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.