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Author: Neil Keefe

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Yankees Thoughts: The AL East Is Over

Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore painful losses to the Rays.

Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. The Yankees are 18-7 against teams not from Tampa this season, and they went 2-8 against the Rays this season. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore embarrassment of the team with the 28th payroll beating the team with the highest payroll in every facet of the game.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Back in February, the Yankees were the favorite to win the World Series. Aaron Hicks was going to miss the first half of the season. Then James Paxton was going to be out for the first month of the season. Then Luis Severino went down for the season. Then Giancarlo Stanton was going to miss the first half of the season. Then Aaron Judge was going to miss the first half of the season. Then the season was postponed.

With the late-July start to a shortened, 60-game season, the Yankees were still at least the favorite to win the American League. Then Masahiro Tanaka missed the start of the shortened season after taking a line drive to the head. Then Aroldis Chapman got put on the COVID-19 list. Then Paxton lost his velocity. Then Tommy Kahnle went down for the season. Then J.A. Happ pitched like a soon-to-be 38-year-old coming off the worst season of his career. Then Aaron Boone didn’t improve as a manager. Then Gary Sanchez couldn’t make contact. Then Stanton went on the injured list. The Judge went on the injured list. Then the Yankees couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Brett Gardner turned back into the player who looked finished in 2018. Then DJ LeMahieu went on the injured list. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Hicks became the No. 3 hitter. Then Zack Britton went on the injured list. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Gleyber Torres went on the injured list. Then the Yankees started playing Tyler Wade every day. Then Judge went on the injured list again. Then Sanchez still couldn’t make contact. Then Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on. Then Gerrit Cole started giving up home runs like Phil Hughes. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Chad Green turned into his April 2019 self. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays.

Once 16-6 with the best record in baseball, the Yankees are now just 20-15. 

2. The division is over. It’s over. Put an asterisk or a lowercase letter next to the Rays in the standings denoting they clinched it. The Yankees are three games back in the loss column and 4 1/2 games back overall against the Rays. According to FanGraphs, the Yankees have a 13 percent chance of winning the AL East. If you’re holding on to the slimmest of hope that they can play better than .750 baseball for the next three-plus weeks or that the Rays collapse, just remember the Yankees are closer to being out of the playoffs (they have a two-game loss-column lead on the ninth-place Tigers) than they are to the Rays.

The Yankees have 25 games remaining and the Rays have 22. If the Rays play .500 baseball the rest of the way and go 11-11, they will finish at 37-23. The Yankees would have to go 18-7 just to tie them, and that would do nothing since the Rays won the head-to-head matchup in an 8-2 landslide. The Yankees would have to go 19-6 to win the division if the Rays play .500 baseball. The Rays aren’t going to play .500 baseball though, not with a rotation of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton. And the Yankees aren’t going to go 19-6. Not with 10 of their remaining 25 games against the Blue Jays, who are much improved and also battling for a postseason spot.

3. The best the Yankees can do now is finish as the No. 4 seed in the AL playoffs. That is the only non-division winner spot that will get to host all three games in the best-of-3 first round. The Yankees are one game back in the loss column from the 4-seed and are tied with the same record as the Astros for the 5-seed, but lose the division record tiebreaker. Right now, the Yankees are the 6-seed, lined up to play the Indians in the best-of-3. That means facing the best pitcher in the AL this season in Shane Bieber in Game 1 and then either Carlos Carrasco (3.75 ERA), Zach Plesac (1.33 ERA), Triston McKenzie (1.69 ERA) or Aaron Civale (3.72 ERA) in Game 2, and another name from that list in Game 3. All three games (if necessary) would be played in Cleveland if there isn’t a playoff bubble.

4. The Yankees just had their current postseason rotation of Cole, Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery perfectly set for a three-game series at home against the Rays, who wouldn’t be starting Snell, and they still lost the series. That’s about as disheartening as it gets. The Yankees not having Judge, Stanton or Torres isn’t an excuse. Even without those three, the Yankees’ lineup is still better than the Rays’ on paper. The problem is the Yankees’ lineup doesn’t hit like it should on paper and neither does the Rays’. And the Rays have their own injury problems, missing Ryan Yarbrough, Nick Anderson, Oliver Drake, Jalen Beeks, Chaz Rose, Mike Zunino, Yonny Chirinos and Jose Alvarado. I don’t see anyone complaining about the Rays’ injuries, all I see them is winning nearly every day and having the best record in the American League.

5. I’m happy the season series against the Rays is over. Now I don’t have to watch the Yankees lose anymore regular-season games to the Rays and I don’t have to hear about the two team’s recent history of throwing at each other. Has there ever been more made of a pitch that didn’t actually hit a player or benches clearing that didn’t actually lead to a fight than there was from Tuesday night? Maybe Chapman meant to throw at Mike Brosseau. If he did, he’s an idiot, considering the Yankees had to have that game and putting Brosseau on with two outs in the ninth would have brought up the tying run. And Chapman isn’t exactly Mariano Rivera or even his old self in terms of confidence in successfully closing out games. He can’t be screwing around with runners on base because it usually doesn’t end well for him. The suspension for him and the suspensions for Boone and Kevin Cash were unnecessary. Nothing happened. No one did anything and no one pushed or punched anyone, outside of Wade for some reason trying to hold the Rays’ dugout back. If you were picking teams in a fight between the Yankees and Rays, Wade would easily be the last pick of the draft, and that’s after you pick the clubhouse attendants and bat and ball boys. I wonder how tough the Rays would have acted if Judge and Stanton were on the IL or if CC Sabathia were still on the team. Probably as tough as they have acted under those circumstances when tempers flared in the past: not tough at all.

6. So much for that grand slam on Sunday leading to Sanchez turning around his season. None of his previous five home runs led to him turning around his season, and homering in three straight games didn’t either. So I’m not sure why I thought maybe, just maybe a go-ahead, extra-inning grand slam would bring the old Sanchez back. Sanchez went 1-for-10 with a walk and four strikeouts in the three games against the Rays and he’s down to .130/.245/.337. It’s appalling that Sanchez’s OPS (.582) looks like what his slugging percentage should be. The other night, Paul O’Neill said that Sanchez isn’t going to hit .300 this season should focus on just hitting well for from here on. .300? .300?!?! Can Sanchez even get to .200 at this point?

7. DJ LeMahieu’s average finally dipped below .400 to .392. If LeMahieu can get to 186 plate appearances, he will qualify for the batting title, and he will win it. He needs 82 over the final 25 games or 3.28 per game. Basically, he just can’t get hurt. The next closest is Franmil Reyes at .336 and Tim Anderson at .333. LeMahieu would become the first player ever to win a batting title in both leagues, and he should have done it last season when he hit .327, but Anderson stole it from him by hitting .335 in only 123 games and 22 fewer games. LeMahieu is the best player on the Yankees. He needs to be extended. The Yankees can’t screw this up, but I wouldn’t count on them not screwing it up.

8. I want to reiterate what I wrote in What is Wrong with Gerrit Cole? on Tuesday because he’s the most important Yankee when it comes to the postseason. If Cole doesn’t turn into his Houston self, the Yankees aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does in October, he’s the single-most important Yankee in the postseason. He was supposed to be like signing two starting pitchers if the Yankees were to face the Astros in the ALCS since the Astros would be without him and the Yankees would be with him. Now that there’s an extra best-of-3 postseason round, the Yankees will need him to beat whichever team they face in that game. Cole has five starts left: Baltimore (2), Toronto, Boston and Miami. He has five stats to go from the guy leading the league in home runs allowed to the guy that couldn’t lose a game for more than a year. If this version of Cole is present in the postseason, it won’t matter if the team is at full strength, the Yankees won’t have a chance.

9. I like how the Yankees keep saying Deivi Garcia is in the conversation to start on Friday. I hope that’s just an unnecessary strategy ploy, so the Orioles don’t overly prepare for him because if it’s not, this team is more poorly run and managed than anyone thought. Garcia produced the best, or at worst, the second-best start of the Yankees’ season in his debut. It was better than any Cole or Tanaka start, much better than any Montgomery start, and the only start comparable would be Happ’s against the Mets. Garcia doesn’t just deserve to start, he deserves to be in the rotation. I would have him pitch Game 3 in the postseason right now over Montgomery based on one major league start. That’s how good he was. I’m sure the Yankees will call him up to start on Friday and make him the 29th man on the roster for the doubleheader and then send him back down after his start because they don’t want to not have Nick Nelson or Ben Heller on the active roster. What would they do without Nelson or Heller?!

10. The last three games were absent of Boone screwing anything up, causing my blood pressure to hit dangerous levels. That’s because Cole ruined Monday’s game in the first inning and the offense could barely make contact against Tyler Glasnow, Tanaka was able to get the ball right to the elite relievers on Tuesday, and Boone was suspended for Wednesday’s game, though it didn’t matter since Montgomery ruined it within the first four batters. It wasn’t fun watching the Yankees lose another series to the Rays, lose more ground in the standings, and ultimately lose the division. But it was nice to sit back and not have any issues with Boone over the last three nights. I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, if at all.

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The 2020 MLB All-Animosity Team

In a normal year, I would put out the All-Animosity Team to coincide with the All-Star Game. But this isn’t a new normal year and there’s no All-Star Game, so now is as good a time as any to announce the team.

On Tuesday night, the Yankees had a 2-0 lead over the Rays in the fifth inning, and it seemed like maybe this would be the game the Yankees would finally stop their losing streak against their only division competition. Instead, Kevin Kiermaier hit a game-tying, two-run home run off Masahiro Tanaka, a night after putting a Gerrit Cole pitch in the second deck at Yankee Stadium. On the light-hitting Rays, Kiermaier might be the lighest hitter, but not against the Yankees. In seven games against the Yankees this season, Kiermaier has two doubles, two home runs, four walks and a 1.150 OPS.

In a normal year, I would put out the All-Animosity Team to coincide with the All-Star Game. But this isn’t a normal year and there’s no All-Star Game, and after Kiermaier’s latest big hit against the Yankees, I decided now is as good a time as any to announce the 2020 MLB All-Animosity Team.

I’ll always remember the teams which featured David Wright, Josh Beckett, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Adrian Gonzalez, Chone Figgins, Kevin Youkilis, Robert Andino, Carl Crawford, Manny Ramirez, Matt Wieters, Delmon Young, B.J. Upton (when he went by B.J.), Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Jose Bautista, Magglio Ordonez and many others. But I also like having a new generation of players to have animosity for, and this year there are a few new names on the list.

Here is the 2020 All-Animosity Team.

C: Christian Vazquez
There were reports of the Red Sox possibly trading Vazquez prior to Monday’s deadline and I couldn’t have been happier about what I was hearing. Unfortunately, Vazquez wasn’t traded and remains a Red Sox and remains in the AL East where he will undoubtedly hurt the Yankees.

Vazquez only has a .633 career OPS against the Yankees, but it seems like the times he does get a hit, it’s a big one. None bigger than the opposite-field home run he hit off Zack Britton in Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS, which ended up being the difference in the game.

1B: Pete Alonso
I will never get over Pete Alonso breaking Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record in a season in which the actual baseball was manufactured so differently that Brett Gardner hit 28 home runs. Alonso never should have hit 53 home runs and never should have broken Judge’s record of 52.

Alonso has been terrible this season, which has made last season hurt less, and has also made it obvious that his record-setting power was a product of the baseball. Alonso is on a 28-home run pace with six and is batting .213/.333/.385 this year. He has been demoted from in the top-third of the Mets’ order and has mostly batted sixth over the last few weeks, which hasn’t been hard to watch.

2B: Jose Altuve
Jose Altuve used to be my favorite non-Yankees player. That was before this past October and offseason.

After hitting .320/.414/.560 with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the 2017 ALCS, Altuve hit .348/.444/1.097 with a double, two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the 2019 ALCS. He also is responsible for ending the Yankees’ season with a walk-off, pennant-winning home run in Game 6.

A career .291 hitter against the Yankees, I used to enjoy watching Altuve play (when not playing the Yankees) and admired his ability for his stature. Now I watch him hoping he will fail, and this season he has, hitting .211/.276/.316 in 32 games. A .592 OPS? Now that’s enjoyable.

3B: Rafael Devers
The moment Rafael Devers hit that two-strike, opposite-field home run off Aroldis Chapman in 2017, I knew I had a problem. I also knew the All-Animosity Team had a third baseman for the next decade.

After his impressive 58-game rookie season in 2017, Devers looked lost last in 2018, batting .240/.298/.433 in 121 games and I got ahead of myself thinking the 21-year-old might be a bust. Last season, he hit .311/.361/.555 with a league-leading 54 doubles to go along with 32 home runs 115 RBIs.

Devers is going to be on this team for a long, long time. That is, until he’s set to free agency and the Red Sox cry poor and trade him. I can only dream that will happen.

SS: Carlos Correa
While Altuve and Alex Bregman were hiding behind their prepared statemetns and vague responses to questions about the Astro’s sign-stealing scandal, Correa was busy talking to anyone who would listen. The only problem was a lot of what he said was outrageous.

Add in his ridiculous 1.040 career OPS against the Yankees, his .913 OPS against them in the 2017 ALCS and his two home runs in the 2019 ALCS, including his walk-off in Game 2, and Correa is an easy fit to pencil in at short on this team.

LF: Anthony Santander
This spot went to Trey Mancini last season, but unfortunately Mancini isn’t playing this season. I do wish him a healthy and speedy recovery, so he can get back on the field and back on this team and I can get back to watching him torment Yankees pitching.

In Mancini’s place, I thought it only made sense to fill the spot with an Oriole. And like Mancini, Santander is seemingly the only hitter to truly worry about in the Orioles’ lineup and not let beat you, and the Yankees consistently let him beat them. No, they don’t let the Orioles actually beat them and win a game, they let Santander beat them in his at-bats. Even as the Yankees won 17 straight games against the Orioles in 2019, Santander kept on hitting against them with three home runs and a .900 OPS. He currently leads the league in doubles (13) and RBIs (32), so not having to worry about him isn’t going to end anytime soon.

CF: Kevin Kiemaier
Kiermaier is a career .249/.308/.382 hitter, but against the Yankees he might as well be Ken Griffey Jr. This season, Kiermaier has drawn game-changing walks, hit big home runs against Tanaka and Gerrit Cole and has continued to play Gold Glove defense, up until his ill-advised dive on Tuesday night.

Normally, I want Yankees pitching to face as many hitters with Kiermaier’s numbers as possible, but not Kiermaier. I’m looking forward to his contract with the Rays ending in 2022, and hopefully the team option for 2023 isn’t picked up.

RF: Randal Grichuk
How did Randal Grichuk end up on this team full of All-Stars, award-winning players and ex-Yankees? Well, in 19 games last season against the Yankees, Grichuk had two doubles, eight home runs, 15 RBIs and a .938 OPS. Add in the five home runs he hit against the Yankees in 16 games in 2018 and you know why he’s on this team.

Grichuk is barely a major leaguer when he plays against the 28 other teams not named the Yankees and he’s a Hall of Famer against the Yankees. He essentially hits against the Yankees the way Ortiz, Evan Longoria, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Manny Machado used to.

DH: Alex Bregman
The first thing I used to think about when thinking about Bregman was how hard it is to retire him at the plate. Now when I think of him, I think of him standing there at the Astros’ fan fest and giving the same rehearsed answer over and over about the team’s sign-stealing scandal with that smirk on his face and the sarcastic laugh he kept giving the media. It doesn’t matter that he overall doesn’t hit against the Yankees, those answers, that smirk and that laugh are enough to get him on this team.

SP: Justin Verlander
I haven’t liked Justin Verlander since Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS. The Yankees’ decision to not trade for his enormous contract at the 2017 August deadline and allowing him to go to the Astros to single-handedly decide that season’s ALCS made me like him less (though it made me like the Yankees’ financial decisions even less).

It pains me that Verlander was finally able to get over the championship hump in 2017 after years of losing in the ALCS and World Series and it pains me even more that his championship came after he won both Games 2 and 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees.

Verlander was openly critical of sign stealing around the league, but after his own team was caught in the biggest sign-stealing scandal of all time, Verlander had nothing to say. He’s a fraud.

RP: Nathan Eovaldi
Nathan Eovaldi isn’t a relief pitcher, but he has been, and he most notably was in the 2018 World Series.

Never trust a pitcher who throws triple-digit fastballs and can’t strike anyone out and that’s exactly what Eovaldi is. The Dodgers gave up on him and the Marlins gave up on him despite him being 24 years old with incredible velocity because he didn’t have an out pitch and he didn’t know where the ball was going. So the Yankees gave up Martin Prado and David Phelps because of the glamour of Eovaldi’s fastball, thinking they would be the ones who could fix him. They weren’t.

Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record in 2015, 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 game or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings and qualify for a win because he needs 20-plus pitches per 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 leave at the end of the season.

When Eovaldi returned to baseball in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays, many Yankees fans started to think about a reunion, having not learned their lesson from the last time Eovaldi was a Yankee. When he was traded to the Red Sox, I laughed with excitement, envisioning him destroying the Red Sox’ chances at winning the division. Instead, he shut out the Yankees in the all-important August series (even if faced a JV lineup) and then shut them out against in September. I never thought he would be able to beat the Yankees in October in the Bronx, but he did, after getting more run support than any other pitcher against the Yankees in the team’s history.

Eovaldi beat the Yankees and the 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. (Only in Boston could a losing pitcher become a “hero.”) Now Eovaldi is a World Series champion and I’ll never get over it. At least he’s returned to his former pre-2018 postseason self.

Manager: Dave Roberts
If Dave Roberts is unsuccessful in his attempt to steal second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees win that series and most likely the World Series, and who knows, maybe the Red Sox still haven’t won a championship since 1918. Without that steal, Roberts isn’t a household name in the baseball world and he most likely isn’t the manager of the Dodgers.

It was Roberts’s bullpen decisions in the 2018 World Series which led to another Red Sox championship as he continually gave the ball to Ryan Madson, forgetting it was 2018 and not 2009. The right-handed reliever somehow appeared in four of the five games in the series despite allowing all seven of his inherited runners to score. It was also Roberts who decided not to start Cody Bellinger in Games 1, 2 and 5 and Max Muncy in Games 1 and 2, choosing to not have arguably his best two hitters in the lineup for the entire game. Roberts is now responsible for two Red Sox championships.

I dream about the Yankees playing the Dodgers in the 2020 World Series and the Yankees handing Roberts his third straight World Series loss. But if the Yankees and Dodgers do play in the World Series, I won’t have to dream about the Yankees winning, Roberts’ managing will take care of it for me.

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Yankees Podcast: Yankees Finally Beat Rays

The Yankees did it! After six straight losses to their only division competition, they finally beat the Rays.

The Yankees did it! They beat the Rays! After six straight losses to their only division competition, the Yankees avoided blowing another game to the Rays. Masahiro Tanaka was allowed to pitch six innings, DJ LeMahieu and Luke Voit kept on hitting and Kevin Kiermaier finally did something bad against the Yankees. Because of the ninth-inning antics, the series and season finale on Wednesday might lead to some suspensions.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

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

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Yankees Podcast: Gerrit Cole Needs to Figure It Out

Against the Mets, J.A. Happ pitched like Gerrit Cole. Against the Rays, Gerrit Cole pitched like J.A. Happ.

On Saturday against the Mets, J.A. Happ pitched like Gerrit Cole. And on Monday against the Rays, Gerrit Cole pitched like J.A. Happ. It was the second straight start in which Cole lasted only five innings, as he has now failed to beat the Rays in any of his three starts against them this season. Cole has been good this season, but he needs to be great. If he isn’t his old self a month from now, the Yankees aren’t going anywhere.

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

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What Is Wrong with Gerrit Cole?

Gerrit Cole wasn’t good again on Monday night against the Rays. For who he is and what he is supposed to be, he sucked.

Gerrit Cole wasn’t good again on Monday night against the Rays. Actually, he flat-out sucked. He might not have sucked the way someone like James Paxton is capable of sucking, but for who he is and what he is supposed to be, he sucked.

I didn’t think I would ever have to give Cole the “Ladies and gentlemen” treatment on Twitter, but in the first inning of his eighth game as a Yankee, I had to. Cole began the game with two quick outs, and then unraveled, allowing a line-drive single and a home run to former Yankee Ji-Man Choi, who hits against Cole and the Yankees as if he’s David Ortiz, and who Cole said about following the game, “I don’t really have an answer on him at this point.” In the first game of a three-game series against the Rays, representing the Yankees’ last chance to get back in the division race, and with Tyler Glasnow going for the Rays, Cole lost the game in the first inning. It was his worst start of the season and it came when the Yankees needed him most.

The next inning, Cole let the light-hitting (and I mean light-hitting) Kevin Kiermaier take him into the second deck in right field, and he would give up a fourth run in the fifth. While Tyler Glasnow was busy no-hitting the Yankees into the sixth inning, Cole had already been done for the night for more than an inning after putting 12 runners on base in five. His final line: 5 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 2 HR. That’s a line I didn’t think I would see from Cole as a Yankee. At least not until the final couple of years of his contract.

Cole walked four batters for the first time since Sept. 12, 2018, and nearly all contact the Rays made was barreled, as 10 of the 15 balls they put in play had exit velocities of at least 95 mph. After getting lit up in Atlanta last week for five earned runs and three home runs, Monday’s start against the Rays was the second straight start in which Cole only lasted five innings. It was the third time in as many starts that he has failed to record more than 15 outs against the Rays (in 2019, he only failed to record more than 15 outs in four of his 33 starts), the toughest opponent the Yankees will see in the regular season and their only competition for the division.

Cole’s ERA (3.91) is now just slightly better than J.A. Happ’s (4.05) and hitters have a much better average against him (.224) than Happ (.188). His ERA isn’t a product of bad luck or unfortunate circumstances as his 4.83 FIP suggests his ERA should be even worse than it is. He leads the league in home runs allowed (12) and has allowed more than Happ (4), Masahiro Tanaka (3) and Jordan Montgomery (3) combined in 19 less innings. Worst of all, he has yet to win a game against the Rays this season, pitching to this line: 16.1 IP, 20 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 6 BB, 27 K, 5 HR, 4.97 ERA, 1.595 WHIP. A win every fifth day was supposed to be a given and as close to a guarantee as there is in the league with Cole, now even a “quality” start isn’t a given with him, as he has produced only four in seven starts with his other start on Opening Night being cut short due to rain.

Am I worried about Cole? Not really. The problem is the answer to that question should never be anything other than “No.” In fact, that question should never have to be asked. If anything, I’m worried he’s not healthy by the way he has pitched. In eight starts, Cole has gone from challenging Jacob deGrom as the best pitcher on the planet to a five-inning, 100-pitch pitcher who allows a home run every 3.8 innings. Sure, he’s been good, but he hasn’t been the Houston version of himself, and being good isn’t enough. He needs to be great. He needs to not extend losing streaks like he did against the Braves or destroy winning streaks like he did against the Rays.

The only positive is that Cole understands the magnitude of the game he lost on Monday night. He didn’t talk about how he had “great stuff” or make excuses for why he can’t beat the Rays or keep the ball in the ballpark.

“I’m pretty hard on myself as it is,” Cole said. “I definitely know how important the game was, so I’m wearing it.”

Ultimately, Cole will be judged on what happens in the postseason, like every Yankee is. No one will care if he can’t pitch a 1-2-3 inning against the Rays in August (which he couldn’t) as long as he dominates them or whichever other team he faces in October. He has less than a month to figure it out.

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

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