The Yankees finished their season-opening, seven-game homestand with a winning record (4-3) against the Red Sox and Blue Jays. I would have signed up for that prior to the first pitch on Opening Day and I’m happy with the result. Again, it could have and should have been more, but to come out of those two series with a winning record is what was needed (even if the Red Sox aren’t very good and nowhere near the level of the Blue Jays).

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Through seven games, the Yankees’ offense has been a problem. The offense has produced 24 runs this season and two of those were scored by automatic runners, so it’s really 22 runs in seven games. That’s 3.1 runs per game. That’s not going to cut it.

Last season, seemingly every day Yankees fans were told the lineup would eventually hit and they would get on a roll and they would turn it around, only to never to do any of those things. So why should any Yankees fan think the offense that underachieved all of last season won’t do the same this season, if it includes the same players?

It’s not early either. The core of this Yankees lineup has played hundreds of games as a unit, not just seven, and Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo have now been Yankees for nearly the equivalent of half of a full season. Don’t let any player, the manager, the front office or media members tell you its early in assessing the Yankees. They brought back the same team plus Josh Donaldson and it’s completely fair to evaluate them on their performance to date in 2022 because it’s been a continuation of 2021.

2. Donaldson has been dreadful in his first week as a Yankee. Sure, he drove in the automatic runner on Opening Day to beat the Red Sox in the 11th inning, but that’s all he has done. He’s hitting .185/.241/.222 with one extra-base hit and has struck out 11 times in 29 plate appearances. He deserves to be the leadoff hitter about as much as Aaron Hicks deserved to the be 3-hitter last season.

There’s always risk when rostering and playing a 36-year-old every day that at any moment he could just be finished. Time is undefeated and when it comes to baseball players in their mid-to-late-30s, it’s usually not forgiving.

Donaldson isn’t having the kind of bad luck Gallo was having in the season’s first weekend when the quality of his at-bats were good and he was hitting the ball hard and not coming out with hits. Donaldson’s at-bats have been painful. He seems to be behind in every count and when he does put the ball in the play, he’s not doing so with authority. I didn’t think the Yankees were getting the 2015-16 version of Donaldson when they acquired him, but I didn’t think they were getting what has been a near-automatic out to this point.

The Yankees will continue to bat Donaldson leadoff because of his name and his career history and hope that they didn’t just trade for a third baseman whose finished who they owe $48 million to over this year and next.

3. The problem with the Yankees’ offense is twofold: their stars haven’t hit (outside of a couple games against the Red Sox) and the bottom of their order can’t get the ball out of the infield, let alone get on base.

Jose Trevino, a career .248/.273/.366 hitter, who the Yankees acquired just before Opening Day is currently the team’s best catcher. It’s scary, but it’s true.

It’s scary because the Yankees chose this catching tandem. It wasn’t created out of necessity because of injury or some other circumstance. The Yankees purposely traded away Gary Sanchez to create the worst catching situation in the majors. Thankfully, Trevino at least had the two-RBI performance he had on Thursday night to make up for Higashioka’s atrocious start.

4. I didn’t expect anything out of Higashioka this season because I have never expected anything out of him. When a player has a .178/.226/.370 career batting line, there’s no positive expectation that can come with them, only a negative one, and Higashioka has surpassed every negative expectation with flying colors.

Higashioka hasn’t just been bad, he’s made himself unplayable. He hit a 79-hopper on the ground up the middle in his first at-bat of 2022, and since then nothing. He hasn’t had another hit. Not even a walk. In the 17 plate appearances to follow that single, he has made 18 outs (he hit into a 6-4-3 double play), mostly by hitting the ball to the shortstop (his specialty) or by striking out.

I’m not mad at Higashioka. I’m not frustrated or angry. He didn’t tell the Yankees to trade the second-best power-hitting catcher in the majors so the Yankees could inexplicably make Higashioka their starter to improve the team’s framing. He’s starting most games for the Yankees despite his inability to generate offense and his inability to throw out baserunners because who wouldn’t want to play Major League Baseball? It’s like not he’s the one who created this roster issue and he’s not the one who continues to put himself in the lineup.

Trevino should be playing over Higashioka. This isn’t a 2022 sample size. This is a career sample size and Higashioka’s career suggests this is who he is. Naming him the starting catcher wasn’t going to magically make him play like someone worthy of being a starting catcher. It didn’t work last season when Boone started giving him the majority of the catching playing time over Sanchez, and it didn’t work the year before either. Higashioka hasn’t been having these kind of offensive results for a week, he’s been having them for a career. Sanchez would unfairly lose his playing time for having a week like Higashioka just did. It should go both ways.

5. It’s hard for me to hold back on Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who like Higashioka didn’t ask to be the Yankees’ starting shortstop. I’m going to do my best to hold on a little longer with him because he’s playing a position in shortstop that hasn’t been his primary position and he’s on a new team trying to prove himself.

It hasn’t been good for the front office to date that their all-glove, high-contact offseason acquisition has been a mess in the field and at the plate through the first two series. Kiner-Falefa needed a 3-for-3 night on Thursday to get his batting average up to .200, and with the way averages jump with so few at-bats this early in the season, that should tell you how bad he was prior to Thursday when he, Trevino and Luis Severino led the Yankees to a win.

6. I love Severino. He has been my favorite Yankee for several years, and it feels good to have him back, healthy and starting games. With his litany of injuries since 2019 spring training hopefully behind him, it’s not surprising he’s having the kind of success he’s had in his first two starts against the Red Sox and Blue Jays (8 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 11 K, 1 HR, 2.25 ERA, 1.125 WHIP).

Severino has been the Yankees’ best pitcher through his first two starts, and no one should be shocked by that. He was a Cy Young contender in his last healthy season (2018), and in his late-September 2019 and 2019 postseason starts, he was really good, and last season when he came back from Tommy John surgery he was great. Severino has been an elite, front-end starter since 2017, and as long as he avoids injury, he will continue to be one. I love having him back and watching him pitch every fifth day.

7. Severino held the Blue Jays scoreless for five innings on Thursday, two nights after Nestor Cortes held them scoreless for 4 1/3 innings. Three years ago, Cortes was used as a piggyback option to the opener for the Yankees (usually Chad Green) and he couldn’t have been less deserving of the role or a spot on a major-league roster. But since changing his style last season, he has become a valuable part of the pitching staff, and a trustworthy part of the staff. (I never thought I would use “trustworthy” as a way to describe Cortes). I look forward to his starts as much as I didn’t look forward to his appearances three years ago, and his style and demeanor continues to be enjoyable.

8. The difference between last season and this season is the Yankees’ rotation is better and their bullpen is the best ever assembled. The Yankees can win games scoring three and four runs like they have in 2022 because their starters will rarely ever take them out of the game and their bullpen will be able to protect nearly every lead and hold nearly every deficit to give the offense countless chances to get back into games.

I can’t say enough about the bullpen construction and how comfortable I feel once the Yankees’ relievers start entering games.

This is what the Yankees’ bullpen did in the Red Sox series:
18.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 9 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 0.96 ERA, 0.803 WHIP

This is what the bullpen did in the Blue Jays series:
16 IP, 13 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 15 K, 1 HR, 1.69 ERA, 1.063 WHIP

This is the bullpen’s line through seven games:
34.2 IP, 19 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 13 BB, 34 K, 2 HR, 1.30 ERA, 0.923 WHIP

Even on nights when Aroldis Chapman tries his best to throw away a game like he did on Thursday, the Yankees aren’t out of options despite having already used Lucas Luetge, Miguel Castro, Clay Holmes and Chad Green, and with Jonathan Loaisiga unavailable after pitching back-to-back games. Boone didn’t have to sit by and watch Chapman single-handedly ruin a game. He was able to go back to a bullpen in which Chapman is no longer the best option and not even a Top 5 option (he’s more like a Bottom 3 option) and bring in Michael King to save the game.

9. After getting shut out on Monday (3-0), the Yankees shut out the Blue Jays on Tuesday (4-0) and Thursday (3-0). Yankees pitching held the Blue Jays to seven runs over the four games after the Blue Jays scored 20 runs in a three-game series against the Rangers to open the season.

The Blue Jays are for real. Of course they are. They are the favorite to win the American League. But I’m not as worried of the Blue Jays as maybe I should be. I’m most worried of the Rays in the AL East because the Kevin Cash Rays have owned the Boone Yankees. I’m less worried about the Red Sox than either of those two teams. I’m not worried about the Orioles at all.

What I am worried about though is the Yankees playing to the Orioles’ level. Something we saw far too often last season which cost the Yankees a chance to win the division and forced them to play the one-game playoff on the road. The Yankees’ inability to beat up on the 110-loss Orioles of 2021 ruined their season because the rest of the division beat up on them.

10. The Rays have already played and swept the Orioles in three games. With the Yankees playing the Orioles this weekend, they need to hold serve. A series win would be acceptable, but a series sweep is what’s really needed. (A series loss or Orioles sweep is an outright disaster.) As long as the Rays, Blue Jays and Red Sox are stacking wins against the Orioles, the Yankees need to as well.

The Yankees, Blue Jays and Rays are all currently 4-3. The Red Sox are 3-3. The Orioles are 1-5. The wins and losses will change, but the standings will closely resemble that order for the entire season with the Yankees, Blue Jays and Rays all about equal, the Red Sox just behind and the Orioles buried. With the non-Orioles teams in the AL East all beating up on each other and likely all playing close to. 500 against one another, the team at the top will be the team that performs best against the Orioles. This weekend isn’t just an early-season, mid-April series against the lowly, last-place Orioles. It could be the difference between getting a bye to the ALDS or having to play a best-of-3 with all games in the series on the road. It could be the difference between playing past Game 162 or not. It should be treated as such.

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It feels good to have Yankees baseball back for nearly every day of the next six (and hopefully seven) months. It feels even better that the team got off to a good start and took two out of three against the Red Sox. However, it should feel even better than it does.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Overall, it was a good weekend for the Yankees. But it could have and should have been better. (Kind of like their offseason.) The Yankees could have crushed the Red Sox with a win on Sunday night, sending the Red Sox to an 0-3 start and needing to only go 7-6 to win the season series, which is more important than ever since tiebreaker games no longer exist and the difference between going to the postseason or not could easily come down to head-to-head record. (Last season, it was the difference between the Yankees playing the one-game playoff at home or on the road.) Instead, the Yankees gave away Sunday night’s game. They had 16 baserunners in the game and left 13 on. Sure, they were unlucky at times with expected batting averages of .630, .990, .450 and .560 on balls that were outs, but they also left the bases loaded in the first and third, couldn’t score with second and third and one out in the fifth, hit into two inning-ending double plays and got the leadoff man on in five innings and only scored him once.

Yes, I went into the weekend wanting a series win, since that’s all anyone can ever want as a baseball fan. But the Yankees left a win on the table and a sweep on the table, and it’s something they did far too often last season.

2. For as frustrating as Sunday night was, the weekend as a whole was a positive, considering the Yankees recorded 87 outs and their starters only produced 31 of those outs (36 percent). Over an entire season, that’s a recipe for disaster, but in early April and coming off a shortened spring training, it’s acceptable.

I went into Opening Day with the same kind of bad feeling I went into the wild-card game with because it was Gerrit Cole against Nathan Eovaldi and because Cole can’t seem to pitch well against the Red Sox (or the Blue Jays or Rays for that matter) and because Eovaldi has dominated the Yankees ever since leaving New York as a complete bust. Two batters and six pitches into the game, the Red Sox led 2-0 and my bad feeling had come to fruition. After 10 pitches, Cole still didn’t have an out, and the Yankees were conducting their first mound visit of the season after three batters. After four batters, the Red Sox had a 3-0 lead in what ended up being a 27-pitch first for the Yankees’ “ace.”

3. After the game, Cole didn’t use the “sick my stomach” line he used after getting lit up and thoroughly embarrassed in the last game the 2021 Yankees played, but I was sick to mine. Cole had been awful again against the Red Sox (4 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 1 HR), and this wasn’t a ‘Hey, it’s the first game of the season and the first of 33 starts for him’ performance, this was the latest example in a trend of his inability to beat the Yankees’ direct competition for the AL East.

Cole might not have been pitching with a hamstring injury like he was in October, but he did have to deal with the extenuating circumstance of having his start delayed by four minutes because of the Opening Day ceremonies.

“The festivities got a little away from schedule,” Cole said as an excuse for his first-inning meltdown.

It’s not quite the cringe-worthy, humiliating kind-of line Brian Cashman gave us all a few weeks ago when he essentially said the Yankees won the 2017 World Series, but it’s embarrassing for someone of Cole’s stature to act like a four-minute delay was the reason he walked Kike Hernandez on four pitches and then gave up three straight hard-hit balls with exit velocities of 101.4, 111.8 and 91.9 mph.

4. Thankfully, Cole’s disturbing first inning didn’t sink the Yankees’ day. Anthony Rizzo launched an important two-run home run in the bottom of the first to get the Yankees on the board in their eventual comeback, walk-off win. The next day he hit another two-run home run in another Yankees’ comeback win, and on Sunday night, it was his two-run single that tied the game in the fourth. Rizzo finished the series 3-for-10 with two home runs, 6 RBIs and three walks. He was easily the Yankees’ best position player over the weekend.

When the Yankees re-signed Rizzo, I wrote Anthony Rizzo Is Not Freddie Freeman. And it’s true, he’s not. I wanted Freeman because he’s the better player and because Rizzo was coming off the worst season of his career since his rookie season nine years ago, and players in their 30s don’t usually turn their performance trajectory around once it starts to head south. (At least not since the ’90s and early 2000s when there was a way to do so.

5. Giancarlo Stanton was the other position player star of the weekend, homering on both Friday and Saturday and becoming the first Yankee to homer in six straight games against the Red Sox. He has been a different player since the start of last season, and that’s because he has been a healthy player since the start of last season. In 2018, he played the majority of the season through a hamstring injury, in 2019, he barely played, and in 2020, it was more of the same from 2019. But since last year, the Stanton I thought the Yankees were trading for back before 2018 has been available and locked in. (Except for that swing on a pitch from Hansel Robles on Opening Day that bounced before the plate.)

6. For as good as Rizzo and Stanton were in the first three games of the season, the Yankees’ bullpen was the collective MVP of the series. Here’s their line: 18.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 9 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 0.96 ERA, 0.803 WHIP. That’s simply ridiculous. That kind of line against the Red Sox’ offense shouldn’t be possible. It’s possible because this is the best Yankees’ bullpen ever.

I’m not just saying that because they pitched six hitless innings on Saturday and allowed one hit in 5 2/3 innings on Sunday. I say it because every option out of the pen is trustworthy. The Yankees don’t have to exhaust Chad Green and Jonathan Loaisiga because they have Clay Holmes and Miguel Castro and Lucas Luetge. They don’t have to always turn to those four because they have Michael King and Wandy Peralta. They have their top pitching prospecting in Clarke Schmidt out there (who was impressive on Sunday), I think everyone liked what they saw out of Ron Marinaccio’s horizontal break on his slider and we’re still waiting for JP Sears to make his debut. There’s no Nick Nelson or Brooks Kriske. Albert Abreu is gone. Brody Koerner and Justin Wilson aren’t coming into games. The Yankees’ bullpen is the deepest its ever been with reliable arms.

7. Rizzo and Stanton were great, the bullpen was outstanding and even Aaron Boone did his job well. Yes, that’s a real sentence I just wrote. Opening Day was the best managerial job he has ever done in a single game between his lineup decisions (playing DJ LeMahieu over Gleyber Torres and batting LeMahieu fifth), the order of his bullpen choices and his call to pinch hit Torres for Kyle Higashioka in the 10th. Don’t get me wrong, all of these decisions were simple and logical, but nothing comes easy to Boone, so when he does so many things right in a single day, it’s remarkable and worth praising. Boone had many chances to screw up Friday’s game and he never did.

On Saturday, he had another good game. Yes, two consecutive games of competent managing from a major-league manager. It’s been a long time since Yankees fans have experienced that. But on Sunday, Boone showed he hasn’t completely evolved into making the logical decision every time.

On Sunday, Boone sat LeMahieu. He sat his Gold Glove-winning second baseman, who hit a game-tying, eighth-inning home run on Friday, so that he could play both Torre and Aaron Hicks. A flat-out irresponsible choice for the third game of the season against a division opponent.

Prior to Opening Day, Boone spoke at length about how hard the decision was to play LeMahieu over Torres, as if he were choosing between two equal players and not the Yankees’ 2019-2020 MVP and a player who has ruined what was once a promising career. He said Torres “understood” the decision, which I’m glad an incapable defender with a .703 OPS over his last 676 plate appearances can “understand” why he’s not in the lineup. But two days later, Torres was in over LeMahieu.

8. This is going to be a constant problem this season. The Yankees’ obsession with load management and unnecessary rest (a strategy that has produced zero World Series appearances in 12-going-on-13 years) coupled with them having too many players for not enough lineup spots is going to be a daily theme. It’s not that they have too many “good” players for not enough lineup spots, they just have too many players they feel are worthy of everyday at-bats. No one more than Hicks.

The Hicks’ contract extension was a foolish mistake the day it was offered, and has grown into a regrettable decision, as Hicks entered 2021 having played in 62 percent of the Yankees’ games since the start of 2019. It’s not the money that’s the problem in ways that seven-year deals for players into their late-30s is normally a problem, since it was $70 million over seven years (and because I don’t care about the money since it’s not my money), but it is the money that’s the problem because it’s not enough money. It’s not enough money in that the Yankees don’t have to justify playing Hicks every day for a return on their investment, so Hicks can just linger on the roster for THREE MORE YEARS AFTER THIS SEASON and cause lineup chaos.

The crowded lineup is an issue because the Yankees have made it an issue. Rather than commit to playing Stanton in the outfield regularly and making Hicks the fourth outfielder, they go out of their way to clog up the DH spot with Stanton, forcing Hicks into the outfield and then forcing an infielder to the bench, and it seems like the Yankees are now going to rest an infielder everyday because of this. Hicks as a two-days-a-week player is fine with me. Hicks every day and forcing a better bat to the bench is not fine.

9. You can bet the house a regular (probably Josh Donaldson) will be on the bench in Monday’s series opener against Blue Jays and at some point in the series you will likely see Stanton (who mostly only bats) or Aaron Judge on the bench because it’s too many baseball games in a row for the Yankees’ best two hitters.

Judge needs to play. He needs to play because he’s the Yankees’ best player and the lineup’s most important hitter. And now he needs to play because he has to accumulate enough stats to try to top the $30.5 average annual salary he turned down prior to Opening Day.

I don’t know if Judge thinks he’s younger than he is, thinks he’s less injury prone than he is or think he’s the best player in baseball, but the offer the Yankees extended to him was more than fair. When reports came out he rejected an extension, I assumed he turned down like six years and $150 million. But seven years at $30.5 million per season? It’s likely he regrets that. For him to say he’s “disappointed” is off-putting. He’s disappointed he’s inaccurately valuing his own worth and turned down nearly a quarter of a billion dollars?

When Bryce Harper hit free agency, he was 26 years old, a .279/.388/.512 hitter who had won Rookie of the Year, and MVP, a Silver Slugger and was a six-time All-Star. He had only missed 17 percent of the games in his career to that point. He received 13 years and $330 million.

When Mookie Betts got traded by the Red Sox and extended by the Dodgers, he was 27 years old, a .301/.374/.519 hitter who had won an MVP, four Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers and was a four-time All-Star. He had only missed eight percent of the games in his career to that point. he received 12 year and $365 million.

Judge is going to be 30 in two weeks. When his new contract begins, he will a few weeks shy of 31. He entered this season as a .276/.386/.554 hitter who won Rookie of the Year and two Silver Sluggers and was a three-time All-Star. He has missed 24 percent of the games in his career from his major-league debut through the end of 2021.

If it’s true that Judge is seeking a nine- or 10-year-deal worth more annually than Mike Trout then good luck to him. Judge spent a good amount of his 20s on the injured list and we are expected to believe he will be healthier with age. Is he a fine wine? No, he’s the biggest everyday player in major-league history for which there’s no comparison as to how he will age, and he wants more annual money than arguably the best player in the history of the sport. I like 30-year-old Judge hitting second (or third like he did on Sunday) in the Yankees’s lineup. I will probably like 31-year-old Judge through 34-year-old Judge doing the same. But 39-year-old Judge and 40-year-old Judge making somewhere around $37 million per year and likely playing sparingly? No thanks.

10. I’m happy with the weekend, but I could be happier. I’m more content than anything since it was another missed opportunity from a franchise that has missed every opportunity in the front office and on the field in recent seasons.

There’s no off day on Monday, and there’s no break in the opponent either as the Yankees host the Blue Jays for the next four days. The Blue Jays entered the weekend as the odds-on favorite to win the American League, mostly because of their deep and vaunted lineup, and then they went out and scored 20 runs over the weekend. The good news is they gave up 23 runs. I don’t think the gap between the Blue Jays and Yankees is large, and there might not be a gap at all. We’ll start to find out on Monday night.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!