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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The Yankees opened their second “half” with the worst possible day imaginable: swept in a doubleheader in Houston. The Yankees’ lead over the Astros for the best record in the American League is now down to two games in the loss column.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The only people left who don’t seem to think the 1-seed in the American League is important are the Yankees. Aaron Boone came back from the three-day All-Star break and couldn’t bring himself to play the best possible lineup in both games of the doubleheader in Houston. Giancarlo Stanton didn’t start the first game and DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Rizzo were left out of the starting lineup in the second game. The Yankees sat their 1- 2- and 4-hitters in the two most important remaining games of the regular season.

They also decided to give Domingo German his first start since July 31, 2021 in one of the two most important remaining games of the season, on the road, in Houston, against the Astros. I love John Sterling, but he’s wrong: you can predict baseball. German got lit up, allowing back-to-back home runs in the first inning, lasted only three innings and gave up on five runs on seven baserunners. It was the least surprising performance of all time, as the starting pitcher who isn’t any good, wasn’t good again, and the starting pitcher who averages nearly two home runs per nine innings allowed two in just three innings.

2. German should have been released by the Yankees in 2019 as soon as he was suspended. Instead, the Yankees have continued to roster him, even as the clubhouse wanted no part of him in spring training last year, and even as his performance has been abysmal. The Yankees couldn’t wait to get him back into the majors. They couldn’t wait to give him a start against a team they never beat in a stadium they never win at. They couldn’t wait for him to pitch them to another loss, and he did exactly that.

And yes, those two games were the two most important remaining games of the Yankees’ 70 remaining games (now 68). The Yankees entered the second “half” with a four-game lead in the loss column over the Astros, and that’s now down to two after losing 3-2 and 7-5 on Thursday.

3. As Boone was giving his postgame press conference following the second loss (a press conference in which he said he saw “some good” from German in what was his latest embarrassing evaluation), YES showed a graphic that read “Yankees never led in doubleheader.” Forget the doubleheader. The Yankees never led in any of the seven games between the two teams this season. In the two Yankees’ wins, the Yankees didn’t lead until Aaron Judge walked off the Astros twice. They never led in the entire seven games.

4. Here is a summary of the now-over season series:

Game 1: Yankees are no-hit from innings 2 through 8, and overcome three-run deficit in ninth inning to walk off.

Game 2: Yankees score one run in loss.

Game 3: Yankees are no-hit for first time in 19 years.

Game 4: Yankees are no-hit for first 6 1/3 innings, over come three-run deficit in seventh and eighth innings because Dusty Baker refuses to use his best relievers again, and Yankees walk off in 10th.

Game 5: Yankees score one run in loss.

Game 6: Yankees score two runs in loss.

Game 7: Yankees start pitcher who has thrown 1 1/3 innings since July 31, 2021, and lose.

That’s a lot of being no-hit, a lot of not scoring and a lot of losing. The Astros thoroughly own the Yankees. They own them in the regular season and they have owned them in the postseason. The only two Astros position players still on the team from their 2015 wild-card win over the Yankees are Jose Altuve and Jason Castro, and Castro is currently on the injured list and rarely ever plays. The only Astros position players still on the team from their 2017 ALCS win over the Yankees are Altuve, Castro, Alex Bregman and Yuli Gurriel. The Astros have changed their entire roster, they have let George Springer, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Correa walk, and they still own the Yankees. That’s because they have signed the right free agents (like Michael Brantley, who I begged the Yankees to sign after 2018), and continue to fill their roster voids with capable major leaguers who become All-Stars like Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker and Jeremy Pena. At full strength, the Astros don’t have Isiah Kiner-Falefa or Joey Gallo in their lineup, and they aren’t wasting at-bats and money on Josh Donaldson. (Sure, Gurriel is having a down year, but he also won the batting title just last year and is making one-third of what Donaldson makes.)

5. Since the Yankees’ 2017 ALCS loss to the Astros, the Astros have moved on or traded pitchers like Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel, Mike Fiers, Collin McHugh, Joe Musgrove, Wade Miley and Zack Greinke. The only two constants have been Justin Verlander and Lance McCullers Jr., and when Verlander missed 2020 and 2021, and when McCullers Jr. missed 2021 the Astros still managed to get to the ALCS in both seasons and the World Series in 2021.

6. The only Astros starter the Yankees haven’t seen in 2022 is Jake Odorizzi, and it would take an inordinate amount of injuries for him to get a postseason start (like it did in 2021).

Here is how the Astros’ starters have fared against the Yankees in 2022:

Justin Verlander: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 1 HR

Christian Javier: 12 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 5 BB, 16 K, 1 HR

Luis Garcia: 10.1, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 12 K, 2 HR

Justin Verlander: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 1 HR

Jose Urquidy: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 1 HR

Framber Valdez: 6 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 1 HR

Total: 42.1 IP, 15 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 16 BB, 41 H, 6 HR, 1.91 ERA, 0.732 WHIP

McCullers Jr, who has always pitched well against the Yankees, is nearing a return, which means at least one of these starters is going to the bullpen. Or maybe McCullers Jr. will go to the bullpen, like he did when he threw four scoreless innings to close out Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS against the Yankees, throwing only breaking balls.

7. What happens if the Astros go out and upgrade their roster like they did at the 2017 deadline when they added Verlander (because the Yankees wouldn’t take on his salary and watched him single-handedly swing the ALCS), or prior to 2018 when they added Cole (because the Yankees wouldn’t trade Clint Frazier or Miguel Andujar, eventually releasing Frazier for nothing and still won’t give Andujar everyday playing time over Aaron Hicks or Joey Gallo), or like they did in 2019 when they added Zack Greinke (and the eventual 103-win Yankees didn’t make a single move and overused their bullpen in that ALCS with Zack Britton admitting the relievers were fatigued). What happens if the Astros trade for Luis Castillo?

8. The Yankees need to do something. The right play is to give up the farm for Juan Soto, because he not only helps the Yankees now, but would help them for the next 10-plus years if extended. The other option is to be the team that trades for Castillo, not the Astros (or Dodgers).

9. As currently constructed, the Yankees won’t get past the Astros in a possible ALCS matchup. Home-field advantage wouldn’t even matter. That has been made clear through the seven games the teams played against each other. The Astros are better than the Yankees in every facet of the game, aside from the back end of the bullpen, and one half of the Yankees’ back end of the bullpen lost the first game on Thursday, and the other half didn’t even pitch. The bullpen has been the Astros’ biggest flaw since 2017, but it hasn’t stopped them from going to five straight ALCS and three of the last five World Series. Because come October, they will just move starters to the bullpen once again to supplement Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero and Ryne Stanek.

10. The 1-seed is in serious jeopardy. The Yankees had a double-digit lead over the Astros at one point, and now it’s down to two games in the loss column. While the Yankees will spend the next two-plus months battling their division opponents, all of which are at least .500 and all of which have a chance at the postseason, the Astros will play nearly one quarter of their schedule against the A’s and Angels, who are counting down the days until their miserable seasons are over.

The Yankees had an unbelievable opportunity  to increase their odds at having home-field advantage on Thursday, and they blew it, with the days going as badly as possible. If they continue to not play the best possible lineup even once a week and continue to give extended rest to their starters and relievers and act like they have already clinched everything there is to clinch, they will continue to make it easy for the Astros to pass them.

With home-field advantage the Yankees will have a chance at representing the American League in the World Series. Without it, a Yankees-Astros ALCS is likely to play out the same way it did in 2017 and 2019.

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