I wasn’t upset when Mike Tauchman made the Yankees’ Opening Day roster. It didn’t bother me that someone who became a Yankee six days before the start of the season was going to take the place of Tyler Wade on the roster, given that Wade had done close to nothing during his time in the majors. I figured Tauchman would only be used in case of an emergency, and because the Yankees told us Aaron Hicks would only miss the first three games of the season and would return on April 1, Tauchman might not even appear in a game for the Yankees.

But Hicks didn’t come back for the fourth game of the season on April 1 (he didn’t come back until the 42nd game of the season on May 15), and on the day of the fourth game of the season, the Yankees placed Giancarlo Stanton on the injured list. Suddenly, Tauchman wasn’t a guy who could tell future generations of Tauchmans about getting to wear the pinstripes for a few days, he had become an everyday player.

Tauchman appeared in the next six games, going 2-for-12 with five strikeouts in four starts. Beginning on April 13, he would appear in 27 of the Yankees’ 29 games, batting .217/.316/.422 with four home runs and 13 RBIs. He was in the starting lineup nearly every game for a team with championship aspirations, while other actual everyday players continued to receive unnecessary rest. On the same day Hicks made his 2019 debut, Tauchman was in the lineup for both games of the doubleheader against the Orioles. But Tauchamn was sent down after the doubleheader sweep, and I thought I had seen the last of him as a Yankee. Tauchman reappeared a month later, playing in three mid-June games against the White Sox before being sent back down, and once again I thought I had seen the last of him as a Yankee.

Then with Stanton going back on the injured list prior to the Yankees’ two-game series in London, coupled with the team being allowed to increase their roster size for the trip, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for the Yankees to recall Clint Frazier and give him everyday at-bats in the majors. Instead, in what was a surprising decision, the Yankees chose Tauchman over Frazier to travel to Europe, citing his defensive abilities as the reason.

Tauchman went hitless in two at-bats in London to lower his line on the season to .208/.300/.387. Defense aside, the Yankees were keeping a 24-year-old outfielder with an .843 OPS in Triple-A, choosing to roster a 28-year-old outfielder with a .687 OPS. While it was frustrating to see Frazier waste away in Triple-A where he had nothing left to prove, the decision to bring call up Tauchman over him seemed like a two-game decision which would be righted prior to the Yankees’ return to North America for the second part of the Subway Series. Upon their return, though, Tauchman remained with the Yankees and Frazier remained with the RailRiders.

The first few days of July went by without Frazier replacing Tauchman on the roster and with Tauchman not playing at all. But Tauchman was back in the starting lineup in Tampa on July 4, and that’s when everything changed.

In 16 games in July, Tauchman hit .423/.474/.750 with six doubles, a triple, three home runs and 13 RBIs. He was playing all three outfield positions and his middle-of-the-order-like bat had become a force at the bottom of the lineup. He put together three, three-hit games in the span of week, including one in the series opener against his former Rockies. He even added a home run in the series finale against the Rockies at the Stadium, showing his previous organization what they had given up on. He finished his breakout month with a two-run home run against the Diamondbacks on July 31 and scored the tying run in the eventual win after hitting a two-out double in the bottom of the seventh.

Tauchman’s hot streak (sorry for using that phrase since Aaron Boone and the Yankees don’t believe in hot streaks) has continued into August where he’s 6-for-12, following his three-hit, two-home run game against the Orioles on Monday night. He’s now batting a ridiculous .294/.368/.541 on the season after going from emergency outfield organizational depth to fourth outfielder to everyday player to having fans forget all about Frazier.

I know it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t always been a Tauchman fan, though it would take speaking with someone in Tauchman’s family or the biggest Yankees homer in the world to find someone who has always been a fan of his. Throughout the season, I have written and tweeted some less-than-positive things about Tauchman like …

Mike Tauchman is batting sixth tonight. In a Major League Baseball game. For the New York Yankees.

Mike Tauchman and Tyler Wade wake up in the morning as New York Yankees, travel in luxury, make an incredible salary, receive meal stipends, have full benefits for life and are working toward service time pension. What a life.

The Yankees have already exhausted their depth and batting Tyler Wade and Mike Tauchman is basically the equivalent of playing shorthanded in a Central Park softball league and having to take automatic outs at the end of the batting order.

I hope the nerd who recommended acquiring Mike Tauchman is now working in the mailroom.

The Yankees are in London and Clint Frazier is in Triple-A. The Yankees have decided using Brett Gardner as an everyday player, which has gone as bad as expected this season, and letting Mike Tauchman, who doesn’t belong in the majors, serve as the fourth outfielder is better than having Frazier on the roster.

The best day of the week is when Mike Tauchman plays for the New York Yankees while Clint Frazier doesn’t.

I even wrote this fake Old Timers’ Day introduction about him for 2029:

John Sterling: “This next player became a Yankee in 2019 following a trade a week before the season to give the team depth and outfield insurance. Injuries forced him on to the Opening Day roster and despite being a career .153 hitter, he was batting sixth by the fifth game of the season and batting fifth in the third week of the season. Manager Aaron Boone quickly fell in love with his ability to strike out, pop up and weakly roll over ground balls to the right side as he would play in nearly all of the team’s first 40 games of the season, while regular everyday players continued to get extra rest. Please welcome back, Mike Tauchman!” (Stadium organ plays)

But for all the negative things I said about Tauchman, on April 20, I did tweet: Is Mike Tauchman Luke Voit 2.0? So even if my optimism about Tauchman’s future was brief, it still existed at some point.

Brian Cashman and his team once again found another diamond in the rough with seemingly everyday-playing capabilities, and it cost them nothing, the same way it cost them nothing to acquire Hicks, Voit and Gio Urshela. When it comes to position players, Cashman should no longer be doubted. (Pitchers, on the other hand, are a much different story.)

I would like to apologize to the nerd who recommended acquiring Tauchman and hope he’s not working in the mailroom. More importantly, I would like to apologize to Tauchman as he’s been an important part of the 2019 Yankees. (I can’t believe I wrote that.)

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

It’s been 10 years since I walked out of Yankee Stadium following Sunday Night Baseball in early August and a four-game sweep of the Red Sox, which propelled the Yankees to a division title and eventually a championship. This past weekend’s four-game series had the same result with a much different meaning.

The Yankees aren’t fighting the Red Sox for the division in August 2019 the way they were in August 2009. They haven’t had to fight the Red Sox for the division this entire season. The only obstacle the Yankees have had to face in the division was the Rays for the first two months of the season, but the Yankees cleared that hurdle and cleared it for good nearly three months ago.

We didn’t learn anything from the weekend series. We already knew the Yankees were the class of the American League, even though they haven’t played a single game this season at full strength, and we already knew the Red Sox suck, as they are now only four games over .500 in an era of baseball where the majority of the league is tanking and wins are easy to come by. We saw a true championship contender embarrass a mediocre team and only because it’s Yankees-Red Sox does it feel like something more.

The Red Sox got swept by a Yankees team, which in the final game of the series, put out a lineup without Gary Sanchez, DJ LeMahieu, Luke Voit, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks and Edwin Encarnacion. A Yankees lineup without six of its expected nine starters for the upcoming postseason raced out to a 7-0 lead and when J.A. Happ, who won’t be part of the postseason rotation, needed to be pulled, the team turned to Luis Cessa, the 25th man on the roster, who is barely hanging on to his Yankees career. With their season on the line and facing a sweep and potential eighth straight loss, the Red Sox lost to the Yankees JV lineup (and giving them JV status is generous), worst starter and worst reliever.

The series, and this season as a whole, has served as a painful reminder of how ridiculously fortunate the 2018 Red Sox were. They needed every below-average- and average player playing well, every good player playing great and every great player playing at an MVP level for their 2018 season to happen. They got it all in what was one ridiculously improbable parlay which couldn’t be stopped. Screw the 1967 Red Sox. The 2018 Red Sox were the Impossible Dream.

There won’t be any dream this season. The Red Sox are more than finished in the division, trailing the Yankees by 16 games in the loss column, and on the brink of eliminating themselves from any postseason berth, as they are now 10 games back for the first wild card and seven games back for the second wild card.

The last eight days couldn’t have gone better as the Yankees lost enough in Boston to prevent the Red Sox from dealing any tradeable assets, impending free agents or opt-out clause contracts. The Yankees kept the Red Sox alive long enough to then completely destroy their season a week later, after the only trade deadline of the season. It’s rare when things go exactly how you want in baseball, and this is one of those rare times.

Back on April 19, I wrote Yankees Fans Should Be Worried About the Rays This Season, Not the Red Sox and said the following:

Eventually, we are going to need other teams to beat the Rays. The Red Sox? They’ll beat themselves. The Rays are the team I’m worried about in the division this season, not the Red Sox. If the Yankees are to end their division-winning drought and avoid the wild-card game for the fourth time in five years, they are going to have to beat the Rays to do so.

The Red Sox aren’t the Yankees’ biggest threat in 2019. They are who I believed them to be in 2018 before they put together an improbable season, winning 108 games and easily handling the Yankees, Astros and Dodgers in the postseason. The Red Sox have a built-in excuse for this season after winning the World Series last year and they are playing like it. There’s no 17-2 start, no weekly magical six-run, ninth-inning comebacks and there’s running away and hiding with the division.

The Yankees are the ones running way and hiding with the division this season. It was a four-game sweep in the first days of August in New York that ended the Red Sox’ division chances for good, like the four-game sweep in Boston the Yankees suffered in the first days of August last year, which ended their division chances.

It’s going to take a lot for the Yankees to regain the upper hand in the rivalry after the way the division played out in the regular season and the division series played out in the postseason last year. But the Yankees putting the Red Sox’ season in peril and pushing them to the brink of elimination for even the second wild card was a good start.

The Yankees don’t have to worry about the Rays, and they certainly don’t have to worry about the Red Sox. They don’t have to worry about the division at all. All the Yankees have to worry about between now and the end of the regular season is getting healthy and securing home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

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

Last weekend didn’t go according to plan. The plan was for the Yankees to bury the Red Sox even more in the division standings and put their season in peril for any postseason berth. This would lead to the Red Sox possibly selling at the July 31 trade deadline and waving the white flag on the season. Instead, the Yankees lost three of four in Boston.

The Yankees’ series loss allowed the Red Sox to momentarily hold a wild-card spot in the standings. But since the Yankees’ season-salvaging win on Sunday Night Baseball, the Red Sox have lost four straight following a sweep by the Rays over the last three days, and now the Red Sox’ season is once again teetering on the brink of ending.

The Yankees hold in an insurmountable lead in the division with a nine-game loss-column lead over the Rays and a 12-game loss-column lead over the Red Sox. The Yankees don’t have to play much better than .500 for the rest of the season to easily clinch the division title, and the only thing they have to do between now and Game 162 is try to clinch home-field advantage in the playoffs, which they need to do now even more than before after what the Astros accomplished at the trade deadline.

The ideal situation for the Yankees and the postseason would be for to win the No. 1 overall seed and own home-field advantage in the AL playoffs and in a potential World Series. In this ideal situation, the Astros would get eliminated in the other ALDS and the Yankees would face an inferior Twins or Indians team in the ALCS. But to get to the ALCS, having the weakest ALDS opponent would greatly help the Yankees’ chances.

The Red Sox aren’t that weakest opponent. Over the course of the regular season, the Red Sox have proven to not be postseason-worthy, even in a five-team, two wild-card format. Their roster has performed the way it should have last season if not for the most miraculous, unexpected season in the history of baseball, the real “Impossible Dream” season. But in a short series? In a short series, the Red Sox are the last team the Yankees want to see. The deep Twins lineup, the Indians’ potential, the pesky Rays or the underrated A’s would all be more welcome first-round series than the Red Sox, who know the Yankees better than any other team and have had more than enough recent success against them. Even if the Red Sox burned Chris Sale in a wild-card win, I still don’t want to see them in a five-game series. I don’t want to see them in any postseason series.

I’m still not over what happened in the ALDS last season, and I’ll never get over the 2004 ALCS. I don’t want these traumatizing series to keep piling up, clouding my memory and tainting my baseball fandom. Yes, it would be exhilarating to end the Red Sox’ season in the postseason for the first time in 16 years and for the first time in the last three tries, but the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Instead of ending the Red Sox’ season in October, I would rather the Yankees end it in August, weakening the AL playoff field and taking them out of the picture completely. The Red Sox would then regret not selling off tradeable assets this past week and potentially be stuck empty-handed if their impending free agents leave this offseason or the opt-out clauses they handed out are exercised. If anything, it would work to the Yankees’ short- and long-term favor that they allowed the Red Sox to briefly think they were a playoff team with last weekend’s series win, only to have their season destroyed a week later. The Yankees can make this all happen this weekend.

The Red Sox’ division chances are over. Their general manger Dave Dombrowski even admitted the division standings being the reason he stood pat the deadline. If the Yankees play one-game-over-.500 baseball for the rest of the season and go 28-27, the Red Sox would have to go 37-15 to tie them. If the Yankees play at their current .636 winning percentage for the rest of the season and go 35-20, the Red Sox would have to go 44-8 to tie them. The Yankees continuing to play at their current winning percentage is certainly more than doable with 23 games remaining against the Orioles, Blue Jays, Mariners and Tigers. So yeah, the Red Sox have no chance at winning the division. (The Rays don’t either.)

The Red Sox’ only path to the postseason is by winning a wild-card berth and appearing in the one-game playoff. Right now, they are five games back for the first wild card and 3 1/2 games back for the second wild card. They are extremely close to having no chance at playing the wild-card game at home and are dangerously close to playing themselves out of contention for the second wild card as well. They are essentially one bad series from the rest of their season being nothing more than formality. One bad series against the Yankees.

It’s going to take a lot for the Yankees to regain the upper hand in the rivalry after the way the division played out in the regular season and the division series played out in the postseason last year. Simply eliminating the Red Sox from the postseason this season isn’t going to do it, but it’s a start.

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