The Yankees beat the Royals 4-3 in 11 innings on Wednesday to win the series with Juan Soto breaking out of his slump.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After the Yankees’ offensive performance on Tuesday looked like an October foreshadowing, the first five-plus innings on Wednesday looked the same.

On Tuesday, the Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts and didn’t have a single runner reach second base. On Wednesday, through the first 5 1/3 innings, the Yankees were 2-for-17 with six strikeouts and a walk. They still hadn’t had a runner reach second base. No runner in scoring position for 14 1/3 innings.

After Gleyber Torres put the bat on his shoulder for an entire six-pitch walk (including taking back-to-back curves on 2-2 and 3-2), Juan Soto came to the plate.

Soto fouled off a 2-2 pitch into his ankle and hobbled around before needing to stay on the ground for a couple of minutes. It was a scary moment with visions of Soto missing the rest of the season playing out in my head. Thankfully, Soto was able to walk it off and get back in the box, fouling away another pitch after the scare. Two pitches after looking like he may be seriously hurt, Soto sat back on a hanging curve from the league leader in strikeouts per nine innings Cole Ragans and crushed it into the right-field bleachers to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. (Why Ragans went changeup-curve after Soto fouled a slider off into his ankle, I don’t know, but I’m grateful he did.)

2. “Sometimes when you hit yourself like that, you go away a little bit,” Soto said. “I tried to just focus, take my time and go in there and make good contact.”

On Wednesday, I wrote: I thought Soto would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar. The two-run home run was the kind of at-bat and moment I envisioned from Soto when the Yankees traded for him. When the rest of the team is slumping and not performing, I figured he would carry them. When the rest of the offense disappears in October, I know he will be there given his postseason success with the Nationals and Padres.

The runs were the first the Yankees had scored since Monday. After not homering in the entire series at Wrigley Field and being shut out on Tuesday, it was just the second of the last six games the Yankees hit a home run in.

3. The lead didn’t last long. The very next inning Aaron Boone went to Clay Holmes, knowing very well he would have to face the top of the Royals’ lineup. A single, single, lineup and sacrifice fly later, and the Royals had tied the game and Holmes had his 12th blown save of the season.

Using Holmes in the seventh inning of a one-run game against the top of the Royals’ order is the same as using him as the closer. Boone still hasn’t learned his lesson despite eight of Holmes’ 12 blown saves turning into losses for the team. One of those losses came against these same Royals back on June 13. It was that loss in Kansas City that sent the Yankees’ season into a free fall. If Holmes only half-sucked and only four of those eight had turned into losses, the Yankees would have a six-game loss-column lead on the Orioles. He has single-handedly put the Yankees in the current standings battle they are in to avoid playing in the best-of-3, wild-card series.

But like I have written and said many times, I’m never mad at the player or pitcher in a situation like this, and I’m not mad at Holmes. He didn’t let himself stay in the closer role after blowing 11 saves. He doesn’t keep deciding to bring himself into games. And he didn’t bring himself into a one-run game on Wednesday. You would think a “closer” with a 5.14 ERA over three-and-a-half months would need more than one clean inning in a loss to the Cubs after being demoted before being thrown back into high-leverage situations. Not for Boone. Holmes had five days off after his disastrous performance in Texas, threw a 1-2-3, 12-pitch inning in Chicago, and Boone decided he was ready to get back into a crucial role. The Yankees used five relievers in the game and all of them did their job except for Holmes.

4. The Yankees had a chance to take the lead back in the bottom of the seventh. With one out, Anthony Volpe singled and Anthony Rizzo walked, bringing up Jose Trevino. If you were going to have a draft for the worst hitter in the majors to be up with runners on first and second and one out and the threat of a double play looming, Trevino would be the first overall pick. He’s slow, he makes weak contact, and typically hits the ball on the ground right to the shortstop. He has hit into 11 double plays this season in just 68 games. Trevino is better at hitting double plays than anything else.

Knowing that and knowing that Trevino is a miserable hitter aside from his knack for rally-ruining double plays and knowing he’s hitting .083 with a .366 OPS since coming off the injured list in mid-August, he’s not just the last player on the Yankees you want up in that spot, he may be the last player in the entire sport.

5. Fortunately, Boone had options. With a lefty on the mound, he could take his chances with the left-handed Austin Wells, or if he wanted to stick with the righty vs. lefty matchup, he could use the switch-hitting Jasson Dominguez or the switch-hitting Oswaldo Cabrera or Jon Berti. Any of those four options would have been better a choice than Trevino. Unfortunately, Boone didn’t do anything.

Instead, Boone used Cabrera as a pinch runner at first for Rizzo and then let Trevino bat for himself. Trevino hit the ball on the ground to first, was tagged out running to first, and Volpe idiotically tried to score from second on the ground ball and was tagged out at home. An unconventional double play to end the inning.

To compound Boone’s stupidity, when Trevino’s spot in the order came up with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th inning, he used Wells as a pinch hitter … against a lefty! So he was willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th, but he wasn’t willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the go-ahead run on second and one out in the seventh. Please make it make sense.

6. Between the decision to use Holmes in a one-run game and against the top of the Royals’ order, and the decision to let Trevino hit for himself with four better pinch-hit options available, Boone had quite the seventh inning. The atmosphere and intensity of the game was playoff-like with a division pennant and first-round bye hanging in the balance, and Boone was at his worst. The bigger the game and the closer the score, every decision Boone makes will have an enormous impact on the outcome and how this season ends, and once again, he seems incapable of making logical in-game choices.

7. So much for Dominguez playing every day. Two days after arriving, he was on the bench so Verdugo could play. Rather than let the switch-hitting Dominguez start against a lefty, Boone went with the left-handed Verdugo against the left. Verdugo hit two ground balls to the right side in the game, and with that, he tied the record for the most groundouts to the right side in a single season with 111 in the Statcast Era (since 2015). Verdugo has 16 games remaining to break the record and once he does, I think it’s a record that will last forever, like Wayne Gretzky’s points record or Cy Young’s wins record. Because no one that bad and hitting that many ground balls to the right side would be given as many plate appearances as Verdugo has been given this season.

8. Luis Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still only allowed one run (a solo home run) over five innings. There have been so many games this season Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still put together a performance like he did on Wednesday. He should be the Yankees’ Game 2 starter in the postseason, but we all know it’s going to be Carlos Rodon. Owed money always wins over actual performance.

9. I can never believe Giancarlo Stanton’s batting average when the graphic displays it with him at the plate. He’s hitting .230 this season, which may as well be .330 since I feel like he’s hitting .130. In his last seven games, Stanton is 1-for-26 with 10 strikeouts.

10. Soto came out of his slump, and maybe Judge is close to coming out of his? He had a line-drive single and two walks in the game. It would be glorious if Judge got his power stroke back in time for this four-game Red Sox series. It would go a long way to helping the Yankees win the division and a long way to keeping the Red Sox out of the postseason for the fifth time in six years.

The Yankees lost to the Royals 5-0 and no Yankee reached scoring position in the game.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I finished Tuesday’s Thoughts with this:

I can’t see Boone giving Giancarlo Stanton a second consecutive day off. If he doesn’t, someone has to sit. We’re about to see just how much Dominguez is going to play and if Verdugo isn’t.

We found out the answer to the question of will Jasson Dominguez really take away playing time from Alex Verdugo when Tuesday’s lineup was posted and Dominguez was in it batting seventh and Verdugo was on the bench.

2. “He and I spoke, yeah,” Aaron Boone said about talking with Verdugo about losing his everyday spot. “That role is a little bit fluid. Certainly, Jasson being here impacts him some.”

Dominguez being in the majors doesn’t just impact Verdugo “some” it turns him from an everyday player into a bench player. Boone said when Aaron Judge is playing the outfield, he will play center field, and when Judge is playing center field, Dominguez will play left field. That’s a very complicated way of saying Verdugo isn’t playing anymore. With Giancarlo Stanton as the designated hitter, Judge has to play the outfield. And if Boone says when Judge is in the outfield, he will play center field and Dominguez will play left field, well that’s every game that Stanton plays. And with only 17 games remaining and the division on the line, Stanton is going to be playing a lot. And in the rare instance when he doesn’t play, I’m assuming Judge will be the DH, Dominguez will play center and Verdugo will play left.

3. For Tuesday’s game, Boone put together the best possible lineup he is capable of putting together with the current roster.

Gleyber Torres, 2B
Juan Soto, RF
Aaron Judge, CF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Anthony Volpe, SS

(I say the best possible he is capable of putting together since I would move Torres from first to after Chisholm and move Soto, Judge, Wells, Stanton and Chisholm all up one spot.)

Unfortunately, the best, most optimized version of the Yankees offense couldn’t do anything against Seth Lugo for seven innings (7 IP, 10 K), Kris Bubic for an inning (1 IP, 2 K) or John Schreiber for an inning (1 IP, 2 K). The Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts. They didn’t draw a walk and no one reached second base. It was the first game in Yankees history in which they had the combination of no walks, no extra-base hits and struck out at least 14 times. Add another line to the impressive managerial resume of Boone as there’s yet another embarrassing historical performance he has overseen.

4. “That was probably as good a performance [as there’s been] against us this year,” Boone said. “We were silent.”

It may have been the best starting effort and total-game effort against the Yankees in 2024, but it’s not like similar performances from the offense are rare. They scored one run on Sunday at Wrigley Field and six runs total in three games against the Cubs, and didn’t hit a home run in that entire series. Last month, they struggled mightily to score against the Tigers and Nationals. In July, they had trouble scoring against everyone until the final days of that month.

The type of “effort” the Yankees bats gave on Tuesday is what worries me every Yankees season, envisioning yet another no-show in October. A lack of offense is why the Boone Yankees have always bowed out of October early. In the 2018 ALDS, they scored four runs in Games 3 and 4, lost both and went home. In the 2019 ALCS, they scored 14 runs from Games 2 through 6, went 1-4 in those games and were eliminated. In the 2020 ALDS, they were held to one run (on three hits) in the decisive Game 5 and lost. In the 2021 wild-card game, they were shut out for the first five innings, scored two runs in the game and their season ended. In the 2022 ALCS, they scored nine runs in four games (and five of those runs came in one game) and they were embarrassingly swept. Last season, of course, they missed the postseason because their offense was so bad for the entirety of the regular season.

5. Lugo is the exact type of pitcher the Yankees will face every game in October and he had his way with them by getting ahead in counts, throwing strikes and changing speeds. The Yankees were swinging through high-80s and low-90s pitches like Mason Miller was on the mound because of Lugo’s impeccable control and wide array of pitches.

“That was a pitching clinic,” Royals manager Matt Quataro said of Lugo’s outing.

At one point, Lugo retired 17 straight. It was, and it was the exact type of start that keeps me up at night. It was the exact type of game this Yankees lineup is prone to.

“The playoffs are different animal,” Torres said. “We face [Lugo] again, we for sure have to have a different plan.”

6. The troubling postseason past of Judge is well known (.211/.310/.462 in 44 games) and his most recent postseason performance in the 2022 ALCS sweep by the Astros (1-for-16 with a single) after setting the American League home run record during the regular season is still bothersome. Over the last two weeks, Judge is hitting .196/.339/.255 without a home run and with 20 strikeouts in 61 plate appearances. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees are 6-8 during that stretch.

It’s also unsurprising the Yankees have struggled over the last two weeks against the Nationals, Cardinals, Rangers, Cubs and now Royals because Juan Soto is also not hitting. The Yankees offense goes as those two go, and Soto is hitting .212/.339/.327 over the last two weeks. I thought he would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar.

The Yankees are good enough to deal with one of the two being cold, but they can’t overcome both of them not hitting. The rest of the lineup relies on them to get on base and to drive the rest of the lineup in in the rare moments other members of the lineup are on base. If those two hit this way (which is not at all) for even two days in a row in October, the season will end disappointingly.

7. With the Dominguez-Verdugo situation, the emergence of Austin Wells, the demotion of Clay Holmes, Nestor Cortes voicing his opinions on the way the Yankees handled his demotion and Judge and Soto not hitting, there has been enough going on that it taken the attention away from the fact that Anthony Volpe is hitting as poorly as he ever has and that Anthony Rizzo has been a complete dud (as expected) since returning.

After homering in back-to-back games on August 2 and August 3 to get his OPS back above .700, Volpe is hitting .210/.256/.261 over the last five weeks. In September, he has a .394 OPS and 13 strikeouts in 31 plate appearances. He hasn’t homered since August 3 and has walked once in the last three weeks. But he keeps on playing, keeps on starting at shortstop every day.

Rizzo was atrocious before getting hurt in mid-June (.630 OPS) and has been atrocious since (.452 OPS). I would love for this to be Rizzo getting back to playing every day and knocking the rust off, but it’s not like he’s coming back during a season in which he was playing well and had a great season interrupted by an injury. He was bad before the injury and has been worse since coming back from the injury.

I wish we would see more of Oswaldo Cabrera, who is now the backup for both Volpe at shortstop and Rizzo at first base, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Volpe hasn’t been benched since his first day in the majors and Rizzo is being paid $17 million, so he’s going to play whether he can still hit (which he apparently can’t) or pick a ball out of the dirt (which he apparently can’t) or not.

8. Cortes openly voiced his opinion on the Yankees’ decision to remove him from the rotation over the weekend. It’s hard to feel sorry for Cortes after he got beat up by the Cardinals over Labor Day Weekend, couldn’t get through five innings against the Angels in August and let the Rays knock him around in back-to-back starts in mid-July after his wildly delusional tweet about everyone wanting to be the Yankees and how they are contenders every year, even though they missed the playoffs entirely last year. It’s easier to feel sorry for him when you realize he was removed from the rotation instead of Marcus Stroman.

Unfortunately, for Cortes, he’s only on the books for $3.95 million this season, while Stroman is making $18.5 million, is owed $18.5 million next season and has an $18 million option for 2026 that will kick in if he throws 140 innings in 2025. Stroman isn’t better than Cortes, but owed money is the initial deciding factor in roster decisions and playing time with the Yankees. With Cortes’ name swirling around trade rumors in July and with him being a free agent at the end of next season, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him traded during this offseason. But for now, the Yankees need to win games and he gives them a better chance to than Stroman.

9. Stroman was once against awful on Tuesday against the Royals. It didn’t matter that he was bad since the game could still be being played at this moment and the Yankees still wouldn’t have scored, but Stroman was painful to watch yet again: nine baserunners in 5 1/3 innings. Since July 4, Stroman has started 57 innings and only nine of them have been 1-2-3 innings, which is outrageous. Every six-plus innings Stroman will give you a clean frame. He didn’t have one on Tuesday, so he’s due for one in his next start!

If Stroman is to make his next start, it will come on Sunday against the Red Sox. Stroman has made two starts against the Red Sox this season, and in 8 1/3 innings, he has allowed 21 baserunners. I don’t know how you could possibly let him face them again, but I’m excited to see the bullshit the Yankees tell us about why they are going to let him face them.

10. Before the Yankees get to their four-game series against the Red Sox this week, they still have one more game against the Royals. Another rubber match. It will be the 10th time in the Yankees’ last 11 series they have played a rubber match. It will come against the left-handed Cole Ragans. The All-Star is a lefty, which the Yankees can’t seem to hit, and he has ridiculous strikeouts numbers with 204 in 167 1/3 innings this season as he leads the league in strikeouts per nine innings (11.1). Lugo doesn’t even average eight strikeouts per nine innings and he struck out 10 in seven innings on Tuesday. If the Yankees are to win the game, win the series and avoid possibly being tied with the Orioles in the loss column again, the offense is going to need to show up. After their night off on Tuesday, they should be well rested.

The Yankees’ offense came alive for the first time in four games in a 10-4 win over the Royals on the day Jasson Dominguez was called up.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Four days ago, Brian Cashman said Alex Verdugo gave the Yankees the “best chance to win” as the team’s everyday left fielder instead of their top-ranked, untouchable-in-trades prospect Jasson Dominguez. Three days after making that wildly idiotic assertion, Dominguez had a locker in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse to begin a three-game series with the Royals.

“Jasson’s going to play a lot,” Aaron Boone said before Monday’s game.

In 72 hours, Dominguez went from not having “a lane” to everyday playing time on the Yankees to batting sixth in their lineup — three places higher in the batting order than the player who was said to give the Yankees a better chance to win with than Dominguez.

2. “Like I said on September 1, when we didn’t initially recall Jasson, he’s [been] in the conversation every single day,” Boone said. “As much as anything, it’s just continuing to build the momentum he’s built here over the last few weeks.”

Nothing changed for Dominguez since September 1. He was destroying Triple-A pitching then and was as recently as his last Triple-A game. He didn’t magically go from not being ready for the majors to being ready to hit in the middle of the lineup in eight days.

“We feel like [he’s been] stringing together some of his best baseball here over the last couple of weeks,” Boone said, “and has earned this opportunity.”

And nothing changed for Verdugo over that time either. He had a .654 OPS on September 1 and a .651 OPS at the end of play on September 8. He has sucked all season and he has sucked just as bad since rosters expanded.

3. In order for a roster spot to open to play Dominguez, the Yankees had to designate someone for assignment or put someone on the injured list. They went with the injured list and that someone was DJ LeMahieu.

Rather than move on from LeMahieu and pay him more than $30 million to not play baseball for them through 2026, they decided to put him on the IL with a made-up injury. LeMahieu has no more of a hip impingement than you or I do. Boone said LeMahieu has been dealing with “it” for a “few weeks.” So either the Yankees are putting LeMahieu on the IL with a made-up injury or they have been playing an injured 36-year-old with a .527 OPS for a few weeks. I pray it’s the former, but knowing the Yankees, it’s very possible it’s the latter.

4. LeMahieu’s 2021 season ended early due to injury and he missed the one-game playoff. His 2022 season ended early due to injury and he missed the postseason. Last season, he made it to the end of the year, but there was no postseason for the Yankees. This season, he’ll miss the postseason again.

“I don’t know,” Boone said about LeMahieu returning this year. “We’ll see.”

That’s the same kind of “We’ll see” I tell my kids (ages 2 and 4) when they ask if they can stay up all night. LeMahieu isn’t coming back this year. He will be back in spring training with a chance to redeem himself and avoid being paid by the Yankees to not play for the Yankees.

5. In his first game at Yankee Stadium this season and with the Yankees trailing 2-0 in the fourth inning, Dominguez singled, stole third and scored on an error when the throw from Salvador Perez to get him went into the outfield. It was more production than Verdugo had provided in more than two months with the team. That same inning, with a runner on, Verdugo hit a go-ahead, two-run home run to right field. It’s almost as if tying playing time to production and consequences motivates players to perform better. I’m sure the Verdugo home run put a smile on the faces of Cashman and Boone. You know those two want Verdugo to outplay Dominguez over the final 18 games of the season.

6. “He’s gonna play, Verdugo said of Dominguez. “Whatever that means, that means, right? If I lose a little bit of playing time, I lose a little bit of playing time. At the end of the day, I want to win. The only thing that matters is getting to the playoffs and winning there.”

I was surprised with those comments from Verdugo. He said exactly what someone in his position should say. He didn’t respond like Gleyber Torres, who said “I play second” after the team traded for Jazz Chisholm. He didn’t respond like Nestor Cortes did on Saturday.:

7. “Obviously, I was upset,” Cortes said of being removed from the rotation. “I feel like amongst all the starters, I’ve been the workhorse here,” Cortes said. “Once [Gerrit] Cole went down, they picked me to be the Opening Day starter, not necessarily the No. 1, but the Opening Day starter. I had to switch my routine there, and now they do this.”

Of course, Cortes is delusional to think he has had a better season than he has. After each one of his crappy starts, his manager talks about how well he pitched and how “good” his stuff was, and Cortes, himself, says the same. However, to Cortes’ credit, he shouldn’t be the one out of the rotation, Marcus Stroman should be.

8. While Dominguez’s arrival was the story before the game and through the the top of the seventh with the Yankees then trailing 4-3 and the Orioles on their way to a loss, Austin Wells stole the spotlight with a mammoth, go-ahead three-run home run.

“He’s been a middle-of-the-order hitter for two to three months now,” Boone said. “We’ve all seen that, witnessed that.”

It’s been more than two or three months. It’s been more than four months. Wells has an .837 OPS since April 24. He has become the best all-around catcher in the majors and should be the favorite to win American League Rookie of the Year, considering he leads AL catchers in wRC+ at 121 and is statistically the second-best defensive catcher in the AL as well.

9. Carlos Rodon pitched good enough to win (6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 2 HR), but left the game on the hook for the loss thanks to some more sloppy defense with Chisholm bouncing a throw to first, Anthony Rizzo being unable to pick that throw and Torres dropping a popup. As of now, the four postseason starters seem to be Rodon, Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt in some order. (My order would be Cole, Gil, Schmidt, Rodon, but we all know owed money outranks performance.)

10. Stroman, thankfully, won’t be part of the rotation. I don’t even know how you would put him on the postseason roster since he can’t be trusted out of the bullpen with his stuff. Unfortunately, Stroman goes for the Yankees on Tuesday against the tough Seth Lugo. Even though Lugo is a second straight hard-throwing, sinker-focused righty, I can’t see Boone giving Giancarlo Stanton a second consecutive day off. If he doesn’t, someone has to sit. We’re about to see just how much Dominguez is going to play and if Verdugo isn’t.

Another game, another loss for the Yankees. Another series, another series loss for the Yankees.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After losing a series to the 25th-ranked Nationals, the Yankees helped the Cardinals get above .500 by losing a series at home to them. And then over the last three nights in Texas, the Yankees dropped their third straight series to a Rangers team that hasn’t seen the .500 mark since May 19. Three straight series losses and a 3-6 record against three teams that won’t be playing in October.

2. Since August 1, the Yankees are 15-15. In those 30 games, three came against a team that started their series with the Yankees above .500. They were gifted an incredible five-week stretch to play mediocre-to-historically-bad teams and they squandered it. They completely wasted it.

3. Wednesday was much of the same from the Yankees. Bad starting pitching, horrific relief pitching and an offense that didn’t show up until garbage time. After getting shut down by ex-Yankee Andrew Heaney on Tuesday, ex-Yankee Nathan Eovaldi did the honor on Wednesday. It wasn’t until the game was out of hand and the Yankees trailed by eight runs in the ninth inning that they added to their anemic run total in the 10-6 loss.

Their four runs in the ninth came from a Trent Grisham grand slam. In one swing, Grisham matched Alex Verdugo’s home run total since July 6. In that one swing, he equaled Verdugo’s RBI output from the last three weeks. If Jasson Dominguez is going to waste away in Triple-A, maybe Grisham can be given a turn playing every day instead of Verdugo? Grisham has the better on-base percentage and the better slugging percentage, and better power and walk numbers relative to plate appearances. At worst, he provides actual Gold Glove defense — having won the award twice — and not the kind of fake, made-up strong defense Verdugo is perceived to have by some (including the front office).

4. Verdugo went 1-for-3 in the game, hitting three ground balls in all of his plate appearances. One of three reached the outfield for a single, and on the other two, they were easily turned into outs as Verdugo power walked down the first-base line, forcing Michael Kay to ask on the broadcast, “Is there something wrong with his legs?”

“He’s beat up,” Aaron Boone said of Verdugo not running to first. “He’s playing his ass off … I don’t have any issue with how hard he’s playing the game.”

One loser talking about another loser. If Verdugo is “beat up” then why is he playing? That’s even more reason to sit him.

5. Verdugo dogs it in a way that makes Gleyber Torres seem like Charlie Hustle, but nothing ever happens to Verdugo. Just more playing time, more at-bats and no threat of consequence for dogging it. (Or is it “dawging it” for Verdugo?) Why would there be? When there’s no consequence for being the worst everyday hitter in the majors, there can’t be any consequence for jogging (and jogging is putting generously).

As long as Verdugo is a Yankee and continues to play everyday, the idea that he is part of the backup “plan” is Juan Soto leaves via free agency grows in probability.

6. “We’ve been in this tight AL race all year long,” Verdugo said after the loss. “It’s just a couple of series, we’re right there.”

Oh it’s been “just a couple of series?” The Yankees are 3-6 in their last nine. They’re 15-15 since August 1. They’re 31-39 since June 13. That’s not a couple of series.

7. “A couple of games not going our way,” Aaron Judge said. “Stuff like that is going to happen.”

Delusion runs deep in the Yankees clubhouse. The captain thinks it’s been just a couple of games not going their way, even though they have been under .500 for three months. But like his manager likes to say, “That’s baseball!”

Judge had another no-show game, which has been the case for the last 10 days. It’s easy to excuse him when he’s having a Barry Bonds-type season, but it’s hard not to think about how Judge has played in his postseason career and not think he’s getting a headstart on his all-too-familiar October disappearing acts.

He was part of the problem on Wednesday as the Yankees’ 3 through 8 hitters went 1-for-21 with the one being a Jazz Chisholm single. The offense didn’t show up until the fifth when Juan Soto hit a two-run home run, and by then, Marcus Stroman had already put them in a 5-0 hole.

8. “Just don’t think I executed when I needed to,” Stroman said. “Got in some long counts and they were able to put the barrel on balls.”

Oh you don’t think you executed when you needed to? No shit. It’s concerning that Stroman is staying in the rotation over Nestor Cortes because Stroman had a few good starts in a row against the Rangers, Tigers, Rockies and Cardinals. Stroman’s entire game is based around living on the edge and getting ground balls. He can’t win in the strike zone because he can’t throw quality strikes or getting swings and misses in the zone. If Stroman isn’t painting the black with every pitch or if the home plate umpire isn’t being favorable to him, he has no chance.

9. The Yankees are a mess. For outsiders who only view the standings, they see a team with an 80-60 record that is a 1/2 game out of the division. For Yankees fans who watch them play every day, they see a team that is eight games under .500 over their last 69 games. They haven’t been the team that once had a 49-21 record in nearly three months.

10. John Sterling announced he will come out of retirement to call all of the Yankees playoff games this October before going back into retirement. It’s welcome news and hopefully Sterling’s return will last more than a couple of nights in a best-of-3, wild-card series. Right now, it’s hard to believe it will.

The Yankees had a 4-1 lead in the eighth inning against a team counting down the games, innings, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season ends. They lost 7-4.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I think I need to change the way I watch and consume the Yankees. I desperately wish I could be the type of fan who watches the team play if I happen to come across them playing while channel surfing, and if the game isn’t on a commercial break. The type of fan who can only name Aaron Judge as a player on the roster, doesn’t know what place they are in the standings or what time their game is that day, or if there even is a game. The type of fan who goes to one or two games a year because a friend had an extra ticket. I want to be that fan. Unfortunately, I’m not.

2. Unfortunately, for me, my daily or nightly mood is attached to the final score of their games. My blood pressure hinges on that day’s lineup and my mental health is connected to late-inning bullpen decisions. It made me physically sick when Jasson Dominguez wasn’t called up three days ago, and each day that passes with Alex Verdugo being the team’s everyday fielder will eventually catch up to me health-wise.

3. I wish I didn’t care so much about the Yankees winning because the Yankees — the actual organization — don’t care about the Yankees winning. The organization’s level of interest in the team is a lot like the casual fan I desire to be: If the Yankees win, great. If they don’t, so be it.

If the Yankees truly cared about winning, they would field the best possible 26-man roster from Opening Day through August 31 and then the best possible 28-man roster from September 1 through Game 162. Roster decisions, the rotation of the order, places in the batting order and bullpen titles and usage wouldn’t be tied to name, reputation, friendships, relationships, service time manipulation or money owed. They would all strictly be based on production, performance, talent and ability.

4. The 7-4 walk-off loss to the Rangers on Tuesday night was all too familiar. The offense left an extraordinary amount of runners on and the bullpen was a disaster, yet again. Yankees fans (and I am one of them) can keep telling themselves that this team can win it all because the field is as wide open as it’s been in years, but the Yankees will enter the postseason with the worst bullpen of any of the 12 teams. Aaron Boone isn’t smart enough, isn’t creative enough, isn’t capable of using his starting pitchers as relievers to compensate for his weak bullpen, and because of that, the team’s demise will likely come because of its relievers. (Either that or because Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have a bad week at the same time, which then would make the bullpen issues a moot point.)

There isn’t a single reliever who can be trusted on the Yankees. They traded for Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez before the year and then got rid of both. They traded for Enyel De Los Santos and he’s gone. They brought in Nick Burti and he has done what he’s always done best: be hurt. Tommy Kahnle seems to think only throwing 86-mph changeups that change up from nothing is a sound strategy. Luke Weaver is immensely prone to home runs. Jake Cousins is OK. Mark Leiter Jr. sucks. Tim Hill can’t get a swing-and-miss. Tim Mayza? Scott Effross? No.

5. That leaves Clay Holmes, who blew his league-leading 11th save on Tuesday. He has three more blown saves than anyone in the league, which is remarkable. He’s as far ahead of the pack in blowing saves as Judge is in terms of home runs and RBIs. He’s that good at blowing saves.

This wasn’t a soft-contact blown save. This wasn’t a five-ground-balls-found-holes blown save. This was line-drive single, stolen base, walk, walk, grand slam. It would be the equivalent to you showing up to your job at lunch time, then taking a two-hour lunch with cocktails, returning to watch two hours of YouTube before leaving an hour early.

6. Boone loves to say “That’s baseball” when the Yankees lose a game or are shut down by a mediocre-to-bad starting pitcher, like Andrew Heaney or Kyle Gibson or Patrick Corbin, a trio that has shut them down over the last week. It’s hard to say “That’s baseball” when it happens every other day, or in the Yankees’ case, more frequently than that. Since the Yankees are 31-38 since June 13, it’s happened more frequently than every other day.

Every poor outcome for the Yankees is chalked up to being bad luck, misfortune or a tough break. It’s never because the players sucked or that they were put in a position to fail. It’s always just a game of luck when the Yankees lose. And when they lose in the postseason, it’s because the postseason is a crapshoot. Oddly enough, the postseason wasn’t a crapshoot in the late-‘90s or 2000s.

7. That’s why I want to be that casual fan. I don’t want to be awake at midnight because Holmes is still the Yankees closer despite being worse at that role than any other pitcher in the majors. I don’t want to be aggravated that Boone keeps preaching how well Verdugo has hit of late, when his last two hits were a ground ball to third that he beat out because the third baseman was playing near shortstop and a 61-mph bloop that only fell in for a hit because the infield was drawn in with a runner on third. I don’t want to be told Nestor Cortes will make his next start (which Boone said on Sunday) only for Boone to say on Tuesday that Cortes will not make his next start, and have no one in the media ask him why he said differently 48 hours prior.

8. I want to be the fan that just accepts what the team is and goes on with their life. If Hal Steinbrenner tells me Boone is a “great manager” and deserving of an eighth season without having won a championship, awesome. If Brian Cashman tells me there’s no lane for the team’s top prospect who is untouchable in every trade request to play every day because the worst-hitting left fielder in the league needs to play, great. If Boone tells me Holmes is “the guy” for the closer role despite being the worst closer in the majors, fantastic. My life as a Yankees fan would be so much easier, so much more enjoyable if I could react that way. Or the Yankees could just operate in a way that made sense, and my life as a Yankees fan would also be much easier, much more enjoyable.

9. Life as a Yankees fan shouldn’t be so stressful, so aggravating, so disappointing. It’s unbelievably easy to create the best 26-man roster possible and then play the nine best available position players from that roster nearly every day, bat them in an order that makes sense using simple logic, pull starting pitchers when they are fatigued, give relievers clean innings to come into, occasionally call for a bunt, steal or hit-and-run, never use the contact play with a runner on third and less than two outs, be honest about player performances and injuries and hold players accountable for their performances. And yet, the Yankees make it so unbelievably difficult.

10. The Yankees are once again out of first place. They trail the Orioles by a 1/2 game and because the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, it’s as if they trail them by 1 1/2 games.

The Orioles will play the White Sox again on Wednesday. The Yankees will play the Rangers. If the Yankees don’t win, they will fall another game behind in the division with 22 games left. If they lose, it will be because of bad luck or soft contact or a ball that didn’t fall in or some other bullshit to hide the fact the best 28 players in the organization weren’t available or on the roster for the game. I guess nothing can be done about that. That’s baseball.