1. The Yankees will play the Red Sox in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Tuesday, Sept. 29 at Yankee Stadium. That was made certain on Wednesday when the Yankees lost the series finale to the Twins. Now five games back in the loss column of the Rays, the Yankees would need to sweep the Diamondbacks this weekend in Arizona and have the Rays lose three of four to the A’s and Red Sox over the next four days to be where I thought they needed to be going into next week’s four-game series: two games back. But I don’t know what’s less likely: the Yankees sweeping a team with something to play for when they couldn’t even beat the Twins on Wednesday or the Rays losing three of four when all they have done is win, win and win some more to hold off the Yankees.

2. The Yankees are going to fall short of winning the division for the second straight season and for the sixth time in nine seasons under Aaron Boone. At a time when most of the league is actively not trying (there are five teams in the AL with a positive run differential) and when it’s never been easier to reach the playoffs with 40 percent of the league getting in (it’s possible one or more AL playoff teams finish under .500), the Yankees have done nothing to separate themselves from the rest of the AL. Instead, they will need to win a best-of-3 series (against the one team they needed to avoid) to reach the real postseason.

We are living last season all over again. The Yankees got off to a fast start, built up a lead in the division, squandered that lead after taking the summer months of the season off and then tried to make it all back in the final weeks of the season. Like last season, their end-of-the-season cramming strategy will fall short. While the Blue Jays allowed the division to go down to the final day with spotty play in September, the Rays have kept their foot on the gas. When the Yankees got the deficit down to 1 1/2 games in the final week of July, the Rays went 12-2 to push it back up to 6 1/2. When the Yankees cut it back down to three games in the last week of August, the Rays answered by going 7-2 to increase it again. And when the Yankees got it back down to three last Thursday, the Rays began the five-game winning streak they’re currently on. The Yankees have gone 34-20 since July 19, but the Rays have gone 36-17. The Yankees have gone 20-9 since August 16, but the Rays have gone 18-11. The Yankees have gone 10-4 in September, but the Rays have also gone 10-4. Each time the door has appeared to be open for the Yankees to overtake the Rays, the Rays immediately closed it.

3. The Rays’ payroll is going to be around $114 million for the season, or the rough equivalent of what the Yankees are paying Carlos Rodon (will finish with a half-season of starts), Trent Grisham (.703 OPS and two injured-list stays), Giancarlo Stanton (24 games played), Ryan McMahon (28 percent worse than league average), DJ LeMahieu (was released on July 10 last season) and Jazz Chisholm (.715 OPS). The Rays’ highest-paid player (Nick Martinez) will earn $13 million in 2026, which is $3 million less than McMahon and $2 million less than LeMahieu.

4. So now the Yankees will try to survive a three-game series against the Red Sox for a second straight season. Except this time the Red Sox won’t be starting Brayan Bello in a postseason series or a rookie taking a major-league mound in a winner-take-all game with just a handful of starts to his name. This time they will have Roman Anthony in the lineup and they will have Sonny Gray (2.76 ERA this season and 3.23 career postseason ERA), Payton Tolle (one earned run and four hits allowed in 13 innings against the Yankees) and Ranger Suarez (who owns one of the best postseason starter ERAs of all time). And if the Yankees do survive the Wild Card Series, they will travel to Tampa (to play at a venue they never win in) to play the Rays (a team they are 3-6 against this season) on just one or two days rest with their rotation out of order, while the Rays will have had a week off. It’s the same awful setup the Yankees had last October, a setup they deserved then and deserve now for taking the summers off as if they are educators.

5. If the Yankees had won the division and were able to host the first two games of a best-of-5 against a Rays or Red Sox team with its rotations out of order, I would have loved their chances of reaching the World Series. Because whichever of the three AL East teams survives the AL East-only bracket is going to the World Series. The Astros, Rangers, Guardians and White Sox are all jokes. But needing to best the Red Sox again and then needing to get past a well-rested Rays team with everything set up to favor them is a lot to ask. It’s doable, it’s just not favorable, which is what happens when you’re a wild-card berth.

It doesn’t matter that the Yankees have the best run differential and best team on paper. The postseason isn’t played in a vacuum, and the Yankees’ path to the World Series is now set up like the least desirable mirror maze imaginable. Beat the Red Sox and then beat the Rays with everything stacked to the Rays’ advantage (because they earned it) from rest to rotation to venue to home-field advantage? Again, it’s a lot to ask.

6. It will be a near-impossible ask if Aaron Judge is out again with a different injury. Judge left Wednesday’s game after striking out in two at-bats and coming as close to hitting a fastball as any fan picked at random would. Judge is 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and one walk since returning and looks more like Aaron Hicks before being designated for assignment than Aaron Judge. It says a lot about the Yankees’ roster construction that everyone employed by the Yankees and every fan of the Yankees knows the team’s postseason chances rest on the health of a guy who missed more than half of the season and who looks like he’s blindfolded at the plate right now.

7. The division-losing loss came in the form of a road extra-inning loss, in which the Yankees led in the 10th and 11th innings, had the bases loaded with no outs and didn’t score a run in the 12th inning and then didn’t score the automatic runner against in the 13th. How can you not be romantic about baseball? The worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020 blowing their last chance at a bye by losing such a game was like a fairy-tale story with a horrible, yet predictable ending.

8. It’s hard to win a division when you can’t beat Zebby Matthews and the Twins. The Yankees’ offense performed like a team that is content with being the first wild card. The offense was pathetic against Matthews — the kind of starter that has shut them down too many times this season, and the kind of starter they won’t see in October. There won’t be a Zebby Matthews in the postseason. There will be Gray, Tolle, Suarez and Drew Rasmussen and Shane McClanahan and so on. The Yankees’ offense is too inconsistent to make any Yankees fan feel good about October or to make any Yankees fan believe this October will be different than all of the other Octobers under this manager.

With or without a healthy, otherworldly Judge, the Yankees’ lineup has too many holes. George Lombard Jr. should be a rookie worried about playing great defense and batting ninth as he learns how to hit at this level. He shouldn’t be batting sixth for a team that thinks it can win a championship. Instead of being hidden at the bottom of the lineup under the notion that anything he gives you offensively is a bonus, Lombard Jr. is being forced into a middle-of-the-order role. He has a middle-of-the-order role because the options behind him like McMahon, Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe are all inferior to a 21-year-old with 34 career games and a .627 OPS.

McMahon isn’t a major-league player. How could he be with a .621 OPS and 72 OPS+ and an arm that can’t reach first base in the air. He does nothing well, and yet, he’s under contract for $16 million in 2027. The “Let’s See If He Can Find It” strategy didn’t work for Josh Donaldson (a former MVP who finished his career with a 129 OPS+) in 2022 or 2023, and it shouldn’t be an option for McMahon in 2027. McMahon shouldn’t be playing now, let alone next season. He shouldn’t even receive a postseason roster spot. He’s an awful baseball player with poor body language. His offensive effort on Wednesday was despicable.

9. Heliot Ramos against right-handed pitching is a disgrace and Luis Garcia against left-handed pitching is an equal disgrace. If Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger and Judge (when he’s himself) don’t put the Yankees on the board, the Yankees don’t get on the board with any consistency. Sure, Garcia (against righties) and Spencer Jones have their moments, but nothing that can be counted on. It’s hard to win when there is no expectation that nearly two-thirds of the lineup will do anything other than strike out, pop up or ground out. And that’s against the entire league and back-end starters barely in the league. What will happen when the field is cut down to only the best in 12 days and the No. 4 and No. 5 starters and middle relievers don’t see the mound? I think we know what will happen since we have seen it happen in every postseason in the Boone era.

10. It’s off to Arizona for the last road series of the season where the Yankees will try to sweep the Diamondbacks and simultaneously pray the Athletics and Red Sox can win three of four against the Rays to keep their 5.6 percent chance to win the division alive. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny. It’s no longer right in front of them, though since the end of June it likely never was. Ten games remain before a best-of-3 series I desperately wanted them to avoid. There’s no avoiding it now: Yankees-Red Sox in a couple of Tuesdays in the Bronx.

1. The Subway Series ends in a tie. After losing two of three to the Mets at Citi Field in May, the Yankees took two of three at Yankee Stadium to end the 2026 Subway Series at three games apiece. The Yankees held on to beat the Mets 6-4 on Friday, got blown out 12-2 on Saturday and won a 2-0 game on Sunday that featured six total hits.

2. Friday’s win included a three-run home run from Cody Bellinger and a solo home run from Ben Rice as the Yankees’ offense went 13-for-34 with one walk and seven strikeouts. They took a 1-0 lead in the first, had a 4-1 lead after two and a 5-1 lead after five and managed to hold on as the Mets scored three runs and put eight runners on in the final three innings.

3. The biggest takeaway from the series-opening win was the performance of Carlos Rodon: 6.1 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K. Rodon hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a start this season and has a 1.86 ERA over his last six starts and 29 innings. As I wrote going into the series, the Mets had been playing much better of late, especially their offense, so it’s not like Rodon stifled the White Sox or Reds.

4. Rodon’s performance was important because Gerrit Cole was once again a disaster the next day. After allowing three consecutive home runs to begin his start in San Diego last Sunday, Cole allowed a leadoff home run to Francisco Lindor on Saturday. Cole allowed one run in the first, two in the second, one in the third and another in the fifth. He couldn’t get through the fifth, lasted just 4 1/3 innings and gave up nine hits, including three home runs.

5. Cole is a problem. A big problem. Because the Yankees trust him implicitly, no matter how poorly he pitches. He’s going to start either Game 1 or Game 2 of the postseason because of his name and reputation and not because of his recent performance. I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but I trust Rodon more than I trust Cole. There’s a good chance Cole ruins October and the Yankees’ season.

6. If Cole doesn’t, the Yankees’ lineup against left-handed pitching may. The Yankees are going to play Heliot Ramos and Amed Rosario against a left-handed starter. One of Ben Rice or Luis Garcia won’t play, and possibly both, the way they were both held out of the lineup on Saturday. The Red Sox will use Payton Tolle and Ranger Suarez in a three-game series, meaning unless the Wild Card Series lasts two games, the Yankees will play without their optimal lineup for the majority of the series.

7. All of the platooning is tiresome. I wish the Yankees just had one lineup they would deploy no matter what hand the opposing pitcher throws with, but unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. They are going to sit some of the best bats on the team in the postseason (and weaken their defense in the process), and it just seems so unnecessary.

8. Cam Schlittler shut up Mets fans who were excited about their team’s 10-run rout on Sunday.

“It was a little frustrating yesterday, just hearing all the Mets chants,” Schlittler said. “I wanted to make sure I came in here today and shut that down.”

Schlittler threw six scoreless, one-hit innings to lower his ERA to 1.95 on the season. The single-season starting-pitcher ERA in Yankees history every Yankees fan knows is Ron Guidry’s 1.74 from 1978, which has always seemed so ridiculously insane and untouchable, and Schlittler won’t get that low with just two starts (at most) left this season, but finishing with a sub-2.00 ERA over a full season of starts (he’s at 31) is ridiculous.

9. There has been growing talk of Schlittler as the American League MVP and when you look at the seasons in which Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander won MVP awards, it’s not crazy (though I don’t think he will win).

What was crazy were Aaron Judge’s comments when asked about Schlittler winning MVP.

“He’s definitely pitching like an MVP, but they’ve got a Cy Young Award for a reason – best pitcher in the game,” Judge said. “So he’s got my vote, definitely, for the Cy Young.”

OK, Judge.

10. “The expectation is to make the playoffs, and the expectation is to win a championship,” Schlittler said. “We’re in a good spot if we keep playing the way we’re playing.”

The Yankees are going to the playoffs. But this has never been about just going to the playoffs, it’s about where you are when you get there, and right now, the Yankees remain four games in back of the Rays for the AL East after the Rays swept the scumbag Astros over the weekend. Before the Subway Series began, the Yankees were three back in the division, and I wrote they needed to cut another game off that deficit in the next nine games before the four-game series against the Rays at the Stadium later this month. Now they need to cut two games off this week to avoid having to sweep the Rays.

1. There were six homegrown Yankees in the lineup on Thursday for the series finale against the Rockies, and a seventh on the bench in Aaron Judge. The six who played led the Yankees to a 10-3 win behind a three-hit night from Spencer Jones and a three-hit night from Anthony Volpe.

2. Here is what I wrote about Volpe last week:

Anthony Volpe will be back. He will most likely be back as the team’s second baseman next season, and I would actually be OK with that. At second base, I would be OK with him being given a chance there. I wouldn’t be OK with him being given years or even a year there. I would treat him like every other player in team history has been treated other than him: perform and you will play. I would be extremely quick to pull the plug if it’s not working out after two months. I have no doubts he can field the position with the shorter throw to first, but he has to improve his hitting to league average.

Well, we didn’t have to wait until next season. After more than a month in Triple-A, Volpe was back in the bigs on Thursday, playing second base and batting ninth: two places he should have been all along. Volpe went 3-for-4 with a home run and five RBIs. The home run (a grand slam) was just his second of the season, as he accumulated 21 percent of his RBIs in 2026 in one night.

3. The home run was his ninth in his last 18 games between Triple-A and the majors. An insane run for a player with limited offensive ability, let alone power. When Jasson Dominguez said earlier this week that Volpe had turned into Barry Bonds, he wasn’t wrong. (Let’s just hope he’s Pirates Bonds and not Giants Bonds.)

4. I wasn’t too happy when Thursday’s lineup was posted without Judge’s name, but I guess 15 innings was too much for someone who needs as much playing time as he can possibly accumulate over the next two-plus weeks. I was mostly upset that Judge wasn’t playing on a day in which the Rays had already lost to cut the division deficit to three games. But the Rockies are so bad (a .377 winning percentage) that they couldn’t stop Volpe and the Judge-less Yankees.

5. “I wanted to get a lot out of it,” Volpe said of being sent down to Triple-A. “You have a game every night to try out different stuff and feel what works. You feel like it’s going to translate in case an opportunity like this comes. So there was just a lot of trial and error.”

Now imagine if the Yankees had sent Volpe down much earlier in his career instead of forcing him to play a position he couldn’t handle and continuing to have him try to hit pitching he couldn’t hit. Again, this was one game. One game against the worst team in baseball. (Let’s see how he looks against the Mets’ starters this weekend.) And it was three hits, two of which got through the infield and the other of which would have also been a home run only in Houston. There are four years and more than 2,000 plate appearances suggesting Volpe didn’t have the light bulb go off in a couple weeks of Triple-A play, but here’s to wishing he did so the Yankees can have a second baseman of the future to go along with their shortstop and center fielder of the future.

6. Max Fried was shaky, lacked control and threw too many pitches with a limited pitch count, only lasting 3 1/3 innings. Fried needed 80 pitches to get 10 outs against a Rockies lineup that made Will Warren look like Cam Schlittler on Wednesday. Fried has three starts left to get completely built up and figure things out before he starts either Game 3 of the Wild Card Series (if necessary) or Game 3 of the ALDS.

7. Michael Fulmer, John Schreiber, Ryan Yarbrough, Brent Headrick (the game was close at one point) and Luis Gil combined for 5 2/3 scoreless innings. With each scoreless appearance from Fulmer and Schreiber, it’s becoming more and more likely the duo will be a part of the bullpen for the postseason. It’s also becoming more and more likely Gil won’t be a part of it.

8.. Next up is the second half of the Subway Series with the Yankee Stadium portion. The Mets’ season has been a disaster, but they are playing much better of late and are currently riding a four-game winning streak. This is all the Mets have left in 2026. This is their postseason and their World Series. Once this weekend ends, the Mets will go back to counting down the games and days and outs left in their miserable year. Not only is it the Mets’ postseason, but their rotation is lined up as if it were with their three best starters going this weekend. It will be Nolan McLean against Carlos Rodon, Zac Thornton against Gerrit Cole and Christian Scott against Cam Schlittler.

9. The door for the division is still open thanks to the Rays’ loss on Thursday, and three games back with 16 to play is doable, simply because of the four head-to-head games remaining. While the Subway Series is played in the Bronx, the Rays will be hosting the Astros in Tampa. The Astros have a three-game lead in the West and are just a half-game behind the White Sox for a first-round bye. A big weekend against the Mets is a near-guarantee to cutting into the Rays’ lead even more.

10. The Yankees need to erase at least one more game from the deficit over their next nine games against the Mets, Twins and Diamondbacks while the Rays are playing the Astros, Athletics and Red Sox. At minimum, take one more off during those three series and the deficit will be two when the teams meet in the Bronx in less than two weeks. It starts with reminding the Mets just how bad their season has been.

1. After a wasted week on the West Coast, the Yankees are finally doing what good teams are supposed to do: beat bad teams. It wasn’t easy defeating the Rockies on Tuesday, but it was a little easier on Wednesday in a 6-1 win.

Luis Garcia gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a solo home run in the second inning and George Lombard Jr. blew the game open with a grand slam in the third, becoming the youngest Yankee other than Mickey Mantle to hit a grand slam. It was the Yankees’ first grand slam of the season in Game 145.

2. “It was a big swing to put us in front,” Lombard Jr. said, “and give us a good lead so we could win today.”

Cody Bellinger also added a solo home run as the Yankees went 7-for-31 with three walks and six strikeouts. Aaron Judge owns Tomoyuki Sugano, so when he struck out swinging against the Rockies’ right-hander in the first inning, it was as clear a sign as there could be that Judge is rusty. Judge did go on to pick up two hits in the game before being removed for a pinch runner in the eighth inning.

3. Will Warren went six innings and allowed just one earned run. Warren had given the Yankees just one quality start from the end of May through late August and now has given them two in his last two starts in wins over the Red Sox and Rockies. Warren mentioned “when it wasn’t going good there for a minute” when talking about his season, and I’m not sure how long Warren considers a minute to be since he had a 5.92 ERA over a two-month period. John Schreiber (who hasn’t allowed a hit in 4 1/3 innings as a Yankee), Paul Blackburn and Michael Fulmer pitched three scoreless innings in relief.

4. Unfortunately, the fraudulent Braves were beaten handily for a second straight day by the Rays, so the Yankees’ division deficit remains at four games. The Yankees have gone 15-7 over the last three weeks and have picked up 1 1/2 games in the standings. They desperately need to sweep the Rockies and have the Braves salvage the final game of their series against the Rays.

5. The biggest news of the day came when it was announced Jazz Chisholm would go on the injured list with a thumb injury and Anthony Volpe would be recalled. Volpe started to really hit a little over a week ago at Triple-A, while playing second base, so this call-up seems to at least be deserved. But for the fans who think Volpe figured something out in a week after struggling for four years, don’t be fooled. There are 2,080 major-league plate appearances of data to Volpe’s name. A hot week in the final week of the Triple-A season doesn’t erase four years of being the worst everyday player in Major League Baseball.

6. Would it be great if Volpe did figure something out, mashed in the majors, took playing time away from Chisholm and became the Yankees’ second baseman of the future? Yes, it would be amazing. But I’m going to need to see more than the limited schedule remaining this season to believe Volpe has figured anything out other than owning the sixth tool: having the front office believe in you to no end.

7. It will be interesting to see how the Yankees construct their postseason roster. These names are givens:

1. Aaron Judge
2. Ben Rice
3. Luis Garcia
4. Cody Bellinger
5. Spencer Jones
6. Ryan McMahon
7. Paul Goldschmidt
8. Heliot Ramos
9. Jazz Chisholm
10. Jose Caballero
11. Austin Wells
12. Ali Sanchez
13. Cam Schlittler
14. Gerrit Cole
15. Max Fried
16. Carlos Rodon
17. David Bednar
18. Brent Headrick
19. Paul Blackburn
20. Tim Hill

Does Warren get on? What about Luis Gil? Do Ryan Weathers and Clarke Schmidt do enough in two-plus weeks as relievers? Will Fernando Cruz be healthy? Have Schreiber and Fulmer done enough? Will Trent Grisham come back? Could Jasson Dominguez be a pinch runner? Would the Yankees leave Amed Rosario off? Could Volpe push himself into the equation? There are more than 30 options for 26 spots.

The Yankees carried 14 position players and 12 pitchers for the ALDS last year. Obviously, the Wild Card Series is weird in that it’s a best-of-3, so you don’t need as many starting options, and the ALDS is the “real” postseason roster.

8. I think it’s obvious Jones is the team’s starting center fielder even if Grisham does come back. Jones has an .854 OPS since July 29. He hits, hits for power, draws walks, has speed and is athletic, all traits Grisham doesn’t possess.

9. I also think Ryan McMahon may be playing himself out of a starting spot. He has one multi-hit game in the last month and one home run in the last two months. He doesn’t walk and strikes out a lot. He can get his glove on nearly everything, but then struggles to make accurate throws. He has an abysmal on-base percentage and no speed. If Volpe could hit, I would play him at second, move Chisholm back to third and stop playing McMahon. Caballero has been too poor offensively since his May IL stint to make him the starting third baseman. It will be McMahon at third in the playoffs, unless a lefty is starting and then it will be Caballero? Or Rosario? And then we will likely watch what happened in the late-June game at Fenway Park happen again with Rosario at third base in an intense atmosphere. The problem once again is that the Yankees have too many DHs on their team (Rice, Garcia, Ramos, Dominguez) and too many players making too much money to not play (McMahon, Grisham) to construct a logical roster.

10. Thursday’s series finale against the Rockies needs to result in a win. It’s Max Fried against Ryan Feltner. It’s not as lopsided as Tuesday’s pitching matchup was (because Fried will be limited by a pitch count), but it’s close. And because the Mets have their three best starters lined up for the weekend for the second half of the Subway Series, the Yankees can’t lose to the worst team in baseball.

1. Since the end of May, every Yankees fan has been waiting for the team’s best player to return to properly evaluate them and create expectations for October, and that time is now. With the return of Aaron Judge, I guess now the Yankees can be evaluated properly, and after one game, the Yankees are who I envisioned they would be offensively, and that is still a heavily flawed offense.

2. This has nothing to do with Judge, who looked like someone who hasn’t played in a game or seen real pitching in more than three months as he went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against a pitcher who can’t strike anyone out. (Gabriel Hughes entered Tuesday’s game with only 42 strikeouts in 52 2/3 innings and then struck out six Yankees in five innings.) This has everything to do with the entire lineup sitting around and waiting for Judge to do something to carry them to a win.

3. The Yankees scored one non-defense-aided run in seven innings against Rockies pitching before Heliot Ramos’ three-run home run in the seventh created separation. At the time of Ramos’ home run, the Yankees were clinging to a 2-1 lead over the worst team in Major League Baseball and were one swing away from another Cam Schlittler masterpiece (7 IP, 1 ER, 0 BB, 10 K) being wasted. Thankfully, the one swing that changed the game was Ramos’.

4. As expected, Judge’s return didn’t suddenly turn a lineup full of sub-.700 OPS into a lineup you can trust to hit elite pitching every day in October. Ben Rice went 0-for-2 with a walk, Cody Bellinger went 1-for-4, Luis Garcia Jr. went 2-for-4, Spencer Jones went 0-for-3 with a walk, Jazz Chisholm went 2-for-4, George Lombard Jr. went 1-for-3, Ryan McMahon went 1-for-3 and Austin Wells went 0-for-3. The Yankees went 8-for-30 with three walks and 10 strikeouts. They couldn’t hit the starter Hughes and his 6.19 ERA in 11 career starts, couldn’t touch reliever Mark Manfredi, couldn’t score against reliever Jaden Hill and needed a Brennan Bernardino meltdown to put the game out of reach. It was a frustrating performance even if the final score made it look better than it was.

5. This is nothing new. The Yankees’ offense has been wildly inconsistent all season, both with and without Judge. And once Judge gets more games and plate appearances under him and finds his timing, he will hit, but it doesn’t mean others will follow. After wasting a week on the West Coast during a time when the Rays went 3-4, the Yankees nearly wasted the most lopsided starting pitching matchup of their season against the worst team they will face all season.

6. Here’s what I wrote about Judge’s return and what I expected for a nonsensical load management plan last week:

The Yankees will of course institute some asinine return plan for him like playing a full game in right field and then sitting the next game and then serving as the DH for the next game and then sitting the next game and then playing right field for a full game and so on. The Yankees believe they have figured out a scientific way to beat injuries, and yet, their load plans don’t prevent injuries because injuries happen. It’s idiotic to not play Judge as much as possible when he returns because if Judge is healthy enough to play then he should play every day. He needs at-bats with a limited number of games remaining before October.

Judge was removed early from the game on Tuesday because apparently you’re more prone to injuries late in the game than early in the game.

7. “I feel great,” Judge said. “I played half a game, so I don’t know what to say about that. I respect Boone, so whatever he says, I’m going to do. I’m not happy about it.”

Judge had to have known Boone was going to remove him before the end of the game, so it’s hard to believe he was surprised by the decision. The Yankees will likely continue this charade for the next few games before eventually letting Judge play a full nine innings of baseball.

8. The Yankees’ elimination number dropped to 15 after the Rays’ 7-1 win over the Braves on Tuesday. The division deficit has to be at most what it is now (four games) for the four-game series against the Rays in the Bronx in two weeks, but you would like it to be less so a sweep isn’t mandatory.

9. With Will Warren getting the start on Thursday, the Yankees now have their rotation lined up to have Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon start the four games against the Rays. A lot can happen to a rotation in 15 days, but the Yankees at least are planning for the Rays series like it’s a postseason series.

10. It would be nice if the Braves could show up and win the next two against the Rays, but I’ll take even one win from the fraudulent Braves at this point. The Yankees have to sweep this series against the Rockies if they want to keep the division dream alive and avoid playing a best-of-3 against the Red Sox to determine their fate for the second straight season. Sweep the Rockies and get even just one win from the Braves and it’s three games with 16 to go and four head-to-head games remaining.