The first half of the season is over and the Yankees have already clinched the division. I forgot what it felt like to win the division so early in the season and it feels even better than I remember it feeling.

The Yankees are off until Friday when they will begin the second half. They have 74 games remaining and will play their next 38 games with only two off days in between. Thankfully, they won’t be chasing any team for the rest of the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The first “half” is over and the Yankees are 57-31. Last year, through 88 games, they were 58-30, so they are one game worse than they were last year. But because the Red Sox aren’t having the most improbable, fluky season in the history of baseball, the Yankees aren’t 2 1/2 games back in the division like they were in 2018. Instead, they have an eight-game lead over the Rays in the loss column and a 10-game lead over the Red Sox in the loss column.

Despite losing their last two games of the first half to the Rays, the Yankees did what I wanted them to do: win at least two games in Tampa. If the Yankees play .500 baseball against the Rays and Red Sox the rest of the way, they won’t lose any ground and will take a huge portion of games off the schedule.

However, it would be nice if the Yankees didn’t play like they have already won the division. Yes, I believe they already have, but that doesn’t mean they should be giving as many players days off as possible in the first week in July. This isn’t the last week of September. The lineup Sunday at the Trop was ridiculous. The Yankees had three days off surrounding the London trip and have four days off this week. Yet, they still gave their All-Star position players Sunday off because they will play a few innings on Tuesday. Sure enough, the Yankees lost by one run. The unnecessary rest will never end.

2. Masahiro Tanaka said he was surprised to be an All-Star and there can’t be a baseball fan who wasn’t surprised. Tanaka has a 3.86 ERA, 7.7 strikeouts per nine and 2.1 walks per nine. There’s nothing he’s doing that’s All-Star caliber, unless you count having one disastrous inning per start, which he’s been the best at. This is the second-worst season of Tanaka’s six-year career and somehow he’s an All-Star. I love that he’s part of the game, whether he pitches or not, because it means more Yankees are on the American League roster, I just have no idea how or why he was picked.

3. I had two friends text me on Saturday night when Aaron Hicks hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning asking me if he would receive “Ladies and gentlemen” immunity for the home run. The answer was no. The immunity standards haven’t fallen like the All-Star selection standards have. With such a big lead in the division race, Hicks is going to have to do something in the postseason to be immunity-worthy and given his history against teams like the Astros, Indians, Red Sox and the postseason as a whole, it would be nice if he did anything in the postseason.

I don’t know what it’s going to take for Hicks to removed from the top or middle of the order, but I have no idea how for a second straight season he continues to bat ahead of better and more established bats. How is Gary Sanchez batting behind him and how is Gleyber Torres hitting four and five spots behind him? Like I said last week, everything between now and Game 162 is to get ready for the postseason or not, and even without Luke Voit and Giancarlo Stanton in the lineup, it’s time for Hicks to find a home at the bottom of the order because that’s what where he better be hitting come Game 1 of the ALDS.

4. What’s left to say about Luis Cessa that I haven’t already said in nearly every Off Day Dreaming blog this season? I don’t care that he’s the last man in the bullpen or the 25th man on the roster. His most recent appearance, on July 4, led to him nearly blowing a five-run lead in the 10th inning. All he had to do was get three outs before giving up five runs and he came dangerously close to not doing so after he allowed two hits and two walks in the inning. If Cessa can’t be trusted to get three outs before giving up five runs, there’s no place for him on this team, or any major league team for that matter. We are way past the time to give someone else a chance to be the last man in the bullpen, I’m just not sure if it will ever happen. Considering he has a 5.93 ERA since April 30, there might be nothing he can do to pitch himself off the roster and out of the organization.

5. Every time I watch Charlie Morton pitch, I can’t help but think that the Yankees could have and should have had signed him. The Rays gave Morton a two-year, $30 million deal. The Yankees gave J.A. Happ $4 million more and a vesting option for 2021. Morton is 10-2 with a 2.32 ERA and 142 strikeouts in 112 2/3 innings. Happ is lucky if he gets through five innings each start.

Morton is the kind of power pitch the Yankees always go after and with the way he pitched in Houston and pitched against the Yankees in Houston, his 35 years of age shouldn’t have mattered to the Yankees in free agency since Happ’s 36 years of age clearly didn’t.

Morton beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS and I have a bad feeling they could be seeing him in Game 1 of the 2019 ALDS, and then again in Game 5, if the series were to go that far.

6. Dallas Keuchel has now made four starts for the Braves after two mediocre starts, he’s pitched seven innings and and 7 1/3 innings in back-to-back starts, allowing two earned runs in both. The Yankees could have had him for only money and now they will instead have to further dismantle their farm system to acquire starting pitching this month.

7. We are just under three weeks until the trade deadline and I have been under the impression all along the Yankees will trade for either Marcus Stroman or Madison Bumgarner. The Blue Jays showed last year at the deadline they could care less about trading with the Yankees and within the division with the Happ deal, so I don’t see there being an issue with Stroman, except that he’s currently injured. Prior to the injury, I thought Stroman was the unanimous choice for the Yankees to land, but now it seems and feels like Bumgarner. If both were healthy, I would prefer Bumgarner, not because I think he’s still the same pitcher he was five years ago like some do, but because I think a postseason run with the Yankees could revitalize his career the same way it did for Justin Verlander in 2017. Bumgarner hasn’t pitched in a postseason game since 2016, is on a last-place team this season, was on a 73-win team last season and a 64-win team in 2017. It’s impossible to know if that’s contributed to his career downswing after four straight All-Star Game appearance from 2013-16, but how could it not? Reaching the majors at 19, throwing 1,750 regular-season innings and another 102 1/3 postseason innings is what’s mainly responsible for diminished numbers, as it would be with any pitcher, though pitching in meaningless games for three straight seasons has to be part of it as well.

The Yankees won’t be getting 2016 Stroman or 2016 Bumgarner if they trade for them, but both 2019 versions are still better than most of the starting options they have now.

8. I did some math and the least amount of games the Yankees will win this season is 96, and that’s a very low number. The Yankees would have to go 39-35 in the second half to win 96 games, and that’s with a lot of games remaining against the Orioles and Blue Jays.

If the Yankees were to win 96 games and play only .527 baseball for the rest of the season, the Rays would have to go 44-27 and the Red Sox would have to go 47-25 just to tie them. So despite everyone getting upset with me last week for calling the division over after the London games, the division is over.

9. Aside from the Yankees’ already big division lead and their rather easy August schedule, the 10 games remaining between the Rays and Red Sox might be the Yankees’ greatest advantage to winning the AL East. At the same time the Rays and Red Sox play a four-game series at the end of September, the Yankees will be playing the Blue Jays, who are on pace to lose more than 100 games and will be a week away from the offseason and vacation.

10. My expected record for the Yankees for July is 13-12, and they are off to a 3-3 start, so they are right on pace. Again, that might not seem like a good record given the way the team has played through the first 88 games, but August is when they can get fat again with 13 games against the Orioles, Blue Jays and Mariners.

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

I wanted the Yankees to go to London and win one game, not lose any ground in the standings and take two more games off the schedule. They did even better, sweeping the two games and pushing their division lead out of reach for their competition.

This is going to be a fun, relaxing and enjoyable summer with no chasing for the Yankees to do. For the first time in a long time, Yankees fans can sit back during the second half and not worry about the division title or wild-card seeding.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. The division is over for the Rays and Red Sox. O-V-E-R. Yes, on July 1, with essentially half the season left, I’m calling the division for over for both the Rays and Red Sox. I called it over weeks ago for the Red Sox, but I’m eliminating the Rays from the AL East now as well.

If the Yankees were to play .500 baseball over their remaining games and go 40-40, the Rays would have to go 46-32 (.590) to tie them and the Red Sox would have to go 50-28 (.641) to tie them. Both winning percentages represent higher win percentages than both teams are currently playing to, though that doesn’t even matter since the Yankees aren’t going to become a .500 baseball team for the next three months. The level of competition in baseball this season won’t let them.

The Yankees currently have a .659 winning percentage (54-28), so let’s say they win 60 percent of their remaining games, which still might be low. That would give them a final record of 102-60. The Rays would then have to go 54-24 (.692) to tie them and the Red Sox would have to go 58-20 (.744) to tie them. So yeah, the division is over.

2. The Yankees return home from London with a two-game series against the Mets and then four games in Tampa against the Rays. The best part about having such a big lead in the division is the Yankees no longer have to win series against their direct competition. They don’t have to go to Tampa this weekend looking to win three of four to gain ground on the Rays or create more separation. All they have to do is play .500. Win two of the four and that’s four more games off the schedule and four more games off the schedule between them and the Rays.

It’s a beautiful feeling to have this type of division cushion that I forgot what it felt like. It’s been nearly seven years since the Yankees last won the division and have had only a handful of division, some only for a day or two, in that time. The second half of this season is going to be about getting healthy, staying healthy, acquiring a starting pitcher and preparing for the postseason. It’s just like the old days: the regular season is set up as a formality for the postseason. I couldn’t be happier.

3. The problem is the Yankees could go out and win 100 games again like last season or 105 or 110 and it won’t matter if they don’t get those 11 wins in October. I hate to rain on the parade of the best team in the AL, especially after they destroyed the Red Sox this weekend, but it’s the truth. Nothing matters if the Yankees don’t finish the job for the first time in a decade in October.

4. What a weekend it was for the Yankees. Putting up 29 runs in the two games against the Red Sox and ruining any small chance the Red Sox had of getting back in the division race. The Red Sox are now 12 games back in the loss column of the Yankees and two games back of the second wild-card berth. The best-case scenario for the Yankees would be for the Red Sox to play themselves out of the postseason completely since they would have the best chance of winning the AL Wild-Card Game among the competition and that would most likely set up a best-of-5 with the Yankees. The Yankees might own the Red Sox this regular season, but that would mean nothing in October, and I don’t want to find out if the Yankees can continue their 2019 success against their rival.

5. I think DJ LeMahieu should officially change his first name and replace the DJ with Derek Jeter. Derek Jeter LeMahieu. We are watching Derek Jeter at the plate when LeMahieu comes up. A contact-first, opposite-field approach that not only works, but is every bit as good as Jeter’s was. LeMahieu is up to .345/.392/.534 on the season with 12 home runs and 61 RBIs, playing first base, second base and third base. If the season ended today, LeMahieu would be the AL MVP. Remember when he wasn’t in the Opening Day lineup and was going to be used a super utility player?

6. I don’t care that Aaron Hicks hit a home run on Saturday and I don’t care that he hit that seventh-inning triple on Sunday, Hicks should never bat third for the Yankees. He shouldn’t bat higher than seventh, and even putting him seventh might be too high. The only person Hicks should ever bat higher than on this current Yankees team is Brett Gardner. That’s it.

Hicks isn’t Bernie Williams, though the Yankees keep treating him like he is. He has no business batting between Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez with Luke Voit and Giancarlo Stanton both out, and he has no business batting higher than Edwin Encarnacion or Gleyber Torres either. For some reason, the Yankees keep confusing Hicks’s ability with Torres’s ability, batting the 23-year-old star at the bottom of the order in favor of the career two-month wonder. Come postseason time, if the team is at full strength, this should be the lineup:

DJ LeMahieu, 3B
Aaron Judge, RF
Gary Sanchez, C
Luke Voit, 1B
Giancarlo Stanton, LF
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Edwin Encarnacion, DH
Aaron Hicks, CF
Didi Gregorius, SS

Unfortunately, the Yankees would likely not bat Sanchez ahead of Voit and Stanton since there’s no amount of records Sanchez can break to solidify himself as the team’s No. 3 hitter, wouldn’t bat Voit ahead of Stanton, wouldn’t bat Torres ahead of Encarnacion, wouldn’t bat Hicks behind Torres and would never bat Gregorius ninth. But that’s what the lineup should be. I don’t care about breaking up the right-handed bats since there are too many that you can’t break them up.

7. Given the odd travel schedule, playing baseball in a soccer stadium and everything being weird about the London games, it makes sense to give Masahiro Tanaka a pass for Saturday’s disaster. No pitcher pitched well in London, so it’s hard to get on Tanaka for a bad inning when Rick Porcello managed to do worse and the teams combined for 50 runs in two games. Even if you remove Saturday’s first inning from Tanaka’s season ledger, it doesn’t change the fact he has one inning nearly every game in which he lets the game get away from him.

London aside, Tanaka is the team’s best and most consistent starter right now. He’s going to get the ball in the postseason, whether it’s in Game 1, 2 or 3 and I have all the faith in the world he will pitch as brilliantly as he has in the last two postseasons. I’m not worried about his regular-season inconsistencies because I trust him more than any other Yankees starter and I know when the calendar turns to October he’s unbeatable.

8. I have a feeling if Luis Cessa let the Red Sox extend their lead considerably on Sunday, it might have finally been his last game as a Yankee. Instead, Cessa went out and pitched four shutout innings, keeping the Yankees in the game, and allowing them the chance to come back and tie the game before taking the lead for good.

This doesn’t change the fact that Cessa isn’t good and doesn’t belong on the Yankees. Give any fringe major leaguer enough chances and eventually they will be successful in some capacity. That game wasn’t Cessa turning a corner or figuring it out once and for all, it was just the last man in a major league bullpen having a good outing. Don’t be surprised when he’s now trusted in a bigger spot in the coming weeks and fails to come through. That’s who Cessa is, not the pitcher from Sunday.

9. Zack Britton is a problem. A real problem. Normally, on a team like this, a bad reliever would eventually be removed of his late-inning role and would pitch in mop-up duty or meaningless games. But because of Britton’s contract, resume and stature, he’s going to get the ball in high-leverage situations no matter what, and I’m petrified he’s going to lose a game in October, just like he did last October.

Don’t let Britton’s 2.55 ERA fool you. He has walked 20 and struck out 26 in 35 1/3 innings this season. Since May 20, he has walked 12 and struck out four in 15 innings. I don’t know what’s worse, the four strikeouts or the 12 walks. But I do know a pitcher with those kind of numbers can’t be trusted to pitch the eighth inning in close games and can’t be viewed as an elite option. It’s only a matter of time until Britton’s high walk rate and low strikeout rate translate into earned runs. He can’t pitch like this and escape damage forever and he better figure it out before it gets to that point.

10. My expected record for the Yankees for June was 15-11 and they finished 17-9, two games better. When they started the month 4-8, it looked like they weren’t going to come close to the mark I set for them, but winning 13 of their last 14 certainly helped.

The Yankees play 25 games in July. They are off today, four games for the All-Star break and again on July 29. My expected record (by expected record, I mean a record I would be content with them having) for July is 13-12. That doesn’t seem great, but with 12 games against the Rays and Red Sox, and a bunch of other somewhat decent matchups, playing a game over .500 isn’t bad. August is when they can get fat again with 13 games against the Orioles, Blue Jays and Mariners. If the Yankees are 67-40 through the end of July, they will still have a comfortable lead in the division with only 55 games left.

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

The Yankees are the hottest team in baseball, having won 11 of 12, and have opened up their lead in the division to seven games in the loss column over the Rays and 10 games in the loss column over the Red Sox. The Yankees are a good weekend in London and a bad Rays weekend from being set up to coast to their first division title in seven years.

The Yankees are off for the second straight day today and then again on Monday. They will then play six straight before the All-Star break. After the All-Star break though, they will play 38 games around one off day. The dog days of summer are about to be here, and the Yankees have set themselves up to make it a relaxing summer, one in which they won’t have any chasing to do for the first time in a long time.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees on this off day as usual.

1. Giancarlo Stanton retuned to the Yankees on Tuesday, June 18. The Yankees then gave him the Wednesday, June 19 game off and the Sunday, June 23 game off as well. He still got hurt. It’s just another example of the extra, unnecessary rest the organization feels the need to instill, which prevents nothing. Injuries happen and there’s nothing you can do about them. Somehow, the Yankees still haven’t figured this out.

Stanton slid into third base, got his hand spiked by a cleat and ended up on the injured list with a PCL strain in his knee and is now out until at least August. Another odd injury in what has become a long list of odd injuries for him this season, a now lost season.

If you’re a Yankee and you get injured, expect to go on the injured list. Aaron Boone said the tests on Stanton’s initially-diagnosed knee contusion “were good” only for his knee contusion to become a PCL strain.

If Stanton were to come back on August 1, which he won’t, there will be 55 games left in the season at that point. If he were to play in every game, which is impossible since there are already two doubleheaders scheduled along with all the extra unnecessary rest he will receive, he would finish the season with 64 games played (his nine games played so far plus the 55 remaining games). But Stanton isn’t going to come close to playing in 64 games this season and the Yankees would be lucky if he finished the season with 54 games played, the equivalent of one-third of the season.

Stanton will come back sometime in late August since Brian Cashman said, “I would say it’s safer to look into August,” when asked about his return, and because we know of the potential setbacks or maybe inevitable setbacks is a better phrase to use when talking about Stanton, I don’t see him coming back before August 15. When he does come back, he will be inserted into the middle of the order and will be asked to return to the height of his abilities in only a few weeks times leading up to the postseason.

After Stanton’s performance last October and what’s gone on with him this season, he can’t afford to be swinging-and-missing his way out of the batter’s box down the stretch and again in the postseason, and the Yankees can’t afford it either. He won’t have much time to get back into a groove and make sure that doesn’t happen, if he’s not back until late August, and I don’t like where this is all headed.

2. The Yankees are in London and Clint Frazier is in Triple-A. The Yankees have decided using Brett Gardner as an everyday player, which has gone as bad as expected this season, and letting Mike Tauchman, who doesn’t belong in the majors, serve as the fourth outfielder is better than having Frazier on the roster.

Cashman cited Tauchman’s defense as the reason why he’s on the team for the London trip, saying, “This ballpark has a lot of foul territory. The corner would be be best served with having somebody that can really go get the ball and go a long way.” Does that mean Tauchman might actually start or play in this series? I sure hope not.

Cashman also said Frazier isn’t being punished for taking three days to report to Triple-A after being sent down.

“His send-down was tougher than most because of how good he performed here and how much he helped this club. If he needed the extra time to process being the odd man out, I was OK with that personally. It had nothing to do with him not being selected coming here.”

If the Yankees already had their roster set and departed for London prior to knowing Stanton would need more than just the two off days to recover from his knee injury, then these decisions make a lot more sense. But if Frazier isn’t on the 25-man roster on Tuesday when the Yankees return to play the Mets at Citi Field, then we’ll know the truth.

3. This latest Stanton injury could possibly save Frazier’s Yankees tenure. I still think the team is going to move him in a deal for starting pitching after botching better money-only pitching options, but the Yankees might be forced to keep Frazier now.

Gardner can’t play every day. He can barely play as a role player. He’s a near automatic out at the plate, and in the field, it’s obvious he’s not what he once was, with his arm looking like it left him in the offseason. Sure, he can play this weekend against the Red Sox, but after Monday, the Yankees play six straight heading into the All-Star break and then after the All-Star break, they play 38 games with one day off. There’s no way the team can think Gardner or Tauchman is going to be in the lineup for those games.

Stanton has proven he’s both prone to injury and doesn’t heal quickly. An August return seems reasonable for a PCL strain, but no one would be surprised if August become late August and late August became September. The Yankees have a capable everyday player in their system with Frazier, and maybe, just maybe he won’t be dealt for starting pitching.

4. The more James Paxton sucks, the better the chances are the Yankees make a rash decision for starting pitching at the trade deadline. And nearly every start, Paxton sucks.

Wednesday was Paxton’s 13th start of the season and for the sixth time he failed to go five innings and for the 10th time he failed to go six innings. I was one of the fools who thought his back-to-back starts against the Red Sox and Royals in April were him turning a corner, but since then he’s pitched to a 5.35 ERA in eight starts and has landed on the injured list once. Paxton hasn’t been any different as a Yankee than he was as a Mariner: a left-handed starter with lights-out stuff who can never seem to put it together consistently.

I have no idea how the Yankees have been able to build a seven-game lead over the Rays in the loss column and a 10-game lead over the Red Sox in the loss column with their replacement lineup for the first two months of the season coupled with their disastrous rotation. Outside of Masahiro Tanaka right now, which Yankees starter does anyone feel good about? Paxton? No. CC Sabathia? No. J.A. Happ? No. The opener combination of Chad Green and Nestor Cortes? No.

The Yankees are going to go out and get at least one starting pitcher and then hope Domingo German comes back and performs well and that Luis Severino might even come back at some point too. The Yankees, as currently constructed, are built to win in the regular season since most of their games are against teams not even trying to be competitive, but they are hardly built for the postseason, and that’s what this is all supposed to be for.

5. I love DJ LeMahieu. How can you not? Expected to be somewhat of a super utility player despite being a two-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove winner and former batting champion, LeMahieu went from being on the bench on Opening Day to becoming the Yankees irreplaceable leadoff hitter. LeMahieu leads the league in hitting with a .336 average, is three home runs shy of his his season-best total (15) with 82 games left, has a .385 on-base percentage, rarely ever strikes out, and on top of all that, he has played first base, second base and third base. I have said before he is essentially Derek Jeter at the plate and after a few years of watching too many strikeouts from the team and too many home run-or-nothing players come through the organization, LeMahieu is a breath of fresh air and as fun to watch hit as anyone on this team.

6. Edwin Encarnacion has been bad in his small nine-game sample size with the Yankees. Sure, he’s hit three home runs, which is what the Yankees got him to do, but he’s batting .152/.263/.455 in pinstripes. I thought he was going to come over to the Yankees and immediately go off the way so many other veterans have once they put on the pinstripes, but I guess it’s going to take Encarnacion a little time to get going. That’s not a problem since the team is winning and has gone 8-1 in the nine games he has played, but he’s going to hit somewhere in the middle of the order because of his career and reputation, so it would be good if he hit like someone deserving of his lineup spot and not like Kendrys Morales.

7. Speaking of Morales, I feel safer now that he’s no longer a Yankee. Knowing he was still part of the organization and looming on the injured list with a chance to return and unfairly take a roster spot from an actual worthy major leaguer made me fearful. But now Morales is gone and I and all Yankees fans don’t need to worry about seeing his bat-only game (minus the bat) in the lineup and a few weak groundball outs in every game he plays. Morales finished his Yankees tenure batting .177/.320/.242 with a home run and five RBIs in 19 games. He was every bit as bad as his .562 OPS suggests he was and I have to think the Yankees were his last chance in the majors. At least he provided the Yankees with a 3-for-5 day on June 11 in what will likely be his last major league game.

8. I don’t think I have to tell anyone how ecstatic I was for Jonathan Holder to be sent down. Thankfully, the final straw for Holder came in a game win which the Yankees still won, and he didn’t cost the team yet another game in the standings on his way out.

My dislike of Holder isn’t really his fault. He’s not very good and he’s used in spots in which a relief pitcher who is actually very good should be pitching. That’s not Holder’s fault. It’s not his fault the front office and Boone feel he’s capable of pitching in high-leverage situations, and it’s not even Holder’s fault when he blows leads or loses games. He shouldn’t be allowed to. He should pitch when the Yankees are up by a lot or down by a lot and have little to no chance of blowing the game or winning the game. If he were used the way his abilities say he should be used, I would have no problem with Holder. Unfortunately, for the second straight season, the Yankees asked him to be a pitcher he’s not, and now he’s in Triple-A, where he can’t ruin anymore games.

9. Holder realizes he deserves to be sent down and everyone knows he should have been sent down a long, long time ago before it ever got to this point. Green was sent down three weeks into the season and is much more established and has a much better career resume than Holder. But Holder has to be wondering, like everyone else, how Luis Cessa is still a Yankee.

The answer is: options. Cessa is out of options and the Yankees would have to pass him through waivers to remove him from the 25-man roster. So because the Yankees are worried about one of other 29 teams claiming Cessa, they continue to roster a pitcher who has no role, but does have a 5.11 ERA to go along with his 4.79 career ERA. Cessa has pitched in 22 games this season and has allowed runs in 11 of them. Every other time he comes out of the bullpen, he’s giving up runs and many times, they come as a result of a home run, which he’s now allowed eight of in 37 innings.

For as bad as Holder has been, Cessa has been worse and worse for a long time. But for some reason, the Yankees are scared they might lose him.

10. The Yankees began June 4-8 and are now 15-9 in the month. My expected record for them this month was 15-11, which seemed impossible a couple weeks ago, and now they can’t do any worse than it.

I will gladly sign up for one win in London this weekend, which would keep the Red Sox 10 games back in the loss column and take two more games off the schedule, and more importantly, two more games between the two teams off the schedule.

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