Another series and another series win for the Yankees. The offense barely showed up in the four games against the Mariners (13 runs in the series), but the Yankees’ pitching was outstanding again, the way it’s been all season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On Thursday night, Nestor Cortes used his new-found trickery to pitch five solid innings (5 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 1 HR), but Chad Green gave up another potential late-inning, go-ahead home run that would have been the icing on the cake for what was the latest lackluster performance from the Yankees when not playing the Orioles.

Thankfully, Joey Gallo hit the exact home run I envisioned the 6-foot-5 on-base machine hitting when the Yankees acquired him: a high flyball, which barely found the short porch for the most Yankee Stadium home run you might ever see (until Rougned Odor’s Saturday home run). The go-ahead, three-run, seventh-inning home run gave the Yankees a win in a game. The Yankees play half of their games in a stadium that’s 314 feet to the right-field foul pole, and yet, it took them 101 games into a 162-game season to add a major-league-caliber left-handed bat.

Even if Michael Kay ruined the moment with his cringe-worthy yelling about how the home run being Gallo’s “signature Yankees moment,” it was still a great moment, and a much-needed moment to provide a much-needed win.

2. On Friday night, the Yankees needed another late-inning comeback to tie the game against the Mariners  before gong on to win in 11 innings. The Yankees were held scoreless through the first seven innings on Friday by Marco Gonzales, who entered the game with a 5.15 ERA over 73 1/3 innings. In a season in which Jorge Lopez, Matt Harvey, Michael Wacha, Jordan Lyles, Martin Perez and countless other barely-in-the-league starters have shut down the Yankees, Gonzales became the latest, throwing  6 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing only thee hits and two walks.

Recently-acquired Diego Castillo entered for the Mariners in the eighth, and while Castillo has been very good in his career, I felt good knowing the Mariners hadn’t gone back to old Joe Smith, who got the last out of seventh, because his sweeping slider has been giving the Yankees trouble for 15 years. After four-plus seasons with the Rays, the Yankees had seen Castillo a lot and even for this anemic Yankees offense, they perform better with someone they’re comfortable with. (I would rather the Yankees face Chris Sale than some call-up making their major league debut, as crazy as that sounds). Gardner pinch hit for Jonathan Davis, who has about as much business being on the 2021 Yankees as Gardner, let alone starting every game against a left-handed starter. Gardner worked an all-important seven-pitch walk to begin the inning. Then DJ LeMahieu walked on six pitches and Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch. Down one with the bases loaded, no outs, the Yankee had Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton due up: an ideal situation (at least on paper). Judge hit a line drive which went right at the left fielder, but was deep enough to score Gardner and tie the game. After two walks, a hit by pitch and a rocket line drive against a more-than-shaky Castillo, Stanton  swung at the first pitch and banged into a 6-4-3, inning-ending double play.

In the ninth, both Kyle Higashioka and Gardner failed to get in the winning run from second base. In the 10th, the Mariners scored the go-ahead run, but thankfully, Stanton came through with two outs in the bottom of the inning, this time successfully swinging on the first pitch of his at-bat for the game-tying RBI single.

In the 11th, after Albert Abreu pitched a seemingly improbable scoreless inning, Higashioka failed to get in Torres from second again, but this time Gardner didn’t fail to win the game, driving in Torres to win the game.

3. I have said a lot of critical things about Gardner this season and they are all true. He shouldn’t be on this team. Certainly not over Greg Allen or Estevan Florial based strictly on performance.

Allen has played the way the Yankees still think Gardner does, and likely why he has a lifetime vesting one-year contract. The fact Gardner has been able to maintain his roster spot throughout this dismal season, while Allen and Florial have both gotten sent down to accommodate Gardner’s presence is an embarrassment. The Yankees forced Alex Rodriguez into retirement in early August 2016 following a Hall of Fame career and being the sole reason the organization is currently looking at only a 12-year championship drought and not a 21-year drought. Gardner doesn’t belong on this team. He never did. And ever since he became the elder statesman among position players on the team and the longest-tenured Yankee, the team hasn’t done or won anything. His clubhouse leadership hasn’t brought the Yankees anything other than an outfield logjam, and detrimental roster moves to keep him around. If the Yankees are to reach the playoffs, it’s easy to see Gardner being in the lineup, starting in center field and batting ninth.

His walk-off hit doesn’t change this. It was a nice moment and a big hit in a big spot resulting in a big win. But given enough chances, Gardner will come through every once in a while, like any borderline major leaguer. The problem is his every once in a while is now every once in too long of a while.

4. Saturday was Aug. 7. Aaron Judge hit a first-inning solo home run, and it was the first time the Yankees had scored in the first inning since July 7. A team whose Top 5 hitters have mostly been a combination of LeMahieu, Judge, Stanton, Rizzo, Gallo, Gary Sanchez and Torres for a month failed to score a single run in the first inning of a month’s worth of games.

Judge’s home run didn’t give the Yankees a lead because Andrew Heaney started for the Yankees and was doing Andrew Heaney things: giving up runs and home runs. Heaney allowed two runs in the first (on a two-out, two-run home run) and then another two runs in the second. Heaney was the only Yankees starting pitcher to have a bad weekend, allowing four earned runs over six innings. Yes, he settled down after the second (after he had already allowed four runs), but the way he was praised by the YES broadcast and on social media, you would have thought he had pitched a complete-game shutout. If not for Mitch Haniger falling down late on Saturday and the Mariners inexplicably not throwing home to get LeMahieu, the Yankees lose on Saturday. Heaney wasn’t good, and I don’t expect him to be good.

5. You know who is good? Luis Gil. The Luis Gil who is supposedly “not ready” for the majors has now pitched 11 scoreless innings over two starts to begin his career. Gil was only given a chance because Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery went down with COVID, Scumbag Domingo German hurt his shoulder and Luis Severino and Corey Kluber aren’t ready to return yet. If the Yankees needed only one rotation spot, it would go to Cortes then Heaney then Gil. If not for needing Gil to jump to the majors out of desperation, he would still be wasting pitches in the minors.

In a weekend in which the Yankees started Cortes, Wandy Peralta as an opener, Heaney, and Gil, they went 3-1. And they went 3-1 because of those names, not because of the offense.

The Yankees’ Sunday performance was all too familiar. The team was held to six hits, failed to score any of their 10 baserunner and even against a left-handed starter, the nearly all-right-handed lineup (minus Gallo and Odor) was shut down. On paper, the Yankees’ lineup is awesome. In actuality, it’s far from it. 

Going back to July 22, the Yankees have played 17 games. In two of those games, they scored 23 runs against the Orioles. In the other 15 games, they have scored 45 runs, an average of three runs per game. In nine of those games, they have had both Rizzo and Gallo on the team.

The Yankees have been winning since the second game of their doubleheader against the Mets on July 4 (20-9) and since the All-Star break (15-7) and since the trade deadline (8-2), but it hasn’t had anything to do with their offense. Even in the two games when the offense went off against the Orioles, the pitching staff held the Orioles to four runs in 18 innings. Pitching has carried the Yankees this season and outside of Heaney’s first two innings on Saturday, that was the case this weekend against the Mariners.

Here is the Yankees’ pitching line for the weekend:

38 IP, 39 H, 11 R, 8 ER, 13 BB, 43 K, 3 HR, 1.89 ERA, 1.368 WHIP.

6. The power drought is still a drought. The Yankees don’t make nearly enough contact to be able to string together hits to score runs and their lack of home runs is the reason for their lack of scoring. Here’s the recent power problems for the everyday Yankees:

Kyle Higashioka (he’s now an everyday player with Sanchez out): No home runs since June 22.

DJ LeMahieu: No home runs since June 26
Gio Urshela: One home run since June 28
Brett Gardner: one home run since June 30
Aaron Judge: Two home runs since July 10
Giancarlo Stanton: One home run since July 20
Gary Sanchez: No home runs since July 20
Gleyber Torres: No home runs since July 21
Rougned Odor: One home run since July 25

Even Joey Gallo only has one home run since July 27, nearly two weeks.

7. Welcome back, Luke Voit. Voit was back because Rizzo is now out for about two weeks (at minimum), and so the lineup balance the Yankees created at the trade deadline is down to just Gallo, who has hit .162/.295/.351 in 10 games with the Yankees.

Voit was in the starting lineup on Sunday and hit fifth. In theory it made sense since Voit is a right-handed hitter and the Yankees were facing a left-handed starter (Yusei Kikuchi), and Voit has been great against left-handed pitching as a Yankee. The problem is Voit was awful in the 29 games he played in this season in May, June and July, and on Sunday, he looked like a guy who hasn’t seen major league pitching in a month and has barely seen it in 2021. Voit went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, and left five runners on. His inability to make contact (in his first two at-bats, and swung at seven pitches, swinging through six of them and fouling off one) cost the Yankees multiple chances to score a run. The Yankees ended up not scoring a run in the game.

8. Stephen Ridings was given a chance because of his dominant minor-league season, but really he was given a chance because of injuries and COVID and Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske being arguably the two least effective relievers in the history of the Yankees. On Tuesday against the Orioles, in his debut, Ridings struck out the side in a scoreless inning. Three days later, in the bullpen game, he pitched 1 1/3 perfect innings across the second and third in the bullpen games against the Mariners. On Sunday, he struck out the side again in the seventh. His line in three games: 3.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 K. At 6-foot-8 and with a triple-digit fastball and that breaking balls, he reminds me of Dellin Betances. So far, his results have been peak Betances.

When Aroldis Chapman is healthy, the “elite” relievers are Chapman, Zack Britton, Chad Green and Jonathan Loaisiga. Those four are the four Boone wants to use in the highest-of-leverage situations. Then it’s Clay Holmes, Lucas Luetge and Joely Rodriguez (who reminds me of 2009 World Series hero Damaso Marte) with that sweeping left-handed delivery. Then it’s Wandy Peralta and Albert Abreu and finally Brody Koerner. I think Ridings is already in the second tier (with Holmes, Luetge and Rodriguez) and I think he’s at the top end of that tier. I love everything about Ridings (so far). His results, his velocity, his demeanor on the mound and the way he carries himself with the media.

9. I need the Yankees to get to 96 wins for my preseason over 95.5 wins wager and because I think 96 wins would win them the AL East and avoid them playing in the one-game playoff. The Yankees are 61-50. They would have to go 35-16 to finish with 96 wins. It’s improbable, but not impossible.

There is a path to 96 wins and the division title, but it includes winning pretty much every series the rest of the season with essentially no margin for error.

The Yankees needed to win three out of four agains the Mariners to keep pace, and they did. Here is how the Yankees can get to 96 wins and possibly a division title:

Royals: 2-1
White Sox: 2-1
Angels: 3-1
Red Sox: 4-2
Twins: 3-1
Braves/Indians/Rangers: 6-2
A’s: 2-2
Orioles: 5-1
Blue Jays: 4-3
Mets: 2-1
Rays: 2-1

Again, not crazy. Also, not likely. That’s a lot of wins and not a lot of losses. That’s what happens when you piss away nearly 100 games, and the first four months of a six-month season.

10. The Yankees’ winning ways can’t stop. Not now, not for the rest of the season. Next up are the Royals a team that’s 17 games back in the AL Central and 15 games out of the second wild card and on pace for 71 wins. The Royals suck. Not Orioles level of suck, but they are a very bad team with very bad pitching and the second-worst offense in the AL. This is a series the Yankees should win and have to win. In the 13-game stretch against the Marlins, Orioles, Mariners and Royals, I thought the Yankees had to go at least 10-3. Well, they’re 8-2. A series win this week in Kansas City gets them to the needed record. With the Rays and Red Sox playing this week, every Yankees win will make up ground on one of them, and every Yankees loss will cause them to lose ground on one of them. Get ready for nearly two more months of playoff games and scoreboard watching.

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The Yankees have won 18 of their last 26 games, are 13-6 since the All-Star break and 6-1 since the trade deadline. They are as close to the top of the AL East as they have been in months and one game back in the loss column for the second wild card. Yes, Yankees baseball is fun again.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The three best things to happen to the 2021 Yankees have all happened in the last week: the trade for Joey Gallo, the trade for Anthony Rizzo and the emergence of Luis Gil. That’s how bad the first four months of the season were outside of Corey Kluber’s no-hitter in Texas, which was now nearly three months ago.

Gallo’s go-ahead, three-run, seventh-inning home run on Thursday night to beat the Mariners was the exact home run I envisioned the 6-foot-5 on-base machine hitting when the Yankees acquired him. Gallo hit the ball a mile into the air and it just kept carrying and carrying before landing in the first few rows of the short porch for the most Yankee Stadium home run you might ever see. The Yankees play half of their games in a stadium that’s 314 feet to the right-field foul pole, and yet, it took them 101 games into a 162-game season to add a major-league-caliber left-handed bat.

They didn’t add just the one major-league-caliber bat, and had they done so, their division dreams would be over and they would be buried for the second wild card. That’s because Rizzo single-handedly carried the Yankees to a sweep in Miami, and without his presence in the lineup, the Yankees get swept. It was Rizzo who played a part in all seven of the Yankees’ runs in the first two games in Miami (scored five and drove in two), reaching base in eight of nine plate appearances. And it was Rizzo who hit the game-tying single in the series finale in Miami to spark the Yankees’ late comeback. If the Yankees only trade for Gallo or only trade for Rizzo, they’re not where they are right now, which is in the best position they have been in since the first pitch of the season on April 1.

With a rotation that’s decimated by injury (Kluber, Luis Severino and now Scumbag Domingo German and Clarke Schmidt in the minors), COVID (Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery) and underperformance (Deivi Garcia in Triple-A), the Yankees were forced to start new addition Andrew Heaney against the Orioles and he took the Yankees’ only loss in the series, allowing four home runs in four innings of work (and they will inexplicably start Heaney again on Saturday against the Mariners). During all of this Nestor Cortes has somehow emerged as arguably the Yankees’ best starter (along with Jameson Taillon, who was atrocious in the first half of the season), and because of the lack of starting pitching, on Friday against the Mariners, the Yankees are going to use Wandy Peralta as an opener. Peralta (and his 5.19 ERA in 22 games as a Yankee) hasn’t pitched since July 8 because of the All-Star break and his time on the COVID list. When he takes the ball on Friday in what is essentially a must-win game, he won’t have pitched in 29 days. Thankfully, Luis Gil (6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K) was given a chance to showcase his ability on Wednesday, otherwise Nick Nelson or Brooks Kriske might be opening a game this weekend as well.

2. It’s bad enough the Yankees chose to keep Nelson and Kriske on the 40-man roster over Garrett Whitlock (1.21 ERA in 52 innings for Red Sox) and let Whitlock get away, but to know that someone like Stephen Ridings has been in the minors this season while Nelson was allowed to pitch in 10 games and Kriske in seven games is the most irresponsible things the Yankees have done since hiring Aaron Boone. Ridings was amazing in his major league debut, striking out the side in relief on Wednesday night, with a triple-digit fastball and silly breaking ball. At 6-foot-8 (making him the tallest Yankee on a team that has Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gallo), he’s the exact height as Dellin Betances and has what appears to be the same repertoire as Betances. The Yankees have possibly had Betances 2.0 in the minors all season, and yet they let Nelson appear in double-digit games, including two as the opener, and let Kriske throw 50-footers en route to an extra-inning loss in Boston. I don’t get it.

3. Just like I don’t get why Greg Allen is no longer on the Yankees’ 26-man roster, the same why I didn’t get it when Estevan Florial was removed from it. Do the Yankees really need Jonathan Davis? Are they that worried about making room on the 40-man? I can find at least seven names I would be willing to remove from the 40-man right now, and I could easily part with another five.

Allen is who the Yankees still think Brett Gardner is, but watching the two play, it’s like thinking Tyler Wade is Corey Seager. The fact that Gardner has been able to maintain his roster spot throughout this dismal season, while Allen and Estevan Florial have both gotten sent down to accommodate Gardner’s presence is an embarrassment. The Yankees forced Alex Rodriguez into retirement in early August 2016 following a Hall of Fame career and being the sole reason the organization is currently looking at only a 12-year championship drought and not a 21-year drought. Gardner doesn’t belong on this team. He never did. And ever since he became the elder statesman among position players on the team and the longest-tenured Yankee, the team hasn’t done or won anything. His clubhouse leadership hasn’t brought the Yankees anything other than an outfield logjam, and detrimental roster moves to keep him around. If the Yankees are to reach the playoffs, it’s easy to see Gardner being in the lineup, starting in center field and batting ninth.

4. To reach the playoffs, the Yankees are going to have to keep winning series, and to win the division, they are going to have to continue winning at their current rate and play about .700 baseball for two more months.

Are the Yankees good? They are now 13-6 since the All-Star break and 6-1 since the trade deadline. Or are they just playing bad teams? They have gone 3-4 against the Red Sox, 2-1 against the Rays and 2-0 against the Phillies, but are a much-needed 6-1 against the Marlins, Orioles and Mariners. Whichever it is, it doesn’t matter. The Yankees are winning, and that’s all that matters.

5. I need the Yankees to get to 96 wins for my preseason over 95.5 wins wager and because I think 96 wins would win them the AL East and avoid them playing in the one-game playoff. The Yankees are 59-49 and 10 games above .500 for the first time in 2021. (It only took 108 games.) They would have to go 37-17 to finish with 96 wins. It’s improbable, but not impossible.

There is a path to 96 wins and the division title, but it includes winning pretty much every series the rest of the season with essentially no margin for error.

6. Here is how the Yankees can get there:

Mariners: 2-1
Royals: 2-1
White Sox: 2-1
Angels: 3-1
Red Sox: 4-2
Twins: 3-1
Braves/Indians/Rangers: 6-2
A’s: 2-2
Orioles: 5-1
Blue Jays: 4-3
Mets: 2-1
Rays: 2-1

7. Not crazy. Also, not likely. That’s a lot of wins and not a lot of losses. That’s what happens when you piss away nearly 100 games, and the first four months of a six-month season.

You can swap out wins and losses among the teams however you like, except the remaining games against the Red Sox and Rays. Those have to happen. The Yankees have to go at least 4-2 against the Red Sox and at least 2-1 against the Rays, otherwise this path, which is already obstructed by leaves, debris and litter with several seemingly immovable boulders blocking the way will be become even more unlikely.

8. We’re now seeing the Red Sox team I expected to see in 2021. A team with an awful starting rotation, a shaky bullpen and three, maybe four real hitters. They have lost seven of nine, have fallen out of first place in the AL East and are barely hanging on to a wild-card berth with the Yankees, A’s and Blue Jays rapidly ascending. Given the Red Sox’ remaining schedule, their lack of talent and the tracks of the regression going right through Fenway Park, it’s not hard to see a complete second-half collapse from the Red Sox leaving them where they belong: outside the playoffs.

The Rays are a much harder sell on blowing their division lead. They have the easiest remaining schedule in the AL East and even though their lineup strikes out more than any other in the game, their pitching is too good and too deep to see them experiencing an extend losing streak or a bad two-month run. I want it to happen. I pray it happens. It’s just difficult to envision.

The focus is on the Red Sox and Rays since those are the teams ahead of the Yankees, but anyone who isn’t closely watching the Blue Jays is foolish. The Blue Jays have won eight of 10, have possibly the best rotation in the East with Hyun Jin Ryu, Jose Berrios, Robbie Ray and Alek Manoah and their lineup features George Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien and Teoscar Hernandez. I’m very, very worried about the Blue Jays.

9. I’m mostly worried about the Yankees though. While, they have been winning, aside from a couple laughers against the 31-games-under-.500 Orioles, the offense is still a mess. Anthony Rizzo single-handedly led the team to a sweep in Miami, and without him, they get swept in Miami, and Anthony Gallo’s three-run Yankee Stadium led the team to a comeback win on Thursday night over the Mariners. (It was the exact home run I have been waiting for Gallo to hit: a ball that carries just enough to barely reach the short porch in right field.) The two trade deadline additions have done their part. The rest of the everyday players, who have been with the team all season, leading the Yankees to a 53-48 record, which forced the team to acquire Rizzo and Gallo? They continue to do close to nothing.

10 That can’t continue. It’s gone on for four months and a week and 108 games. The games against the nothing-to-play-for Orioles and other AL basement dwellers are going to dry up and the non-Rizzo and Gallo Yankees are going to need to hit consistently in a way they haven’t in two years. If they don’t, the nearly improbable path to a division title will be the same path to the wild card.

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