against the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers and Astros, the Yankees demolished the Nationals for three straight days, outscoring them 26-8.

That’s what these Yankees do: they beat up on the league’s worst and lose to the league’s best. It’s what they have done all season and it’s what has them currently in third place in the AL East and in the second wild-card spot, meaning all road games in the best-of-3 wild-card series at the moment.

2. It’s great the Yankees swept the Nationals. They have to sweep the league’s worst because of their inability to win series against the league’s best. But I evaluate the Yankees with the idea of winning the World Series in mind, so everything I write, analyze or criticize is under that premise. It’s hard to get excited about beating the crap out of the Twins, Cardinals, Rays and Nationals when the team gets humiliated by the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Astros, Tigers, Dodgers and Phillies since those are the teams that the Yankees will potentially play in October.

3. Despite the series sweep of the Nationals, the Yankees were unable to pick up a game on the Red Sox because they were busy sweeping the lowly Orioles and only picked up one game on the Blue Jays, who won their series against the Twins. The Yankees remain behind the Red Sox in the wild-card race because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, which the Red Sox clinched at Yankee Stadium last weekend, and 4 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays for the division with 29 games to play (though it’s really 5 1/2 games since the Blue Jays clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Yankees as well).

4. Before Tuesday’s game I wrote:

Luis Gil needs to be as good (5 IP, 1 ER) as he was on Thursday because we all know first-half MacKenzie Gore — All-Star Gore — is going to be who the Yankees face or make him out to be.

And that’s exactly what happened. Gil gave the Yankees the same five-innings-and-one-earned-run performance as he did in his previous start and the best version of Gore showed up or at least the Yankees made Gore the best version of himself … except for Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton tagged Gore for a bases-clearing, three-run double in the third to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead and then hit a two-run home run off of Orlando Ribalta in the sixth to give them a 5-1 lead, which was the final score. Stanton 5, Nationals 1.

5. “It’s been fun being able to contribute on both sides,” Stanton said. “I’m just making sure I’m mentally prepared for all scenarios when the ball is hit towards me.”

Stanton went 2-for-3 with a double, home run and five RBIs and the rest of the Yankees went 4-for-27 with six strikeouts. Aaron Judge (who continues to play every day over Stanton) had another hitless game and the Development-Failing Duo of Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells went 0-for-7 with a walk (Wells) and three strikeouts.

6. The game was Volpe’s big return to the starting lineup after being held out of it on both Sunday and Monday. Volpe went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in what was another abysmal performance and things would only get worse for him on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Trent Grisham hit a leadoff home run to give the Yankees an early lead and then in the third, the offense exploded for nine runs in typical bully fashion en route to an 11-2 win. Here is how Wednesday’s third inning unfolded:

Ben Rice: single
Aaron Judge: home run
Cody Bellinger: home run
Jazz Chisholm: walk
Jasson Dominguez: double
Anthony Volpe: lineout
Austin Wells: catcher’s interference
Ryan McMahon: home run
Trent Grisham: strikeout
Rice: home run
Judge: single
Bellinger: walk
Chisholm: walk
Dominguez: single
Volpe: strikeout

The Yankees scored nine runs on three singles, two doubles, three home runs and three walks in the inning. Volpe made two of the three outs in the inning in what would be an 0-for-5 day with two strikeouts to drop him to 1-for-37 with 14 strikeouts since the first game of the St. Louis series on August 15. That represents a .027 on-base percentage, which is the lowest OBP by any non-pitcher Yankee in any 11-game span in the 103-year history of the franchise (stat from Katie Sharp). The “fucking elite” Volpe (which is what Aaron Boone referred to him as to Meredith Marakovits earlier this season) is hitting .204/.269/.393 on the season. He has the second-worst batting average in the majors (Oneil Cruz has the worst at .203), the worst on-base percentage at .269 and the 11th-worst OPS. It’s not a major-league bat, it’s an unplayable bat, and yet, he will continue to play every single day.

7. “You go through it as hitters, man. It’s hard,” Boone said when asked about Volpe. “What I’m excited about is he continues to play really good defense.”

Volpe has been going through “it” for three years since his first game in the league. And yes, hitting is hard, which is why you don’t pass on the deepest shortstop free-agent class in history full of proven players for an unknown with the team in a supposed championship window like the Yankees did with Volpe between the 2022 and 2023 seasons. As for being excited about him because he’s not booting ground balls and throwing the ball all over the field, all I will say is shortstop defense grows on trees. You can find yourself an all-glove, no-bat shortstop anywhere, and if that’s what the Yankees are accepting of Volpe being then it’s an organizational failure that it has gotten to this point.

8. Every Yankees starter reached base except for Volpe, as the offense did its usual stat padding against the 53-80 Nationals. Rice, Judge and Bellinger went 8-for-13 with three home runs, Chisholm walked three times, Dominguez had two hits, Grisham homered and even McMahon and Wells homered.

9. Max Fried had his second Fried-like start (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K) as he was staked to a 10-0 lead before he took the mound in the fourth inning. After having just one quality start between June 25 and August 22, Fried has looked like his old self the last two times out, even if one of those two times was against the Nationals with a double-digit lead. Fried’s next three starts will be against the Astros, Blue Jays and Red Sox, so we’ll see if he is really fixed and back to being the first-half Fried (who was a Cy Young favorite and in line to start the All-Star Game before falling apart) or if these last two outings were just a tease.

10. The next four days is another series against a last-place team in the White Sox. The White Sox aren’t as bad as they were last year and when you look at how they have been playing of late, this isn’t the type of cake walk that many feel it is. The Yankees will have to play well to beat the White Sox and keep pace with the Red Sox, who host the Pirates. Based on what we have seen of late from the Bronx Bullies, expect one last impressive beatdown of a bad team before 12 straight games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox begins next week.

1. Vacation is over and so is the vacation from the Thoughts. A vacation that started out with five straight Yankees wins over teams counting down the days until the end of the season fell apart over the weekend against a team the Yankees can’t seem to solve. Even though the Yankees won the last two days, what transpired from Thursday through Saturday negated the run before the Red Sox series and its stench has lingered into the Nationals series.

The Yankees are bullies. They beat the crap out of the league’s worst teams and the moment a team equal to or better than them comes around they run away and hide. Of course they had a 10-run lead over the Nationals until the ninth inning on Monday, the same way they hit nine home runs in a game against the Rays last week and hung 24 runs on the Cardinals the weekend before. That’s who the Yankees are. They are also the team that lost three of four at home to the Red Sox, lost eight straight to the Red Sox prior to Sunday’s win and are 2-8 against the Red Sox on the season. The Yankees are the team that is 6-19 against the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tigers and Astros.

2. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if the Yankees win five or more games this week against the last-place Nationals and last-place White Sox. I’m expecting the Yankees to do exactly that. That’s what bullies do. I’m also expecting them to then get put in their place like bullies do when they go to Houston next week and follow that up with series against the Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox.

3. At this point, the Yankees are going to the playoffs. They lead the Royals by five games in the loss column, the Guardians by six and the Rangers by seven. Those teams aren’t capable of erasing those deficits with a month to play, and the Yankees have 19 games remaining against the Nationals, White Sox, Twins and Orioles to bully their way into the playoffs.

4. It took nearly three full seasons, but Anthony Volpe was finally “benched” earlier this week. It wasn’t a traditional benching since he entered Sunday’s game as a defensive replacement (which is beyond absurd) and was already told he will be back in the lineup on Tuesday. It was a fake benching to give Volpe time to rest as he’s mired in yet another ridiculous slump that has left fans booing him at the plate and in the field. Volpe has one multi-hit game in August and that came on August 1. Since then he’s 8-for-66 and hitting .121/.171/.242. Yes, he has a .414 OPS for nearly a month.

“It’s just been a scuffle offensively here over the past week, 10 days,” Aaron Boone said of Volpe’s performance.

Ah, yes, it’s only been a week to 10 days of no offensive production for Volpe. That must be why he’s at the bottom of every offensive statistic for everyday players in the league since the start of 2023. No other player gets to play every day with numbers like his over the last three years.

Volpe is a .222/.284/.380 hitter in 1,799 career plate appearances with an 84 OPS+. This is who he is. A fake, not-even-two-full-games benching isn’t going to change him from being the worst everyday hitter in baseball to the player the Yankees told us he would be when they passed over the deepest free-agent shortstop class in history for him. He will be back in the lineup now every game and continue to do nothing nearly every game.

5. Volpe has the second-worst batting average (.208) in the majors and is just one point off the lead. Ryan McMahon is third at .216. That’s quite the left side of the infield Brian Cashman has built. At least McMahon makes every single play and then some at third. Recently, Nathaniel Lowe was between the two with the third-worst average in the majors, but after a big weekend against the Yankees, Lowe is now only the fifth-worst hitter in the league. You have to love that a player the Rangers paid to go away and the Red Sox picked up off the scrap heap only so they could stop playing Abraham Toro at first base was responsible for two of the Red Sox’ wins over the weekend.

6. Monday’s win was enjoyable because it was a relaxing blowout win. Cam Schlittler was awesome, the Yankees hit a bunch of home runs and Volpe and Austin Wells didn’t play. What more could you ask for?

Schlittler is my favorite Yankees pitcher because he isn’t out there trying to fool anyone. Everyone knows his fastball is coming and no one is hitting it. In eight starts he has allowed three runs or fewer each time out and he has allowed one run over his last starts 22 1/3 innings with 25 strikeouts.

“It’s just important for me to do my job,” Schlittler said. “I try to get six, seven innings and put the team in a spot to win.”

Boone called Schlittler “a future staple of our rotation.” Umm, he’s in the rotation in the present and hopefully it’s not “your” rotation for much longer (though we all know it will be.)

If the playoffs started next week, he would be my Game 1 starter because even when he doesn’t have his best stuff, he can still get outs. Unfortunately, the Yankees don’t make on-field decisions based on performance. Money owed, name and reputation will always supersede actual results. 

7. Max Fried finally looked like himself on Friday and Carlos Rodon finally beat a good team on Sunday. But one start from each doesn’t make me feel better about either. I’m going to need to see it every fifth day for the rest of the season to believe they can win in October, considering the postseason histories for both aren’t exactly glowing.

8. It was just last week Boone was using Yerry De los Santos in the sixth inning of a tie game at home the Yankees would lose because he couldn’t retire a hitter, and then on Monday, Boone used him in a 10-run game and De los Santos couldn’t close that out. I laughed at the people who were upset I complained about De los Santos being used in the spot he was in the series finale against the Twins and I’m laughing at them again. De los Santos is fine as a last or second-to-last relief option. He should have been nowhere near that game last week and his season ERA (which the Boone Fan Club cited as a reason for him being in the Twins series finale) has more than doubled since he ruined the Twins series finale.

9. The best hitter on the Yankees doesn’t get to play every day in Giancarlo Stanton. He’s hitting .306/.383/.638 and is the best he’s been as a Yankee and since his 2017 NL MVP season. And yet, he didn’t play on Monday, didn’t start on Friday or Wednesday and got one at-bat in St. Louis. Stanton not being the designated hitter so Judge can is so perfectly the Boone Yankees. Judge is hitting .210/.380/.403 since coming off the injured list on August 5. In that same time, Stanton is hitting .441/.525/1.029.

Stanton has been hitting and hitting no matter who the opponent is, while Judge went 2-for-14 against the Red Sox and 2-for-9 against the Astros — the only two teams with winning records the Yankees have faced in August. One extra-base hit (a double) for Judge in this seven games. It’s a precursor of what to expect in the playoffs, which is what has always happened in this era in the playoffs: Stanton shows up and Judge doesn’t. When we look back on this era of the Yankees, one that is unlikely to include a championship, we’ll know it wasn’t because of Stanton.

10. MacKenzie Gore gets the ball on Tuesday and while he has been bad in July and August, any starting pitcher with a hint of ability is capable of stopping this Yankees’ offense, especially a left-hander with the ability of Gore who is one of the game’s best when he’s on. Here is what I think Boone will do on Tuesday:

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

It’s another big game for the Yankees as they are tied in the loss column with the Red Sox and need to finish one game ahead of them because of the head-t0-head tiebreaker to avoid playing a best-of-3 on the road in the playoffs. Luis Gil needs to be as good (5 IP, 1 ER) as he was on Thursday because we all know first-half Gore — All-Star Gore — is going to be who the Yankees face or make him out to be.

1. It’s no coincidence the Yankees’ starter pitched into the seventh inning and the offense scored six-plus runs in the first two games of the Twins series and the Yankees won both. Aaron Boone looks like a genius when he doesn’t have to think. Pitch well, hit well and play clean baseball and Boone doesn’t get to be a part of the equation. It’s the best kind of baseball there is.

That’s what I wrote after Tuesday’s blowout. Take Boone out of the game and the odds of the Yankees winning increase dramatically. Allow Boone to interject himself into the outcome with in-game decision making and you get the kind of result the Yankees suffered on Wednesday with a 4-1 loss. A complete missed opportunity to make up ground on everyone in the standings as the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Mariners and Guardians all lost.

2. Instead of pulling one game closer to the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Mariners and one game further away from the Guardians, the Yankees ran in place in what was a wasted game against an inferior opponent.

Prior to Wednesday’s game I wrote:

The Yankees will go for the sweep on Wednesday night, and in order to pull it off, they will need to beat the Twins’ best starter in Joe Ryan. The active Yankees have only faced him a couple of times in their careers and their numbers against him are weak. Cam Schlittler will need to match Ryan for as long as he can because after scoring 15 runs over the last two nights, Wednesday has a Yankees offensive no-show written all over it.

The Yankees had opportunities to get to and beat Ryan, Schlittler did his job matching Ryan for the five innings he was in the game and the offense no-showed, scoring just one run on five hits in the game.

The Yankees stranded Trent Grisham on second with no outs in the first when Aaron Judge couldn’t get him over for someone to get him in. (Judge was hitting .394/.490/.779 before Boone kept him out of the starting lineup for the only time all year on June 12 in Kansas City and he’s hitting .235/.373/.536 since.) Ben Rice led off the second with a single and was also stranded. Cody Bellinger took Ryan deep for a solo home run in the third, but Schlittler gave it right back in the fourth. The game remained tied at 1 until the sixth when Boone got his hands on it.

3. The Yankees couldn’t have asked for a better pitching situation heading into Wednesday’s series finale: They had won the first game of the series by four runs and the second game by eight runs to allow their bullpen and elite relievers to rest, and with a scheduled day off on Thursday they could unload their top arms on Wednesday and still have them all for Friday in St. Louis. So knowing all of that, why was Yerry De los Santos the first guy out of the bullpen in a 1-1 game on a night when all of the Yankees’ playoff competition had already lost?

“[Schlittler] set us up,” Boone said, “especially going into an off day with a rested-up pen and felt like we could get there.”

So Boone knew of the advantageous spot the Yankees were in after Monday and Tuesday and after Schlittler pitched five innings of one-run ball on Wednesday and he still made the choice to go to De los Santos.

4. De los Santos is a nice, back-end-of-the-bullpen arm, which is how he has been treated all year. In April, May and June he only pitched in blowout wins or losses. He was sent down in mid-June and when he returned in late July, he continued to be the last or one of the last options out of the bullpen. He was sent down again after all the moves were made at the trade deadline since there was no longer room for him with all of the new relief acquisitions. So De los Santos wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee on August 1, but now two weeks later, he’s good enough to pitch in the sixth inning of a 1-1 game with playoff position jockeying on the line. Not only that, but he was called on to face the 2-3-4 hitters in the Twins lineup.

5. Mark Leiter Jr. to Camilo Doval to Luke Weaver to David Bednar was how the plan should have unfolded. I would have even used Weaver in the sixth there with the scored tied and the 2-3-4 hitters due up. Not Boone. Boone went with De los Santos and it went about as well as expected. He faced three hitters, they all reached and they all scored and when the book was closed on him the Yankees trailed 4-1. Only after De los Santos didn’t retire any of three batters he faced and gave up a two-run double did Boone go to Leiter Jr. So Boone was willing to go to Leiter Jr. in the sixth inning, he just thought he would try to steal an inning with De los Santos before going to his best relievers. Not only did Boone turn to Leiter Jr. with the Yankees trailing by two rather than tied, but then in the eighth he went to Doval with the Yankees trailing by three. So he would rather have Leiter Jr. and Doval pitch with the Yankees trailing than in a tie game.

6. The Twins didn’t score for the rest of the game after getting to De los Santos because the Twins suck. If they were ever going to score it was going to be with their 2-3-4 hitters up. The Yankees didn’t score for the rest of the game either because that’s what they do against the league’s best pitchers like Ryan. And once Ryan was out of the game and the Twins turned to Kody Funderburk and his 5.73 ERA and Justin Topa, the Yankees had already given up as they had just one baserunner against those two in 2 1/3 innings of relief.

7. Boone had to manage one game in the series and he couldn’t even do that. It’s games like that for why he should have lost his job long ago. Not because he has never seen one of his players perform poorly in eight years, not because he exaggerates his evaluations and straight up lies about injuries. It’s because he has spent his entire life around baseball, and not just baseball but Major League Baseball, and still manages as if he were introduced to the game a week ago.

8. It’s hard enough for the Yankees to overcome their top-heavy offense, their shaky rotation, their inconsistent bullpen, their running the bases like drunks as John Sterling said during last year’s World Series and their defensive miscues, but to have to overcome their own manager in any close game too? It’s too much. It’s why no matter how well the team plays or how clean of a game they provide, it’s exceedingly hard for them to win big, close games. (Look no further than Games 1 and 5 of the World Series, the two biggest games of Boone’s managerial career.)

9. So instead of arriving in St. Louis feeling good after a series sweep and tied with the Red Sox in the loss column and two games behind the Mariners in the loss column and a game up on the Guardians in the loss column, the Yankees are in the same spot as they were before Wednesday’s game with one more game erased from the schedule: the third wild-card spot. And they are only in that spot because the Guardians have two games in hand. The Yankees and Guardians are tied in the loss column and if the Guardians win those two games in hand, the Guardians become the third wild-card team since they have a better record against their own division than the Yankees.

10. A missed opportunity in a season full of them. In an era full of them. The Yankees have lost that same game countless times under Boone in which he can’t properly utilize his bullpen because he’s always trying to steal an out or an inning to save an arm for a situation and a game that may never come. Keep managing for tomorrow and there won’t be a tomorrow after Game 162 for the Yankees this season.

1. The Yankees’ odds of winning seemed bleak early on Tuesday as Carlos Rodon allowed a leadoff single to open the game and was at 30 pitches with the bases loaded and no outs in the first inning. Rodon’s Yankees career has been three seasons of letting the team and its fans down, but this time he settled in, allowed one run in the inning and didn’t allow another hit for the rest of his night. The Yankees as a whole didn’t allow a hit for the rest of the night. The Twins went 1-for-28 with two walks and eight strikeouts against Rodon, Tim Hill and Yerry De los Santos.

“We were set up for disaster there, but we got through it,” Rodon said. After the first inning, I attacked the strike zone and made them put the ball in play, and the defense played great.”

2. The Yankees scored nine runs in the game and it could have been a lot more. They racked up 11 hits (five for extra bases) and 11 walks. There was traffic on the bases all game as the Twins failed to have a single 1-2-3 inning. The 9-1 win gave the Yankees back-to-back wins for the first time in two weeks and just the second time in a month.

3. Giancarlo Stanton hit his 12th home run of the season (in only 157 plate appearances) and had his first four-hit game in two years. Stanton is now up to .300/.376/.586 on the season and has been the Yankees’ best hitter since he returned from the injured list. The games he lost sitting on the bench over the last couple of weeks that the Yankees lost because he was on the bench look even worse now than it did at the time.

“It’s refreshing after missing so much time, because I contribute zero when I miss time,” Stanton said. “Anything I can do when I’m back is always nice.”

4. Anthony Volpe hit a three-run home run after what looked like a little help from Jazz Chisholm on second base relaying him the pitches. As long as Chisholm is on second base waving his arms for Volpe to see, Volpe is a great hitter. To his credit, Volpe has been a much better all-around player in recent weeks, especially defensively. I still don’t trust him at the plate and will never trust him in the field, but he’s fine since the boos starting raining down in him at home last month.

5. Aaron Judged homered in the first to tie the game. It was Judge’s first home run since July 23. Yes, he missed a chunk of time on the IL during the last three weeks, but he had gone seven games without a home run, which is an eternity for Judge.

6. Wins by four or more runs are always welcome, like the Yankees provided the last two days. Blowout wins like Tuesday’s are the best. It’s no coincidence the Yankees’ starter pitched into the seventh inning and the offense scored six-plus runs in both games in the series and the Yankees won both. Aaron Boone looks like a genius when he doesn’t have to think. Pitch well, hit well and play clean baseball and Boone doesn’t get to be a part of the equation. It’s the best kind of baseball there is.

7. “Our mission is still the same thing: Go back to the World Series and win it,” Judge said. “We made it a little tough for ourselves the past couple of weeks, falling out of first place, but we have a lot of ballgames left to go do our thing.”

First, let’s settle down with any World Series talk. Right now the Yankees are tied with the Guardians in the loss column and the Guardians have two games in hand. If the Guardians and Yankees finish with the same record for the third wild-card spot, the Guardians will get in based on their record against their own division. Second, you didn’t make it “a little tough” you made it a lot of tough. You went from an eight-game division lead over the Blue Jays to pissing it away entirely in two months. And it hasn’t been a few weeks, it’s been more than two months of bad baseball and you haven’t been in first place since July 3. Third, there aren’t “a lot of ballgames left” as there are now 42 games left.

Unfortunately, the Mariners, Blue Jays, Guardians and Red Sox all won, so the Yankees’ blowout win didn’t change the standings. (The Rangers did lose to fall 4 1/2 games behind the Yankees, so for now they aren’t worth worrying about.)

8. It was another start at catcher for Ben Rice on Tuesday. The Yankees traded away every catching prospect they had because they believed Austin Wells would be their starter for the next decade and that J.C. Escarra would be a worthy backup. Now Wells is benched since he can’t hit sliders or sweepers and Escarra was sent down at the trade deadline and only recently recalled because of the injury to Amed Rosario. The Yankees’ payroll distribution and roster construction are deplorable and their decisions at catcher are a big reason why.

9. I can’t believe I forgot to write about Brooks Kriske in Tuesday’s thoughts after he pitched against the Yankees on Monday. Kriske threw 11 1/3 innings across 12 games for the Yankees in 2020 and 2021 and is best known for his wild pitch meltdown at Fenway Park to lose an extra-inning game in 2021. But my favorite thing about Kriske is just looking at his pitching line as a Yankee: 11.1 IP, 15 H 20 R, 19 ER, 6 HR, 13 BB, 15 K, 1 HBP, 7 WP, 15.09 ERA, 2.471 WHIP. What a masterpiece. That’s 29 baserunners in 11 1/3 innings! That’s an average 11.9 hits, 4.8 home runs and 10.3 walks per nine innings. It has to be the single-worst pitching line in Yankees history for someone who was allowed to pitch in 12 games. And to think the Yankees chose to protect Kriske and Nick Nelson instead of Garrett Whitlock. Now you know how it’s possible the same front office chose Wells and Escarra over Carlos Narvaez and Agustin Ramirez, only to have someone (Rice) they said wasn’t good enough to be a catcher in the majors become their starting catcher.

10. The Yankees will go for the sweep on Wednesday night, and in order to pull it off, they will need to beat the Twins’ best starter in Joe Ryan. The active Yankees have only faced him a couple of times in their careers and their numbers against him are weak. Cam Schlittler will need to match Ryan for as long as he can because after scoring 15 runs over the last two nights, Wednesday has a Yankees offensive no-show written all over it. Yes, it’s hard to sweep any team, even the Twins, but the Yankees need to find a way to. That’s what happens when you spend two-and-a-half months losing more often than not.

1. Oh how easy being a Yankees fan would be if the Yankees were part of the AL Central. In desperate need of a win, the Twins arrived in the Bronx and rolled over for the Yankees like they always do. The Yankees won 6-2 to win the first game of a series for the first time since the July 11-13 against the Cubs (though the Yankees ended up losing the second and third games of that series).

2. Will Warren (6.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 2 HR) was dominant and economical through the first 5 2/3 innings before Byron Buxton got him for a solo home run. Up until that point it felt like the Yankees had the game in the bag with Warren throwing a one-hitter, even though the Yankees only had a 3-0 lead. Warren gave up another solo home run in the seventh and the three-run lead that felt like it would be enough for a win was suddenly down to a single run.

3. Thankfully, the Yankees added two runs in the bottom of the seventh and another in the eighth. Luke Weaver got four outs across the seventh and eighth in relief of Warren and David Bednar got the final three outs of the game. Starter to Weaver to Bednar is a recipe for success and the only formula that can be trusted at this point since no other relievers can be trusted and Boone doesn’t know how to or when to properly use anyone other than those two.

4. “I think we’ve been needing that spark,” Warren said. “The past month hasn’t been how we’re supposed to play baseball.”

The past month? How about the past two months? Because this collapse started back after the win over the Royals on June 12. If you want to go back further, the Yankees are just one game over .500 since April 27.

Cody Bellinger hit a first-inning solo home run, Giancarlo Stanton and Ben Rice hit back-to-back solo home runs in the third and Jazz Chisholm hit a solo home run in the eighth. The solo home run: the only way the Yankees seem to know how to score.

5. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like right there,” Boone said of the win.

And that’s what it’s supposed to look like to take Boone out of the game: 6 2/3 innings from the starter, only needing your best two relievers, six runs from the offense and no errors in the field or on the bases. A Boone-less game is the best kind of game. The manager never had a chance to impact the game and ruin it.

6. Trent Grisham, Aaron Judge and Ryan McMahon each went 1-for-4 and combined for five strikeouts. Anthony Volpe went 1-for-3 with a walk and Paul Goldschmidt went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts as he continues to be unable to hit right-handed pitching, no matter who it is, and demolish left-handed pitching, no matter who it is. The Yankees went 10-for-34 as a team with a double, four home runs, two walks and 12 strikeouts.

7. Do I feel any better about the Yankees after Monday’s game than I did before it? No. The Yankees are still a mess. One win against a team going nowhere and a team that sold nearly half its roster at the trade deadline isn’t exactly feeling-changing. The Yankees could (and should) win on Tuesday and again on Wednesday for their first sweep in more than a month and I would feel the same way about them. The Twins suck and beating up on them should be expected and nothing more. Yes, wins over the Twins are crucial and much-needed, but there is nothing the Yankees could do in this series to make me think the Yankees team that is one game over .500 over their last 91 games isn’t going to show up in St. Louis on Friday.

8. The Blue Jays, Mariners and Guardians were off, the Red Sox lost and the Rangers won, so it was a pretty good night for the Yankees. The Yankees remain in the third wild-card spot (and would play a best-of-3 against the Astros with all games in Houston if the season ended today). Here is where the Yankees are in the standings:

7 games back of the Blue Jays in the division (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)
3 games back of the Mariners for the first wild card
2.5 games back of the Red Sox for the second wild card (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)
Tied with the Guardians in the loss column (Guardians hold intradivision tiebreaker)
3.5 games up on the Rangers (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)

9. The Yankees really need the Guardians to start losing because it’s going to be very difficult for the Yankees to finish with a better record against the AL East than the Guardians will have against the AL Central.

While the Yankees play the Twins, the Blue Jays play the Cubs (great), the Red Sox play the Astros (great), the Mariners play the Orioles (not great), the Guardians play the Marlins (OK) and the Rangers play the Diamondbacks (not great).

10. Carlos Rodon gets the ball on Tuesday. In his last seven starts dating back to June 30, he has one quality start (July 11 against the Cubs). Outside of that start, he failed to go more than 5 1/3 innings in any of the other six and has put 55 baserunners on in 38 innings. He has been bad for a long time (just like Max Fried has) and that needs to change on Tuesday. It has to change on Tuesday.

1. Another series against a playoff team and another series loss for the Yankees. Aaron Boone let Devin Williams ruin Friday’s game (a 5-3 loss), then allowed Camilo Doval to nearly ruin Saturday’s game (a 5-4 win) and then the offense Boone called the “best in the league” at various points this season was no-hit by Jason Alexander — a 32-year-old journeyman with a 5.97 ERA this season — in a lackluster 7-1 loss.

2. The last time the Yankees played a series against a team currently over .500 and won was back from July 8-10 when they swept the Mariners at the Stadium. Before that it was June 3-5 when they took two of three from the Guardians at the Stadium. In the last 10 weeks the Yankees have won two series against teams over .500. During that time they have dropped series to the Red Sox (twice), Reds, Blue Jays (twice), Mets, Cubs, Phillies and now Astros.

3. Unsurprisingly, the Astros did to the Yankees what they have been doing to them for the last decade. The crowd booed Jose Altuve in the first inning on Friday night with chants of “FUCK AL-TU-VE” and Altuve responded with a two-run home run. Two days later, he homered again in the first inning and would finish the series 6-for-11 with a double, two home runs, four RBIs, three walks and a stolen base.

Carlos Correa returned to the Astros at the trade deadline just in time to arrive in the Bronx playing third base for his former-and-once-again-current team. Like Altuve, Correa didn’t miss a beat against the Yankees with a 6-for-11 weekend, including a home run, three RBIs and three walks.

Why is it that every time these two teams meet the Astros’ stars play like stars and the Yankees’ stars run away and hide? (The one outlier was Juan Soto last season, but he’s no longer here.) Aaron Judge did what he does best against the Astros in a short series, picking up just two singles over the weekend, and the rest of the offense followed with a comeback effort that fell short on Saturday and a dismal performance on Sunday.

4. Not only was the defense a mess, yet again, but Max Fried wasn’t good, yet again. Fried has one quality start since June 25. He blew a lead and the Yankees lost to the last-place Orioles on June 20. On June 25, he shut out the Reds for seven innings to salvage the last game of that series. He pitched poorly in Toronto on July 1, struggled against the Mets in just five innings on July 6, left the game against the Cubs after three innings on July 12 and then pitched poorly in Toronto again on July 23. He followed that up by beating the Rays before getting beat up by the Rangers and Astros. He has put 22 baserunners on in his last two starts and 10 innings.

5. My biggest fear with Fried has always been how he will perform in the postseason and in big games, since he has been atrocious in October in his career. In 20 games and 12 starts in the playoffs, he has a 5.10 ERA and 1.493 WHIP which is a far cry from his 3.02 career ERA and 1.148 career WHIP. Well, my fear is being realized as the season progresses with the Yankees essentially playing a playoff game every night and Fried pitching like it’s October in July and August every five days.

6. If Fried and Rodon are going to lose every time they take the mound then there’s no point playing the remaining 44 games. On Saturday, Luis Gil became the first Yankees starting pitcher to get an out in the sixth inning since July 30 (stat from Katie Sharp). The starters have been bad and the bullpen has been overworked. Add in an offense that is benching their best hitter over the last month (Giancarlo Stanton) on purpose every game and you get a bad team, which is what the Yankees have been for a long time. At 20-31, the Yankees have the worst record in the American League since June 13. For two months (or one-third of the season) the Yankees — the team with the highest payroll in the AL has been the worst team in the AL.

7. As the Yankees have gone from 17 games above .500 with an eight-game division lead to out of the playoff picture like they were for about an hour yesterday, Boone’s tone and demeanor have changed in his postgame press conferences. The confident, cocky, arrogant version of Boone who acts as if he has a ring for every finger on one hand as Yankees manager is now speaking like someone who seems to be thinking about his job security for the first time on the job.

After Sunday’s loss, Boone said the following: “The game is littered with dead and buried teams … that are sitting in a worse position than we are right now that go on a run.”

Hmm, that sounds familiar. Wait a second, Boone said the same thing two years ago on Aug. 16, 2023 when the Yankees were swept by the Braves.

“The game is still littered with examples of teams going on unlikely runs,” Boone said back then.

8. On Sunday, Boone also said, “This is different than ’23 where I didn’t think we were necessarily capable of that run we needed … This is different.”

Oh really? Now it’s different? I find it quite amusing Boone says he didn’t believe in the 2023 team considering there are endless quotes from him from July and August of that season telling us how the offense will find it and how the team has the players to turn it around and have they will get going. It sounds an awful lot like the bullshit he has been spewing over the last two months.

2023: “We got the players to do it. We have the players with the track record to do it.”

2025: “I believe we have the people to get it done.”

2023: “We’ve got to fix out own house and get going.”

2025: “We got to play consistent baseball.”

9. Boone has run out of answers or ways to motivate his team, so on Sunday, he did what he knows best: he argued balls and strikes and got ejected in the third inning for the fifth time this season. At the time the Yankees were trailing 2-0. If Boone thought he could light a fire under his team, well, they were no-hit for two more innings and outscored 5-1 the rest of the game after he was tossed.

10. Maybe the Yankees will win a couple of games against the Twins over the next three nights at the Stadium, but who knows? The Twins sold at the deadline and yet they have a winning record since then, while the Yankees turned over 27 percent of their roster at the deadline and have lost seven of nine. Even if the Yankees are able to win a couple of games and a series against a team counting down the days until their season is over, then it’s off to St. Louis and Tampa and back home to host the Red Sox.

I keep hearing about how “easy” the Yankees late-August and late-September schedules are, but they have to actually be alive to have those matter, and they actually have to be playing well to think they can advantage of them. Otherwise, this season will end the same way 2023 did, whether Boone or anyone in the clubhouse believes in this team or not.

1. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe in the eighth inning of a 0-0 game with the 3-4-5 hitters of the Rangers lineup due up that Aaron Boone was going back to Devin Williams a night after he blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning. Then again, everything is believable when it comes to Boone and in-game decisions.

These were Williams’ last three appearances entering Tuesday:

Tuesday, July 29 vs. Tampa Bay: Entered with a three-run lead in the ninth. Allowed a triple and a walk and brought the tying run to the plate with no outs before eventually getting out of the inning.

Wednesday, July 30 vs. Tampa Bay: Entered with a one-run lead in the ninth. Allowed a walk and then a go-ahead, two-run home run for the blown save.

Monday, Aug. 4 at Texas: Entered with a one-run lead in the ninth. Allowed a game-tying home run for the blown save.

2. Williams has been untrustworthy since the first day he put on pinstripes on Opening Day when he nearly blew a three-run lead in the first game of the season. I don’t care about his run from early May through mid-July. Late March and April were enough to make me never trust him on the mound and when you add in his body language when things aren’t going well and the way he handles answering for blown saves — citing “just one bad pitch” when he blows a one-run lead like he did on Monday — there’s nothing to like about him. Devin, as a closer with a one-run lead, YOU CAN’T HAVE “ONE BAD PITCH!”

But there he was unable to command his fastball and throwing his changeup for easy takes on the Globe Life Field mound on Tuesday for the second time in 24 hours. And there he was ruining a game on the Globe Life Field mound for the second time in 24 hours as he allowed two runs and the Yankees lost 2-0.

3. It’s not Williams’ fault he was pitching in that spot in the game. It’s not his fault he’s still viewed as the highest-leverage reliever the team has. It’s not his fault he’s a Yankee. It’s his fault he sucks, but it’s not his fault the Yankees’ decision makers aren’t willing to accept that he sucks.

Boone could have and should have gone to either David Bednar or Mark Leiter Jr. for the eighth against the 3-4-5 hitters, but he decided to save both, likely wanting Bednar for a save situation as Boone continues to worry about a situation that may never come instead of worrying about the moment even as the Yankees continue to plummet down the standings. Boone stayed with Williams after he loaded the bases. He only went to Leiter Jr. once the Rangers had scored twice.

4. There have been a lot of stars over the years who have come to the Yankees and failed and failed miserably and Williams is the latest. It won’t surprise me when he’s somewhere else in 2026 and pitching like his pre-Yankee self and serving as the closer of the All-Star Game. It’s sad that so many great players and Hall of Fame players that have played for the Yankees under the Steinbrenners’ ownership were forced to cut their hair and shave daily, but the policy was modified for Williams of all players. One of, if not the softest player to ever come through the organization.

5. For as soft as Williams is, the offense as a collective group is much, much softer. After suffering a disastrous loss on Friday, the offense went out and got two-hit and shut out on Saturday. After suffering a disastrous loss on Monday, the offense went and got two-hit and shut out on Tuesday. This team has no fight. It’s why they didn’t have a late-game comeback for months to begin the season. When the going gets tough, the Boone Yankees get going. They always have, outside of a select few.

6. One of those few is Giancarlo Stanton who was held to one plate appearance on Tuesday because Aaron Judge returned and Judge can only DH, and because the Yankees are worried about Stanton’s health with 48 games left and a playoff berth hanging in the balance, Stanton is going to be held to one plate appearance a lot moving forward. Shockingly, the Yankees’ problems weren’t resolved with the return of Judge as Boone suggested they may be when he sternly said, “Judge tomorrow,” to the media after Monday’s game as if to foreshadow that everything would change. The Yankees were a bad team for a long time with Judge playing every day and continued to be one without him and are still one now with him again. Judge wasn’t himself for a long time before going on the injured list and still isn’t himself as he went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. Judge did say the Yankees “have a good ball club” and Boone said he’s “confident” the team will turn it around. The same “good ball club” and the same “confidence” the two have never stopped referring to despite being 19-29 since June 13.

7. It’s always the ex-Yankee fucking the current the Yankees. It was Nathan Eovaldi throwing eight inning of one-hit ball on Tuesday. On Monday, it was former Yankees minor leaguers Josh Smith and Ezequiel Duran (two players traded for Joey Gallo) combining to go 3-for-7 with three RBIs. Over the weekend in Miami, it was Augustin Ramirez (traded for Jazz Chisholm) with the walk-off hit on Friday and two solo home runs in the Yankees’ 2-0 loss on Saturday. It’s always the ex-Yankees.

8. Eovaldi’s line looks great from Tuesday, but he didn’t do anything special. Eury Perez and the Marlins did the same thing to the Yankees on Saturday. Shutting out the Yankees isnt some great accomplishment. In June, they were shut out at Fenway Park on a Sunday and then shut out for 11 innings by the Angels the next day and then shut out by the Angels again the day after that. Eovaldi was good on Tuesday because he’s been good in nearly every start since leaving the Yankees after 2016.

9. Boone has had nearly three full seasons to pinch hit for Anthony Volpe in big spots and has always refrained. Yes, Stanton presented a better chance at a game-tying home run in the ninth inning on Tuesday and I would have made the same move, it’s just funny that Volpe is finally showing some semblance of offense and power for the first time in his career and now he’s a pinch-hit opportunity for Boone. Maybe Boone will finally start pinch hitting for Austin Wells now too.

10. Unfortunately, Carlos Rodon, who is as soft as Williams gets the ball in the series finale on Wednesday. Anyone who tells you they like Rodon, trust him, think he’s good or believe he will go out and lead the Yankees to a win on Wednesday is either a Yankees homer, full of shit, soft themself or all three. Sure, Rodon could go out and pitch well and the Yankees could end their five-game losing streak and avoid falling out of a playoff spot for the first time all season, but no one can feel confident in thinking he will. Because even if Rodon pitches well, the offense is likely to no-show. And if the offense does show, Rodon likely won’t pitch well. And if the offense does show and Rodon does pitch well, someone will make a baserunning or defensive mistake you have never seen before. And if the offense does show and Rodon is great and the Yankees play a clean game in the field and on the bases, the bullpen will blow it. And if the offense does show, Rodon is stellar, the Yankees play a clean game in the field and on the bases and the bullpen is unhittable, the Yankees just may win. And if all of those things happen it will be their first clean game and their first win since the trade deadline and in August. And if all of those things happen, the Yankees will leave Texas still in a playoff spot.

1. The Yankees led the Rangers 5-4 with one out and no one on the ninth inning on Monday night.

“And here is Joc Pederson, who has really struggled,” Ryan Ruocco said on YES as the Rangers pinch hit for Ezequiel Duran.

YES displayed a graphic with Pederson’s season stats showing a .126 batting average, two home runs, six RBIs and a .473 OPS on the season.

“Stunning,” David Cone replied. “Those numbers are absolutely stunning from Joc Pederson, who signed a two-year, $20 million deal to come over here. Hitting a-buck-twenty-six.”

Four pitches later Pederson destroyed a 2-1 changeup off Devin Williams to tie the game.

The moment Pederson’s blast landed, the Yankees lost. Yes, technically, there was still baseball to be played, but either the Yankees were going to get walked off on in the bottom of the ninth, or they were going to get walked off on in extra innings. Every Yankees fan knew the game was over. The worst extra-inning road team since the automatic runner was implemented was only going to provide one result.

2. And lose they did. After failing to score in the top of the 10th, the Yankees lost, as expected, in the bottom of the 10th.

In the top of the 10th with Jasson Dominguez as the automatic runner, Jazz Chisholm moved him over to third with a groundout. Anthony Volpe walked to set up runners on first and third with one out, but Austin Wells failed miserably (as he always does) and hit a weak grounder back to the mound to start an inning-ending double play. The Yankees 0-for in the 10th has them now at 1-for-33 (the one was a single) with no RBIs in six extra-inning road games this season. The only run they have scored in extras on the road this season was on a wild pitch.

Aaron Boone had already used Luke Weaver, Camilo Doval, David Bednar and Williams, so he went with Jake Bird for the 10th.

Bird got the hardest out of the inning — striking out Marcus Semien to prevent the automatic runner from advancing to third — and got Adolis Garcia to ground out to keep the automatic runner at second. Bird was one out away from sending the game to an 11th inning.

Boone decided to intentionally walk Wyatt Langford, choosing instead to pitch to Josh Jung. Jung went on to hit a 1-1 sinker 401 feet for a game-winning, three-run home run to drop the Yankees to 0-6 on the season in extra-inning road games and extend their losing streak to four straight.

3. Brian Cashman was praised for bringing in Bird, Bednar and Doval at the trade deadline, but we’re quickly seeing why he was able to hold on to his top prospects to acquire the three. The games Bird and Bednar have appeared in have been the biggest of their careers as Bird had only ever pitched for the Rockies and Bednar had spent the last five seasons in Pittsburgh after throwing 17 1/3 innings for the Padres to begin this career. Doval is the only one of the three to ever throw a meaningful pitch in August let alone October.

4. Max Fried had a 1.29 ERA through 11 starts and the Yankees were 10-1 in them. Fried has a 4.30 ERA over his last 12 starts and the Yankees are 5-7 in them. Fried was bad again on Monday: 5 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 7 K. Eleven baserunners in five innings isn’t going to cut it. Fried now has one quality start (July 29 against the Rays) in his last six outings going back to July 1. In those six starts he has a 5.81 ERA and the Yankees are 2-4.

5. Aaron Judge is set to return on Tuesday. “Judge tomorrow,” is what Boone told the media on Monday night in a way that makes me believe Boone thinks Judge is going to come back and solve all of the team’s problem. I hate to break it to you, but Judge only missed nine games since going on the injured list. The Yankees were a bad team with Judge. They have just continued to be a bad team without him.

6. Judge’s DH-only return means Giancarlo Stanton will be going to the bench. The Yankees are taking their best active hitter out of the lineup because they are afraid to let him play the outfield. There are 49 games left and the Yankees are closer to being out of the playoffs than they are to moving up in the current playoff picture. If Stanton gets hurt playing the outfield, so be it. His bat is too valuable to remove because Judge can’t play the outfield. Stanton has to play. What are you saving him for? The postseason that you’re not going to play in if he doesn’t play every day right now. Stanton can’t be a glorified pinch hitter and allowed only one plate appearance a night until Judge can throw again.

7. “Do you feel like this stretch is weighing on guys?” Boone was asked after the game.

“Yes,” Boone answered surprisingly.

I didn’t think Boone had it in him to admit things aren’t going well when things are obviously not going well, and that’s the first time in his eight years as manager I can recall him doing so. Boone said after Sunday’s loss that it’s “gut-check time” for his Yankees and they went to Texas, checked their gut and got punched in it again.

As I wrote after Sunday’s loss, Boone’s postgame tone completely shifted over the weekend. He sounds like someone who knows where this season is headed and with each passing day they are one loss closer to missing the postseason.

8. Despite having a somber tone in his voice, Boone did manage to throw out some of his favorite go-to lines after the loss. He gave us a “Gotta get over it” and a “We gotta win games” and a “We gotta do it better” when asked about his team’s recent play. The team he called “the best team in the league” a month ago. Boone said, “The season is getting shorter in a hurry.” I wonder if he has relayed that message to his clubhouse, especially Volpe, who has recently mentioned how the Yankees have so many games left.

9. On Friday, the offense scored 12 runs and the pitching gave up 13. On Saturday, the pitching held the Marlins to two runs and the offense was shut out. On Sunday, both the offense and defense sucked. On Monday, the offense scored five runs and the pitching gave up eight. The Yankees find a new way to lose every game, and that’s the most obvious sign of a bad team, which is what they have been for a long time now.

10. The Yankees are 19-28 since June 13. They went 13-14 in June, 12-13 in July and are 0-4 in August. They had an eight-game lead in the division at the end of May and are now 6 1/2 games back in the division (tiebreaker included). They had a 12-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox at the end of May and now trail the Red Sox by 3 1/2 games for the first wild card (tiebreaker included). They are now tied with the Mariners record-wise, but do hold the head-to-head tiebreaker to be the second wild card. With Will Warren going against Nathan Eovaldi on Tuesday and the Mariners hosting the White Sox, I expect the Mariners to pass the Yankees by the end of play on Tuesday.

1. The Yankees blew a 6-0 lead. They blew a 9-4 lead. They blew a 12-10 lead with one out and no one on in the ninth inning and the bottom of the Marlins’ order due up. The Yankees lost a game in which they scored at least 12 runs and had at least 15 hits for the first time in 85 years (stat from Katie Sharp), falling to the Marlins 13-12.

In the Aaron Boone era, the Yankees have made sure to let any good feeling fans have about the team be short-lived. In 2018, the Yankees did their job to begin the ALDS by splitting the first two games at Fenway Park and then returned home to a raucous Stadium crowd only to suffer the most lopsided home postseason defeat in the franchise’s history. In 2019, they won Game 1 of the ALCS on the road against the Astros only to blow Game 2 and lose Games 3 and 4. They momentarily saved their season by coming back in the top of the ninth in Game 6 only to be walked off in the bottom of the ninth. In 2020, they won the first game of the ALDS and then lost three of the next four, including a Game 5 defeat in which they couldn’t hold on or add to an early lead. In 2022, they survived elimination in Games 3, 4 and 5 in the ALDS only to be humiliated in the ALCS. They re-signed Aaron Judge after 2022 and promised to add more, and that more only ended up regrettably being Carlos Rodon. In 2024, they reached the World Series and looked to be on their way to forcing a Game 6 before producing the single-worst inning in the history of the World Series. They traded for Juan Soto and then lost him to free agency after one season.

2. The 2025 Yankees have given fans little to feel good about over the last two months. The team had an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays at the end of May and now trail the Blue Jays by 4 1/2 games with the head-to-head tiebreaker included. The team had a 12-game lead over the Red Sox in the loss column and now they have a one-game lead in the loss column and are tied in wins. But a depressing June and July was supposed to be forgotten with a big August and September. The Yankees finally released DJ LeMahieu last month and did the same to Marcus Stroman on Friday. They had added an actual third baseman to play third base, revamped their bullpen and created a functional bench for the first time in years. Before the first pitch on Friday against the Marlins, I felt the best I had about the Yankees since they took a 3-2 lead over the Dodgers in the 10th inning of Game 1 of the World Series. Again, every good feeling in the Boone era is short-lived.

The bullpen was responsible for a lot of the losses over the last two months, but that was supposed to be resolved on deadline day with the addition of Jake Bird, David Bednar and Camilo Doval. You couldn’t find a Yankees fan on Thursday at 6 p.m. who wasn’t ecstatic about the Yankees adding three high-leverage relievers to replace the crap they had been trotting out for most of the summer. But like every bit of happiness the Yankees have produced since the start of 2018, it was immediately destroyed.

3. Before the deadline day duds ruined Friday’s game, Boone put the wheels in motion. Rodon was awful, needing 107 pitches to pitch 4 2/3 innings. But for as bad as Rodon was, Boone’s decision to let him keep pitching in the fifth inning when he clearly had nothing was worse. The Yankees led 6-0 when Rodon took the mound in the bottom of the fifth and he promptly allowed four runs with a little help from the mess that is Jonathan Loaisiga. Loaisiga hit a batter to load the bases and then allowed a two-run single to ding Rodon’s ERA.

Brent Headrick managed to throw a scoreless sixth to hold the Yankees’ 6-4 lead and the Yankees added three runs in the seventh to take a 9-4 lead. A five-run lead with nine outs to go with the newly-stacked bullpen? That’s about as close to a guaranteed win as you get in this sport. The deadline day acquisitions made sure to remind everyone there’s no such thing as a guarantee in this sport.

4. Bird was the first deadline day reliever to come into the game. The sweeper version of Tommy Kahnle and his changeup, Bird decided he was only going to throw sweepers and when it was evident he had no command of the pitch and had to come in the zone with a fastball, the Marlins rocked him.

Bird went sweeper, sweeper, sweeper, sinker to Agustin Ramirez and Ramirez drilled the fastball off the right-field wall. Bird did then got the recently-called-up rookie to go down swinging after four straight sweepers. Otto Lopez singled when Bird threw him three straight sweepers and Liam Hicks walked when Bird threw sweepers and a curveball out of the zone.

At that point, Bird had thrown 15 sweepers in 19 pitches and it had led to the bases being loaded. Up came Kyle Stowers — the only star in the Marlins’ lineup — and Bird remained in the game. It was obvious Bird didn’t have it, but that wasn’t going to stop Boone from trying to let him find it against the majors’ sixth-highest OPS (.949) in Stowers. Bird went away from the sweeper, thinking Stowers would be sitting on it and missed the zone with a first-pitch curve. Thinking that Stowers would now certainly be sitting on the sweeper after not throwing it on the first pitch, Bird went with a sinker and Stowers hit a grand slam off of it. Bird didn’t find “it” on the mound like Boone thought he would. The grand slam pulled the Marlins to within one run at 9-8 and then Boone decided to pull Bird after he had jumpstarted the Marlins’ comeback.

5. The next of the deadline day duds to enter the game was Bednar. The former Pirates closer quickly found out he wasn’t in Pittsburgh anymore. For the first time in his career he was pitching in a game that mattered in August and he handled it about as well as someone who had spent five years with the Pirates would. Michael Kay warned fans the Marlins broadcast team had told him about Bednar’s struggles in the Marlins’ park and three pitches into his Yankees debut, Bednar allowed a game-tying home run to Javier Sanoja. Yes, the powerful Sanoja who hit 20 home runs with a .719 OPS in 415 games in the minors and who entered Friday with one home run and a .634 OPS in 93 games in the majors homered off Bednar after homering off Rodon earlier. Tie game.

Bednar wasn’t done. He then gave up a double to Jakob Marsee in his major-league debut for the first hit of Marsee’s career. Xavier Edwards then reached on an infield single that “the fucking elite” Anthony Volpe couldn’t handle because he can’t handle anything with the smallest amount of difficulty involved and once Volpe couldn’t end the inning, you just knew the Marlins would take the lead before the inning was over. They did so on the very next pitch as Ramirez — traded last year for Jazz Chisholm — ripped an 111-mph line-drive single to left. Bednar allowed one earned run in his last 23 1/3 innings with the Pirates and then allowed two in his first five batters with the Yankees (stat from Katie Sharp). 10-9 Marlins.

Volpe made up for his inability to play shortstop in the majors by hitting a game-tying home run to lead off the eighth. Volpe flipped his bat and then made some odd gesture either to his bench or the crowd as to quiet them down before going on the slowest recorded home run jog of his career. How about we get to league average as a hitter before we act like that? Tie game again.

The game was still tied at 10 in the ninth when the Yankees built a two-out rally against the tough Anthony Bender. Ben Rice hit a pinch-hit single to right, Jose Caballero stole second after pinch running for Rice and Ryan McMahon battled back from 1-2 against Bender to single in Rice and give the Yankees an 11-10 lead. Volpe followed with a double to drive in McMahon and the Yankees had a 12-10 lead. Kay screamed on YES, “FOUR-HIT NIGHT FOR ANTHONY VOLPE,” as if Volpe had just eclipsed Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak because the odds of Volpe having a four-hit game were just about as impossible as someone breaking the Yankee Clipper’s record.

Because no big moment during the Boone era goes without retaliation, anyone who thought the two ninth-inning runs would be enough to put away the Marlins must be new around here. Bird sucked and Bednar sucked just as bad, so Boone figured the final deadline acquisition in the bullpen in Camilo Doval couldn’t possibly be as bad.

6. Bird had been given a five-run lead as a soft landing spot to get his feet wet as a Yankee and couldn’t handle it. Bednar was given a one-run lead to protect against the bottom of the Marlins’ lineup and couldn’t do so. Doval was being asked to protect a two-run lead with the 7-8-9 hitters due up. Get three outs before the bottom of the Marlins’ lineup could score two runs and the Yankees would have themselves a fourth straight win and would be one game closer to the Blue Jays.

It seems unfathomable anyone hits Doval with his 100-mph cutter, but when he inexplicably doesn’t use that pitch it’s easy to see how he gets hit. Doval got the first out of the ninth on four pitches and then the immortal Sanoja singled on a line-drive right right after Doval went sinker, slider, slider against him without showing the Marlins’ 8-hitter the cutter. Doval then threw seven pitches to Marsee (again making his major-league debut) and only one was a cutter — clocked at 99.5 mph — and Marsee walked. The Marlins had the tying run on base and the winning run at the plate with the lineup turning over. Maybe now Doval would go to his best pitch? No, he wouldn’t.

Doval went slider then sinker to Xavier Edwards and Edwards singled to right. The base hit was going to score one run, but it ended up scoring two as Caballero let the ball roll under his glove. Caballero is a middle infielder by trade, but he has played 33 games in his career in the outfield, so it wasn’t his first time out there. But there’s nothing that Boone loves more than playing players out of position if he can. Cody Bellinger had to move to first after Paul Goldschmidt and Rice were removed from the game, so Caballero had to play right field because he was the only option left for Boone. Wait … what’s that? The Yankees recently traded for Austin Slater who has played 1,049 2/3 innings in right field in his career and he was available off the bench. Oh …

“I feel sad,” Caballero said, “because it’s definitely a game that we could have won.”

Yes, I would say a 6-0 lead over the Marlins constitutes as a game that could have been won. I would say a 9-4 lead over the Marlins constitutes as a game that could have been won. I would say a 12-10 lead with one out and no one on in the ninth and the 8-9 hitters due up constitutes as a game that could have been won.

7. No one could have envisioned all four deadline day acquisitions would play a major role in the Yankees suffering a loss not experienced by the franchise in more than eight decades in their very first game with the team. But my biggest worry when the Yankees made all the moves they made at the deadline was that they gave Boone so many pieces to play with that he wouldn’t know how to use them. It took one game for that fear to be realized. Boone needs eight everyday players at all eight positions, five clear starting pitchers, a pure seventh-inning pitcher, eighth-inning pitcher and closer. He needs a 12-piece puzzle with giant pieces and pictures of safari animals on them. He was supplied with a 1,000-piece puzzle of the Manhattan skyline at night.

The Yankees treated the winter and first two-thirds of the seasons as if they didn’t matter. They didn’t have a real third baseman play third base until July 26. They didn’t improve their bullpen until July 31. Brian Cashman spent $300 million on a roster that needed to add seven players to before the deadline. More than a quarter of the Yankees’ roster is different than it was a week ago because the original roster was so poorly constructed.

8. It’s not Boone’s fault Rodon sucked again, Bird couldn’t throw his sweeper for a strike, Bednar pooped his pants in the biggest game of his career, Doval was a disaster and Caballero played the ball in right like the drunkest guy on a beer league team stuck in right field where he couldn’t possibly impact the game. But it’s Boone fault that Rodon was allowed to pitch as long as he did. It’s Boone’s fault he didn’t get Bird out of the game when he clearly didn’t have it. It’s Boone’s fault Caballero was playing right field with Slater on the bench.

With Edwards on third representing the winning run, Ramirez came to the plate with one out. It would be nearly impossible to throw out the speedy Edwards if Ramirez put the ball in play on the ground and because Doval had no swing-and-miss stuff in his debut, the sensible decision would be to intentionally walk Ramirez. That would create the possibility of a double play, so that a ground ball wouldn’t necessarily end the game with Edwards on third.

I’m not sure if the thought to walk Ramirez ever entered Boone’s mind. I’m not sure he’s capable of reading the situation and thinking of such an option because he didn’t. Instead, he had Doval pitch to Ramirez, Ramirez put the ball in play on the ground and the Marlins won 13-12.

“It’s now how you draw it up,” Boone said.

Actually, if you know anything about the Boone era, it’s exactly how things get drawn up. The endless list of lowlights and miserable franchise records set during his tenure as Yankees manger is depressing.

9. “We fought,” Volpe said. “Overall, I’m proud of the fight everyone showed.”

What the fuck are you talking about? The Marlins should be proud of their fight, not the Yankees. The Yankees had a 96 percent chance to win when they led 6-0. It was 97 percent when they led 9-4. It was 95 percent when Doval got the first out of the ninth. Bird, Bednar and Doval combined to allow nine runs on nine hits in just 2 1/3 innings. I bet Ian Hamilton and Yerry De los Santos are together still floating up against a ceiling from laughter like Uncle Albert and Bert in Mary Poppins.

10. The Blue Jays lost again, so the Yankees missed an opportunity to trim the loss column deficit in the division to two. The Red Sox and Mariners both won, so the Yankees’ lead on the first wild-card spot was cut into.

WC1: Yankees (4.5 games back of Blue Jays because of tie-breaker)
WC2: Red Sox (0.5 games back of Yankees)
WC2: Mariners (1.5 games back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (4.5 games back of Yankees because of tie-breaker)

Friday’s loss was the kind of loss that keeps you up and makes you question why you like the Yankees. It’s also the kind of loss that makes you get up and write nearly 3,000 words about it. I don’t want to write about a game like that again. Not this season. Not ever.

1. The Yankees won a game and won it against a division opponent, beating the Rays 7-5 to improve to 12-19 in the AL East.

The Yankees won a game they had to have: a game started by Max Fried. The Yankees had been 2-4 in Fried’s last six starts and when the rest of your rotation is the untrustworthy Carlos Rodon, the inconsistent Will Warren, the inexperienced Cam Schlittler and the inept Marcus Stroman, you have to win the games Fried starts.

2. It didn’t necessarily look like the Yankees were going to win the Fried start on Tuesday. With a runner on first and no outs in the first inning, Anthony Volpe fielded a ground ball up the middle and shoveled a throw out of the reach of Jazz Chisholm at second. The Yankees may have been able to turn two on the play and erase the runner on base, but at worst they were going to get the first out of the inning. Instead, they got nothing and the Rays ended up scoring twice with two outs in the inning when the inning should have been over. Unfortunately, the errant throw wouldn’t be Volpe’s only of the game.

3. The Rays added a third run in the third inning to take a 3-0 lead and the Yankees’ odds of coming back felt insurmountable with an offense that had scored in just two of 20 innings since Aaron Judge went on the injured list. (And in one of those two innings, both runs scored on bases-loaded walks.) But Cody Bellinger (inexplicably batting fourth despite being the best active hitter in the lineup) tied the game with a three-run home run in the bottom of the third.

The Yankees scored three more runs in the fourth to take a 6-3 lead. They gave one back in the seventh, but added a seventh run in the eighth and then eked out a win in the ninth as Devin Williams was shaky and his defense was even shakier as Volpe threw away the would-be final out of the game to extend the inning and give the Rays another crack at tying or taking the lead in the ninth.

4. Volpe moved back on the ball in the ninth inning — as he now always does — and let the ball play him. Once he fielded it, he took two hops to gather himself and then put his left leg (his plant leg) exceptionally far from his body before delivering a throw in the the dirt to first. I have no idea how the player who failed to make that play and the player who now has that poor of footwork and fielding technique was able to win the Gold Glove two years ago.

“I’ve never really experienced something like this,” said Volpe. “I know what I’m capable of.”

5. Volpe did provide an RBI bloop single, managed to steal third on an errant throw and hit the longest home run of his career for one of his best offensive games of the season, but he’s still 11 percent worse than league average for the season. The battle for the worst defensive shortstop in the league continues to be between Volpe and Elly De La Cruz. The difference is you can live with the errors Cruz has made at the position because he’s hitting .282/.362/.484 with an .846 OPS, a 128 OPS+ and 29 steals.

6. There’s no current resolution for Volpe, nor do the Yankees want to have one. They want Volpe to work out and be the player they promised because they passed on the deepest shortstop free-agent class in history to cater to him. They have played him every single day since the start of 2023 and have defended him to the media in a way no player has ever been defended by the organization before. The idea Volpe is going to lose playing time to Amed Rosario is not worth thinking about because it’s never going to happen. The only way out of this mess is for George Lombard Jr. to develop into the player the Yankees thought they had in Volpe.

7. Trent Grisham went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. Ben Rice went 0-for-2 with two walks. Paul Goldschmidt went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts. Bellinger had the big, game-tying blast. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. Jasson Dominguez went 2-for-4 with a stolen base. Ryan McMahon went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Volpe went 2-for-4 with a home run and Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with a walk. Jonathan Loaisiga threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings following Fried and Williams closed out the ninth around a triple, walk and the Volpe error.

8. The Blue Jays lost for the fourth straight game, so the Yankees — despite going 2-2 in their last four — have now picked up two games on them in the division. The Red Sox also won, but the Mariners and Rangers lost to go along with the Rays loss.

WC1: Yankees (5 games back of Blue Jays because of tie-breaker)
WC2: Red Sox (1 game back of Yankees)
WC2: Mariners (1.5 games back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (3.5 games back of Yankees because of tie-breaker)
Second team out: Rays (4.5 games back of Yankees)

9. It’s going to be extremely hard to win Thursday afternoon’s series finale against the Rays with Stroman starting, so the Yankees need to win Wednesday night’s game with Warren starting. Unfortunately, Warren has faced the Rays twice this season and pitched poorly in both outings. On April 17, he was pulled in the second inning in Tampa after allowing four hits and two walks and needing 53 pitches to get five outs. On may 4, he allowed seven hits and three walks over 4 2/3 innings, needing 102 pitches to get 14 outs.

10. Which version of Warren will show up on Wednesday? Will it be the one who couldn’t beat the Rays in either start this season? The one who ruins the game in the first inning? The one who has trouble getting through five innings? Or the one who can shut out a team and rack up double-digit strikeouts? I have no idea and neither do the Yankees.

1. The Yankees played a team that doesn’t completely suck on Monday, so if you didn’t watch, you know how it went: they lost 4-2. The Yankees scored two first-inning runs on two bases-loaded walks against the Rays and then didn’t score again in the game. They had six hits, all singles. Following Ryan McMahon’s bases-loaded walk to tie the game in the first, the Yankees went 3-for-28 with eight strikeouts. They had one hit from the last out of the first inning until one out in the eighth inning.

“We just weren’t able to mount enough and couldn’t hold them down just enough,” Aaron Boone said, essentially defining the meaning of the word “loss”.

2. On a day the Rays traded their starting catcher (All-Animosity Team member Danny Jansen) to show they aren’t sold on their current roster, they still managed to beat the Yankees in the Bronx. The Red Sox and Rangers also lost, but the Mariners won to go along with the Rays’ win, so the updated wild-card picture looks like this:

WC1: Yankees
WC2: Mariners (0.5 games back of Yankees)
WC3: Red Sox (1 game back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (1.5 games back of Yankees)
Second team out: Rays (3.5 games back of Yankees)

The Blue Jays also lost for the second straight game, which seemed like an impossible feat of late. But really who cares about the Blue Jays right now, since the Yankees are just 2 1/2 games up on a playoff spot (because of they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers) and they are 6 1/2 games out in the division (because the Blue Jays hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over them).

3. There isn’t much to feel good about right now with the Yankees. They have fewer wins than both the Rockies and White Sox over the last nearly six weeks, Aaron Judge is out with a flexor strain, the bullpen sucks, the rotation provides no length, the lineup is a collection of inconsistent performers and the manager is somehow in his eighth season making the same kind of in-game decisions he made in his first weekend in his first season. And oh yeah, they’re 11-19 against the division.

It’s depressing watching the 2025 Yankees die a slow, painful death. Because if you think it’s OK they are currently holding the first wild-card spot, you’re a fool. This is a team that had an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays in the last week of May. A team that led the Red Sox by 12 games in the loss column. They didn’t fight to get to where they are like the Red Sox and Rangers. Actually, I guess they did since they didn’t fight and that’s why they are where they are.

4. Cam Schlittler wasn’t good on Monday (11 baserunners in 4 1/3 innings), but I have nothing bad to say about him because nothing bad can be said about him. He has three major-league starts to his name after having just six Triple-A starts and 14 Double-A starts to his name. He has had to start against the Mariners, Blue Jays and Rays, or in other words, the best team in the American League, a team currently holding a playoff spot and a team battling for a playoff spot. He wasn’t exactly given a soft landing spot to get his feet wets in the bigs, and he’s being asked to win important games with no limited run support and a bad defense.

5. After playing a mistake-free defensive game on Sunday in the win over the Phillies, the Yankees made up for it on Monday with a couple of miscues. Jazz Chisholm couldn’t get a ball out of his glove on a play that was inexplicably ruled a base hit and Anthony Volpe couldn’t make a play on a ball to his left that was also inexplicably ruled a hit. I don’t think we’ll hear Boone talk about the official scorer in the Bronx after he did both of his middle infielders a favor on two plays that were clearly errors.

6. The boos came out for Volpe after his misplay. Sure, it was a tough play, but it was also a play a major-league shortstop should make, especially one who has been deemed “fucking elite” by his manager. I don’t know that Volpe is equipped to handle boos from the Yankee Stadium crowd. The Golden Boy has only ever been told how great he is by everyone in the organization. He was a first-round pick who moved quickly through the minor leagues and was given the everyday shortstop job after just 22 games of a .718 OPS at Triple-A because of a good spring training. Since then, the threat of being sent down has never been an option as he has never even been benched. Not for a series, not for a game, not for an inning. He just continues to play every single day in every single game despite being one of worst everyday offensive players in the majors over the last three years, all while his defense and baserunning have regressed to poor levels. If the boos continue for Volpe (and every indication is that they will if he continues to put up 0-for-4s and misplay ground balls) that may be what leads to him losing playing time because his manager and general manager can shield him from the media, but they can’t shield him from the fans, and the fans have put up with below-league-average play from him for long enough and they have the power to make a performance reversal impossible

7. I think it’s time Paul Goldschmidt stopped playing against right-handed pitching, don’t you? The Yankees’ defense is a mess whether Goldschmidt plays or not, so they need to focus on creating offense and Goldschmidt just doesn’t do that. Goldschmidt has one home run since June 6 and a .589 OPS since the beginning of June. He has a .615 OPS against righties this year. Ben Rice needs to be playing against righties every game. He needs to be pinch-hitting for Goldschmidt against righties in games.

8. Give me this lineup against a right-handed starter:

Trent Grisham, CF
Cody Bellinger, RF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Ben Rice, 1B
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Austin Wells, C
Anthony Volpe/Amed Rosario SS

And this lineup against a left-handed starter:

Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Amed Rosario, RF
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Austin Wells, C

(I would play Dominguez in center field with Grisham out of the lineup, but we all know that’s not going to happen.)

9. Again, the defense is going to be a problem no matter who is playing, so it’s time to worry about offense, especially with Judge out. I wish the Yankees had one regular, everyday lineup, but they don’t seem to believe in that and also lack the personnel to have that. Their righties don’t hit righties and their lefties don’t hit lefties for the most part. The roster construction remains a mess in that they have players who don’t deserve to play every day and others who can’t play every day because they don’t have positions.

10. The summer slog continues on Tuesday in the second game of four against the Rays. I went into this series wanting the Yankees to split the series. Take four games off the calendar and keep the Rays at bay, while trying to stay afloat until the trade deadline and injured list bring back some names and Judge returns. But after Monday’s loss, the Yankees need to win two of three to accomplish that and (as of now) Marcus Stroman is starting one of those three games. Max Fried needs to go out on Tuesday and make sure the bullpen usage is kept to a minimum. He needs to go out and give the Yankees the kind of start he gave them every five days through the end of June. The kind of start he hasn’t given them in more than a month.

1. The Yankees played a good team over the weekend, so if you didn’t watch, you know how it went: they lost two of three and dropped another series. The Phillies blasted the Yankees’ bullpen for a 12-5 win on Friday and rocked Marcus Stroman for a 9-4 win on Saturday before the Yankees managed to salvage the third game by somehow getting to Zack Wheeler for four runs. The Yankees played one error-free game in the series, and guess which one was it was? The one they won. What a coincidence.

2. Going back to May 30, the Yankees have played 10 series against teams with a winning record. Here is how those series went:

Lost two of three to the Dodgers
Lost two of three to the Red Sox
Swept by the Red Sox
Lost two of three to the Reds
Lost two of three to the Blue Jays
Lost two of three to the Mets
Swept the Mariners
Lost two of three to the Cubs
Lost two of three to the Blue Jays
Lost two of three to the Phillies

The Yankees went 1-9 in the 10 series with an 11-17 record. Over that time, they have watched their eight-game lead over the Blue Jays turn into a 5 1/2-game deficit (and it’s really 6 1/2 when you account for the head-to-head tiebreaker).

3. The Yankees have been a bad team for a long time. They were 42-25 after sweeping the Royals on June 12. Since then, they have gone 15-23 and blew a massive division lead. They are now clinging to a 1 1/2-game lead for a playoff berth (though it’s really 2 1/2 games since they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers).

4. Things have been going poorly for the Yankees for nearly two months and now they will be without Aaron Judge for at least 10 days (and possibly more) and when he does return he will only be allowed to be the designated hitter at first. That means for Giancarlo Stanton to play, he will have to play the outfield. That means the Yankees’ defense (which is already a well-known embarrassment) will get even worse.

5. The Judge injury annoys me because not only does it hurt the Yankees’ chances of winning, it creates a built-in excuse for Aaron Boone’s job security if the season ends poorly (and all signs point to the season ending poorly), the same way Judge’s long absence in 2023 served as an excuse for the Yankees’ 82-80 disappointment. No single player in baseball should have as a great of an impact on a team as Judge does, and his absence shouldn’t serve as an excuse for anyone keeping their job if the season spirals out of control (which it has been doing since the end of May). The Yankees were in a bad place while Judge was healthy and playing. They are in a much worse place now.

6. The Yankees finally addressed third base after neglecting to do so in the winter or for 2024 or 2023 or 2022. The last time the Yankees had a solid everyday third baseman was when they had Gio Urshela there from 2019-2021, and he wasn’t supposed to be there, Miguel Andujar was. After trying Josh Donaldson, Oswaldo Cabrera, DJ LeMahieu, Jazz Chisholm, Oswald Peraza and Jorbit Vivas there over the last three-and-a-half years, the Yankees now have Ryan McMahon for this season and the next two.

7. When I wrote about McMahon recently, I wrote that he wasn’t worth trading for because I never thought Hal Steinbrenner would agree to take on his whole salary in order to lessen the prospect cost. I figured the Yankees would have to give the Rockies a real prospect in order to get the Rockies to eat some of McMahon’s money, like the Yankees did to get Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo four years ago. Instead, Steinbrenner agreed to take on McMahon’s contract, which is essentially double at the moment because of the Yankees’ luxury-tax penalties.

8. McMahon had a nice first weekend as a Yankee, going 3-for-6 with a double, walk and two RBIs. It’s enjoyable to see him make challenging plays with such ease at third and it’s comical to see his arm make throws from the left side of the infield to first compared to Anthony Volpe. Maybe the pinstripes will enhance McMahon’s performance the way they have for so many over the years. At least the Yankees know who their third baseman will be for the rest of 2025 and 2026 and 2027.

9. Giancarlo Stanton hit two more home runs over the weekend. Cody Bellinger went 1-for-the series. Volpe went 3-for-12, which is about as good as it gets with him. Austin Wells went 1-for-4 with a couple of walks. Jazz Chisholm went 4-for-12. Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-10 with a walk. Ben Rice went 1-for-9 with a walk. Jasson Dominguez went 2-for-7 and Trent Grisham went 2-for-12 with a walk.

Will Warren was OK, Stroman was bad and Carlos Rodon was blah. The bullpen was an unmitigated disaster and Boone was his usual nonchalant, everything-will-be-fine self. Except everything isn’t fine, hasn’t been fine in two months and is unlikely to be fine over the next two weeks.

10. The Yankees’ next two weeks are daunting. They were going to be that way with Judge, and without him, the next two weeks have the potential to sink the season.

The Yankees play four games at home against the Rays, who are sitting at .500 and three out of the last wild-card spot. (The Yankees could destroy the Rays’ season with a big week here, but we all know that won’t happen.) Then it’s three in Miami against the Marlins, who are red-hot and 20-9 over the last month. Then it’s three on the road against the Rangers, who are 27-15 over the last six weeks and trying to chase down the Astros in the West. Then it’s three at home against the Astros. Thirteen games in 14 days, many of them without Judge, and possibly all of them.

While the Yankees’ schedule from late August through the end of the season is favorable, they have to survive the end of July and rest of August to get there.

1. It’s no longer right in front of them. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny when it comes to winning the AL East this season and potentially avoiding having to play in the best-of-3, wild-card series. After Wednesday’s 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays, the Yankees now need outside help to overcome the four-game deficit in the division with 64 games left to play and only three of those games are against the Blue Jays.

2. The Yankees had their best three starting pitchers lined up for the last three days in Toronto and they still lost the series. They had every position player aside from Oswaldo Cabrera healthy and available and they still lost the series. The Yankees did what these Yankees have always done during the Aaron Boone era and that is lose in the biggest of games in the most remarkable of ways.

With a chance to win the division in 2018 still on the table in early August, the Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series. They were swept after blowing a three-run lead in the ninth in the series finale. In the postseason, they split the first two games of the ALDS on the road against the Red Sox and then suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 3 and were eliminated in Game 4.

The 2019 Yankees hit .214/.289/.383 in the ALCS and lost four of the final five games of the series. They were eliminated in Game 6 after they erased a two-run deficit in the top of the ninth inning only to get walked off on in the bottom of the inning.

The 2020 Yankees lost three of the last four games in the ALDS, and in the decisive Game 5, scored just one run and gave up the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth.

The 2021 Yankees were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series, and instead, they finished third in their own division and fifth in the AL and were eliminated in the one-game playoff.

The 2022 Yankees were swept in the ALCS after their manager used the darkest moment in the organization’s history as motivation to come back in the series, all while FaceTiming the man responsible for the darkest moment in the organization’s history.

The 2023 Yankees missed the playoffs entirely despite 40 percent of the league getting in.

The 2024 Yankees were embarrassed in a five-game World Series loss, which included blowing a five-run fifth-inning lead at home in Game 5. The champions spent the entire offseason publicly bashing and laughing at the Yankees’ sloppy, undisciplined brand of baseball. And the Yankees did nothing to change it.

3. The Yankees committed four official errors in their loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday and that doesn’t even account for J.C. Escarra mishandling a ball in the dirt allowing a runner to advance to second, Escarra being unable to block a breaking ball in front of him to allow runners on first and second to move up to second and third and Cody Bellinger throwing his arms up to indicate he wasn’t going to catch a routine fly ball that led to a one-out “triple” with the game tied at 4 in the sixth inning.

4. “I think we have a very good defensive club,” Boone said with a straight face. “I think it’s here and I think it’s in this building we haven’t played well.”

This isn’t just about the Yankees’ play in Toronto, which has been unacceptable. It’s been their play everywhere. It’s been their play during Boone’s entire tenure. It continues to be their play because there is no accountability for poor play and no consequences for it either.

5. Not only was the defense a mess, yet again, but Max Fried wasn’t good, yet again. Has Fried been great as a Yankee? Yes. Has Fried been mediocre to bad for more than a month now? Also, yes.

Fried has one quality start in more than a month. He blew a lead and the Yankees lost to the last-place Orioles on June 20. On June 25, he shut out the Reds for seven innings to salvage the last game of that series. He pitched poorly in Toronto on July 1, struggled against the Mets in just five innings on July 6, left the game against the Cubs after three innings on July 12 and then pitched poorly in Toronto again on Wednesday.

My biggest fear with Fried has always been how he will perform in the postseason and in big games, since he has been atrocious in October in his career. In 20 games and 12 starts in the playoffs, he has a 5.10 ERA and 1.493 WHIP which is a far cry from his 3.02 career ERA and 1.148 career WHIP. I pray the version of Fried we have seen of late in big regular-season games isn’t the one that is going to show up in the postseason.

Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and Will Warren can’t be trusted and Cam Schlittler has two career starts to his name. The Yankees aren’t going anywhere if Fried pitches in August, September and October the way he has pitched in July. With all of their pitching issues, the Yankees are only going to go as far as Fried takes them.

6. The same goes for Aaron Judge. In the biggest series of the season, Judge went 1-for-10 with two walks and four strikeouts. That one was the game-tying, two-run home run in the sixth inning on Wednesday that momentarily made me think the Yankees may actually win the series and season finale in Toronto. Instead, it was nothing more than a short-lived moment that was immediately destroyed in the bottom of the inning.

It seems like every time Judge hits a big home run, the Yankees end up losing. There was the home run on Wednesday. There was the ninth-inning home run off Garrett Crochet at Fenway Park earlier this season. There was his first World Series home run in Game 5 last year. There was his home run off Emmanuel Clase in the ALCS last year. There was his solo home run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS and his two-run home run off Justin Verlander in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. If Judge hits a big home run in a big game, the Yankees seem to lose.

7. If Fried is going to be a run-of-the-mill starter and if Judge is going to be merely great and not otherworldly, the Yankees’ chances at the division aren’t just over, their chances at reaching the postseason at all are going to be increasingly difficult. I’ll worry about how the duo performs in October once the Yankees get there. For now, they need to make sure they get there.

8. For a team that once led the Blue Jays by eight games and had a 12-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox, the Yankees now hold just a two-game lead on a postseason berth. If the Blue Jays play .500 baseball for the rest of the season (30-30), they will finish at 90-72. The Yankees would need to go 35-25 to tie them. So if the Blue Jays — a team that is 18 games over .500 becomes a .500 team for the rest of the season — the Yankees will have to go at least 10 games over .500 in 60 games to pass them. The Yankees are 10 games over .500 through 102 games.

9. It’s very likely the Yankees will end up as a wild-card team and end up in the vaunted best-of-3. It’s something I hoped they would avoid. It’s something that seemed impossible not to avoid at the beginning of June. But I lived through the one-game playoffs of 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021. I hoped the Yankees would never end up in that one-game playoff when it was implemented in 2012 and they ended up in it more times than any other team in baseball.

10. If the Yankees continue to play the way they have for the last six weeks, I won’t have to worry about the best-of-3, wild-card series because they won’t even be in that and will miss out on the postseason for the second time in three years despite the format allowing 40 percent of the league in. But if the Yankees are going to get in and they play like they did against the Dodgers in the World Series or like they did in Toronto the last three nights then I don’t want them in anyway. Save all Yankees fans from the humiliation. Because a postseason berth guarantees no organizational changes. A missed postseason likely means no changes as well (as we saw in 2023), but it leaves the door open for them. It’s disappointing missing the postseason is even an option again.

1. The Yankees played a good team on Monday, so you know what that means: the Yankees lost on Monday. The good feeling from the five-run comeback win on Saturday and the series-clinching win on Sunday were erased as soon as the Yankees stepped on the same field as a team headed for the postseason. The Yankees lost 4-1 to the Blue Jays and it wasn’t even as close as a one-run effort in a three-run game could be.

2. For all of the complaining about Jacob Misiorowski being an All-Star this season, no one complained about Carlos Rodon being one, but they should have. Rodon took the mound on nine days rest and was in trouble all game. He loaded the bases in the second inning and escaped. He allowed a two-out walk in the third inning and got out of it and left the bases loaded again in the fourth. In the fifth, his playing with fire caught up to him and the Blue Jays’ first three batters went walk, single, double, and while the inning should have ended with Rodon simply blowing the Yankees’ small one-run lead and facing a one-run deficit, it turned into a three-run deficit because of throwing errors on back-to-back plays by Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe.

3. Even if Peraza had made a good throw with two outs to end the fifth to keep it a 2-1 game, it still wouldn’t have been a good outing from Rodon. If that play had ended the inning, he still would have thrown 97 pitches in five innings (he ended up throwing 107 in five innings) and the Yankees still would have needed the offense to tie the game and the bullpen to get 12 outs. Rodon’s night was a far cry from the eight innings and turning the ball over to Luke Weaver (since Devin Williams pitched the last two days) I dreamed about. It wasn’t good enough. But that’s who Rodon is in big games: not good enough.

Rodon lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Blue Jays this season. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Red Sox. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Mets. To be fair, he did make it through six innings against the Tigers … except he allowed five earned runs. He made four postseason starts last year and only once pitched six innings. In the other three starts, he went 3 2/3 innings, 4 2/3 innings and 3 1/3 innings. But that’s who Rodon is: a pitcher who will dominate the weak teams in the league (he has a 2.36 ERA and 0.859 WHIP against teams not currently holding a playoff spot) and will struggle against the league’s best.

4. Rodon’s crappy-but-expected performance would have been easier to stomach if the offense had showed up, but it didn’t, of course. The bigger the game, the worse the offense performs. In this Yankees era, the only bat to consistently show up in the biggest of games has been Giancarlo Stanton, and sure enough, it was Stanton who provided the Yankees’ only run with a solo home run in the fourth inning to give the Yankees a brief 1-0 lead.

Aaron Judge did what he does when the games are the most important: nothing. Judge struck out swinging in the first, was intentionally walked in the third, popped out in the fifth and struck out swinging again in the eighth. Jasson Dominguez, Austin Wells and Volpe all went hitless as well and the Yankees struck out 12 times as a team. (The Blue Jays struck out four times.)

5. The defense did what it does when … well, always. Peraza and Volpe threw the ball away on back-to-back plays in the fifth, which scored two runs for the Blue Jays. Peraza has the lowest OPS in the majors for all hitters with at least 150 at-bats. If you’re going to be the worst hitter in the league, you have to make every play in the field. Peraza was given an opportunity to become an everyday player this year and change his life and stop the Yankees from going out and wasting assets on a third baseman at the deadline, and he has done nothing but force them to do whatever they can to have someone who resembles a major leaguer playing third base by 6 p.m. on July 31.

6. As for Volpe, there is nothing left to say about him. It’s nice he had the big game on Saturday with two home runs to help the Yankees overcome a five-run deficit and win a game, but it didn’t last. He’s 1-for-7 since that game and his at-bats are as bad as they have been all season. On Monday, he flew out to right twice and grounded out to the pitcher. The expected batting average on those three balls were .020, .010 and .250. The ball with the highest expected batting average was a weak, 40.7-mph groundout back to the mound.

Then there’s the defense. Volpe’s fifth-inning error made him the league leader for position players with 12 errors. Congratulations! After the game, Boone was asked about Volpe’s defense on back-to-back questions. He started to get heated answering the first question and then got increasingly annoyed when the second one was asked. Last week, Boone told Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” when she asked about his poor play. When she asked Boone about Volpe’s poor throw that led to a run on Monday and about him being the league leader in errors, this is what Boone said: “Errors get handed out in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways.” Yes, Boone blamed official scorers around the league for Volpe leading the league in errors and not Volpe.

7. It was the latest moment in Boone’s lack of accountability for himself or his players. If you wonder why the Yankees can’t play one, clean nine-inning game of baseball it’s because it doesn’t matter if they do or not as they don’t have to answer for it. If you’re wondering why the infield throws the ball all over the field or why runners take off for third with no outs in extra innings or why the Yankees had two cut-off men on a play over the weekend and no one covering second base or why they seem to have catcher’s interference called against them every other game, it’s because nothing happens to them for having a lack of fundamentals. After Jorbit Vivas was thrown out at third base by Ronald Acuna on Friday, Boone was asked why he didn’t bench Vivas and Boone said he only benches players who don’t run hard. Except the only player he ever benched for supposedly doing that was Gleyber Torres. Jazz Chisholm ran out a ground ball on Friday as if he had two broken ankles and he wasn’t benched. The Yankees gave the Dodgers three free runs in the biggest inning of last season and they gave the Blue Jays two free runs in the biggest inning of this season.

8. Boone calls Volpe “fucking elite” and considers him “one of the best shortstops in the league” even though both are categorically false and Volpe made a massive error on Monday. Boone refers to his offense “as the best offense in baseball” even though they are third in the majors in runs scored and scored one run on a solo home run and had two hits over their last 22 batters on Monday. Boone recently called his team “the best in baseball” even though they have the ninth-best record in the majors and lost a fifth straight game to the Blue Jays on Monday.

9. “It’s still the middle of July,” Volpe said. “We’ve got so many games ahead of us.”

The middle of July is from 8 a.m. on July 11 through 8 a.m. on July 21, so it’s no longer middle of the July. And there aren’t a lot of games left. Monday’s game was Game 100. There are 62 games left. If the Blue Jays were to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish 90-72. The Yankees would have to go 36-26 to finish ahead of them. So if the Blue Jays simply win half of their remaining games, the Yankees have to play 10 games above .500 to pass them. The Yankees are only 10 games above .500 at this moment through 100 games.

10. The Yankees are now four games back in the division. They are one loss to the Blue Jays in the five remaining games against them from no longer controlling their own destiny in terms of winning the division and from not being able to say “It’s right in front of us.” That loss will come on Tuesday if Cam Schlittler isn’t great in just his second career start or if the offense performs yet another disappearing act in a big game.

1. It may not have been the most exciting series of the season and we all know it wasn’t the most well-played series of the season, but in terms of importance, this past weekend in Atlanta was the most important series of the season to date. In terms of importance, it will be immediately replaced by the upcoming series in Toronto. Before the Yankees could think about their last three games of the season north of the border, they had to think and deal with a bad Braves team clinging to life for their season.

2. On Friday, the Yankees opened the “second half” of the season with an opener. The thing about using an opener is that it only works if the opener doesn’t suck. Unfortunately, Ian Hamilton sucks, and the Braves tagged him for three runs in the first inning, going single, double, double to open the game. It was disheartening the Yankees thought using Hamilton to face the few good hitters in the Braves lineup to open the game put them in the best possible position to win. I understand Cam Schlittler was supposed to start the game and was pushed back due to biceps soreness, but how is a plan of Hamilton then recently-signed Rico Garcia, Scott Effross and JT Brubaker the best course of action? If the Yankees feel going with a bullpen game with those names gives them a better chance than Allan Winans or Carlos Carrasco, then why even have them in the organization?

The Braves led 3-0 after the first, 6-0 after the third and 7-0 after the seventh. The Yankees scored three runs in the seventh for one of their patented do-just-enough-to-get-the-manager-to-say-we-showed-fight fake comebacks and lost 7-3. While the Yankees were losing to the Braves, the Blue Jays were busy beating up on the Giants to extend their division lead to three games.

3. On Saturday, the thoughts of being swept by the under-.500 Braves became a real thought. The left-handed Joey Wentz and his 6.32 ERA and 1.703 WHIP shut out the Yankees for four innings, and in the meantime, Will Warren was getting blasted. Warren allowed a long solo home run to Michael Harris and his .550 OPS in the third and then gave up four runs — all with two outs — in the fourth to put the Yankees behind 5-0. Earlier this season, YES liked to opine “If you remove Warren’s start against the Dodgers, he’s been great.” Then it was “If you remove his starts against the Dodgers and Blue Jays … .” I guess now you just need to remove his starts against the Dodgers, Blue Jays and Braves and you have yourself a good, young pitcher you can trust.

After scoring in just one of the first 13 innings of the series, the Yankees scored twice in the fifth to make it a 5-2 game. But Effross and Tim Hill gave those two runs right back in the bottom of the inning and the Braves led 7-2 through five.

4. The Yankees scored four more times in the sixth to make it a 7-6 game, but Jonathan Loaisiga immediately gave one of them back to make it an 8-6 game. Since June 24, Loaisiga has allowed 19 baserunners, nine earned runs and three home runs in 8 1/3 innings. In his best season (2021), he allowed three home runs all season (70 2/3 innings). That best season was a long time ago. Four years in baseball years can be measured in dog years. Loaisiga was OK in 2022, missed nearly all of 2023 and 2024 due to Tommy John surgery and has been bad in 2025. Maybe Loaisiga just stinks now? Maybe a career marred by injuries and the surgery caught up to him? The Yankees are going to have to find out because they are paying him $5 million for this season (with a $5 million team option for 2026) and there is no one else right now. The only two trustworthy relievers in the bullpen are Luke Weaver and Devin Williams. Loaisiga, by default, is the next most-trusted arm? Then Hill? Then no one between Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans? The Yankees have given an abundance of relievers a chance to be major leaguers and to win important roles and each one of them has sucked. Not just Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans, but Garcia, Brent Headrick, Yoendrys Gomez, Tyler Matzek, Clayton Beeter and Geoff Hartlieb. (I leave Javien Sandridge out since his chance was sabotaged by Aaron Boone having him face Juan Soto and Pete Alonso as his first two hitters in the majors.) I guess all of those guys just really like living in Scranton and taking bus rides everywhere.

5. The Yankees desperately miss Fernando Cruz, Mark Leiter Jr. and Ryan Yarbrough They even miss Yerry De los Santos. If those four were healthy then Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans aren’t on the 26-man roster and the bullpen looks so much different and better. The team looks so much different and better.

6. Loaisiga’ latest disappointing effort put another obstacle in the way of a Yankees comeback, but they added a run in the seventh to make it 8-7 and tied the game at 8 in the eighth with Anthony Volpe’s second home run of the game. It was Volpe’s first multi-home run game of his career. It was his first multi-hit game since June 23 and his second multi-hit game since June 13. The two-home run game guarantees he will never come out of the lineup (not that he was ever going to anyway). If Boone was willing to tell Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” last week, like Michael Kay reported, then he probably thinks he’s a Hall of Famer now after hitting two home runs in a game. But good for Volpe to help the Yankees win a game for the first time since … I don’t know? All season?

7. The game remained tied at 8 into the ninth. With the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the ninth, I feared the game would find its way to extra innings and the Yankees would endure yet another road extra-inning loss to add to their majors-worst record since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020. Trent Grisham put those fears to rest when he hit a go-ahead grand slam off Braves closer Raisel Iglesias to give the Yankees a 12-8 lead. They would go on to win 12-9.

8. Grisham batted in the leadoff spot on Friday and then sixth on Saturday. I figured his two-hit, five-RBI night would have him back in the leadoff spot on Sunday. Instead, he wasn’t even in the lineup. Never change, Boone and the Yankees. Never change. Saturday’s win was so important to keep pace with the Blue Jays (who won again), but also important because with Marcus Stroman going on Sunday it wasn’t unrealistic to expect the Yankees to lose. But Stroman didn’t suck, and the Yankees didn’t lose. Stroman pitched six innings of one-run ball and the Yankees won 4-2.

Here are Stroman’s first three starts of the season in March and April:

9.1 IP, 12 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 7 BB, 7 K, 2 HR, 11.57 ERA, 2.036 WHIP

Here are Stroman’s four starts in June and July since coming off the injured list:

21 IP, 21 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 5 BB, 12 K, 3 HR, 3.00 ERA, 1.238 WHIP

9. The best possible scenario is occurring with Stroman for the Yankees. He missed too much time to have his 2026 salary clause automatically kick in, as long as four of Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil, Will Warren, Ryan Yarbrough, Cam Schlittler or any starter the Yankees trade for are healthy in October then Stroman won’t be needed in the postseason and he’s giving the Yankees winnable starts now at a time when they need him and need him to be good the most. It couldn’t have worked out better.

This four-start run doesn’t mean anyone should feel good when Stroman gets the ball and everyone should be concerned with him scheduled to start against the Phillies at Yankee Stadium next weekend, but for now, Stroman is doing exactly what the Yankees need him to do.

10. The next three games are the most important of the season to date. Three games in Toronto with three games separating the Yankees and Blue Jays in the division. The Yankees have their pitching set up with Rodon, Fried and Schlittler, and all of their rostered position players healthy and available. The bullpen is an enormous weak spot and could potentially ruin this series, but here’s to hoping it doesn’t come to that. How about eight from Rodon to Weaver on Monday and then eight from Fried to Weaver on Tuesday and then six from Schlittler to Hill, Weaver and Williams on Wednesday? Keep everyone else in the bullpen and as far away from the mound as possible and keep Boone’s decision-making to a minimum. That seems like a good plan to me. Let’s go with that plan.

1. The Yankees played a series against a contender, so you know can guess how it went: they lost two of three. To no surprise, the Yankees are 5-11 against the current division leaders this year. (They have yet to play Houston and Philadelphia.)

As currently constructed, the Yankees’ ceiling is likely enduring the same fate they did last year: losing in the World Series (hopefully without the humiliation). And to get there, as of now, they would have to win a best-of-3 against the Red Sox (a team that has won 10 straight and is 5-1 against the Yankees this year) then beat either the Astros or the Tigers in the ALDS, and then likely whichever one of the Astros or Tigers they didn’t face in the ALDS in the ALCS. The road to the 2025 World Series is going to be littered with obstacles. The path isn’t going to be the red carpet the Yankees received last year with Kansas City and Cleveland.

2. With the “first half” complete, the Yankees have the AL’s fourth-best record and the majors’ ninth-best. Despite this, their manager refers to them as the best team in the league. That opinion is shared by the players who talk about how good they are and how good they know they can be (like Will Warren did again on Sunday), but don’t play like it, having lost 18 of their last 29 games.

In that time the Yankees have watched their division lead vanish. Once eight games ahead of the Blue Jays, they are now two games behind them. Once 12 games ahead of the Red Sox in the loss column, that lead is now down to two and they are tied in wins.

3. After beating the Cubs 11-0 on Friday, the Yankees lost 5-2 on Saturday and 4-1 on Sunday. That’s their motto: Win blowouts and lose close games. The offense was no-hit until the eighth inning on Thursday, shut out until the ninth on Saturday and held to one run on Sunday in a game in which they sent the minimum amount of batters to the plate over the final seven innings.

A lot has been made about the Yankees scoring five-plus runs in the first 10 games of July, but they went 5-5 in those games. That’s because their pitching has been atrocious. Inconsistent starting pitching combined with a depleted bullpen and a manager who doesn’t have a clue about how to utilize the relievers he does have has led the Yankees to a 5-7 record this month despite scoring 6.3 runs per game.

4. Carlos Rodon completed eight scoreless innings on Friday with some magnificent help from Aaron Judge in right field. Max Fried left Saturday’s game with a blister on his left hand in what was his shortest and worst start of the season (and he has now been blah to bad in four of his last five starts). Warren put nine baserunners on in 5 1/3 innings on Sunday, but limited the damage to two runs. One good start, one bad start and one OK start. That’s the way it has been going for the Yankees for the last month. Mostly, when they hit, they don’t pitch, and when they pitch, they don’t hit. And when things are going well, their manager hinders their odds of winning, like on Sunday.

5. In the series finale, the game was tied with one out in the sixth. With a well-rested bullpen, 11 outs to get and four complete days off ahead, who do you think was the first reliever out of the bullpen? Ian Hamilton! Hamilton allowed a two-run home run to the first batter he faced, the Cubs took the lead and never looked back.

Paul O’Neill suggested on YES that Boone should have let Hamilton start the inning clean instead of having him come in with a runner in scoring position. Are you new around here, Paul? Stealing outs with the starting pitcher is Boone’s signature move. Whether it’s April or July or September or even the postseason, Boone will stop at nothing to try to get an extra out from a clearly labored and fatigued starter. It’s what he does best.

6. The trade deadline is 17 days away. I wouldn’t give up anything of value for the third base options that have been mentioned. Because the options aren’t worth giving up anything for. You’re either getting a good bat with no defense or good defense with no bat. This team also isn’t a third baseman away from wining a championship. They are a third baseman, a starting pitcher, at least two relievers, a shortstop and a manager away.

Even if the Yankees trade for a third baseman, get a starter and two relievers, Boone will still be in the dugout and Anthony Volpe will still be at shortstop. Brian Cashman likes to say the Yankees went to the World Series with Volpe at shortstop. But when he says that, he doesn’t mention that the Yankees lost the World Series. That they were thoroughly embarrassed in the World Series. He doesn’t mention that Volpe was part of the fifth-inning meltdown. He doesn’t talk about only needing to beat the Royals and Guardians to win the pennant.

7. It’s painful watching Volpe play. He can’t hit for average. He doesn’t have power. He’s a liability on balls hit to him. His arm is weak. His baserunning instincts are poor and his overall Baseball IQ is frightening. There’s not a single positive quality he brings on the field, and his media sessions are every bit as bad as his actual play.

After Sunday’s game, in which he posted his latest 0-for and screwed up two more plays in the field, the media huddled around Volpe to hear him say, “Everything’s in front of us.” I wonder where he learned that line from. From his manger, of course. The same manager who backed Volpe’s ridiculous inning-extending play on Sunday by blaming Jazz Chisholm.

“As a shortstop, you gotta have the freedom to try and get yourself the best hop,” Boone said, “and then, Jazz probably has to turn into a first baseman there where we’re stretching.”

No, it can’t be the Golden Boy’s fault. It can’t be the fault of the shortstop who won’t charge a ball and doesn’t have the arm to make up for his hesitation.

“I feel like we have the makings of a good defensive club,” Boone said, as delusional as ever.

8. Volpe is down to .214/.287/.384 offensively. His .671 OPS is right in line with his .663 career OPS. He’s down to being 14 percent worse than league average with an 86 OPS+. Guess what his OPS+ was last year? 86. There has been no improvement even though Boone told everyone two weeks ago how much he has improved year over year and how “everybody is losing their mind” when it comes to criticizing the Golden Boy’s performance. Volpe is at best the same hitter he was in 2023 and 2024, and now he’s a worse defender and baserunner. But sure, keep telling everyone what they see every single day (since he gets to play every single day the way All-Stars Judge and Jazz Chisholm do) isn’t real and that it’s all an illusion. The Yankees’ internal metrics will tell you Volpe should have been elected an All-Star like Judge and Chisholm. The same metrics that Boone cited when talking about how great Isiah Kiner-Falefa was at shortstop in 2023, only to bench him in the postseason. The same metrics that Boone cited in talking about Gleyber Torres’ 2024 season when he was leading all second baseman in errors, and then when it came time to pay Torres they let him walk.

9. Volpe isn’t the answer at shortstop. He’s likely not an answer at any position, because after 414 games and 1,674 career plate appearances he’s closer to not being a major leaguer than he is to being part of the solution, like Cashman told us last week. He’s not part of the solution, he’s part of the problem. A big part of it.

George Lombard Jr. needs to be part of the solution. The most enjoyable moment of the weekend for the Yankees was happening 900 miles away with Lombard Jr. starring in the Futures Game. Lombard Jr. is the most important person in the organization not currently on the 26-man roster. He needs to work out. He has to work out because Volpe certainly isn’t.

10. I typically hate the All-Star break with no baseball for four days. Not this year. This year I’m welcoming the All-Star break and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Yankees need a break and I need a break from the Yankees.

Maybe the four days off will reset them before the open the “second half” in Atlanta. Maybe it will cool off the Red Sox who haven’t lost in their last 10 games. Maybe it will serve as tailspin for the Blue Jays who erased an eight-game deficit between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Maybe it will be the end of the Yankees’ annual summer swoon and for the rest of July and August and September they will be the team they were in March, April and May.

Here’s to four, Yankees-less, relaxing days this week. I don’t think the next nine-plus weeks won’t be so relaxing.

1. The Yankees have started to do what they spent nearly a month undoing. After losing 16 of 22, the Yankees have won four straight games. They salvaged the final game of the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series, chased the league leader in strikeout percentage, beat the crap out of a rookie starter and overcame a five-run deficit in a game they were no-hit into the eighth inning in to win four straight.

“It just shows the versatility that we have,” Austin Wells said. “We’ve shown that we can go big early in the games, and we can come back late.”

2. Prior to Thursdays game, I wrote: The best anyone can ask for from Stroman against a solid team like the Mariners is three earned runs over five innings and even that is likely asking for too much. Here’s to him surprising everyone and extending the winning streak to four straight.

Stroman did even better than I asked, allowing only two earned runs over five innings. If the Yankees were going to lose, it wasn’t going to be because of him. And for the majority of the game, it looked like the Yankees were going to lose. Bryan Woo was dominant for seven innings, no-hitting the Yankees until Jazz Chisholm led off the eighth with a single.

“It felt like we were getting dominated,” Boone said. Yeah, I would say getting no-hit into the eighth inning is getting dominated.

3. Boone decided a two-run deficit was too much to overcome, so he went to his last man in the bullpen for two innings with the Yankees trailing 2-0. The decision to go to Clayton Beeter was because of Boone’s decision-making the night before. After Wednesday’s game, I wrote about how unnecessarily using Jonathan Loaisiga and Luke Weaver for multiple innings in a game in which the Yankees had a comfortable lead and had Cam Schilittler pitching well with a low pitch count could come back to screw the Yankees in the series finale. It nearly did when Beeter let the Mariners’ lead go from 2-0 to 5-0.

Giancarlo Stanton hit a pinch-hit, two-run home run to make it a 5-3 game in the bottom of the eighth and Boone’s latest bullpen mismanagement looked like it would cost the Yankees a real opportunity to win the game. But in the ninth, the Yankees saved Boone from any hard postgame questions when they got to Andres Munoz for two runs to tie the game.

4. Trent Grisham led off the ninth with a single. Aaron Judge flew out for the first out, but Cody Bellinger singled to put two on with one out. Chisholm just missed a walk-off home run on a hanging slider, and instead, flew out for the second out. Down to their last out and eventually their last strike as Ben Rice fell behind 0-2, Rice battled back to draw a walk to load the bases. Wells followed with a two-run single to right to tie the game.

5. When Bellinger was on second base in the ninth, I noticed he was waving his arms wildly and visibly. Then I noticed each time he did it Munoz would throw a slider. Then I went back and saw Grisham was doing the same thing when he was on second, just not as noticeably as Bellinger. It was clear the Yankees had something on Munoz, whether it was a tell with his glove position or the runner on second being able to see his grip as he began his delivery because the arm waving would start as soon as Munoz began his motion. Whatever it was it worked and led to the two-run, ninth-inning comeback against a closer that entered the game having allowed 15 hits in 34 innings.

6. Devin Williams did his job in the 10th, stranding the automatic runner. I still don’t trust Williams. I don’t know that I ever will. But with the state of the bullpen he may very well be the most trustworthy at the moment given the home run issue with Luke Weaver recently. Williams has allowed 12 hits and five earned runs in 22 2/3 innings with 31 strikeouts and 1.99 ERA since May 7. He’s been awesome I just can’t erase the first month of the season from my memory.

7. With Volpe serving as the automatic runner in the bottom of the 10th, I was waiting for him to try to steal third with no outs in extras like he unsuccessfully did against the Red Sox last month. Thankfully, he didn’t. Oswald Peraza was asked to bunt Volpe over to third and took a first-pitch fastball at the bottom of the strike zone and then tried to bunt a a elevated second pitch and popped it up to third for the first out. With a lefty on the mound, Boone removed Jasson Dominguez from the game for Paul Goldschmidt and the Mariners immediately walked Goldschmidt. If you’re wondering why the Yankees are so bad in extra innings, the lack of fundamentals and situational hitting coupled with Boone’s brain demonstrated in the first two batters of Thursday’s 10th inning is why.

8. Grisham drew a walk to load the bases to bring up Judge who never gets to hit in extra innings. Judge hit a medium-depth fly ball to center field that Julio Rodriguez made a perfect throw home on, but Volpe made a nifty move to slide around the tag and win the game. Volpe finished the game with another 0-for-4 and his OPS+ is down 88 on the season (it was 81 in 2023 and 86 in 2024, but his slide helped win the game as he would have been out with any other slide. The Yankees wouldn’t have won on the play if anyone other than Volpe, Dominguez or Chisholm had been on third. It was the Yankees’ first win when trailing after eight innings this season.

9. The Yankees’ four-game winning streak will be put to a real test this weekend in the Cubs. The Cubs lead the majors in runs scored per game and the Yankees will try to combat that with Carlos Rodon on Friday, Max Fried on Saturday and Will Warren on Sunday.

With three games to go until the All-Star break, the season will be 59 percent over when the break hits. The Yankees head into the weekend trailing the Blue Jays by two games in the East, trailing the Astros by three games for a bye and have a four-game lead on a wild-card berth. They are in an OK spot. They were in a much better spot a month ago, but they are in a much better spot than they were on Saturday afternoon in Queens.

10. If a midsummer swoon under Boone is tradition then a disastrous weekend heading into the All-Star break under Boone is one as well. In 2021, they led the Astros 7-2 in the ninth, but gave up six runs, including a three-run, walk-off home run to Jose Altuve to lose 8-7. In 2023, they held a 4-1 lead over the Cubs in the seventh, but allowed six runs over the final three innings to lose. Last year, the Yankees had the humiliating loss in Baltimore to end the first “half” when Volpe and Alex Verdugo misplayed balls that would have ended the game. Let’s not do that again. How about a nice series win to go into the break? How about a sweep to keep the winning streak going? Let’s do that.

1. Goodbye to DJ LeMahieu. I always liked LeMahieu and was an advocate for him to be re-signed during the 2020-21 offseason. Did I think giving him a six-year deal to spread out the $90 million the Yankees gave him was the right decision? No. But when you’re worried about the luxury tax that’s what you do and Hal Steinbrenner is worried about the luxury tax more than you’re worried about anything in your life.

The Yankees signed LeMahieu as a free agent prior to 2019 despite coming off back-to-back below-league-average seasons in 2017 (93 OPS+) and 2018 (88 OPS+) while playing half of his games at Coors Field. If you remember, LeMahieu wasn’t even part of the Yankees’ expected everyday lineup in 2019 and didn’t even play on Opening Day. He quickly forced himself into the lineup and hit .327/.375/.518 with a career-high 26 home runs and 102 RBIs. (Let’s forget about the juiced ball that season that saw Brett Gardner hit 28 home runs and Gleyber Torres 34.)

LeMahieu was every bit as good in the postseason that year as well, posting a .976 OPS in the three-game sweep over the Twins and a 1.029 OPS in the ALCS loss to the Astros. He was the Yankees’ best hitter in the six games against the Astros and his ninth-inning home run to tie Game 6 would have been an all-time moment in the team’s history if they had gone on to win the game and the series. Instead, it will be mostly forgotten like Alfonso Soriano’s go-ahead home run in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.

After finishing second for the batting title in 2019, LeMahieu won it with a .364 average in the shortened 2020 season. He hit .364/.421/.590 and led the league in WAR despite missing 17 percent of the 60-game season. He also led the league in on-base percentage, OPS and OPS+.

The Yankees had to sign LeMahieu after 2020. He had become the second-most important piece of their offense and on defense he was a versatile Gold Glove winner. At the time, no one knew Torres would play his way off of shortstop and force LeMahieu to play third and first. No one knew LeMahieu was about to break down.

2. The Yankees spread out the $90 million over 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, hoping the first half of the six years would be the same old LeMahieu and they would deal with the second half of the six years. But after being designated for assignment on Wednesday, LeMahieu only lasted for four-and-a-half years of the deal, and for those four-and-a-half years, he wasn’t himself, plagued by a multitude of injuries, which turned him into a seeing-eye-singles hitter at the plate and an immobile defender in the field.

LeMahieu played in 150 games in the first year of the deal in 2021 (and was two percent worse than league average), but was shut down prior to the postseason — a postseason that lasted only one game for the Yankees.

He began to return to form in 2022, posting a 118 OPS+, but again missed time and was shut down for the postseason.

His 2023 season looked a lot like his 2021 season and he managed to play in 84 percent of the team’s games, but was four percent worse than league average in those games.

His 2024 season was the worst of his career as he hit .204/.269/.259 in 67 games and was on the injured list to end the season for the third time in four years.

He got hurt again in spring training in 2025 and missed the beginning of the year. When he returned, I wrote: LeMahieu has become the Yankees’ family dog who wanders around aimlessly and goes to the bathroom all over the place and lies around and sleeps all day. You try to pretend like the end isn’t near and you try to remember the good times to get through the bad times. Once in a while the dog will do something to remind you of what it used to be, but it’s just a momentary tease. The moments were too far and few between at the plate, and in the field, he was a liability at second base, unable to get to balls within reach. And so on Wednesday he became a former Yankee.

3. It was the right move, though at the wrong time. It was a move that should have been made either during last season or prior to this season. Aaron Boone spent the winter telling everyone how LeMahieu would return to his old self in 2025, the same way he told everyone they were crazy to not believe in Josh Donaldson in 2023 before his eventual release. The same way he tells everyone how good Anthony Volpe is despite every stat and metric suggesting he’s not and anyone with eyesight knowing he’s not.

4. It happened quickly for LeMahieu. He went from starting on Sunday to being told he was going to be a bench player on Tuesday to being designated for assignment on Wednesday. He was a good Yankee and I’m sure some other team will sign him even though he seems as washed as it gets. The Yankees gave late-career Kendrys Morales and Jay Bruce a chance. The Brewers signed Donaldson after he left the Yankees. The Orioles and Angels gave Aaron Hicks a chance. Some team is always willing to give some washed-up player a chance. I know how these things work out and I can already see LeMahieu coming to the plate with runners on second and third and two outs against Jonathan Loaisiga in the playoffs and LeMahieu hitting a 37-hopper up the middle to score two.

5. After the news of LeMahieu’s designation tapered off, the Yankees won their first game since Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS without LeMahieu in the organization. For the second straight night they beat the crap out of a Mariners starter and this time it was Logan Evans allowing 11 baserunners and six earned runs in 4 2/3 innings to the Yankees. The offense has come alive in July with at least five runs in all eight games this month.

6. But the story wasn’t the bats it was Cam Schlittler making his major-league debut. Schlittler looked great in his 5 1/3 innings of work, frequently throwing 100-mph fastballs by Mariners hitters. It was refreshing to see a Yankees pitcher not trying to fool everyone and just throwing the ball right by them instead.

7. Schlittler’s final line of three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings may not look great, but I blame the solo home run on Austin Wells for calling for back-to-back breaking balls to Jorge Polanco, and when they both missed and the count was 2-0, Polanco knew the rookie would come with a fastball and he destroyed it.

I blame the third earned run on Boone. Schlittler allowed a leadoff bloop double to begin the sixth to Julio Rodriguez. He then got to face Cal Raleigh a third time and blew Raleigh away with a high fastball at 98 mph. Schlittlter was only at 75 pitches after striking out Raleigh, but Boone went to Loaisiga, who has been dreadful, to face Randy Arozarena. Arozarena promptly hit a two-run home run to right field and Schlittler was charged with an earned run.

8. There is a lot behind this horrible decision. Schlittler was allowed to face the major-league leader in home runs a third time, but not Arozarena? With Marcus Stroman starting on Thursday, the most innings the Yankees could expect is five, which means the bullpen would be leaned on for four innings. Knowing that, why would you remove a starter pitching well with a four-run lead at 75 pitches?

For all of the talk recently about how Boone shouldn’t be Yankees manager because he won’t tell it like it is, no, that decision right there summarizes why Boone shouldn’t be the manager. He has no idea what he’s doing in terms of in-game management in Year 8 in the position. He had Loaisiga pitched multiple innings and Luke Weaver pitch multiple innings when he didn’t need to. So now both will be unavailable on Thursday when they are more likely to be needed. Boone’s decision-making on Wednesday nearly blew the game before the offense tacked on additional runs and those decisions could lead to a loss on Thursday. Boone, himself, is a bigger problem than the Yankees’ pitching staff depth or their lack of a third baseman.

9. Jasson Dominguez was back in the leadoff spot where he went 3-for-4 with a walk. I’m sure he will either be moved down on Thursday or benched so Trent Grisham can play. Aaron Judge went 1-for-3 with two walks, Cody Bellinger went 2-for-4, Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt picked up singles, Jazz Chisholm homered twice and Austin Wells had a pair of hits. Volpe hit a ball off the right-field wall and was thrown out trying to stretch his hit into a double. Oswald Peraza went 0-for-4, but his four balls were hit 99, 109, 99 and 92 mph, which was a welcome sight. Maybe with consistent playing time he will prove he can hit in the majors.

10. Unfortunately, the three-game winning streak and the mood around the team that seems to be changing for the better is likely to come to an end on Thursday with Stroman pitching. I can’t envision him pitching well or giving the Yankees enough innings to not ask what is a shaky-at-best bullpen to get at least 12 outs. The best anyone can ask for from Stroman against a solid team like the Mariners is three earned runs over five innings and even that is likely asking for too much. Here’s to him surprising everyone and extending the winning streak to four straight.

1. The Yankees won on Sunday. They had Monday off. They won on Tuesday. That means the Yankees won two games in a row. It was the first time since June 25 and June 27 they had won back-to-back games and just the third time since June 12. For a team whose manager calls them “the best in baseball” despite having the ninth-best record and despite having lost 11 1/2 games of ground to the Blue Jays, you would think the “best team in baseball” would win back-to-back games more than three times in a month.

2. If you were wondering how long the Yankees would be comfortable with Jazz Chisholm playing a shaky third base and DJ LeMahieu being unable to get to balls within reach of him at second base, well, we received out answer on Tuesday. The answer is going from an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays to trailing the Blue Jays by 3 1/2 games.

The best part of the Yankees staying with Chisholm at third as long as the Yankees did is that he was given the day off on Sunday because of a shoulder issue that was affecting his throwing. Aaron Boone said it had been going on a for a while. So for a while, Boone knowingly was starting Chisholm at third base every day even though he had an issue throwing. Chisholm said he didn’t want to use it as an excuse for his poor throws across the diamond (of which there was at least one a game for an extended period), but by saying he didn’t want to use it as an excuse, he was using it as an excuse.

3. I don’t fault Chisholm for playing a bad third base, considering he has never been a third baseman in his career outside of his time with the Yankees — the only team in the majors that takes pride in playing multiple players out of position on a daily basis. But with Oswald Peraza at third base on Tuesday, you could see the glaring difference between having an elite left-side infielder on the field compared to a player being asked to do something he wasn’t asked to do with his previous organization and to do something he wasn’t even told to prepare for in spring training. Peraza made roughly four plays on Tuesday that Chisholm wouldn’t have made.

4. It turns out when you play a clean game defensively it makes it easier to win. It also helps when you get a strong starting effort like the Yankees got from Will Warren (5.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K) and when you hit with runners in scoring position, which the Yankees did going 5-for-7 (I don’t think they had five hits with runners in scoring position over the last five weeks). The Yankees got to Logan Gilbert — the league leader in strikeout percentage — for five runs in 5 1/3 innings and then torched Casey Legumina for five runs in an inning of work. The 10-3 rout was a big win for the “Lookout the Yankees’ run differential!” crowd.

5. I like LeMahieu. I was all for re-signing him after 2020 before he started to break down. He should be happy every day he wakes up and is still in the majors at this point. Boone said LeMahieu took the news of going to the bench, “Not great, necessarily.” LeMahieu can’t be even a little upset he’s not going to be anything more than a bench player for the time being. He should be grateful he’s still on the team.

6. Aside from Chisholm back at second, Peraza at third and LeMahieu on the bench, Jasson Dominguez was batting leadoff. Dominguez had a big game out of the leadoff spot on Saturday and then was batting sixth on Sunday. He should be the leadoff hitter moving forward, though, unfortunately, because Boone is trying to overcorrect for not playing Trent Grisham over Alex Verdugo last year, and in doing so is doing everything he can to stunt Dominguez’s development by playing Grisham as much as possible. I’m sure Dominguez will sit on Wednesday so Grisham can play.

7. Tim Hill, Ian Hamilton and Scott Effross combined to throw three scoreless innings of relief and Geoff Hartlieb gave up three runs while recording just one out. Hartlieb couldn’t have done less with his two appearances this season (1.1 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 1 HR).

8. Aaron Judge went 2-for-5 with a solo home run with the Yankees up 6-0 in the seventh. Cody Bellinger went 3-for-4, Giancarlo Stanton hit the game-opening three-run home run, Jazz Chisholm had a double, Paul Goldschmidt had three hits, Austin Wells homered and Peraza singled in the first run of the game. Anthony Volpe — as expected — went 0-for-4. The “really good” and “productive” offensive player Boone spoke about last week is down to .217/.293/.393 on the season. The “above league average” offensive player Boone talked about is now nine percent worse than league average.

9. Because the Yankees blew a sizable division lead and because they have lost 16 of their last 24 game, there has been the annual midsummer call for Boone to be fired. (It’s as expected each summer as the Fourth of July is at this point.) As a leader of the movement in recent years, I wish I could take part in this year’s edition, but it’s a waste of energy. Boone survived finishing third in the division and fifth in the AL in 2021 when his team was the favorite to win the AL. He survived missing the postseason completely in 2023 when 40 percent of the league gets in. There is nothing he could do to get fired this season, especially off a World Series appearance, even if that appearance was embarrassing, humiliating and disturbing.

Because of the annual midsummer call for Boone to lose his job, there has been this narrative — led by Michael Kay — that Boone shouldn’t be fired because he doesn’t tell it like it is. That’s not the reason Boone should be removed. It’s one of the reasons, but it’s second at best to his in-game strategy and decision-making. Boone shouldn’t be the manager of the Yankees because he routinely fails to put his players in the best possible position to succeed (like playing Chisholm at third base every day or having Jayvien Sandridge make his major-league debut against Juan Soto and Pete Alonso) and because he’s incapable of making consistent logical in-game decisions. His lack of urgency, misevaluation of performance, defense of underperformance and telling everyone how good the Yankees are when they aren’t is second to all of that.

One day Boone will no longer be the Yankees’ manager. That day is not any time soon. He will never be fired. Hal Steinbrenner would rather have the team finish in last place for a decade than pay two people at the same time for one job. One day Boone’s contract will end and the Yankees won’t offer him a new one. That’s the only way he will no longer be the Yankees’ manger. (This doesn’t mean I won’t take every opportunity I get to criticize him. I just know it won’t lead to anything until his contract expires.)

10. Cam Schlittler gets the ball on Wednesday in his major-league debut. With Luis Gil and Ryan Yarbrough on the injured list and Clarke Schmidt out for this season and next, Schlittler has an opportunity to be a part of the rotation for the long haul if he pitches well. Right now, the Yankees’ No. 3 starter is Warren and the No. 4 is Marcus Stroman, so yeah, Schlittler has an amazing opportunity here and the bar is just be better than Stroman.

Can the Yankees win a third straight game on Wednesday? If they do, it will be the first time since June 10-12.

1. The Yankees held an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays on May 28. That lead is now gone. That lead is now a deficit. Because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Yankees are in second place in the AL East. They are a wild-card team.

2. It took a lot of losing to get to this point. It took a 13-14 June into an 0-3 July. It took going 6-10 against five teams outside of the playoff picture (Red Sox, Angels, Orioles, Reds and A’s). It took blowing a two-run lead to the Blue Jays on Monday and blowing another two-run lead to them on Tuesday. It took giving up five runs before recording an out on Wednesday and facing an 8-0 hole in the fifth, only to come back and tie the game at 9 to then lose anyway, 11-9.

3. Wednesday’s game was much of the same from the Yankees. Will Warren laid another first-inning egg and the offense took the first four innings off. The offense woke up and made one of their rare appearances just in time for the bullpen to implode. The Yankees wasted an amazing three-week run of starts from their rotation with embarrassing offensive efforts. Now that the starting pitching has regressed, the offense has reappeared, but so have the early-season bullpen meltdowns. Mark Leiter Jr. ruined Monday’s game (with help from the left side of the infield). Luke Weaver ruined Tuesday’s game (with help from his catcher). Devin Williams ruined Wednesday’s game (with help from his catcher).

4. The Yankees are a collection of pieces that don’t fit and it’s by design. After years of being too right-handed heavy, they overcorrected to become too left-handed. They have multiple players without positions, so they have some of those players play out of position. Then for players that do have positions, they play them out of position as well.

Their best second baseman plays third base every game to accommodate an immobile statue who will turn 37 next week because he’s still owed $22 million between this season and next. Their best defensive shortstop sits on the bench every day, but when he does get the rare chance to play, he plays second base or third base to cater to the 24-year-old Golden Boy of the organization — the only player who gets to play as much as Aaron Judge. Their starting left fielder is a center fielder who they have forced to play left field, so that their supposed fourth outfielder (who wasn’t good enough to play over Alex Verdugo last season) can play center field. On Wednesday, their starting catcher was making his fourth career start behind the plate because he’s really only been a first baseman in the majors. Two weeks ago the Yankees weren’t convinced he could start a game at catcher in the majors and now he has started four of the team’s last 14 games there, starting over the actual backup catcher, who the Yankees believed in more than the right-handed-hitting Carlos Narvaez, so they gave away Narvaez to the Red Sox where he is a middle-of-the-order bat with an .800 OPS. Now the Yankees have three left-handed-hitting catchers on the roster. All of these players playing out of position has led to game-changing errors and mistakes throughout the season.

5. When the Yankees lose (which they have nearly every day for the last three weeks), well, “That’s baseball.” When they win, they act as though they will never lose again. They have the swagger of Yankees teams that won without ever having won. This has been going on throughout the Boone era.

They carried themselves like defending champions in 2018 when Judge carried a boom box blasting “New York, New York” while walking out of Fenway Park following a Game 2 win in the ALDS. The Red Sox responded by blasting the Yankees for 16 runs in the worst home postseason loss in franchise history the next game and eliminated them in four games. After winning Game 1 of the 2019 ALCS, they lost four of the next five games to end their season. They thought they could outsmart the Rays with their series-changing opener strategy with Deivi Garcia and J.A. Happ in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS. After being the odds-on favorite to win the AL in 2021, they finished fifth in the AL, went on the road for the one-game, wild-card game and were laughed off the field in the first inning. After that loss, Boone said, “The league has closed the gap on us,” as if the team was coming off a run of four championships in five seasons.

That level of arrogance continued in 2022 when they were pantsed by the Astros in the ALCS, culminating in Boone using video of the darkest moment in Yankees history as a motivational tactic that resulted in no motivation. It continued in the summer of 2023 when Boone kept saying the team would turn a corner they never turned missed the playoffs despite 40 percent of the league getting into October. Last season, seven years of no accountability and a lack of fundamentals came to a head in the World Series and they were humiliated on the game’s biggest stage.

6. Boone has learned nothing from seven seasons at the helm. He makes the same lineup mistakes, presses the wrong bullpen buttons and lies to the media and fanbase in 2025 as if it’s 2018.

Judge — the captain — has learned nothing with Boone at the helm. Judge was likely one of the driving forces in Joe Girardi being replaced and he has spent the last seven seasons recycling Boone-isms about how “They’ll get ‘em tomorrow” until they run out of tomorrows, and they have always run out of tomorrows during this era.

Young Yankees like Anthony Volpe don’t know what accountability is because they have never seen or needed to experience it. That’s why you get postgame answers like Volpe gave on Monday, when instead of owning up to his two-game changing fielding decisions, he doubled down and said he would do the same thing “every single time.”

New(ish) Yankees like Jazz Chisholm talk shit they can’t back up. Chisholm called the Royals’ Game 2 win in last year’s ALDS “lucky” even though he hit .133 in that series. He hit .182/.250/.309 in the postseason. After salvaging the third game in Cincinnati last week, Chisholm participated in the postgame, on-field interview and said, “I feel like we got a great team and I feel like we’re going to make the World Series again,” even though it was June 25, the Yankees had lost eight of 12 and their lead in the loss column had dropped from seven to one.

On Friday, after beating the second-worst team in the AL, Boone called the Yankees “a team to be reckoned with.” They had lost nine of 14 at the time and have lost three of four since. They are being reckoned with and are being wrecked in the process.

7. Now that they’re out of first place for the first time since April 13, you would think maybe, just maybe they would be humbled by the last four weeks. Not only are they not humbled, they are every bit as cocky and delusional as they have ever been.

“We think we’re really good,” Boone said after Wednesday’s crushing loss.

If the players on the team take on the personality of their manager in Boone then Boone has taken on the personality of his manager in Brian Cashman. It was Cashman who told reporters after the 2023 season in which the team missed the postseason, “I think we’re pretty fucking good.” If Cashman could think a roster that went 82-80 and missed the playoffs is good then of course Boone thinks a team that blew an eight-game division lead in just a month is good.

8. Boone was asked, “Is it jarring when you’ve been in first place for two months and then somebody ties you?”

“No,” Boone quickly answered.

Of course it’s not jarring. This type of thing happens every year under Boone, He’s used to it. Three years ago, the Yankees had a 15 1/2-game lead in the division that got cut by 15 games. You think blowing an eight-game lead is a big deal?

9. Asked if he thinks it’s going to be a tight race all season now, Boone replied, “I hope not.”

It didn’t have to be. You had an eight-game lead over the team that has now passed you. (Spoiler: It’s going to be a tight race.) And it’s not just about winning the division. It’s about winning the division and getting a bye. If you win your division, but finish as the third division winner and end up in a best-of-3 series anyway, who cares.

10. After Tuesday’s loss Boone said, “We gotta play better overall and hopefully get it going tomorrow.”

Surprisingly, hoping for a win didn’t work.

After Wednesday’s loss Boone said, “We’ll come ready to go tomorrow, hopefully Clarke will get us off to a good start.”

That’s the Yankees’ plan to get out of this mess: hoping. Not benching underperformers. Not putting players at their best positions. Not putting the worst hitters at the bottom of the lineup no matter what hand they hit with. Not shoring up the defense. Not playing a full, clean game. Hoping. A team with a $300 payroll and World Series aspirations is hoping to win games.

1. I cringed when I heard it. I was hoping I wouldn’t hear it this season, but after hearing it in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, I should have known better.

“We obviously gotta play a little better,” Aaron Boone said after Tuesday’s 12-5 loss, “and we have the people capable of doing that.”

You know it’s summer for the Yankees when Boone starts telling you about how the players the Yankees have are “capable” of turning the season around. He said it in 2021 when the team had a .500 record for the season in July. He said it in 2022 when was slamming press conference tables as the Yankees went 15-27 in July and August and watched their 15 1/2-game lead dwindle to one game. He said it in 2023 went the Yankees went 14-30 in July and August on their way to missing the postseason despite 40 percent of the league getting in. He said it in 2024 when the Yankees went 11-24 from mid-June to late July. And now he has said it in 2025 with the Yankees having lost 12 of 18 and their division lead down to one game.

2. You know what’s next, right? “It’s right in front of us.” Phase 1 of a Yankees midseason meltdown is losing to bad teams and the Yankees just went 6-10 against five teams not holding a playoff spot in the Red Sox, Angels, Orioles, Reds and A’s. Phase 2 is the division lead falling to one game. Phase 3 is Boone saying how “capable” his roster is. Phase 4 — the final phase — is him saying, “It’s right in front of us.” If the Yankees lose on Wednesday, it will be the first time since March 29 they aren’t alone in first place in the AL East. “It’s right in front of us” is imminent.

3. In 2022, Boone said, “It’s right in front of us,” on August 20. In 2023, he said, “It’s all there right in front of us,” on July 15. Last year, he said, “It’s all right in front of us,” on July 7. Each year it’s come a little earlier, but it always comes.

If the Yankees continue to play the way they have played over the last three weeks it will come in Toronto. After ending June with a 5-4 loss, the Yankees opened July with 12-5 disaster.

4. The Yankees scored two runs in the first to take an early 2-0 lead on a two-out, two-run single from Jasson Dominguez. (Dominguez drove in three of the Yankees’ five runs in the game. I bet Boone is upset he can’t bench Dominguez on Wednesday in favor of Trent Grisham, who has a hamstring injury.)

The Yankees still led 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth when Max Fried allowed a solo home run to George Springer. Fried bounced back to retire Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alejandro Kirk. He thought he was out of the inning when he got Davis Schneider to hit a ground ball to Jazz Chisholm, but Chisholm threw it away to extend the inning. Then Myles Straw drew a walk and Andres Gimenez crushed a three-run home run to straightaway center. The fourth inning should have ended with the Yankees leading 2-1. Instead, they trailed 4-2 because they continue to play a second baseman at third base, so that they can play an immobile 36-year-old at second because they owe him $22.5 million between this season and next. Boone is usually quick to shut down any suggestion of personnel changes, but even he said, “We’ll talk through that stuff,” when asked if continuing to play Chisholm at third and LeMahieu at second was the best alignment.

5. The Yankees tied the game at 4 in the seventh when the Blue Jays did their best Yankees impersonation by booting the ball all around the infield to allow two runs to score. The idea the Yankees would repay the Blue Jays for their error-fueled win the night before with one of their own was short-lived as the Yankees’ bullpen crumbled in the bottom of the seventh and allowed five runs and then allowed three more in the eighth for some icing on the cake.

Mark Leiter Jr. was the first reliever to be used in the game. He entered in the seventh with the score tied at 4. He faced three batters and retired one. Leiter Jr.’s WHIP this season is now 1.592. That ranks 150th out of 157 AL pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched (stat from Katie Sharp).

Luke Weaver relieved Leiter Jr. and he faced four batters and retired one and allowed a grand slam to put the game out of reach.

6. The Yankees scored two non-defensive-aided errors in the game and they both came in the first inning. Their ace allowed four runs in six innings. Their bullpen allowed eight runs in two innings. Their third baseman made a game-changing throw for the worse because he’s not a third baseman. Their catcher committed catcher’s interference for the second straight game and leads the league in that stat despite being 44th in games played for catchers.

7. “I didn’t help my team win today or yesterday,” J.C. Escarra said. “It shouldn’t have happened, but it’s something I can control.”

At least Escarra was accountable for his error. Anthony Volpe would have said he will do the same thing every single time like he said about his wild play the day before.

Weaver defended his catcher — the worst catcher at interfering with swings in the majors.

“I feel like that’s a really unfortunate part of our game,” Weaver said. “I don’t think, personally, that belongs in our game.”

Let’s change the rule for Escarra. Rather than have him not hit the batter’s bat mid-swing, let’s just have the rule removed from the game!

8. The Yankees were 2-for-17 with runners in scoring position, a day after they went 1-for-7. So they’re 3-for-24 in the first two games of the series with runners in scoring position.

“I will say the last two nights we’ve stung a number of balls with runners in scoring position,” Boone said. The New York Yankees: where process is more important than results. That’s what Brian Cashman told everyone at the 2022 end-of-the-season press conference.

9. “We’re going to have this conversation next year and the next year and the next year with what’s going on with runners in scoring position,” Boone said.

So Boone not only knows his job is safe for at least three more years through 2028, but he knows those Yankees teams will also suck at driving in runners in scoring position.

10. “That is baseball,” Boone said.

Nothing like a “That’s baseball” from a Yankee to evaluate their latest loss. Volpe used the same phrase on Monday. Aaron Judge said it last week. Boone says it all the time. If they lose again on Wednesday, someone else will say it. Or Boone will resort to telling us it’s right in front of them.