I think people forget how much Nathan Eovaldi sucked as a Yankee.

Yes, Eovaldi had an impressive 23-11 record in two seasons, 51 starts and three relief appearances for the Yankees, but that win-loss record is very deceiving. In 2015, Eovaldi received 5.75 runs of support per start, and only 10 of his 27 starts were “quality”. In 2016, it was much of the same, as he received 5.54 runs of support per start, and only eight of his 24 starts were “quality”. As a Yankee, Eovaldi pitched to a 4.45 ERA and 1.387 WHIP and only struck out 218 in 279 innings (despite throwing 100 mph), but somehow posted a .676 winning percentage. He was as average as average can be, and anything other than the “Nasty Nate” nickname the Yankees gave him on social media. With an arm like his, there’s a reason why the Dodgers and Marlins gave up on him, allowing him to become a Yankee: because he isn’t good.

If missing nearly two years and then having a few good starts against the worst teams in the majors can completely erase the rest of your career, then every mediocre starter should sit out for a couple years. The perception of Eovaldi as a starting pitcher has changed so much because of 48 1/3 post-Tommy John surgery innings that a lot of people are willing to completely disregard his other 739 career innings.

Since his return on May 30, Eovaldi no-hit the A’s for six innings, one-hit the Nationals in six innings, allowed two earned runs over six innings to the Marlins, and on Sunday, he one-hit the Mets over seven innings (and carried a perfect game into the seventh in that performance against the Mets). Supposedly, the Yankees had a scout at Eovaldi’s dominant outing at Citi Field, so naturally some Yankees fans want a reunion with Eovaldi because he has been unhittable against two of the worst two teams in baseball, an underachieving disaster and a respectable .500 team. Unfortunately, the Yankees don’t need another start can shut down teams counting down the days until the end of the season. They need a starting pitcher who can beat other playoff-bound teams. A starting pitcher who can win in the postseason. Eovaldi is far from that.

In his other four starts, Eovaldi was his usual self, needing nearly 100 pitches and sometimes more to get through five innings. In three of those starts, he faced the Yankees, Mariners and Astros, all of which will be in the postseason. His line in those games: 18.1 IP, 19 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 1 BB, 13 K, 7 HR, 5.89 ERA, 1.093 WHIP. That’s the real Eovaldi, and I’m going to pass on the guy who gave up seven home runs in three games to actual Major League hitters. I think the Yankees will too.

On Saturday, the Yankees faced J.A. Happ, another name the team has been connected to because of his expiring contract and because of his success against the Red Sox. Like Cole Hamels’ start earlier this season against the Yankees, Happ had a chance to show that he can handle a real lineup in a pressure situation. The pressure in this situation being the Yankees needing to win every game to keep pace with the Red Sox and Happ needing to pitch well in an audition to join a contender. Happ’s audition didn’t last long.

The Blue Jays’ left-hander gave up back-to-back home runs to lead off the game and then walked the next two batters. After back-to-back strikeouts, he gave up a two-run double, and the Yankees had a 4-0 lead. Happ needed 34 pitches to get through the first inning. In the second inning, he loaded the bases with two walks and a single before bouncing back to get out of the jam unscathed. But in the the third, after a leadoff walk, a lineout, a strikeout and another walk, he was removed. Jake Petricka came in and further ruined Happ’s day and ERA by giving up a two-run triple on his second pitch. Happ’s line: 2.2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 6 BB, 5 K, 2 HR.

I know Happ is better than that. I have seen him be better than that. But he’s 35 now and has a 4.44 ERA and unless he gets traded to a postseason team, he won’t pitch in a bigger game in 2018, and he was awful. Yes, one start is the smallest of sample sizes, but the postseason is all about small sample sizes, and the Yankees can’t afford to add the wrong starter for the final two months of the season and the postseason. He’s still a better option that Eovaldi.

Domingo German has been the answer to Jordan Montgomery’s rotation spot, but his inconsistency might end that, and Jonathan Loaisiga looked he might be the answer to Masahiro Tanaka’s before suffering shoulder inflammation. I don’t think Luis Cessa is the new answer to that spot, and I don’t trust him to be either. That would leave Justus Sheffield as the next starting option. I’m all for Sheffield being given a real chance to be part of the rotation, but with the way the Yankees have babied their starting prospects over the years, I know I can’t count on that idea (even if has the ability the biggest difference-maker the Yankees could potentially add).

I definitely don’t want Eovaldi to a Yankee again since I didn’t want him to be one for the first time. I also don’t want Happ or another rental pitcher like him to be one if the price is anything other than a couple prospects that are nowhere near the majors and most likely will never reach them either. A trade for Jacob deGrom isn’t happening and I don’t think I want to give up current Yankees and more Major League-ready prospects for someone who could be done every time he throws a pitch. The same goes for Madison Bumgarner. But even if I did want either, they are both most likely unavailable.

The Yankees’ best bet is either Happ or Cole Hamels, who I petitioned for earlier this season. Either will be a salary dump and the return would be players without a spot on the Yankees prospects nowhere near helping the Yankees. Either will be better than Sonny Gray (who’s the reason the Yankees need to add another starter), and will be more reliable and stable than Luis Cessa or their other in-house options.

Outside of the Gray trade last year, rarely, if ever, has someone been connected to the Yankees and they eventually trade for them. Usually, out of nowhere, the Yankees are reported to be close to acquiring a player, and five minutes later, a deal is done. Neither Happ or Hamels has been connected to the Yankees of late. One of them needs to be their guy, and they should go out and get one of them.

If I got called up to the Yankees today, I would bat eighth ahead of Gleyber Torres in the order. It wouldn’t matter that I haven’t seen live pitching in a long time and have never seen live pitching anything close to resembling what I would see at the Major League level. All that would matter is that I was a player on the team, and that’s good enough to bat ahead of the 2018 American League Rookie of the Year. I wish you needed more of a resume or any credentials at all to bat ahead of the 21-year-old batting .296/.353/.560 with 15 home runs and 42 RBIs in just 61 career games. Unfortunately, you don’t.

On Sunday, Torres batted fifth, and hit a three-run home run off of David Price in the first inning. Had he batted at the bottom of the order, as he usually does, he wouldn’t have come up in the inning. It was just the latest example of why Torres should always bat in the top half of the order. But on Monday night, the Yankees’ best hitter not named Aaron Judge was once again the Yankees’ No. 9 hitter. All he did was have his 18th multi-hit game of the season with three hits, draw a walk and pick up his 26th extra-base hit.

Torres has now batted ninth in 40 of 60 career starts, and in his other appearance, as a pinch hitter, it was also as the 9-hitter. He has batted fourth once, fifth 10 times, sixth twice, seventh twice and eighth four times. Despite having the best batting average on the team and second-best on-base and slugging percentage, Aaron Boone keeps batting him ninth.

There is this idea that moving other players in the lineup down would cause a disruption in the clubhouse or possibly hurt the feelings of Major League players making millions of dollars to play baseball. There is another idea that Torres makes the lineup longer and that he acts as a second leadoff hitter and that he’s comfortable there. I don’t know which idea is worse: the idea that seniority and not performance should create the lineup or the idea that giving more at-bats to lesser hitters is the way to go because Torres is doing well at the bottom of the order. If that’s the case then Derek Jeter should have continued to bat ninth for 19 years since he was doing so well in that spot, and Judge should still be batting eighth from last year’s Opening Day since he dominated there.

It would be one thing if Torres was batting ninth because he was a struggling rookie that the organization wanted to give everyday at-bats. But he’s proven to be a force in the lineup, capable of handling any pitcher in the game and he’s being treated like a glove-first middle infielder.

On Monday night, Torres hit ninth behind Kyle Higashioka, the near-career minor league who got his first Major League hit on Sunday. Last week, Torres hit behind Neil Walker, who should be expecting his release at any second, and many times Torres has hit behind Austin Romine, who is crashing hard from his early-season offensive success and shutting up any idiot who thought he should be the starting catcher over Gary Sanchez. None of those lineups were as bad as when Torres batted ninth three straight games at Citi Field behind Masahiro Tanaka, Domingo German and Luis Severino.

I thought Boone was supposed to be a manager who happily invited statistics into his lineup building and in-game strategy, but this isn’t even about using sabermetrics or advanced data. This is about using common sense. Boone continues to make questionable decisions in a season in which one game might decide if the Yankees win the division or play in the one-game playoff, and the decision to keep batting Torres ninth is the worst of them all.

Meanwhile, Greg Bird is being treated like the player he’s projected to be and not the player he actually is as he continues to bat in the heart of the order. Thanks to 242 good plate appearance in 2017, the Yankees have forgotten about the rest of Aaron Hicks’ career as he continues to either bat leadoff or no lower than sixth as if he’s Bernie Williams and not just a former first-round pick, who has had a couple good months over six years. Day in and day out, Didi Gregorius is the team’s No. 3 hitter even though he’s batting .210/.257/.323 with five home runs and 15 RBIs in 46 games since May 4 with absolutely no plate discipline. Torres, on the other hand, keeps mashing and keeps batting ninth.

People think complaining about the batting order is ridiculous because the Yankees are 52-30 and on pace to win 103 games. Maybe in another season it would be ridiculous, but in this season where 103 wins might mean hosting the wild-card game instead of going on to the ALDS, every win and every game and every decision and every at-bat matters. Right now Torres is getting less at-bats than he should be because he bats ninth. That could be the eventual difference between winning a championship and losing one random home game to end the season.

After the Yankees won 16 out of 17 games between Apr. 21 and May 9 to go from a 7 1/2-game deficit in the AL East to a one-game lead, I thought they would spend the rest of the season running away in the division. That hasn’t happened, and despite going 26-16 in their next 42 games, the Yankees trailed the Red Sox by a 1/2-game in the division (though the Yankees have played four fewer games) entering this past weekend.

The Yankees have been unable to put the Red Sox away and remove themselves from the possibility of playing another dreaded one-game playoff as a wild-card team. This weekend was a chance for the Yankees to create more separation in the division en route to what should be the team’s first division title in six years.

FRIDAY
After’s the 8-1 win in the series opener, CC Sabathia’s ERA improved to 3.02 on the season, for by far the second-best on the team behind Luis Severino. Sabathia could keep pitching to 3.02 this season and the next season and the season after that and for another decade and I would still be nervous every time he starts against a contending team.

It’s not that I don’t trust Sabathia, it’s that he has one way to pitch and that’s with perfect command. His repertoire now induces a lot of weak contact, which is why he has been successful in his reinvention, but his repertoire also leaves him vulnerable to right-handed batters if he isn’t perfect with his location. Thankfully, he’s had his command a lot this season. Sabathia gave up one earned run over seven innings, and thanks to the offense, that was more than enough.

Miguel Andujar continued to try to stay with Gleyber Torres in the two-horse AL Rookie of the Year race with an RBI single in the second and a two-run home run in the fourth. Greg Bird added a pair of home runs on the day Brandon Drury was recalled from Triple-A to give himself some breathing room for the starting first base job, and the Yankees cruised to an easy 8-1 win. It’s always refreshing to be able to relax and get a blowout win. It’s even better when it’s against the Red Sox.

SATURDAY
I was at my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s birthday, and as Sonny Gray took the mound in the first, my dad joked how Sonny Gray’s always referred to as “Sonny Gray” and not just his last name like every other player. The FOX broadcast drove home my dad’s point by calling Gray by his complete name all night.

Before first pitch, my dad, this time not joking, let it be known how much he despises Gray. Gray quickly got the first two outs of the inning and my dad went to the kitchen. When he returned, it was 4-0 Red Sox and he wasn’t surprised at how quickly the game got out of hand with Gray pitching.

Gray got the first two outs on 10 pitches and then it went single, walk, single, grand slam. Gray ended up needing 36 pitches to get out of the inning.

The game was over after the top of the first with Chris Sale pitching for the Red Sox. I figured the Yankees could at best get three runs off Sale, so now trailing by four, the rest of the game was a formality. I felt bad for the Yankees fans in attendance who had paid and wasted their Saturday night sitting in 92-degree heat, which felt way worse with New York City humidity, to essentially watch a 1/2-inning game. Gray gave up two more runs in the second and another pair of singles in the third before he was finally removed from the game.

I thought Aaron Boone should have kept Gray in the game. The game was already out of reach in the first and now it was 6-0 in the third with two on and one out. Why remove Gray from the game and asked the bullpen to get 20 outs on a humid night? Why ruin the bullpen for the next few days because of Gray’s incompetence? Let Gray throw 110 pitches and see how far that could get you and then take him out of the game. He clearly needs to work on things, and the only way to do that is by pitching. The game was already lost, it’s not like the Yankees were going to come back.

Gray threw only 68 pitches in yet another loss. His line: 2.1 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. It was a good thing after the game he finally held himself accountable for his latest egg instead of deferring to his “I had good stuff” line he had in past starts. Here is Gray’s combined line in two starts against Boston this season: 5.1 IP, 14 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 1 HR, 20.38 ERA, 3.377 WHIP. If the two teams meet in the postseason, there’s no way Gray can start a game. Then again, there’s no way he can even be on the postseason roster at this point.

SUNDAY
Luis Severino started the series finale and that meant a Yankees win. You didn’t have to stay up to hear the awkward Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team. With Severino going, you could go to bed knowing the Yankees would win. And they did.

Severino shut out the Red Sox for 6 2/3 innings, lowering his ERA to 1.98 and improving to 13-2 in what is shaping up to be a Cy Young-winning season. Now that Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole have come down from their unsustainable early-season success, Severino has emerged as the best pitcher in the American League. Actually, he’s the best pitcher in baseball.

Severino didn’t need to be as good as he was thanks to a four-run first, a two-run second and a three-run fourth, but it was good to see the 24-year-old ace making $604,975 this season outpitch David Price, who makes nearly double that per start.

Price got rocked by the Yankees in Boston in April and then backed out of his start in May in New York against them, citing a sore arm from playing video games. The Yankees didn’t even have Gary Sanchez for this game, who hits Price better than anyone anywhere, and they still touched him up for eight runs and five home runs. Three of those five home runs came off the bat of Aaron Hicks in what was the most improbable feat of the season. I have no idea what to make of Hicks as a player and whether or not he’s a first-round bust or serviceable everyday player or a potential All-Star. Maybe I’ll never know. Sunday did nothing other than confuse me more.

The weekend consisted of three blowouts, and we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know about the best two teams in baseball. We already knew CC Sabathia could shut down the Red Sox and Eduardo Rodriguez is inconsistent. We already knew Sonny Gray sucks and Chris Sale is dominant. We already knew Luis Severino is the best pitcher in baseball and David Price has no chance of every beating these Yankees. We already knew both offenses are powerful and both lineups deep. We already knew the Yankees are slightly better than the Red Sox, and winning two of three, proved it.

See how many catchphrases the Yankees play-by-play man will say during a broadcast. (As seen on The Michael Kay Show on YES Network and heard on ESPN Radio New York.)

CARD 1

CARD 2

CARD 3

CARD 4

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episode after every game during the season.

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

That was bad. It wasn’t as bad as losing 9-1 at home to the Marlins to fall to 8-8 on the season, but it was still bad. So much for the 2018 Yankees haven’t loss three straight games. The Yankees were swept at the Trop by the under-.500 Rays, and their four-game loss column lead in the AL East is now two.

But it wasn’t just that the Yankees were swept by a team, whose starting lineup features not a single player that would start on the Yankees. It was how they were swept in the three games. Here is a breakdown of the embarrassment that was the weekend in Tampa Bay.

FRIDAY
The Rays went with a bullpen game against the Yankees and it worked as the six pitchers they used combined to allow one run in the Yankees’ 2-1 loss. It wasn’t that the Yankees didn’t have baserunners in the game, as they had five hits and six(!) walks and were able to plate a single run. The Yankees left two on in the first, two in the second, one in the third, one in the fourth, one in the fifth, two in the seventh and one in the ninth. They went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. In the ninth, it looked like they might produce some late-game magic when Miguel Andujar singled to lead off the inning, but Gleyber Torres flew out and Brett Gardner grounded into a game-ending double play.

CC Sabathia was in bend-but-don’t-break mode all night, as he put 11 runners on in 5 1/3 innings. He gave up the two runs though only one was earned thanks to an error by himself. It was another game in which Sabathia pitched well enough to win and didn’t as he now has four wins this season despite pitching to a 3.18 ERA.

It was a frustrating one-run loss with the Yankees leaving runners on base in nearly every inning, but it was one of those games that happens over the course of a 162-game season. Even against the Rays.

SATURDAY
Prior to this season, Wilmer Font pitched to an 11.57 ERA over seven-career innings in the majors between 2012-2017. Earlier this season, he put 19 runners on base and allowed 13 earned runs in 10 1/3 innings for the Dodgers and was traded to the A’s. Then for the A’s, he put 17 runners on base and allowed 11 earned runs in 6 2/3 innings and was traded to the Rays. Last week against the Yankees, he “started” and allowed one earned runs over 4 1/3 innings. On Saturday, he “started” against the Yankees again and shut them out over 5 2/3 innings. So Wilmer Font, the 28-year-old journeyman, has pitched to the following line in his last two appearances, both against the Yankees: 10.1 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K, 1 HR, 0.87 ERA, 0.874 WHIP. There’s nothing to say.

I think I have made it clear how it’s hard to like Sonny Gray when someone so inconsistent needs to be babied as if he were an actual ace. Whether it’s whining his way to a personal catcher or talking about how “good” his stuff was on a night in which he got rocked, Gray is hard to root for. Except I have to root for him because he’s part of the Yankees rotation, and when he sucks, the Yankees lose.

Gray sucked again on Saturday. Sure, it didn’t matter if he gave up one run or four like he actually did since the offense had no answer for Font for the second time in six days, but it was frustrating to watch the guy the Yankees traded for to slot behind either Luis Severino or Masahiro Tanaka pitch poorly yet again.

Gray put the team behind right away in the first after giving up a leadoff single and one-out double. Then in the third, he gave up two more. He settled down to retire 15 straight to get Yankees fans thinking that this start might not have been so bad, but then he gave up a solo home run on an 0-2 pitch for good measure before being removed.

Here’s how wildly inconsistent Gray has been this season:

4 IP, 1 ER
6 IP, 3 ER
3 IP, 6 ER
3.1 IP, 5 ER
4.2 IP, 3 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
5 IP, 5 ER
8 IP, 1 ER
3.2 IP, 5 ER
6 IP, 1 ER
8 IP, 0 ER
5 IP, 4 ER
5 IP, 2 ER
6.2 IP, 4 ER

Every time you think he might have turned the corner, there’s another bad start around that corner. Yes, he’s better on the road (3.28 ERA) than at home (7.22 ERA) though he wasn’t very good on the road on Saturday and he wasn’t good once again with his personal catcher. But I guess it didn’t matter since you can’t win if you don’t score, and the Yankees were shut out for the second time this season, and had scored one run in the first 18 innings of the series against the following pitchers: Ryne Stanek, Ryan Yarbrough, Diego Castillo, Chaz Roe, Jose Alvarado, Sergio Romo, Wilmer Font and Jonny Venters.

SUNDAY
One run and two losses in two games against the Rays. I knew the Yankees were going to win on Sunday, avoid getting swept and avoid losing three straight for the first time this season, so I wagered on the Yankees.

Domingo German immediately made me regret my decision when he allowed two runs and three extra-base hits in the first inning. But Miguel Andujar answered with a three-run home run in the second and I figured I was right with my expectations for the game. German quickly destroyed the idea of a shutdown inning with a leadoff home run to tie the game in the bottom of the second, and in the third, he gave up three more runs to put the Yankees behind 6-3.

In the fourth, the Yankees had first and second and no one out, but Aaron Hicks struck out and Andujar grounded out with the runners moving to second and third on the ground out. That brought up Neil Walker, who was inexplicably batting above Torres in the order. Walker saw five pitches in the at-bat, didn’t swing at any of them and struck out looking to end the inning.

Because Walker has the best first name in baseball, I avoided getting on him earlier in the season when he deserved any and all criticism. (He was hitting .164/.219/.194 with two doubles and four RBIs on the season on April 27.) Then he went off over the next four weeks, batting .281/.379/.456 with two home runs and 10 RBIs as the catalyst in every Yankees rally, and it looked like the guy who the Yankees paid $4 million to for the season had been a product of a late spring training arrival.

But since May 27 and the return of Greg Bird, which has kept Walker on the bench, Walker is batting .094/.171/.094 with no extra-base hits and no RBIs. No one can blame Walker for being a regular his entire career and then struggling in his new role of utility infielder, but that’s all he will be on the Yankees at this point, barring a series of injuries. He isn’t going to play over Torres or Andujar, and if Bird continues to be an automatic out, it’s more likely that Brandon Drury will get a regular shot at first base over Walker. Walker either needs to adapt to his infrequent playing time, or unfortunately, I will lose having a Neil on the Yankees.

A Brett Gardner walk and back-to-back doubles from Didi Gregorius and Giancarlo Stanton in the fourth cut the Yankees’ deficit to 6-5, and Stanton hit a leadoff home run the eighth to tie the game. And it would stayed tied until the 12th inning.

I thought things would be different with Aaron Boone as Yankees manager. I thought he would throw out the idiotic strategy of using relievers in set innings and only using your closer in a save situation. But Boone has been identical to Joe Girardi with his in-game managing, creating set innings for his relievers and using the most expensive reliever in the league to pitch to a statistic.

After using his entire bullpen aside from Aroldis Chapman and Chasen Shreve, Boone went with Shreve for the bottom of the 12th because the Yankees didn’t have a lead of three runs or less. It didn’t matter to Boone that he would need to get through the 12th for the Yankees to have a chance to ever getting the lead in the game, so he went with Shreve. The Yankees bullpen had pitched eight scoreless innings in relief of German, and all it took was one pitch from Shreve to stop that streak and end the game.

I don’t think Shreve will be a Yankee as of Monday night in Philadelphia. He now has a 5.19 ERA and 1.654 WHIP and in his last eight innings, he’s allowed 18 baserunners and nine earned runs, including four home runs. I get that someone has to be the 25th man on the roster, but there has to a better option.

I will always be thankful to Shreve for (along with Dellin Betances) keeping the 2015 season afloat while Andrew Miller was hurt. After Shreve got knocked around at the end of 2015, I never thought he would still be a Yankee nearly three years later. He had a good run, but it’s time to move on from him.

Aside from the three actual losses, the worst part of the weekend was that the Yankees will now be without Gary Sanchez for their upcoming series against the Phillies, Red Sox and Braves and likely beyond that. All the idiots who wanted Austin Romine to start over the best catcher in the world now have their wish, and they will all be regretting it by the end of the week.

The weekend in Tampa Bay wasn’t the lowest point of the season, but it was still an embarrassment.