The Yankees finished the first “half” of the season by blowing a late lead and losing the last game before the All-Star break for the third time in the last four seasons.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The last four nights have been enjoyable. Four calm, relaxing, peaceful nights free of frustration, anger, depression, elevated blood pressure and the urge to heavily drink. That’s because there was no Yankees baseball. Well, Yankees baseball is back this weekend.

2. I’m still not over the loss from Sunday to the Orioles in Baltimore. A win would have given the Yankees a three-game winning streak going into the break, a 5-5 record against the Orioles for the season and a one-game lead in the division for as bad as the last month has been. Instead, they suffered another inexcusable, catastrophic, ninth-inning loss, negated the positivity of the previous two games, dropped to 4-6 against the Orioles (now needing to sweep the three remaining games against them to win the head-to-head tiebreaker) and trail the Orioles by one game for the division.

3. If you want to view what has gone on through 98 games as the Yankees are only one game back despite being the worst team in the league for a month, go for it. In actuality, the loss on Sunday was a trend of big-moment blowups this team has made a habit of as they had similar losses to the Mariners, Royals and Red Sox. Only once this year have the Yankees had an improbable ninth-inning comeback that led to an unexpected win (the series finals against the Giants). Their other two unexpected ninth-inning comebacks in Cleveland and Kansas City ended in losses.

4. Sunday was a really bad loss. As bad of a loss as you can have in the regular season. It was the worst loss of the season and the only way it will be topped is if the Yankees lose a regular-season game down the stretch that eliminates them from the postseason. Thankfully, for their sake, the “cushion” they built up that Brian Cashman refers to should be more than enough to get them into a postseason in which 40 percent of the teams make it.

5. Unfortunately, the four-day break likely didn’t change the Yankees’ offense from a three-batter lineup with six bel0w-league-average bats. It likely didn’t flip a switch for the rotation to pitch like they did in April and May. It didn’t turn their mediocre-at-best bullpen into a stable of strikeout arms. It didn’t magically make their manager someone capable of using basic logic and reasoning for in-game decisions in close games.

It’s like the opening scene in Mrs. Doubtfire, where Robin Williams’ character, with his marriage falling apart, tells Sally Field’s character, “Come on, Miranda. We’ve got problems, but who doesn’t? We could work them out.”

Field responds, “We’ve been trying to work them out for years.”

Williams answers, “Well, let’s take a vacation with the kids …”

Field rebuts, “Our problems would be waiting for us when we got back.”

The Yankees’ problems from mid-June through Sunday in Baltimore will be waiting for them on Friday night at 7:05 in the Bronx. How they handle those problems and if they’re able to overcome them in the second “half” will be evident before the end of the night on Friday.

6. The Yankees’ upcoming schedule is brutal. Four against the Rays, two against the Mets, three against the Red Sox and three against the Phillies. You may think they finally have a soft landing on August 2 against the Blue Jays, but the Yankees are .500 against the Blue Jays this season, while the Blue Jays are eight games under .500 against the rest of the league.

7. Ideally, the Yankees’ roster will look a lot different on July 31 after the trade deadline than it does now, but we don’t live in an ideal world. (If we did, Anthony Volpe would be able to cleanly field game-ending ground balls hit right at him and Alex Verdugo would be able to catch game-ending fly balls with a catch probability of 99 percent). It’s hard to envision the Yankees making a move (or moves) to become drastically better, and minor upgrades will be costly with 21 of the league’s 30 teams within 5 1/2 games out a postseason spot. The American League is wide open (even though the Astros are now in a position to pass the Mariners for first in the West this weekend), and the Yankees will likely operate over the next 11 days with the idea the path to the World Series isn’t difficult as is, and will refrain from making themselves the clear-cut team to beat.

8. The Yankees are “in contention” and that’s good enough for them. “Just get in” has been their mantra for the last 15 years, and after they get in and get eliminated, they refer to the playoffs as a crapshoot and talk about small sample sizes and short series. Oddly enough, they talk didn’t like that from 1996-2009 when they went all out to field the best possible team and did everything in their power to put themselves in the best possible position to win.

Just look at Nestor Cortes’ tweet from Tuesday.

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

Cortes is delusional, like the rest of the organization, but his perception of the Yankees in 2024 is understandable since all he has known as a Yankee is a front office that claims they’re “pretty fucking” good after going 82-80 and a manager who lets sloppy play slide and only cares to speak about tomorrow until the season runs out of tomorrows. The Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi in part because they thought his tense nature would rub off on their young roster. The roster under Boone has hasn’t just had Boone’s tendencies wear off on them, they have become him. From Aaron Judge walking through Fenway Park carrying a boombox playing “New York, New York” after winning Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS to Boone saying “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees after losing the one-game playoff in that same venue three years later to Boone continuously saying “it’s right in front of us” for the last three years and his players using that same phrase over the same time, the Yankees believe they are still the Yankees when they haven’t been in a long time and have never been with this core under this manager.

9. The replies to Cortes’ tweet were alarming with Yankees fans calling him out and opposing fans laughing at his and the Yankees’ expense. Cortes was a Yankee in 2019 and again in 2021, 2022, 2023 and this season. In that time, the team has lost four of the last five games of the ALCS, finished third in the division and fifth in the AL and lost the one-game playoff, were swept in the ALCS and missed the postseason completely. This season’s team has the worst record in the majors since the middle of June and coupled with Sunday’s humiliating loss, the timing of Cortes’ message couldn’t have been worse. I have been hoping all week Cortes would delete the tweet and claim his account was hacked by a Red Sox fan.

10. For better or worse, Yankees baseball is back. The break is over. The vacation is often. The physical, mental and emotional escape is over. When Gerrit Cole throws the first pitch of Friday night’s game against the Rays, the stretch run will be under way. The last 64 games with Juan Soto under contract as a Yankee will be under way. The glaring issues and problems from the first “half” and from the last four seasons will still be there. We’ll find out if this group handles them differently.

1. “Spirited comeback.” That’s what Michael Kay labeled the Yankees’ ninth-inning rally that came up short. A “spirited comeback.”

The bottom of the ninth inning in Games 4 and 5 of the 2001 were spirited comebacks. The eighth inning of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS was a spirited comeback (and also the reason the Yankees are currently managed by the manager they are). What happened on Thursday night at Tropicana Field was just a collapsing team coming up short yet again and losing for the 18th time in 25 games.

2. The Yankees wouldn’t have needed to have a comeback of any sort if they could just situationally hit. Alex Verdugo singled to lead off the game and Juan Soto followed with a double. The Yankees had runners on second and third with no outs and Aaron Judge due up.

Shane Baz was making his second start of the season and his second start since 2022 due to injury. The Yankees had him on the ropes with a chance to win the game in the first inning. Instead, Judge hit a shallow fly ball, Ben Rice struck out on three pitches and Gleyber Torres struck out on four.

2. Two batters into the Rays’ offensive night they had a 2-0 lead. Yandy Diaz doubled off the catwalk and Randy Arozarena clubbed a two-home run. Nestor Cortes was doing his can’t-pitch-on-the-road act yet again in an attempt to mimic Carlos Rodon’s start two nights before.

“I haven’t had success on the road this year,” Cortes said, “but I don’t think much of it when I’m out there.”

What exactly is he thinking about when he’s on a non-Yankee Stadium mound? How quickly can I put this game out of reach?

3. Cortes needed 97 pitches to get 13 outs and allowed five earned runs and 10 baserunners in just 4 1/3 innings of work. It was an abysmal start, but his manager didn’t think so.

“Stuff-wise he was good,” Aaron Boone said.

How could anyone have good stuff and give up five runs and 10 baserunners and only last 4 1/3 innings? You know who had good stuff on Thursday? Paul Skenes. He threw seven no-hit innings for the Pirates with 11 strikeouts. That’s good stuff.

4. Thankfully, Jeff Nelson on the postgame show didn’t sit by and listen to his former teammate in Boone spew bullshit.

“You’re throwing 97 pitches in 4 1/3 innings,” Nelson said. “I don’t know how you have ‘good stuff.'”

5. Boone then went on to talk about how the team is “in control” despite losing yet another series and losing the opportunity to win back-to-back games for the first time in exactly a month from today. (Happy One-Month Anniversary!)

“Missing opportunities, that’s what I think it comes down to,” Aaron Judge said. “There was a lot of fight out of the guys all the way to the end.”

No one fights and loses like the Yankees!

6. “We’re the Yankees,” Jose Trevino said. “If we win, [it’s], yeah, we should have won. If we lose, they like that.”

Does Trevino think it’s 15 years ago when being the Yankees meant something? When the Yankees were the Yankees, acted like it, played like it and won like it. That was a long time ago. I don’t think anyone still thinks the Yankees should win because they’re the Yankees. They have played worse than the White Sox and Rockies for the last month. They are coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs when 40 percent of the league makes the playoffs. They haven’t reached or won the World Series in 15 years and have lost five ALCS in that time.

7. “Nobody likes losing,” Judge said. “Nobody is happy about it.”

The Yankees may not like losing, but they’re accepting of it. They’re comfortable doing it, and they’re pretty good at it.

8. The Yankees are a three-home run game from Rice against the Red Sox and Grisham driving in both runs and making a game-saving catch against the Rays from being in the middle of a nine-game losing streak. That’s scary, but what’s even scarier is for how bad things are, they are set up to get a lot worse over the next three days in Baltimore.

9. The Orioles were just swept at home by the crappy Cubs. Not only were they swept, but they were outscored 21-2 and shut out on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s very realistic they break out and hang 30 runs on the Yankees this weekend.

The Yankees need to sweep the Orioles to have a winning road trip. Rodon is starting on Sunday, so that’s a loss, and the dream of a sweep is gone. They need to win two of three to at worst run in place and go .500 on this trip. I can’t envision a scenario in which the Yankees take two of three from the Orioles in Baltimore, but they need to.

10. “We’re going to play a first-place team right now,” Judge said. “We’ve got to take these good at-bats into Baltimore.”

They’re going to need to bring a lot more than good at-bats to Baltimore. They’re going to need to bring actual runs, quality starting pitching, bat-missing relief pitching, strong defense and a capable manager. Otherwise, the division will be over before the All-Star break and what was once a promising season will be closer to being over as well.

The Yankees played on Tuesday and that means their season loss total increased by one.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It takes a lot for Brian Cashman to join the Yankees on the road, and losing 16 of their last 22 games entering Tuesday certainly constitutes as a lot.

“Thankfully, we got out of the gates really strong,” Cashman said at Tropicana Field before Tuesday’s game. “Hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this. Hopefully sooner than later because it’s gone on long enough.”

Whenever you’re using the word “hopefully” to discuss your baseball season, you’re screwed, and Cashman used the word twice in 11 words. You would think more than $300 million in salaries could buy you more than hope, but that’s all it has gotten Cashman. It’s all he has gotten after incorrectly spending more than $3 billion in salaries since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance.

2. Cashman could do something other than “hope” the season will turn around. He could replace his manager and try to remove the comfortable-with-losing stench Aaron Boone has covered the Yankees’ winning tradition with. But he won’t. That would go against “the process” Cashman has frequently mentioned in recent years as an excuse for his team’s shortcomings. It would go against his belief that the process is more important than the results, which he said at his end-of-the-season press conference in 2022.

“It’s been a tough stretch for us,” Cashman added.

If by “stretch” Cashman means the entirety of the Boone era, then yes, it’s been a tough “stretch.” Unfortunately, that’s not what Cashman meant. He was referring to just the last month. In fact, he didn’t hesitate to praise the work Boone has done this season, saying his manager has navigated this collapse “as well as he possibly can.”

3. Not only did Cashman defend his handpicked manager’s leadership during a third straight disastrous mid-June collapse, he doesn’t think this season is any way like the last two.

“I think every year is different,” Cashman said. “I think those teams are different and some of the issues are different.”

What? WHAT? WHAT?! Like Mugatu yelling about Zoolander’s faces, THEY’RE THE SAME THING! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigre? 2022? 2023? 2024? THEY’RE THE SAME THING!

Each Yankees season is a continuation of the previous season. This season is a continuation of 2023 and 2023 was a continuation of 2022 and so on. The collapses have been the same. The offensive issues have been the same. The oft-injured players inevitably getting injured are the same. The underperforming players are the same. When you run it back with the same front office, same manager and essentially the same roster over and over, you get the same result. This collapse isn’t an anomaly. It’s not part of the ebb and flow of the baseball season like Boone likes to say. It’s expected. It’s part of who these Yankees are.

4. Cashman’s presence at the Trop on Tuesday did nothing to stop the Yankees from free falling into nothing as they lost again. After they scored a first-inning run on a Gleyber Torres RBI single, the thought the game may play out differently than nearly every game for the past month may have entered your mind. Then Carlos Rodon walked to the mound.

Two batters and seven pitches into Rodon’s night, the Yankees lead was gone and the game was tied at 1. Two batters and seven more pitches from Rodon, and the Yankees trailed by three runs and the remaining eight-plus innings were just a formality in leading the Yankees to their 17th loss in their last 23 games.

5. “It has not been fun, that’s for sure,” Rodon said. “I’m just not really giving my team a chance to win, giving up runs early.”

The Yankees have lost each of Rodon’s last four starts, and in those games, he has put 41 baserunners on in 19 innings, pitching to a 10.89 ERA and 2.053 WHIP. Opposing hitters are batting .356/.423/.713 against him for a 1.135 OPS. For reference, Aaron Judge has the highest OPS in the majors at 1.103, so opposing hitters are collectively the best hitter in the game against Rodon.

6. It was always going to be extremely difficult to like Rodon as a Yankee after his first season with the team when he came to spring training unfocused and possibly out of shape, got hurt before Opening Day and said he would be pitching if it were the playoffs then missed the first half of the season, pitched to a 6.85 ERA over 14 starts, blew a kiss to heckling fans, turned his back on the pitching coach and gave up eight runs without recording an out in his final start of the season. With what has gone on with him this season, I can’t envision ever being a fan of his as a Yankee.

7. Rodon allowed four runs on Tuesday before recording an out didn’t stop his manager from supporting the lefty (who makes roughly $800,000 per start).

“Once he gets settled he’s got a lot of ways of getting you out,” Boone said.

Rodon has a 9.00 ERA on the season in the first inning. He loses each game for the Yankees before they have a chance to bat at home or before they have a chance to bat for a second time on the road. But hey, once he gets settled, watch out!

8. Rodon’s next start will come on Sunday in Baltimore in the final game before the All-Star break. He faced the Orioles in Baltimore on May 2 and allowed six earned runs on eight hits, including three home runs and the Yankees lost 7-2. You can put the Yankees down for a loss this Sunday in Baltimore.

Since the Yankees already lost on Tuesday and are likely to lose on Sunday with Rodon pitching again, that means they would have to win the next four games to post a winning road trip. The last time the Yankees won two games in a row was June 11 and June 12. Today is July 10.

9. With “hope” being Cashman’s solution to the season, the best the Yankees can “hope” for on this six-game trip to Tampa and Baltimore is to go 3-3, and even then it’s not exactly promising. A 3-3 trip would keep them running in place while the Red Sox keep winning and the Orioles gradually increase their separation. On June 12, the Yankees had a 2 1/2-game lead over the Orioles and a 14-game lead over the Red Sox. Today, the Yankees trail the Orioles by four games in the loss column and their 14-game lead over the Red Sox is down to two games in the loss column.

10. The stuffing in the “cushion” Cashman spoke about is bursting at the seams. The Yankees are a bad rest of this road trip from being buried in the division race and from hanging on to a postseason berth. The team Cashman said is “pretty fucking good” during his unhinged tirade over the winter is anything but. For the last month, they’ve been pretty fucking bad, and the “hope” they will magically turn it around is fading by the day.