The Yankees lost the first two games of their series against the Brewers over the weekend, but on Sunday they produced a comeback win to salvage the third game and Aaron Judge produced his 58th and 59th home runs of the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Aaron Judge is going to win the Triple Crown. Home runs and RBIs are a lock, and now he sits one point (.316) behind Luis Arraez (.317) for batting average. There is no doubt in my mind Judge is going to outhit Arraez (and Xander Bogaerts for that matter) over the final two-plus weeks of the season and complete the single greatest impending free-agent year of all time, and possibly the single greatest offensive year of all time.

I don’t need to hear what CC Sabathia and Phil Nevin think about who is the MVP in the American League. Shohei Ohtani might be the best player in the world, but he’s not the most valuable, not this season at least. Without Judge, the Yankees aren’t a postseason team (or on the wild-card bubble at best) and with him they are the second-best team in the AL, and on their way (as long as they don’t blow it over the final 16 games) to the 2-seed and a bye into the ALDS. The amount of games he has single-handedly won this season is absurd, and while his stats may be unbelievable from afar, if you watch this team every day, his season is even more amazing because you can truly appreciate just how important he has been with nearly every hit and home run being the difference or the only offense in games.

If WAR is what drove Ohtani to his MVP award a year ago, how can it not be used this season? All of a sudden it’s no longer the best indicator of who should win MVP because it doesn’t help the argument for Ohtani? I’m all set with hearing from Sabathia or Nevin or anyone on the MVP debate who doesn’t think it belongs to Judge because it’s not a debate. It’s not Judge or Ohtani. It’s Judge or no one.

2. After losing the first two games to the Brewers by blowing a five-run lead on Friday and then getting shut down offensively on Saturday, the Yankees bounced back with a win on Sunday to salvage the third game of the series. It was nice of Anthony Rizzo to grace the Yankees with his presence on Sunday in the win. Rizzo missed time in early July with back issues, missed a week in early August with back issues and returned on Sunday after three weeks away because of back issues and subsequent headaches caused by an epidural used to treat the back issues.

Rizzo had homered in the last two games he started at the end of August, but without a proper rehab assignment it seemed farfetched to think he would return without missing a beat, but that’s exactly what he did, going 3-for-6 with with a home run. Just seeing Rizzo’s name in the lineup gives the lineup more credibility, and most importantly, it forces a weak bat and fringe major-league bat out of it.

3. It also moved Giancarlo Stanton out of the 2-hole where he has struggled mightily, but had to hit because there is literally no other option on the team. Unless you want Josh Donaldson or Isiah Kiner-Falefa hitting there. (Sorry, that’s not even something to joke about since I’m sure Aaron Boone would love to have either of them in that spot.) Stanton went 0-for-the series (though he did draw one walk), striking out six times in his 14 plate appearances, including a Golden Sombrero (four strikeouts) on Saturday. It was his second Golden Sombrero in his last three games, as he also picked one up in Boston on Wednesday.

Stanton has two home runs since July 15 and one of them came off a position player pitching in a blowout. So he has one home run since July 15, and is hitting .130/.239/.234 since then in 88 plate appearances. When Stanton is unproductive, he hurts the lineup double. He becomes a roster problem because he will bat in an important spot in the order despite being unproductive and because of he Yankees’ unwillingness to play him in the field ( even though he always performs better at the plate when he’s also in the game defensively). he clogs up the designated hitter spot. The Yankees have unsuccessfully tried in the past to keep Stanton healthy by limiting him to being a full-time DH. He has gotten injured whether he’s only playing the game offensively or not, so it’s time to put him back him in the field, and if he gets hurt, so be it. The only way to keep him healthy is to have him not play baseball.

Unfortunately, Stanton isn’t going to play the field again this season. Boone has said there’s no plan to have him play the outfield at this time, and at this time, it’s September 19 and there are 16 games left in the season. Add in Harrison Bader possibly playing in an actual major-league game for the Yankees on Tuesday night at the Stadium, and that’s that for Stanton playing the field. If anything, the Yankees would stick him in the small-ish Yankee Stadium right field with Judge in center. But Bader finally playing means Judge goes back to right, and there’s no way the Yankees are going to have Stanton in the Stadium’s vast left field. That’s why they had Oswaldo Cabrera practicing the position prior to the games over the weekend.

4. I have no doubt Cabrera will play a fine left field. He continues to excel at positions he has little to no experience playing and he’s excelling in it at the major-league level. It’s pretty remarkable. Cabrera went 5-for-10 with four walks over the weekend and is no 9-for-27 with a pair of doubles and a pair of home runs in his last seven games. The bat is starting to catch up to his defense and there’s no way right now he can be removed from the lineup given his production and versatility. I expect he will be the team’s left fielder come Game 1 of the ALDS if Andrew Benintendi doesn’t return.

5. Ideally, the Yankees will have too many players for not enough positions if everyone gets and stays healthy before the postseason. Rizzo is now back. Bader is supposed to make his Yankee debut on Tuesday. Benintendi, DJ LeMahieu and Matt Carpenter are still working their way back. But if those three do return, the Yankees will have the following players for eight lineup spots:

Anthony Rizzo
DJ LeMahieu
Gleyber Torres
Isiah Kiner-Falefa
Josh Donaldson
Oswaldo Cabrera
Andrew Benintendi
Harrison Bader
Aaron Judge
Giancarlo Stanton
Matt Carpenter

Three of those 11 would have to be on the bench. Rizzo and Judge aren’t going to the bench. The Yankees didn’t trade for Benintendi to not play him, and they didn’t give away Jordan Montgomery to not play Bader. Stanton is the highest-paid position player on the team and under contract for 37 more years, so he’s not going to the bench. That leaves LeMahieu, Torres, Kiner-Falefa, Donaldson, Cabrera and Carpenter for three spots. If you read this site or these Yankees Thoughts often, you know which three I’m sending to the bench.

(I didn’t include Oswald Peraza on this list because he’s already on the bench as the Yankees continue to stunt his development.)

6. I think the Yankees want both Kiner-Falefa (at shortstop) and Bader (in center field) in the lineup, which is as regrettable a decision as giving Aaron Hicks a seven-year contract extension. That duo plus Jose Trevino would give the Yankees as weak a 7-8-9 as any postseason lineup could ever have, and they would be trying to win the World Series with one-third of their lineup being essentially three automatic outs against the pitching they will see in the postseason. The last time the Yankees won the World Series in 2009, their 7-8-9 was Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher and Brett Gardner. Cano hit .320 that year with 25 home runs and an .871 OPS. Swisher hit 29 home runs with, drew 97 walks and had an .869 OPS. Gardner was the weakest bat on the team and still had a .345 on-base percentage and a .724 OPS. Trevino has a .682 OPS, Kiner-Falefa a .652 and Bader a .673.

7. I guess we’ll get to the bridge of too many players for not enough spots when we get to it. Hopefully, it doesn’t become a 2006 situation in which the team is having Stanton learn to play first base for the postseason like they did for Gary Sheffield because there was no place to put Sheffield with Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreu, Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi at other positions. For now, the return of Rizzo means no more Marwin Gonzalez at first base and the return of Bader should mean the end of Hicks getting playing time (though I’m sure Boone already has a plan mapped out to get Hicks an unbelievable amount of at-bats over these last 16 games.)

8. The Yankees’ improving health isn’t only for the offense. The rotation will get Luis Severino back this week for the firs time since mid-July and it couldn’t come at a better time with Frankie Montas pitching like Javier Vazquez and making excuses like Sonny Gray. (I wrote all about Montas’ disastrous Yankees tenure to date on Sunday.) Montas has been bad (and delusional) and now he’s hurt, so he has been a total zero for the Yankees since being acquired. He’s actually less than zero since they traded JP Sears and Ken Waldichuk for him and could have either used those two arms themselves or used them in another deal at the deadline or another deal this offseason and they gave away Jordan Montgomery because they acquired Montas. Instead they are stuck with Montas for next season as well.

9. Severino is either going to be the Yankees’ Game 2 starter or their Game 3 starter with Nestor Cortes being the other. Gerrit Cole is going to be the Game 1 starter, and I have about as much faith in him pitching well on October 11 at Yankee Stadium as a I do with Boone making logical and sensible lineup and bullpen decisions in the postseason. Cole was once again atrocious on Sunday, giving up multiple home runs and needing 94 pitches to get through five innings.

It’s hard to hear the narrative that Cole “only gave up four hits” or that “he made one or two mistakes” when half of those hits left the park and the one or two mistakes went over the fence. It’s one thing to allow a solo home run here and there, but Cole isn’t doing that and now leads the league in home runs allowed. Guess what kind of teams he will face in the playoffs? Ones that hit home runs. If the Yankees plan on getting out of the ALDS for the first time in three years, they are likely going to have to get by the Astors or Blue Jays at some point to keep their season alive. Cole can’t be “good” against either of those teams. He has to be great because their starting pitching will be against the Yankees.

10. A little over a week ago, the division lead was in serious trouble. The Yankees were on the verge of completing the worst game-lead collapse in baseball history before stabilizing the division lead last weekend. Four days ago, the division lead was once again safe. But after losing two of three to the Brewers coupled with the Blue Jays winning two of three from the Orioles, the division lead, while still stable, isn’t exactly comforting at 5 1/2.

There are only 16 games left on the schedule for the Yankees, which is why Fangraphs gives them a 96.5 percent chance to win division. But it’s hard to believe in the math behind division odds when I watched the Yankees’ 15 1/2-game lead fall to two games in the loss column a little over a week ago.

On Tuesday, the Yankees begin a six-game homestand against the last-place Pirates and the last-place Red Sox. They are set up to put the division just about away by Sunday and render their upcoming three-game series against the Blue Jays meaningless. Judge is also set up to break Roger Maris’ Yankees and AL home run record if he can hit three home runs in the next six games.

This week has a chance to be special all around. Don’t screw it up.

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The Yankees have ended their slide and threat of completing the worst game-lead collapse in baseball history. After sweeping a two-game series from the Red Sox, the Yankees have now won four straight and eight of 10.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. With the Blue Jays and Rays meeting for a five-game series over four days, the Yankees needed to go Fenway Park and beat up on the last-place Red Sox. If they didn’t, they would miss out on an opportunity to gain ground each day over either the Blue Jays or Rays, and would in turn lose ground each day on either the Blue or Rays. Thankfully, the Yankees took care of their own business against the lowly Red Sox (something they have had trouble doing in their last few series against them), and officially put the division away.

I originally wrote the blog titled AL East Race Is Over on June 20. At the time, the math said the Yankees would win the AL East with ease win an 11-game lead. By July 8, the math was playing out exactly as expected, and the Yankees’ lead was up to 15 1/2 games. But over the next two months, the Yankees pissed away everything they achieved in the first third of the season and just a week ago, the Rays had the division lead in the loss column down to two games.

Prior to the last series against the Rays, I wrote:

Right now, I’m moderately worried about the Yankees’ completing the single biggest game-lead collapse in baseball history. I’m a 6.7 out of 10 worried. Five days ago, I was a 9.1. If the loss column lead is zero on Sunday afternoon, I will be a 10, and a 10 is stock-up-on-bottled-water-and-batteries-to-go-into-hiding-level bad.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to go off the grid and spend the next seven months until Opening Day 2023 wondering what happened. The Yankees righted the ship with two wins against the Red Sox after winning an all-important series against the Rays and have now won four straight and eight of 10.

2. Do I think the Yankees are back to being the on-pace-for-122-win team they were at one point this year? No. I never thought the 2022 Yankees were close to being built like the 1998 Yankees despite the endless comparisons between the two and their similar records in late April, May and early June. The Yankees still have enormous flaws and an abundance of question marks that are on display each day and were once again in the two games at Fenway Park.

3. In the first game in Boston, the Yankees needed a pair of game-tying solo home runs from Aaron Judge in the sixth and eighth inning to avoid losing a game started by Gerrit Cole going against Nick Pivetta. When they broke a 4-4 tie with three runs in the 10th inning, they nearly gave it all back, allowing two runs to score in the bottom of the 10th to hang on to win 7-6.

In the second game, they couldn’t solve rookie Brayan Bello, who entered the game with a 5.79 ERA, having allowed an astounding 67 baserunners in 37 1/3 innings. The Yankees finally broke through in the fifth when Gleyber Torres hit a two-out single with runners on first and second and the Red Sox thew the ball around the field allowing the two baserunners to score as well as Torres in what Suzyn Waldman described as a “comedy of errors.” Leading 5-2 entering the ninth, Clay Holmes did everything he could to blow yet another game against Red Sox, allowing a run to score and only managing to get out of the inning by an overturned call when J.D. Martinez thankfully missed stepping on first base on a groundout.

4. In the 18 non-extra, non-automatic runner innings at Fenway, the Yankees scored nine runs. Three of those runs came on the “comedy of errors” play. Two of them came on Judge solo home runs. That leaves four non-error-produced or Judge-produced runs. So the theme with the team remains the same that they can’t score unless Judge is carrying the offense or unless they are helped out by the opposing defense.

The offense the Yankees keep running out there isn’t the offense we expect to see in the postseason, but it could be. There’s no guarantee all five of DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Matt Carpenter, Andrew Benintendi and Harrison Bader will return or will return to the best of their abilities or return be able to play. (I think just about all of them have to come back and have to come back to the best of their abilities for the Yankees to have a chance at winning a championship.) So for now, you have to think the lineup you see on a daily basis from the Yankees is the one you will get in the postseason, until some of those five names return (if they return).

5. If 2018-19 Torres still existed, the loss of those other five worst hurt less. Torres had a big series in Boston, going 4-for-10 with a double and four RBIs, after going 5-for-14 with two home runs and five RBIs in three games against the Rays.

I keep seeing and hearing that 2018-19 Torres is back. No. Just no. This is a five-game sample size. What about the other five months? What about the last nearly three years? This is what Torres does. He has a strong few games and coaxes fans into thinking 2018-19 Torres has returned and then he follows it up with a month-long slump.

Torres stared the season with an .856 OPS through the first week, and there were Yankees fans thinking he had found his old swing. Did his change of positioning  back to second get him going? Did his approach at the plate change? It was neither as Torres then hit .223/.266/.423 over his next 38 games. The following three weeks, Torres went off with a .355/.412/.726 slash line, hitting five home runs in 17 games. Was this the return of old Gleyber? It wasn’t. Torres spent the summer months going hot then extremely cold and from the beginning of August until the beginning of the September (yes, an an entire month), he had the lowest OPS of all players in Major League Baseball, hitting .172/.193/.241 over 119 plate appearances.

So it’s nice that Torres is contributing offensively of late after not for basically the entire season (and the previous two seasons). It’s nice that he has 21 home runs and has somewhat found his power stroke without the juiced baseball. But this is still a player that despite his most recent hot streak (which is just five games), is hitting .244/.294/.429 in 514 plate appearances this season.

I won’t care how bad Torres was in 2020 or 2021 or the majority of 2022 if he shows up this postseason like he did in 2019 when he pounded the Twins (5-for-12 with three doubles, one home run and four RBIs) in the ALDS, or when he (.933 OPS, two home runs and six RBIs) and DJ LeMahieu tried to beat the Astros by themselves in the ALCS. Everyone gets a clean slate come the first pitch of the postseason.

6. That includes Aaron Hicks, though I really don’t see how he can even be on the postseason roster at this point. Despite Boone pulling Hicks from the game against the Ryas last Friday, Hicks is still aBoone favorite and Boone will do everything he can to play Hicks.

Hicks found himself pinch hitting for Jose Trevino on Friday night in the 10th inning, drawing a walk in the process. At the time of the walk, I joked that the walk was enough to get Hicks back in the starting lineup, but it wasn’t really a joke as the following night there was Hicks unbenched yet again and starting in the second game of the series. How did he do? Exactly how you would expect: 0-for-4.

Hicks is now hitting .209/.324/.293 on the season. A slugging percentage that most lower than an on-base percentage is preposterous. He has seven doubles in 408 plate appearances and seven home runs, having last homered on July 9. If you’re surprised, don’t be. This is a player who told The Athletic last month, “If I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is.”

I don’t see how Hicks can be on the postseason roster, and the moment Bader, Benintendi or Carpenter return (again, if they do), Hicks shouldn’t see the field again as a Yankee. Not just this season, but future seasons as well. Trade him for whatever you can get, eat whatever money you need, attached a low-level prospect to him or release him. I don’t care. He can’t be a Yankee again in 2023. Seven seasons of him was seven too many.

7. I’m tired of explaining how ridiculous it is that Isiah Kiner-Felafa continues to play over Oswald Peraza when he was supposed to be a stopgap until Peraza was ready, and now Peraza is ready dnd being blocked by the stopgap. If Peraza isn’t going to play (like he hasn’t been) then there’s no point of him being in the majors. Send him down and stop ruining his development.

8. It’s never been more evident for fools and idiots who think Boone doesn’t control the lineup despite repeated public admissions of exactly that by Brian Cashman. How do you think Kiner-Falefa keeps playing over Peraza? How do you think Hicks keeps finding his way off the bench and into the lineup? Why do you think Josh Donaldson continues to be treated like it’s 2015 and he’s the AL MVP? There’s no front office employee of any team in all of baseball dumb enough to make decisions like that. It takes a know-it-all manager and supposed lifer who uses personal relationships and clubhouse loyalty to determine playing time instead of production. Boone has always favored veterans no matter how bad they may be (and Kiner-Faleafa and Hicks and Donaldson are very bad) over rookies or young players.

9. Thanks to the odd days off this postseason (reminiscent of the 2009 playoffs), the schedule works heavily in the Yankees’ favor (like it did in 2009) in terms of their rotation. The Yankees are undoubtedly going to give the ball to Gerrit Cole in Game 1, but after him is anyone’s guess. The Yankees could use Cole in Game 1 and then again in Game 4 on normal rest or in Game 5 with an extra day of rest. The Game 2 starter could also return for Game 5 on three days of rest. The Yankees could get through the ALDS with only three starters, but most likely, they will need four. The four they are clearly hoping to have are Cole, Nestor Cortes, Luis Severino and Frankie Montas in some order. Health will determine who’s available and then I’m sure the opponent will determine the order. If Severino comes back and is his early-season self, he has to be used before Montas. You could even say he should be used before Cortes, but then there would be pushback that Cortes has been the Yankees’ best starter all season, which is true. But if the Yankees made decisions based on actual performance, Cortes would be the Game 1 starter, and players like Kiner-Falefa, Donaldson and Hicks wouldn’t be everyday players on the 2022 Yankees.

10. The Yankees’ lead in the loss column is back up to seven over both Blue Jays and Rays. The Yankees have three games left with the Blue Jays and none with the Rays. If the Yankees win one of their remaining three games with the Blue Jays, they clinch the season series and the head-to-head tiebreaker, which will be used to determine the division winner (if needed).

The Yankees have 19 games left. After this weekend against the Brewers, they will play six straight against last-place teams in the Pirates and Red Sox. The division is safe once again. The remaining 19 games and the next 25 days are about preparing for the postseason, and that means getting healthy. The Yankees aren’t going anywhere in October with the current state of the roster.

Now that the division is safe, instead of scoreboard for the next three weeks, I will be rehab game and injury update watching. That’s more important than what the competition is doing.

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The Yankees got back on track with a series win over the Rays to finish their homestand at 5-2. With wins in six of their last eight, the Yankees’ division lead is still intact.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are safe … for now. They are safe for the moment from completing the worst and most embarrassing game-lead collapse in baseball history. After winning on Saturday and Sunday (and somehow scoring 20 runs in the process), the Yankees have no remaining games left with the Rays. The Rays’ AL East chances are finished. But the Rays are no longer the issue, the Blue Jays are.

The Blue Jays have won eight of 10, including beating the Rays on Monday, and while they are the same five games back in the loss column of the Yankees as the Rays, the Blue Jays still have three games left against the Yankees. The Yankees hold a 9-7 lead in the season series, but a Blue Jays sweep would get the Blue Jays three games closer to the Yankees and clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker, which will be used to determine the division winner.

The Blue Jays and Rays began a five-game series yesterday, and Yankees fans should be pulling for one team winning three of the five. Can’t have a Blue Jays sweep (since they won the first game) or even a 4-1 series from the Blue Jays.

2. Well, the Yankees could afford to have the Blue Jays win four or five from the Rays if the Yankees take care of their own business, but if you trust the Yankees to take care of their business then you haven’t watched this team since June 19 (in which they are 36-40 since).

The Yankees will see the Red Sox for a two-game series at Fenway sandwiched around two days off, and while the Yankees have been the only team to have trouble beating the Red Sox this year, they need to do so over the next two days. The last-place Red Sox have given up on 2022 after regressing to become the team they should have been in 2021, and have been losing nearly every day, and the Yankees can’t let up just because of one good week since mid-June.

3. Saturday’s first inning was bizarre with the Yankees starting the game with seven straight singles. Some were hard-hit line drives, but there were a bunch of ground balls that found holes, as well as a ground ball that hit Corey Kluber and turned into a base hit. I like to think that was Kluber’s way of giving back to Yankees fans after all of his bad starts and missed time in his one season as a Yankee in 2021.

Sunday was also bizarre. Luis Patino typically dominates the Yankees, and he got lit up. Maybe the Yankees had something on Patino, or maybe it was just a bad start. It’s truly hard to believe the Yankees went from being unable to score three runs per game to flipping a switch and now being capable of putting up double-digit totals without DJ LeMahieu, Matt Carpenter and Anthony Rizzo.

4. Gleyber Torres went 5-for-14 against the Rays with two home runs and five RBIs. His OPS is back over .700 at .719 and he has 21 home runs on the year now. I don’t think Torres is “back” to the player he was in 2018 or 2019 based on one three-game series. That player is gone and never coming back. This is what Torres does and has done for the last three seasons. He sucks for an extended period of time, has a few good games to make you think he might have found or unlocked something from his first two years only for him to go back into another extended period of time sucking. Torres always does just enough to momentarily save his lineup spot or to make Aaron Boone think he’s right by batting Torres first, second or third. Torres isn’t good. He hasn’t been in four years. Don’t believe otherwise.

5. New-father Josh Donaldson returned from paternity leave, bat flipped a ball off the right-field wall and jogged himself into a single. It was more of the same from the asshole of the team immediately after missing three games. Donaldson had himself a nice two games against the Rays and has a four-game hit streak (yes, getting excited about a four-game hit streak from a $24 million per year player and former AL MVP is something), but like Torres, don’t buy into it. Donaldson’s season OPS still sits below .700 at .697, and he has been an utter disappointment and outright embarrassment. That’s not going to stop Boone from playing him every day at third base and batting him in the middle of the Yankees’ lineup.

6. Apparently, nothing is going to stop the Yankees from playing Isiah Kiner-Falefa every day. Both Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman said publicly prior to Opening Day that the team didn’t sign a big-name free agent because they had Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe in the minors and wanted to give them a chance. Well, Peraza earned his way to the majors, and all he has done since arriving is play out of position and sit on the bench. The Yankees are now stunting his growth and development in favor of Kiner-Falefa, who they admitted was a pure stopgap until one or both of Peraza/Volpe were ready. I know Kiner-Falefa has no say in the matter, and he’s not the one playing himself over Peraza, but it’s making me despise Kiner-Falefa because of what his presence on the team and in the lineup represents.

7. Remember when the Yankees’ plan was to go into 2022 with the catching tandem of Kyle Higashioka and Ben Rortvedt? If Rortvedt doesn’t get hurt in spring training, the Yankees likely don’t trade for Jose Trevino, and we are stuck watching Higashioka be the near-everyday catcher all season, and Rortvedt being the backup. Rortvedt was up with the Yankees this past week with Trevino on paternity leave, and he didn’t see the field once. Rortvedt was also part of the trade that brought over Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa in what continues to be a disastrous deal for the Yankees.

8. Back on August 9, I wrote Yankees Have Finally Given Up on Aaron Hicks. At the time, Hicks hadn’t had an extra-base hit in a month and was 3-for-38 over the previous two weeks. The Yankees had traded for Andrew Benintendi and Harrison Bader and made it clear Hicks was no longer an everyday player for the team despite having three more years left on his contract (and a fourth year that will be bought out for $1 million).

After Hicks went 0-for-3 and grounded out into yet another play with the bases loaded on August 15, he didn’t start another game for six days, going 0-for-3 with a strikeout in that one. Then he didn’t start for a week and then another three days after that start. When Benintendi injured his wrist on a swing on September 2, it forced Hicks into more playing time. Following his unbenching, Hicks went 2-for-21 with strikeouts and no walks. No walks from the guy his supporters (or former supporters since I can’t imagine there are any left) will tell you he does well.

On Friday night against the Rays, Hicks went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts. In the top of the fourth, Hicks misplayed a ball off his glove, and then stood and stared at the wall while two Rays runs scored and the ball sat on the ground. The very next batter hit a line drive at Hicks, and Hicks twisted and turned his way into letting the ball go over his head. After the inning ended, Boone removed Hicks from the game for Estevan Florial. The same Florial that Boone told the media was called up to play, and yet he was sitting once again for Hicks.

After the game, Boone tried to explain that Hicks wasn’t pulled for the misplay, acting once again as though every media member and Yankees fan is an absolute moron, incapable of having their own thought. Boone said he “just needed to get Hicks out of there.” What a coincidence Boone happened to pull a healthy Hicks from a game at the same time he had struck out twice, misplayed two balls in the outfield and had the left-field bleachers treating him like he was Manny Ramirez.

Hicks said the opposite. He said he was benched, completely negating the most ridiculous lie Boone has ever told as Yankees manager.

I wish I could say Hicks won’t be on the postseason roster this October or off the Yankees completely in 2023, but I can’t. Hicks is owed more than $30 million, and Steinbrenner would rather try to salvage even a penny of that money than release Hicks and open up the roster spot to someone deserving of being a major leaguer and a New York Yankee.

Hicks has now been demoted and benched from his everyday role for the second time in a month. This coming after Higashioka became the backup catcher, Joey Gallo was traded, the Yankees called up Peraza because of Kiner-Falefa’s play and pray daily LeMahieu comes back as his normal self so that they can play him over Torres or Donaldson (the duo the Yankees tried to trade at the deadline). All of those players were supposed to be everyday players for the 2022 Yankees. Nearly half the expected lineup for the 2022 Yankees in spring training is gone, traded, benched or actively being replaced. That’s some impressive roster construction and management from Cashman.

9. Last week, I wrote two blogs titled Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Donaldson Can’t Be Automatic Outs and Giancarlo Stanton Needs to Start Hitting. Donaldson had a good few games and so did Giancarlo Stanton after finally being able to provide more than one plate appearance per game. Stanton homered in back-to-back games against the Rays (though one came against a position player, and if I’m not going to count it for Hicks and Higashioka from earlier in the season then I’m not going to count it for Stanton). But overall, Stanton looked better at the plate and was actually making contact with middle-middle fastballs rather than missing them completely or fouling them back to the screen. When Stanton’s timing is down, he tends to go off on a home run barrage (until the inevitable next time his timing is off and he looks like he’s blindfolded at the plate), and syncing up this potential hot streak with a trip to Fenway Park is exactly what the Yankees need to get closer to clinching the division.

10. I don’t think the Yankees are suddenly some juggernaut or contender because they won a couple of games against the Rays and beat up on the Twins. Winning six of their last eight isn’t impressive, it was a necessity after they couldn’t beat the Angels or A’s or Cardinals or Red Sox or Pirates or Reds and after they nearly pissed away a 15 1/2-game lead.

After the Yankees had accumulated that 15 1/2-game lead, they were managed and played as if they had clinched a postseason berth, giving even more unnecessary rest than usual to everyday players and managing the rotation and bullpen as if every pitcher on the roster was returning from from Tommy John surgery.

The Yankees have had to mange and play with urgency these past few weeks because of everything they undid over the last nearly three months. They can’t stop with that urgency until the AL East magic number is 0, and it’s currently at 17 with 21 to play. Once the division is clinched, the Yankees can manage, play and act like they won the division. Until then, The Yankees need to manage and play as if they haven’t accomplished anything yet because they haven’t.

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