The Yankees are 2-5 on their current homestand, and it’s not over yet. They still have to face Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom before this miserable week at home ends.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees lost another series. And not just “another” series, but a four-game series to the Blue Jays, the team still trying to catch them in the AL East.

It was another frustrating and disappointing week for the Yankees as their once-15 1/2-game lead is now down to eight games, and seven games in the loss column. If they could just find a way to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish at 94-68, and in doing so, the Blue Jays and Rays would have to go 29-13 to tie them, and likely 30-12, as right now, the Yankees hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over both teams. Because of this math, the Yankees have a 91.2 percent chance of winning the division still, despite losing 14 of their last 18.

2. The Yankees lost three of four to the Blue Jays and were outscored 20-8 in the series. They have now put together these rather horrific records over the last two months:

The Yankees are 25-32 since June 19.

The Yankees are 10-20 since the All-Star break.

The Yankees are 5-14 in August.

3. As the Yankees’ division lead has been significantly cut into, Aaron Boone has gotten testier and more sensitive with each passing day. On Saturday, Boone got snippy with Meredith Marakovits and freaked out on the media after the Yankees lost 5-2 for being asked about the dwindling lead in the standings.

“I gotta quit answering these questions,” Boone exclaimed right before he slammed the table. This came a day after he said, “I don’t give a crap about the division lead.” It’s literally his job to answer questions from the media and to give a crap about the division lead.

If Boone doesn’t answer questions from the media, then the media doesn’t cover baseball. If the media doesn’t cover baseball, there’s no attention paid to baseball. If there’s no attention paid to baseball, then fans don’t exist. If fans don’t exist then Major League Baseball doesn’t exist. If Major League Baseball doesn’t exist then Boone’s entire life is different since everything he has had in life has been a result of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball was the way his grandfather earned a living to pay for his father’s life. Major League Baseball was the way his father earned a living to pay for his life. Major League Baseball is the way he has earned a living to pay for his family’s life. He might want to shut up and answer questions about the game that has given him everything.

4. The Blue Jays went into this season as the favorite to win the American League. When they were 46-42 through July 12, they fired their manager for failing to meet expectations as they were 15 1/2 games back in the division and barely holding on to the final wild-card berth. Since then they have taken 7 1/2 games off the Yankees’ lead and are tied for the first wild-card berth with the Rays.

The Yankees went into last season as the favorite to win the AL. They finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division. Their manager’s contract was up, and instead of moving on from Boone (who had failed to meet expectations in each of his four seasons as Yankees manager), the front office gave him a new three-year contract with an option for a fourth year.

Unless the Yankees collapse to the point of not winning the division and having to play in the best-of-3 round and losing there, I don’t think Boone’s job is in jeopardy. Even then, I think he would be safe. I think if the Yankees were to miss the playoffs completely, he would still be safe. But for the last week he hasn’t been talking to the media like someone who has never been held accountable for a single second in his position. He has been talking like someone who is on the hot seat, which he has never been on. Despite his endless nonsensical lineups, idiotic in-game decisions, incredible lies about injuries and unbelievable sugarcoating of poor performances, Boone has never once had to worry about his job as Yankees manager.

5. In the Derek Jeter documentary The Captain, Buck Showalter talked about leaving the Yankees after 1995 and how George Steinbrenner wanted to fire all of his coaches. Showalter said he couldn’t have stayed with the Yankees and had “any credibility” with all of his coaches being let go. After 2021, the Yankees fired Boone’s third base coach and friend since childhood Phil Nevin as well as his hitting coach Marcus Thames, assistant hitting coach P.J. Pilittere and first base coach Reggie Willits. This comes two years after firing his bench coach Josh Bard and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Boone has maintained his job while everyone around him has been replaced.

The only person who hasn’t been replaced is the one person who unconditionally loves Boone: Brian Cashman. The only way Boone isn’t the Yankees manager in 2022 is if the Steinbrenners move on from Cashman with his contract expiring at the end of this season and the new general manager wants his own manager. But Cashman isn’t going anywhere. For as much as he loves Boone, the Steinbrenners love Cashman more. Hal Steinbrenner has never once blamed Cashman or Boone for the organization’s shortcomings over the last four-plus seasons and always blames the players.

It’s hard to believe Boone has any credibility in the clubhouse. He might be a nice guy and could be the nicest guy of all time, but it’s hard to believe the players on the team experience decisions he makes and think he should be in the role he is in. If a manager is going to be given credit for a team’s run following a team meeting then they should be criticized when a team meeting has an opposite effect. Since Boone’s team meeting in Seattle, the Yankees are 4-9. I wonder why his message didn’t get across to his players.

Boone said himself on Saturday, “We’ve got great friggin’ players in there.” So if you truly believe you have great players then why have they played .439 baseball for more than two months? Why didn’t they listen to what you had to say in Seattle?

6. A day after saying he manages “great friggin’ players,” the Yankees blew an early 1-0 lead and a late 2-1 lead before finally winning a game with Andrew Benintendi finally doing something at the plate. Even with a .951 OPS over the last six games, Benintendi is still hitting just .211/.322/.368 with the Yankees, which tells you how bad he has been since becoming a Yankee on July 28.

7. The Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day at the Stadium with the organization retiring Number 21. I loved O’Neill growing up as a Yankees fans in the ’90s, but in no way should his number be retired. He was a great Yankee, but number retirements should be for iconic Yankees. The Yankees have diminished what it means to get your number retired with the Yankees, and the fact that people have conversations about if CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner should have their numbers retired tells you all you need to know about how much (or how little) it now means.

I was at Ron Guidry Day in August 2003 when Number 49 was retired. For gifts, George Steinbrenner gave Guidry an SUV, a tractor, golf clubs, a digital camera, a gold ring, mountain bikes for his kids and five roundtrip train tickets from Louisiana to New York because Guidry doesn’t like to fly. George’s son gave O’Neill a replica of his plaque in Monument Park, a single bottle of wine, a Number 21 jersey signed by the 2022 Yankees (that probably goes right in the trash) and a gimmick gift of a $29.97 Gatorade cooler from Dick’s Sporting Goods with band-aids on it and a bat through it. Hal isn’t just cheap when it comes to the actual Yankees roster.

The fact that the Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day has definitely raised the idea to Hal that the Yankees don’t need to buy players to win games they can just retire more undeserving numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sabathia and Gardner get their numbers retired at some point, and it will likely happen after Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius get theirs.

8. On Sunday, Boone first asked Lou Trivino to come into a 2-2 game in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and two outs and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. up. Trivino successfully got him to ground out to end the seventh. Then he asked Trivino to start the eighth and he produced a 1-2-3 inning. Then he sent him back out for the ninth and he pitched around a one-out walk to save the game for the Yankees. It was the Yankees’ most impressive relief pitching performance of the season. They had to have the game on Sunday and going to Trivino for seven outs was an absolutely insane ask, but he Trivino handled it just about perfectly, needing only 32 pitches to get through 2 1/3 innings.

9. Alek Manoah hitting Aaron Judge is a non-story. First base was open and Manoah was going to pitch Judge inside and if he happened to hit him in doing so, so be it. It was a good strategy for the Blue Jays. Gerrit Cole trying to play the role of tough guy or enforcer and hopping over the dugout railing to chirp Manoah as if he was going to do anything to do the 6-foot-6, 285-pound Manoah was comical. What Cole should worry about is pitching like Manoah. Cole was awful in his start in the series on Saturday, allowing four earned runs on five hits and two walks across six innings. His manager (friend and neighbor) did say “he threw the ball well,” though, so there’s that.

10. The Yankees need to find a way to win of these two Subway Series games against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Starting Domingo German against Scherzer on Monday would be bad at any time, but with the state of the Yankee’s offense it’s especially egregious. Then asking the Yankees to beat the best pitcher in baseball the following day is just unfair, let alone with Frankie Montas starting, who will likely give up a run per inning.

After the second half of the Subway series, the Yankees head to the West Coast for seven games in seven days against the A’s and Angels, two teams they are a combined 6-0 against this season. But that doesn’t mean anything because these Yankees aren’t he same Yankees that went 6-0 against the A’s and Angels, outscoring them 33-12 earlier this season.

I expect the Yankees to have trouble with the Mets this week. If they have trouble against the A’s and Angels, then I think we will all officially know how this season is going to end.

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The Yankees ended their latest losing streak with a come-from-behind, walk-off win on Wednesday against the Rays. They still lost the three-game series and have lost five straight series, but for one game the Yankees gave their fans a night off from being depressed.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It’s nice to write these Thoughts coming off a win. It would have been better to write them coming off a series win, something the Yankees haven’t had in three weeks, but I will take what I can get att this point as the Yankees continue to make me sweat my over 91.5-win preseason wager. (They need to go 19-25 to clinch for me.)

I’m happy the Yankees won on Wednesday and I’m happy they scored eight runs (seven if you don’t count the automatic runner in the 10th). I’m happy they finally called up two position players to give the roster and lineup a new look, and I’m happy they finally brought back the organization’s best reliever since Michael King went down and Clay Holmes turned into Jonathan Holder. But the happiness is only as good as the next day’s game, and if the Yankees get embarrassed by the Blue Jays over the next four days the way every team other than the Royals has embarrassed them since the All-Star break, Wednesday’s much-needed come-from-behind win will be forgotten the way every other win since June 19 that has been labeled as “The Possible Turning Point” has been.

No team with a 73-45 record should have as big of a win in mid-August as the Yankees had on Wednesday night over the Rays. The Yankees were a an an early four-run deficit and eventually three outs away from yet another loss and from seeing their once-15 1/2-game division lead falling to just seven games in the loss column. But then Josh Donaldson (one of the faces of everything wrong with the 2022 Yankees) stepped up and had his biggest hit as a Yankee.

2. The “Owed $48 Million Man” hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning off Jalen Beeks to prevent the Yankees from losing a fourth straight game, and for at least one night, brought some good vibes back to the Bronx.

Do I expect Donaldson to now go off and turn around his season and make his situation and contract with the Yankees anything more than the disaster it’s been (which is why they reportedly tried to trade him at the deadline, but no general manager was as dumb as Brian Cashman to take on his money owed)? No, I don’t. I don’t because this isn’t the first time Donaldson has had a game in which he tried to fool fans into thinking he was anything other than washed up only to continue his drastic decline.

On Opening Day (April 8), Donaldson went 2-for-6 with a walk-off single against the Red Sox as the leadoff hitter. He then hit .207/.343/.345 with two home runs over his next 105 plate appearances.

In Chicago against the White Sox on May 12 and May 13, Donaldson went 4-for-10 with a double, two home runs and six RBIs. He then hit .213/.283/.336 with two home runs over his next 138 plate appearances.

From July 6 through July 9, Donaldson went 5-for-13 with three home runs and nine RBIs. He then hit .192/.259/.295 with one home run over his next 85 plate appearances.

In Seattle on August 8, in the middle of a five-game losing streak, Donaldson went 4-for-5 with two doubles, a home run and three RBIs. He then hit .120/.241/.120 over his next 29 plate appearances before Wednesday.

And then on Wednesday he hit the grand slam. Even with the grand slam, his OPS is at .698 on the season.

So I’m sorry if I don’t think Wednesday night’s moment was anything more than that: a moment. I don’t expect 2015 AL MVP Donaldson to now appear for the Yankees, and I don’t even expect 2021 Donaldson to appear. I expect the version of Donaldson we have seen for nearly the entire season to continue to be the Donaldson we see, and if he continues to play every day like he has all year, he will have occasional moments like he did on Wednesday. Not enough to warrant him being an everyday player for a championship team, but just enough for him to keep playing and to bat in the middle of the order for these Yankees.

3. Welcome back, Estevan Florial, and welcome, Oswaldo Cabrera. It took scoring one run (on an error) over three games and watching the Yankees 15 1/2-game division lead get cut in half for them to finally make some roster changes. Florial is back after four games with the team earlier this year (and after hitting .300/.440/.550 in 11 games last year), and Cabrera made his major-league debut at third base on Wednesday. Aaron Boone said both are going to play, and we’ll see if Fletcher Reede actually means what he says.

4. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit his first home run of the season and drove in all three Yankees runs in their win on Saturday when the outrage about his play and the calls for Oswald Peraza were as loud as they have ever been (and still remain that loud). Donaldson finally did something at the plate in a big spot for the Yankees on the day one of the Yankees’ top prospects made his major-league debut at Donaldson’s third base. It’s almost as if sending messages and not being complacent can lead to positive results! Who would have known? (Well, clearly the defending-champion Braves who have called up their prospects with less Triple-A time and production than the Yankees’ prospects and have had immense success.)

I hope Florial and Cabrera both flourish in their opportunities. I want the Yankees to roster likable players, and Florial and Cabrera having success in the majors means less of Aaron Hicks, Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa. (I don’t actually think it will mean less Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa since the Yankees clearly think they are good, everyday-worthy, winning players. But it should mean less of them if this duo plays well.)

If Peraza keeps hitting in Triple-A, he should get a chance too. Just because the Yankees traded for Kiner-Falefa as a 2022 stopgap to bridge them to Peraza or Anthony Volpe doesn’t mean they have to wait until 2023 to turn to either. Kiner-Falefa has done enough (or rather not enough) for the Yankees to already have reason to be playing either of them now in the majors. If Kiner-Falefa continues to be an atrocious at-bat with an untrustworthy glove, give someone else an everyday chance.

5. It was nice to see Gleyber Torres finally do something as well on Wednesday, as he hit a two-run home run to get the Yankees on the board. But then in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and one out and the Yankees trailing by one run, Torres came to bat, swung at the first pitch and grounded into an inning-ending double play. Aaron Judge had walked on four straight pitches right before Torres came to bat and it’s likely what happened in Judge’s at-bat never crossed Torres’ mind. It was an ill-advised swing from a player who continues to boast arguably the lowest Baseball IQ I have seen from any player since Nick Swisher.

6. Boone did everything he could to try to extend the Yankees’ losing streak on Wednesday. After Lucas Luetge allowed a run in the sixth, he sent him back out there for the seventh. Luetge was allowed to put two more runners on in the seventh (after putting on two in the sixth) before Boone turned to “Roster Manipulation Ron” Marinaccio to get out of the jam. If Boone was willing to go to Marinaccio in the seventh, why didn’t he just start the inning clean? Why do I find myself writing a sentence similar to that in every one of these Thoughts blogs?

7. Thankfully, Marinaccio was recalled and available on Wednesday. It’s comical that Marinaccio entered in what was the highest leverage situation in the game to that point. Good enough to be used as the most important reliever last night, but not good enough to be a Yankees the previous 10 days. Well, that’s not true. He has always been good enough to be a Yankee, he was just used as a pawn in the Yankees’ roster manipulation strategy. The Yankees lost seven of nine will Marinaccio was wasting away in Triple-A, losing games because of meltdowns from Albert Abreu, Scott Effross, Lou Trivino and Holmes. The Yankees likely have a couple more wins if Marinaccio is on the Yankees over that nine-day period, as well as if Clarke Schmidt were too (who is still wasting away in Triple-A).

8. In the bottom of the ninth, Boone sent up Hicks as pinch hitter for Kiner-Falefa. Boone operated under the idea that Hicks had a better chance of ending the game with one swing than Kiner-Falefa, but that concept is meaningless since I too had a better chance of ending the game with one swing that Kiner-Falefa. Hicks has also homered in 1.6 percent of his plate appearances this season, so let’s not act like Matt Stairs was coming off the bench in that situation. Hicks struck out.

9. Then in the 10th, Boone brought in Aroldis Chapman. I was fine with that decision. What I wasn’t fine with was staying with Chapman with the bases loaded and one out and Francisco Mejia up. Mejia is a .225/.248/.384 hitter against righties and a .386/.397/.561 hitter against lefties. Even down 0-2, Mejia was able to hit a go-ahead, three-run double off Chapman.

As I said on the Keefe To The City Podcast earlier this week, Chapman could pitch 30 straight perfect innings and I will never trust him. The narrative of Chapman of late had been that he had resolved his issues and was his old self, and deserving of being the No. 1 arm in the Yankees’ bullpen. Then he went out on Wednesday night, got two outs and allowed two walks and a double, nearly ruining the game and handing the Yankees another loss before the walk-off in the bottom half of Chapman’s disastrous inning.

10. All Wednesday’s win should have done was make Yankees fans feel good in the exact moment of the walk-off grand slam. That’s it. Be happy until the moment Donaldson crossed the plate and then get back to reality. Because all the Yankees did was win one game. They still have a long way to go to getting back to being even remotely close to the team they were from mid-April to mid-June and to proving their postseason isn’t going to last only a handful of days.

Wednesday was one game and it was one win. Maybe it’s the start of something for the first time in two months. No win since June 19 has been the start of anything, but maybe this win will be different. I pray it is.

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