The Yankees lost another second-half series, dropping two of three to the Mariners. The Yankees are now 6-8 since the All-Star break, having played one-game-over.-500 baseball since June 19.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are a better team today than they were prior to the trade deadline. (At least I think they are.) They made necessary upgrades, but also puzzling decisions, and while they did everything they needed to do (add an outfielder, acquire a starting pitcher and get bullpen help), they kind of half-assed doing what they needed to do.

The move to acquire Andrew Benintendi marked the official end for Joey Gallo as a Yankee. All Yankees fans knew for a couple of months Gallo had played his way out of New York, but trading for Benintendi solidified the decision. All the Yankees needed to do was find a home for Gallo, and they did that in Los Angeles with the Dodgers.

2. Before leaving New York, Gallo spoke with Randy Miller about his time with the Yankees, and what he had to say was rather odd. Gallo talked as if he should have immunity from booing and criticism from Yankees fans: a fan base that has booed both Number 2 and Number 42.

“I don’t go out in the streets,” Gallo told Randy Miller. “I really don’t know want to show my face too much around here.”

I would know who Gallo is if I saw him walking down the street. I think a lot of casual Yankees fans and baseball fans know his name, but I don’t think they would necessarily know him walking down the street in Manhattan, and not every person is a baseball fan. Sure, he’s 6-foot-5, which would make him stick out, and yes, he has a rare haircut (which doesn’t help him hide), but I have a hard time believing most people in New York City would know who Joey Gallo is or care to see him on the street.

“In Texas I was playing every day, so it was a little easier to get on a streak,” Gallo said. “It’s a little tougher not playing every day trying to get that streak going, as well.”

Gallo’s memory must be as poor as hit bat-to-ball skills. When he was acquired by the Yankees, he served as the 2-hitter right away. He played in his 22 straight games to begin his Yankees tenure (and hit .152/.302/.367) and in 2021 played in 58 of a possible 61 games after being traded (hitting .160/.303/.404).

To start the 2022 season, he played in the Yankees’ first 21 games despite posting a .570 OPS. After a couple days off, he then played in the next 14 straight games, while posting a .620 OPS. He played in 21 games in April, 20 games in May, 22 games in June and 19 games in July. The Yankees gave him every opportunity to turn it around, kept forcing him in the lineup to let him turn it around, and he never did. For him to say he wasn’t an everyday player with the Yankees isn’t just wrong, it’s a lie.

“I don’t know how (the fans) usually are, but I don’t know how much tougher they can get,” Gallo said. “Pretty much every team we play, players from that team reached out to me to say, ‘Hey bro, keep your head up. Don’t listen to them.'”

Gallo claims to have grown up a Yankees fan. I don’t know how anyone could grow up claiming to be a Yankees fan and not know how the fan base acts. Alex Rodriguez won two MVPs as a Yankee and single-handedly carried the offense to a championship, and it didn’t matter. He was judged by each plate appearance. If he went 3-for-3 with three home runs, but struck out in his fourth at-bat with the tying run on base, he would get booed, and all he did in 12 years as a Yankee was post a 162-game average of 38 home runs, 117 RBIs and a .283/.378/.523 slash line. I don’t see A-Rod claiming the fans made him “feel like a piece of shit.”

“It makes me feel like a piece of shit, honestly,” Gallo said. “I do appreciate people reaching out, but it makes me feel like I’m a problem.”

Clearly, Gallo is sensitive, and this interview made it obvious why he failed as a Yankee. He was always going to be a hard player to accept with his all-or-nothing approach at the plate, but to tell Miller all of this less than a week after speaking in the past tense of his time with the Yankees while still a Yankee to Lindsey Adler, Gallo was never going to be able to handle adversity.

And sorry, Joey, but you were a problem. The Yankees gave up four prospects to acquire him, and he went from the Yankees’ 2-hitter to eventually being the 9-hitter, to becoming a platoon player to being benched. That’s a problem. He was supposed to be a high on-base guy who would hit 30-plus home runs and play Gold Glove defense. Instead, he was a low on-base guy, who stopped hitting home runs and played questionable defense.

3. I’m not mad at Gallo for failing as a Yankee, and I don’t dislike him either. The Yankees knew the type of player they were getting when they acquired him, and any dip in production was going to be an issue, let alone a catastrophic dip. It’s not Gallo’s fault Brian Cashman gave up four prospects to acquire him and then had to give up three more prospects to trade for Benintendi to take the place of Gallo. It’s not Gallo’s fault he became a Yankee, got to play every day and kept on playing even when it was clear his ability to do the things he was supposed to do was gone. He didn’t have a no-trade clause to veto the trade and he didn’t force his way to the Yankees like Giancarlo Stanton (who told the Marlins he would only accept a trade to the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers or Cardinals). Gallo being a Yankee and arguably the worst everyday Yankees of all time is completely on the Yankees.

Maybe Gallo will reclaim what made the Yankees want to acquire him in Los Angeles. He gets a fresh start in a new place on a great team with a fan base that will allow him to walk the streets of the surrounding beach towns and won’t boo him endlessly in his home stadium. (I know this because I’m married to one of those fans.)

4. I tweeted a few weeks ago that Benintendi was a hard pass for me. But if it meant the end of Gallo as a Yankee, then OK. It did mean the end for Gallo as a Yankee, but it also meant a still-cluttered lineup because of the Yankees’ pledge to play Josh Donaldson no matter what, leaving Matt Carpenter, the team’s second- or third-best hitter as the odd man out.

Aaron Boone has showed us time and again that he will play Donaldson no matter what and no matter what hand the starting pitcher uses to throw with, even though Donaldson can’t hit lefties or righties. Donaldson has done everything to prove he’s washed up and undeserving of everyday playing time other than to actually say the words, and the only reason he continues to play is because the Yankees are paying him $24 million this season and next.

As a Yankee, Benintendi has been Gallo. Through seven games, he’s 1-for-20 with six strikeouts and eight walks. He’s Gallo without the occasional home run, which actually makes him worse than Gallo. Boone has hit Benintendi first, third, fifth and sixth so far. And he has had to because Stanton is injured and because the other options to hit in the Top 6 in the lineup are much, much worse like Aaron Hicks, who has a .332 OPS over the last two weeks (his last hit came in the Subway Series nine days ago), or Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose plan at the plate is to swing at the first or second pitch of his at-bat and hope the ground ball he hits finds a hole.

5. The Yankees needed a starting pitcher and they got one in Frankie Montas. Not the one they should have gotten in Luis Castillo, but Montas is still good (but not great) and instead of getting a true No. 1-2 type, the Yankees got a No. 2-3 type. Which is fine if Luis Severino returns this season and returns as a starter. But that’s not exactly a sure-thing given that the Yankees moved Severino to the 60-day injured list, and given his injury history since spring training 2019.

The Yankees added two relievers in Scott Effross from the Cubs and Lou Trivino from the A’s. Both are better options with more career success than Lucas Luetge (who was just out of the majors for six years) and Albert Abreu (who was just cut by the Royals earlier this season), so why is it that neither was allowed to start a clean inning in the Yankees’ 8-6 loss to the Mariners on Tuesday? Why is it that Boone went to both Luetge and Abreu for multiple innings in that game with both pitchers allowing a run in their second inning of work. Luetge gave up the go-ahead (and eventual game-winning run), and Abreu gave up the insurance run.

The Yankees could have traded for Juan Soto, Castillo and Josh Hader, and Boone would find a way to screw it up. Trading for second-tier options only allows him to screw things up easier. Between his lineup choices (like continuing to play and bat Donaldson in the Top 5 and sit Carpenter) and wildly idiotic bullpen decisiosn, if the Yankees’ offense or the Astros aren’t the reason why the Yankees’ season ends without a championship, Boone will be.

6. The Yankees’ deadline moves made sense, until they traded Jordan Montgomery. Since trading Montgomery, it has come out that the Yankees have been looking to move Montgomery for a few years now. I’m not the biggest Montgomery fan, but why? Does this organization have a secret dearth of starting pitching? Because when the Yankees lost one starting pitcher to injury (Severino) it forced Domingo German who flat-out sucks into the rotation. When they traded for Montas, it meant the end of German in the rotation, but trading Montgomery means German stays in the rotation.

The Yankees traded the promising JP Sears to acquire Montas (let’s hope this isn’t a Sonny Gray or James Paxton situation), don’t seem inclined to give Clarke Schmidt an extended look as a starter, Deivi Garcia is back in Double-A, Luis Gil is out for the year, and the team’s highest-ranking pitching prospect now is a soon-to-be 23-year-old in High-A. (For context, Severino was in the majors when he was 21.) The Yankees don’t have the luxury of being able to trade away reliable, major-league starting pitching, even if that pitcher recently got rocked by the A’s and Royals.

7. The return for Montgomery is what makes the move even more puzzling. Harrison Bader, when healthy, isn’t good. Yes, he plays a Gold Glove center field, but he has no bat. If the goal is to have an all-glove, no-bat center fielder, well, Jackie Bradley, who also can hit, was just released by the Red Sox, and won’t cost a middle-of-the-rotation arm.

Bader also needs his feet to play a Gold Glove center field and he’s currently on the 60-day IL with plantar fasciitis with the possibility he could miss the rest of the season. So the Yankees gave up their current No. 3-4 starter for an injured defense-first outfielder with a career .729 OPS.

It gets worse.

8. If Bader returns, he’s going to play as the Yankees have decided having four or maybe five major-league caliber bats in the lineup will help them overcome the Astros in the postseason. Bader playing means the lineup becomes extremely top heavy. Add in the Yankees’ need to play Kiner-Falefa at short and Donaldson at third, and that leaves the DH spot for Stanton, sends Carpenter and his Barry Bonds-like season to the bench and means one of either DJ LeMahieu or Gleyber Torres won’t play. The ramifications of the Montgomery trade are as bad as the actual trade itself. It’s a deal that made no sense when it happened and makes even less sense as I dissect it. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. If Bader doesn’t return in 2022, it will be like the Yankees traded Montgomery for nothing, and that’s actually better than Bader not coming back in 2022, because his presence will make the Yankees’ lineup even more of a clusterfuck with yet another all-glove, no-bat player in it.

9. Not only do the Yankees have a lack of starting pitching, their current starting pitching isn’t very good. The Mariners are fighting for a wild-card berth with an anemic offense and that offense just put up 17 runs on the Yankees in a three-game series. Nestor Cortes is the only reliable starter right now, and Gerrit Cole is about as reliable as German after blowing a three-run lead to the Orioles, allowing five runs to the Royals and giving up six first-inning runs to the Mariners in his last three starts. The Yankees’ starting pitching is a problem and they just traded away a guy who has the same ERA and a better walks-per-nine percentage than the pitcher who they will give the ball to in Game 1 of the postseason.

10. The Yankees might be an outstanding 70-36, but they are 21-20 since June 19. (It s been a while since I heard YES compare them to the 1998 Yankees.) They are barely above .500 for the last quarter of the season, a stretch in which they played 25 games against the A’s, Guardians, Pirates, Red Sox, Reds, Orioles and Royals. They have been trending in the wrong direction since June 19, but even more so since the All-Star break as they have lost seven of 10 to teams not from Kansas City.

Even though the Yankees’ loss-column lead over the Blue Jays is now just 10 games, it’s still insurmountable. If the Yankees continue to play the .500 baseball they have played for the last seven weeks for their remaining 56 games, the Blue Jays will need to 39-18 just to tie them. The division is still as over as it was back in mid-June. It would be nice if the Yankee started playing like they did in mid-June.

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The Yankees won three of four against the worst team in the worst division in the majors, but it was a rather uninspiring, sloppy weekend from the Yankees, who didn’t look like the best team in the American League.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees went into their four-game weekend series against the Royals having lost five of seven since the All-Star break. They might have won three of four against the Royals, but it didn’t alleviate any of the fears I have about this team two months from now in the postseason where a shitty team like the Royals won’t be.

2. On Thursday, the Yankees won 1-0 on an Aaron Judge walk-off home run. The win, the walk-off home run and Judge’s chase of Roger Maris and history masked the fact that the Yankees got two hits in the games. Yes, they had one hit through the first 8 1/3 innings until Judge won the game. The Yankees 2-for-27 with one walk and 12 strikeouts in the game. Brady Singer is a good pitcher, but he has no business allowing one hit and one walk over seven shutout innings with 10 strikeouts against a team with championship aspirations. After scoring just five runs in the first 18 innings of the Subway Series, the Yankees scored just one at home.

Singer was able to do what he did because of the lineup Aaron Boone constructed for the series opener:

Andrew Benintendi, LF
Aaron Judge, DH
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Aaron Hicks, CF
Josh Donaldson, 3B
Joey Gallo, RF
Marwin Gonzalez, SS
Jose Trevino, C

It’s bad enough Boone has been using Gleyber Torres as his cleanup hitter of late, but that 5 through 8 is as bad as it gets in the majors. I don’t give a fuck about alternating righty-lefty throughout the lineup, and under no circumstance should Jose Trevino ever bat below the two names above him there.

3. On Friday, with Gerrit Cole going against the anemic Royals offense, the Yankees were -400 favorites, a type of money line reserved for NFL games. Cole laid a second straight second-half egg, blowing a 3-0 lead after allowing five runs in six innings and letting the team’s only two feared hitters beat him as Whit Merrifield and Salvador Perez drove in all five of the Royals’ runs. A 23-minute rain delay helped reset the game and the Yankees exploded for eight runs in the eighth inning, as Judge’s two homers and six RBIs led the Yankees to a comeback win.

4. On Saturday, Judge led the way again, reaching base four times and hitting his 42nd home run. Nestor Cortes worked through jam after jam and the Yankees won convincingly 8-2.

On Sunday, after falling behind Jordan Montgomery’s latest clunker against a bad team, the Yankees took a 6-4 lead into the eighth. But then Ron Marinaccio had an extremely rare bad day and Clay Holmes continued his recent stretch of not knowing where his sinker is going, and the Royals rallied in the ninth for three runs in a 8-6 Yankees loss.

In Andrew Benintendi’s first games as a Yankee, he got a taste of what life is like as a Yankee in 2022. His manager gave a regular the day off in each games of the series, didn’t play the left-handed Matt Carpenter (who has hit like Barry Bonds as a Yankee) against right-handed pitching, had Aaron Hicks batting fifth, Josh Donaldson fifth and sixth and had the balls to play Joey Gallo, whose future with the Yankees was decided long ago.

5. The trade for Benintendi solidified Gallo’s future with the Yankees which is that he doesn’t have one. In a recent interview with Lindsey Adler, Gallo spoke about his time with the Yankees in the past tense, knowing his time with the team is over sometime between now and 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

“Every time I see a Yankees hat, every time I see a Yankees jersey, it’s something I’m going to have to understand,” Gallo told Lindsey Adler. “I didn’t play well as a Yankee. I wish I had.”

I wish he had too. I actually feel bad for Gallo. It’s hard to feel bad for someone who makes $10.275 million to play baseball, but he grew up a Yankees fan, dreamed of playing for the team and played as badly as one can play and still be allowed to play. I feel bad for him because he didn’t trade for himself. He didn’t give up four prospects to make him a Yankee. He didn’t continue to play himself when he became the worst everyday hitter in the majors.

But maybe he’s not the worst everyday hitter in the majors. The Yankees actually have three candidates for that title between Gallo, Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

6. I don’t know what it’s going to take for Donaldson to stop being an everyday player for the Yankees, but it needs to happen. Donaldson is unplayable, and no I don’t care about his defense. No defense is enough to justify his bat, let alone a bat that continues to hit fifth and sixth with no consequences for performance. (He hit leadoff on Opening Day over LeMahieu!)

Donaldson is hitting .217/.296/.373 on the season. Remember when he homered in three straight games from July 6 to July 8 against three fringe major leaguers and people thought he was finally turning it around. Well, he hasn’t homered since, has driven in three runs in 17 games since and is hitting .158/.200/.211. To go along with that .411 OPS, he has 21 strikeouts to two walks.

If you have been wondering if Donaldson is washed up and finished, you can stop wondering and wonder about something else. The answer is unequivocally yes. He’s done. This isn’t a slump. This is 334 plate appearances for a 36-year-old who has trouble making contract, and even when he does surprisingly make contact, he hits a weak ground ball to short or third. 

7. Donaldson continues to get treated as if it were 2015 when he was the AL MVP. Gallo makes less than half of what Donaldson makes, plays the same type of stellar defense (though Gallo is better at his position than Donaldson is at his), and Gallo went from 2-hitter upon becoming a Yankee all the way to 9-hitter to platoon player to benched, and by Tuesday evening, he will no longer be a Yankee.

Here is what Donaldson has done as a Yankee:
.217/.297/.373, .669 OPS, 9 HR, 35 RBIs, 9.3 BB%, 27.2 K%

Here is what Gallo has done as a Yankee:
.159/.291/.368, .660 OPS, 25 HR, 46 RBIs, 15.4 BB%, 38.7 K%

Pretty equal if you ask me. Yet Gallo won’t be a Yankee by first pitch on Tuesday and Donaldson will be batting fifth or sixth on Tuesday.

8. I’m not defending Gallo and I don’t think the Yankees should keep him. He’s been awful and the experiment was a colossal failure. But the experiment of Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa has been equally as bad, and arguably worse. The Yankees don’t owe Gallo anything after this season, and he was just one player playing a position of depth for the Yankees. Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa take up two roster spots, two starting lineup spots and Donaldson is under contract for next season, while Kiner-Falefa will be out of the Yankees’ plans.

If the Yankees end up having to pay all of Gallo’s remaining 2022 salary, he will have cost the Yankees $14.535 million. Donaldson is owed $48 million between this season and next and Kiner-Falefa is making $4.7 million this season. That’s a total $52.7 million for a couple of good-but-not-great gloves with no offense. The Yankees could have gotten the same defense with the same abysmal offense for the league minimum.

9. Hopefully, once the trade deadline passes, someone else gets a chance to be the Yankees’ everyday shortstop. But if not and the Yankees are really going to try to win a championship with Kiner-Falefa playing every game in the postseason then these are the only nine current names that should be starting playoff games:

C: Jose Trevino
1B: Anthony Rizzo
2B: Gleyber Torres
3B: DJ LeMahieu
SS: Isiah Kiner-Falefa (unfortunately)
LF: Andrew Benintendi
CF: Aaron Judge
RF: Giancarlo Stanton
DH: Matt Carpenter

10. The weekend was a microcosm of the season. The Yankees record for the weekend was 3-1, but they didn’t play like a team deserving of winning three of four. They played like a team that was fortunate to be playing against a team that’s 22 games under .500 and who just traded their best hitter to the Yankees the day before the series began.

The Yankees are going to have to be better than they have been since the All-Star break in August. Not because the division or a postseason spot is in jeopardy, but because the 1-seed is with a two-game lead over the Astros.

The Yankees’ August schedule is difficult. In the first 23 days of the month, they will play 20 games against the Mariners, Cardinals, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays and Mets. The Cardinals are one game out of a playoff spot and the Red Sox are 3.5, otherwise all of those teams are playoff teams. It’s not until the end of the month when the Yankees get a break with a West Coast trip to Oakland and Anaheim.

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The Yankees got swept in the first half of the 2022 Subway Series, have lost five of seven since the All-Star break and are 17-16 since June 19. The comparisons to the 1998 team have finally stopped as the Yankees try to get back to winning consistently for the last two months of the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Back on April 21, the Yankees lost to the Tigers 3-0 in Detroit, falling to 7-6 on the season. It was the third time the Yankees had been shut out in 10 games. Coming off a three-game series loss in Baltimore the previous weekend in which the Yankees scored only three runs in 29 innings at Camden Yards, the 2022 season was a continuation of the 2021 season. Inconsistent, lackluster and disappointing play had become these Yankees.

Following that shutout loss to the lowly Tigers, the Yankees went off, winning 11 in a row and 22 of 26. They went from the most underachieving season in arguably the team’s history in 2021 to being compared to arguably the best team in the team’s history of 1998 in 2022. From the day after that loss in Detroit through June 18, the Yankees went 42-10, running away with the division and guaranteeing themselves a bye into the ALDS.

2. But since their 4-0 win over the Rays on June 18, the early-season Yankees have returned. The 2021 Yankees have returned. Injuries and underperformance have led to just a 17-16 record since June 19, and in that time, the Yankees lost five of seven to the Astros, blew three games to the now last-place Red Sox, split a two-game series with a Pirates team on pace to lose 96 games, lost a home series to a last-place Reds team on pace for 99 losses and got swept in the first half of the Subway Series.

The starting pitching has begun to show cracks and lost Luis Severino for an undetermined amount of time. The bullpen lost Michael King for the rest of this season and possibly next season, lost Miguel Castro indefinitely and is hoping Aroldis Chapman (who was on his way to being released before injuries) and Jonathan Loaisiga (who looks completely lost) can figure it out and fast. The lineup continues to go as Aaron Judge goes and when the big man slumps, the Yankees often lose.

3. After the Mets completed a first-half sweep in the Subway Series of the Yankees, Aaron Boone said, “We’re good. We know it. But we also know obviously we’re very beatable.”

Boone says a lot of dumb things. Most words that come out of his mouth in pre- and postgame press conferences are exactly that … or lies. But for one of a few times as Yankees manager, Boone said something accurate and truthful.

The Yankees are good, but yes, unfortunately, they are very beatable. I have written and said many times this year that the Yankees are where they are for three reasons: the starting pitching, Judge and the combination of King and Clay Holmes. Well, the starting pitching is no longer what it was in late April, May and the first half of June, and King is done. The Yankees need help and they need it between now and Tuesday afternoon.

4. The Yankees went out and got some help late on Wednesday night, trading for Andrew Benintendi. He’s not Juan Soto, who I still pray the Yankees land and will be distraught if they don’t, but he’s a solid player, and his presence means the end of Joey Gallo on the team and less Aaron Hicks, and no more Gallo and less Hicks is enough to make Benintendi already likable.

I could see Benintendi hitting just about anywhere in the Yankees’ order. First, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, who knows. I don’t think anyone knows because the logic and reasoning Aaron Boone uses to construct his lineups is unpredictable because there is no logic or reasoning. (He gave a breakdown of how he makes decisions on an offseason episode of CC Sabathia’s podcast and it was flat-out scary. I don’t know how the front office didn’t listen to how his brain works and not immediately let him go.) No matter where he hits, the Yankees improved their team and their offense with the trade.

5. The best possible lineup doesn’t include Josh Donaldson, who is officially washed up. I have questioned it all season, but it’s now official. He sucks. If he were on a one-year, prove-it deal for $5 million, he would likely no longer be a Yankee. But because the Yankees foolishly traded for him at the age of 36 and happily took on the entire $48 million owed to him, Donaldson isn’t going anywhere in terms of no longer being a Yankee. He should go somewhere though and that somewhere is the bench.

Donaldson can’t hit right-handed pitching (.239/.315/.396) because he can’t even hit left-handed pitching (.175/.284/.368). His numbers against power pitching are atrocious (.254/.303/.339) because his numbers against any kind of pitching are atrocious. And guess what type of pitching there is in October? Power pitching. How can the Yankees pencil his name into the lineup and expect anything other than strikeouts and ground outs to the left side against Justin Verlander, Christian Javier, Lance McCullers Jr., Alek Manoah, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman, and any other hard-throwing, right-handed starter the Yankees may see.

6. I keep having people tell me “Yeah, but he plays great defense!” Who gives a fuck? Seriously, who gives a fuck? Defense grows on trees. You can find defense anywhere. Infield defense, outfield defense, you name it. It’s not hard to find. Defense-only players don’t get paid $24 million a season, and they don’t hit fifth and sixth for teams with championship aspirations.

Donaldson can’t be an everyday player for a team trying to win the 1-seed in the AL, and he can’t be an option as a starting player in the postseason, whether the Yankees are facing a lefty or not. This year is a lost year for him. If they’re unable to move him and dump even some of his salary in the offseason then try again next year (not that he will suddenly be better a year older). But for 2022, I have seen enough.

7. I have seen enough of Chapman as well, but because of the injuries to King and Castro, he’s not going anywhere. The Yankees are going to try to fix him between now and the ALDS, but if he’s needed in the ALDS, I think we all know how any outing of his will fare.

“It’s obviously tough right now for him,” Boone said of Chapman recently. “He’s going through a tough time and grinding.”

The “tough time” is now more than a year. Since June 10, 2021, Chapman has an ERA of nearly 6 and has allowed double-digit home runs. It’s rare when he pitches a scoreless inning and a near miracle when he pitches a 1-2-3 inning. Most of the time, he has no idea where the ball is going, walks at least one batter in an appearance and gives up the long ball when he has to come in the zone. He could not give up an earned run for the rest of the regular season and I would have zero confidence in him in a postseason appearance.

Loaisiga has been every bit as bad as Chapman, and possibly worse. Loaisiga has allowed 35 baserunners and 17 earned runs in 21 2/3 innings this season. He went from being in the conversation for best reliever in the majors in 2021 to on his way to pitching himself out of the majors in 2022.

8. The Yankees have a lot of bad options right now across all facets of the team. They are willing to give endless starting opportunities to Domingo German who should have been released from the team at the announcement of his suspension in 2019, and who continues to be really, really bad. They continue to roster Gallo, bat Donaldson in the middle of the order, act like it’s not a big deal that their starting shortstop can’t hit the ball in the air and is extremely shaky in the field, and their backup catcher doesn’t do anything well and rarely ever isn’t pinch hit for in a game he starts. In the bullpen, Albert Abreu seems like a ticking time bomb Boone will deploy at the most inopportune time in October and Wandy Peralta is the manager’s second-favorite reliever after all-world Holmes. As long as bad options exit on the roster Boone will find a way to use them, just like he did in inexplicably pinch hitting Gallo on Tuesday night.

9. Gallo hadn’t even walked out of the dugout before Buck Showalter immediately brought in Edwin Diaz. All Yankees fans know how inept Boone is at in-game management. But it’s pronounced when he goes head-to-head against managers like Showalter or Alex Cora or Kevin Cash. After the game, Boone said he wanted to “force” Showalter to use Diaz for a four-out save. The only chance the Yankees had in coming back on Tuesday was to come back before Diaz entered the game, yet there was Boone saying his goal was to get Diaz into the game as early as possible and for as many outs as possible. A true moron.

10. Boone isn’t about to get smarter between now and the first week of October. If it hasn’t happened for him at this point of his life, it’s not happening. And it’s not happening.

The only way to decrease the odds Boone ruins the postseason is by eliminating bad rooster options. Trading for Benintendi was the first step in doing so. It can’t be the only move. If it is, I can tell you right now how this Yankees season will end.

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