Blogs – Page 2 – Keefe To The City

Jul 24, 2025

Yankees Thoughts: It’s No Longer Right in Front of Them

The Yankees lost another series to the Blue Jays and are now four games back in the division. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It’s no longer right in front of them. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny when it comes to winning the AL East this season and potentially avoiding having to play in the best-of-3, wild-card series. After Wednesday’s 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays, the Yankees now need outside help to overcome the four-game deficit in the division with 64 games left to play and only three of those games are against the Blue Jays.

2. The Yankees had their best three starting pitchers lined up for the last three days in Toronto and they still lost the series. They had every position player aside from Oswaldo Cabrera healthy and available and they still lost the series. The Yankees did what these Yankees have always done during the Aaron Boone era and that is lose in the biggest of games in the most remarkable of ways.

With a chance to win the division in 2018 still on the table in early August, the Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series. They were swept after blowing a three-run lead in the ninth in the series finale. In the postseason, they split the first two games of the ALDS on the road against the Red Sox and then suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 3 and were eliminated in Game 4.

The 2019 Yankees hit .214/.289/.383 in the ALCS and lost four of the final five games of the series. They were eliminated in Game 6 after they erased a two-run deficit in the top of the ninth inning only to get walked off on in the bottom of the inning.

The 2020 Yankees lost three of the last four games in the ALDS, and in the decisive Game 5, scored just one run and gave up the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth.

The 2021 Yankees were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series, and instead, they finished third in their own division and fifth in the AL and were eliminated in the one-game playoff.

The 2022 Yankees were swept in the ALCS after their manager used the darkest moment in the organization’s history as motivation to come back in the series, all while FaceTiming the man responsible for the darkest moment in the organization’s history.

The 2023 Yankees missed the playoffs entirely despite 40 percent of the league getting in.

The 2024 Yankees were embarrassed in a five-game World Series loss, which included blowing a five-run fifth-inning lead at home in Game 5. The champions spent the entire offseason publicly bashing and laughing at the Yankees’ sloppy, undisciplined brand of baseball. And the Yankees did nothing to change it.

3. The Yankees committed four official errors in their loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday and that doesn’t even account for J.C. Escarra mishandling a ball in the dirt allowing a runner to advance to second, Escarra being unable to block a breaking ball in front of him to allow runners on first and second to move up to second and third and Cody Bellinger throwing his arms up to indicate he wasn’t going to catch a routine fly ball that led to a one-out “triple” with the game tied at 4 in the sixth inning.

4. “I think we have a very good defensive club,” Boone said with a straight face. “I think it’s here and I think it’s in this building we haven’t played well.”

This isn’t just about the Yankees’ play in Toronto, which has been unacceptable. It’s been their play everywhere. It’s been their play during Boone’s entire tenure. It continues to be their play because there is no accountability for poor play and no consequences for it either.

5. Not only was the defense a mess, yet again, but Max Fried wasn’t good, yet again. Has Fried been great as a Yankee? Yes. Has Fried been mediocre to bad for more than a month now? Also, yes.

Fried has one quality start in more than a month. He blew a lead and the Yankees lost to the last-place Orioles on June 20. On June 25, he shut out the Reds for seven innings to salvage the last game of that series. He pitched poorly in Toronto on July 1, struggled against the Mets in just five innings on July 6, left the game against the Cubs after three innings on July 12 and then pitched poorly in Toronto again on Wednesday.

My biggest fear with Fried has always been how he will perform in the postseason and in big games, since he has been atrocious in October in his career. In 20 games and 12 starts in the playoffs, he has a 5.10 ERA and 1.493 WHIP which is a far cry from his 3.02 career ERA and 1.148 career WHIP. I pray the version of Fried we have seen of late in big regular-season games isn’t the one that is going to show up in the postseason.

Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and Will Warren can’t be trusted and Cam Schlittler has two career starts to his name. The Yankees aren’t going anywhere if Fried pitches in August, September and October the way he has pitched in July. With all of their pitching issues, the Yankees are only going to go as far as Fried takes them.

6. The same goes for Aaron Judge. In the biggest series of the season, Judge went 1-for-10 with two walks and four strikeouts. That one was the game-tying, two-run home run in the sixth inning on Wednesday that momentarily made me think the Yankees may actually win the series and season finale in Toronto. Instead, it was nothing more than a short-lived moment that was immediately destroyed in the bottom of the inning.

It seems like every time Judge hits a big home run, the Yankees end up losing. There was the home run on Wednesday. There was the ninth-inning home run off Garrett Crochet at Fenway Park earlier this season. There was his first World Series home run in Game 5 last year. There was his home run off Emmanuel Clase in the ALCS last year. There was his solo home run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS and his two-run home run off Justin Verlander in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. If Judge hits a big home run in a big game, the Yankees seem to lose.

7. If Fried is going to be a run-of-the-mill starter and if Judge is going to be merely great and not otherworldly, the Yankees’ chances at the division aren’t just over, their chances at reaching the postseason at all are going to be increasingly difficult. I’ll worry about how the duo performs in October once the Yankees get there. For now, they need to make sure they get there.

8. For a team that once led the Blue Jays by eight games and had a 12-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox, the Yankees now hold just a two-game lead on a postseason berth. If the Blue Jays play .500 baseball for the rest of the season (30-30), they will finish at 90-72. The Yankees would need to go 35-25 to tie them. So if the Blue Jays — a team that is 18 games over .500 becomes a .500 team for the rest of the season — the Yankees will have to go at least 10 games over .500 in 60 games to pass them. The Yankees are 10 games over .500 through 102 games.

9. It’s very likely the Yankees will end up as a wild-card team and end up in the vaunted best-of-3. It’s something I hoped they would avoid. It’s something that seemed impossible not to avoid at the beginning of June. But I lived through the one-game playoffs of 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021. I hoped the Yankees would never end up in that one-game playoff when it was implemented in 2012 and they ended up in it more times than any other team in baseball.

10. If the Yankees continue to play the way they have for the last six weeks, I won’t have to worry about the best-of-3, wild-card series because they won’t even be in that and will miss out on the postseason for the second time in three years despite the format allowing 40 percent of the league in. But if the Yankees are going to get in and they play like they did against the Dodgers in the World Series or like they did in Toronto the last three nights then I don’t want them in anyway. Save all Yankees fans from the humiliation. Because a postseason berth guarantees no organizational changes. A missed postseason likely means no changes as well (as we saw in 2023), but it leaves the door open for them. It’s disappointing missing the postseason is even an option again.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Jul 22, 2025

Yankees Thoughts: Pitiful Performance

The Yankees played their biggest game of the season to date and performed how they always do in big games. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees played a good team on Monday, so you know what that means: the Yankees lost on Monday. The good feeling from the five-run comeback win on Saturday and the series-clinching win on Sunday were erased as soon as the Yankees stepped on the same field as a team headed for the postseason. The Yankees lost 4-1 to the Blue Jays and it wasn’t even as close as a one-run effort in a three-run game could be.

2. For all of the complaining about Jacob Misiorowski being an All-Star this season, no one complained about Carlos Rodon being one, but they should have. Rodon took the mound on nine days rest and was in trouble all game. He loaded the bases in the second inning and escaped. He allowed a two-out walk in the third inning and got out of it and left the bases loaded again in the fourth. In the fifth, his playing with fire caught up to him and the Blue Jays’ first three batters went walk, single, double, and while the inning should have ended with Rodon simply blowing the Yankees’ small one-run lead and facing a one-run deficit, it turned into a three-run deficit because of throwing errors on back-to-back plays by Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe.

3. Even if Peraza had made a good throw with two outs to end the fifth to keep it a 2-1 game, it still wouldn’t have been a good outing from Rodon. If that play had ended the inning, he still would have thrown 97 pitches in five innings (he ended up throwing 107 in five innings) and the Yankees still would have needed the offense to tie the game and the bullpen to get 12 outs. Rodon’s night was a far cry from the eight innings and turning the ball over to Luke Weaver (since Devin Williams pitched the last two days) I dreamed about. It wasn’t good enough. But that’s who Rodon is in big games: not good enough.

Rodon lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Blue Jays this season. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Red Sox. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Mets. To be fair, he did make it through six innings against the Tigers … except he allowed five earned runs. He made four postseason starts last year and only once pitched six innings. In the other three starts, he went 3 2/3 innings, 4 2/3 innings and 3 1/3 innings. But that’s who Rodon is: a pitcher who will dominate the weak teams in the league (he has a 2.36 ERA and 0.859 WHIP against teams not currently holding a playoff spot) and will struggle against the league’s best.

4. Rodon’s crappy-but-expected performance would have been easier to stomach if the offense had showed up, but it didn’t, of course. The bigger the game, the worse the offense performs. In this Yankees era, the only bat to consistently show up in the biggest of games has been Giancarlo Stanton, and sure enough, it was Stanton who provided the Yankees’ only run with a solo home run in the fourth inning to give the Yankees a brief 1-0 lead.

Aaron Judge did what he does when the games are the most important: nothing. Judge struck out swinging in the first, was intentionally walked in the third, popped out in the fifth and struck out swinging again in the eighth. Jasson Dominguez, Austin Wells and Volpe all went hitless as well and the Yankees struck out 12 times as a team. (The Blue Jays struck out four times.)

5. The defense did what it does when … well, always. Peraza and Volpe threw the ball away on back-to-back plays in the fifth, which scored two runs for the Blue Jays. Peraza has the lowest OPS in the majors for all hitters with at least 150 at-bats. If you’re going to be the worst hitter in the league, you have to make every play in the field. Peraza was given an opportunity to become an everyday player this year and change his life and stop the Yankees from going out and wasting assets on a third baseman at the deadline, and he has done nothing but force them to do whatever they can to have someone who resembles a major leaguer playing third base by 6 p.m. on July 31.

6. As for Volpe, there is nothing left to say about him. It’s nice he had the big game on Saturday with two home runs to help the Yankees overcome a five-run deficit and win a game, but it didn’t last. He’s 1-for-7 since that game and his at-bats are as bad as they have been all season. On Monday, he flew out to right twice and grounded out to the pitcher. The expected batting average on those three balls were .020, .010 and .250. The ball with the highest expected batting average was a weak, 40.7-mph groundout back to the mound.

Then there’s the defense. Volpe’s fifth-inning error made him the league leader for position players with 12 errors. Congratulations! After the game, Boone was asked about Volpe’s defense on back-to-back questions. He started to get heated answering the first question and then got increasingly annoyed when the second one was asked. Last week, Boone told Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” when she asked about his poor play. When she asked Boone about Volpe’s poor throw that led to a run on Monday and about him being the league leader in errors, this is what Boone said: “Errors get handed out in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways.” Yes, Boone blamed official scorers around the league for Volpe leading the league in errors and not Volpe.

7. It was the latest moment in Boone’s lack of accountability for himself or his players. If you wonder why the Yankees can’t play one, clean nine-inning game of baseball it’s because it doesn’t matter if they do or not as they don’t have to answer for it. If you’re wondering why the infield throws the ball all over the field or why runners take off for third with no outs in extra innings or why the Yankees had two cut-off men on a play over the weekend and no one covering second base or why they seem to have catcher’s interference called against them every other game, it’s because nothing happens to them for having a lack of fundamentals. After Jorbit Vivas was thrown out at third base by Ronald Acuna on Friday, Boone was asked why he didn’t bench Vivas and Boone said he only benches players who don’t run hard. Except the only player he ever benched for supposedly doing that was Gleyber Torres. Jazz Chisholm ran out a ground ball on Friday as if he had two broken ankles and he wasn’t benched. The Yankees gave the Dodgers three free runs in the biggest inning of last season and they gave the Blue Jays two free runs in the biggest inning of this season.

8. Boone calls Volpe “fucking elite” and considers him “one of the best shortstops in the league” even though both are categorically false and Volpe made a massive error on Monday. Boone refers to his offense “as the best offense in baseball” even though they are third in the majors in runs scored and scored one run on a solo home run and had two hits over their last 22 batters on Monday. Boone recently called his team “the best in baseball” even though they have the ninth-best record in the majors and lost a fifth straight game to the Blue Jays on Monday.

9. “It’s still the middle of July,” Volpe said. “We’ve got so many games ahead of us.”

The middle of July is from 8 a.m. on July 11 through 8 a.m. on July 21, so it’s no longer middle of the July. And there aren’t a lot of games left. Monday’s game was Game 100. There are 62 games left. If the Blue Jays were to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish 90-72. The Yankees would have to go 36-26 to finish ahead of them. So if the Blue Jays simply win half of their remaining games, the Yankees have to play 10 games above .500 to pass them. The Yankees are only 10 games above .500 at this moment through 100 games.

10. The Yankees are now four games back in the division. They are one loss to the Blue Jays in the five remaining games against them from no longer controlling their own destiny in terms of winning the division and from not being able to say “It’s right in front of us.” That loss will come on Tuesday if Cam Schlittler isn’t great in just his second career start or if the offense performs yet another disappearing act in a big game.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Jul 21, 2025

Yankees Thoughts: Best Win of Season in Most Important Series of Season

The Yankees came back for their best win of the season against the Braves on Saturday and then won the series on Sunday. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It may not have been the most exciting series of the season and we all know it wasn’t the most well-played series of the season, but in terms of importance, this past weekend in Atlanta was the most important series of the season to date. In terms of importance, it will be immediately replaced by the upcoming series in Toronto. Before the Yankees could think about their last three games of the season north of the border, they had to think and deal with a bad Braves team clinging to life for their season.

2. On Friday, the Yankees opened the “second half” of the season with an opener. The thing about using an opener is that it only works if the opener doesn’t suck. Unfortunately, Ian Hamilton sucks, and the Braves tagged him for three runs in the first inning, going single, double, double to open the game. It was disheartening the Yankees thought using Hamilton to face the few good hitters in the Braves lineup to open the game put them in the best possible position to win. I understand Cam Schlittler was supposed to start the game and was pushed back due to biceps soreness, but how is a plan of Hamilton then recently-signed Rico Garcia, Scott Effross and JT Brubaker the best course of action? If the Yankees feel going with a bullpen game with those names gives them a better chance than Allan Winans or Carlos Carrasco, then why even have them in the organization?

The Braves led 3-0 after the first, 6-0 after the third and 7-0 after the seventh. The Yankees scored three runs in the seventh for one of their patented do-just-enough-to-get-the-manager-to-say-we-showed-fight fake comebacks and lost 7-3. While the Yankees were losing to the Braves, the Blue Jays were busy beating up on the Giants to extend their division lead to three games.

3. On Saturday, the thoughts of being swept by the under-.500 Braves became a real thought. The left-handed Joey Wentz and his 6.32 ERA and 1.703 WHIP shut out the Yankees for four innings, and in the meantime, Will Warren was getting blasted. Warren allowed a long solo home run to Michael Harris and his .550 OPS in the third and then gave up four runs — all with two outs — in the fourth to put the Yankees behind 5-0. Earlier this season, YES liked to opine “If you remove Warren’s start against the Dodgers, he’s been great.” Then it was “If you remove his starts against the Dodgers and Blue Jays … .” I guess now you just need to remove his starts against the Dodgers, Blue Jays and Braves and you have yourself a good, young pitcher you can trust.

After scoring in just one of the first 13 innings of the series, the Yankees scored twice in the fifth to make it a 5-2 game. But Effross and Tim Hill gave those two runs right back in the bottom of the inning and the Braves led 7-2 through five.

4. The Yankees scored four more times in the sixth to make it a 7-6 game, but Jonathan Loaisiga immediately gave one of them back to make it an 8-6 game. Since June 24, Loaisiga has allowed 19 baserunners, nine earned runs and three home runs in 8 1/3 innings. In his best season (2021), he allowed three home runs all season (70 2/3 innings). That best season was a long time ago. Four years in baseball years can be measured in dog years. Loaisiga was OK in 2022, missed nearly all of 2023 and 2024 due to Tommy John surgery and has been bad in 2025. Maybe Loaisiga just stinks now? Maybe a career marred by injuries and the surgery caught up to him? The Yankees are going to have to find out because they are paying him $5 million for this season (with a $5 million team option for 2026) and there is no one else right now. The only two trustworthy relievers in the bullpen are Luke Weaver and Devin Williams. Loaisiga, by default, is the next most-trusted arm? Then Hill? Then no one between Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans? The Yankees have given an abundance of relievers a chance to be major leaguers and to win important roles and each one of them has sucked. Not just Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans, but Garcia, Brent Headrick, Yoendrys Gomez, Tyler Matzek, Clayton Beeter and Geoff Hartlieb. (I leave Javien Sandridge out since his chance was sabotaged by Aaron Boone having him face Juan Soto and Pete Alonso as his first two hitters in the majors.) I guess all of those guys just really like living in Scranton and taking bus rides everywhere.

5. The Yankees desperately miss Fernando Cruz, Mark Leiter Jr. and Ryan Yarbrough They even miss Yerry De los Santos. If those four were healthy then Brubaker, Effross, Hamilton and Winans aren’t on the 26-man roster and the bullpen looks so much different and better. The team looks so much different and better.

6. Loaisiga’ latest disappointing effort put another obstacle in the way of a Yankees comeback, but they added a run in the seventh to make it 8-7 and tied the game at 8 in the eighth with Anthony Volpe’s second home run of the game. It was Volpe’s first multi-home run game of his career. It was his first multi-hit game since June 23 and his second multi-hit game since June 13. The two-home run game guarantees he will never come out of the lineup (not that he was ever going to anyway). If Boone was willing to tell Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” last week, like Michael Kay reported, then he probably thinks he’s a Hall of Famer now after hitting two home runs in a game. But good for Volpe to help the Yankees win a game for the first time since … I don’t know? All season?

7. The game remained tied at 8 into the ninth. With the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the ninth, I feared the game would find its way to extra innings and the Yankees would endure yet another road extra-inning loss to add to their majors-worst record since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020. Trent Grisham put those fears to rest when he hit a go-ahead grand slam off Braves closer Raisel Iglesias to give the Yankees a 12-8 lead. They would go on to win 12-9.

8. Grisham batted in the leadoff spot on Friday and then sixth on Saturday. I figured his two-hit, five-RBI night would have him back in the leadoff spot on Sunday. Instead, he wasn’t even in the lineup. Never change, Boone and the Yankees. Never change. Saturday’s win was so important to keep pace with the Blue Jays (who won again), but also important because with Marcus Stroman going on Sunday it wasn’t unrealistic to expect the Yankees to lose. But Stroman didn’t suck, and the Yankees didn’t lose. Stroman pitched six innings of one-run ball and the Yankees won 4-2.

Here are Stroman’s first three starts of the season in March and April:

9.1 IP, 12 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 7 BB, 7 K, 2 HR, 11.57 ERA, 2.036 WHIP

Here are Stroman’s four starts in June and July since coming off the injured list:

21 IP, 21 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 5 BB, 12 K, 3 HR, 3.00 ERA, 1.238 WHIP

9. The best possible scenario is occurring with Stroman for the Yankees. He missed too much time to have his 2026 salary clause automatically kick in, as long as four of Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil, Will Warren, Ryan Yarbrough, Cam Schlittler or any starter the Yankees trade for are healthy in October then Stroman won’t be needed in the postseason and he’s giving the Yankees winnable starts now at a time when they need him and need him to be good the most. It couldn’t have worked out better.

This four-start run doesn’t mean anyone should feel good when Stroman gets the ball and everyone should be concerned with him scheduled to start against the Phillies at Yankee Stadium next weekend, but for now, Stroman is doing exactly what the Yankees need him to do.

10. The next three games are the most important of the season to date. Three games in Toronto with three games separating the Yankees and Blue Jays in the division. The Yankees have their pitching set up with Rodon, Fried and Schlittler, and all of their rostered position players healthy and available. The bullpen is an enormous weak spot and could potentially ruin this series, but here’s to hoping it doesn’t come to that. How about eight from Rodon to Weaver on Monday and then eight from Fried to Weaver on Tuesday and then six from Schlittler to Hill, Weaver and Williams on Wednesday? Keep everyone else in the bullpen and as far away from the mound as possible and keep Boone’s decision-making to a minimum. That seems like a good plan to me. Let’s go with that plan.

Blogs • Yankees

Jul 18, 2025

The “Second Half” Is Here

After four days off, the Yankees are back to begin the “second half” of the season in Atlanta.

The last five nights were enjoyable. They were relaxing. Because the Yankees didn’t play. There was nothing to be upset about all week. I now know what it feels like to be someone who doesn’t care about the Yankees or baseball or sports. It’s refreshing. Unfortunately, that’s not me. Unfortunately, I allow a group of 26 men I have no relation to determine my mood based on if they are able to throw and hit a five-ounce ball better than 29 other group of 26 men.

The “second half” is here and things haven’t been going well for my favorite group of 26 men. They have been a bad baseball team since the beginning of June. They can’t beat teams geographically closest to them. They can’t beat teams expected to be postseason contenders. They are two games behind a team they led by eight games in the standings. They are tied in wins with a team they once led by 12 games in the loss column.

I needed this break from watching the Yankees as much as the Yankees needed a break from playing. But the break is over. There are 66 games left and the Yankees are as close to having a wild-card bye as they are to missing the postseason completely. The relaxing is over. The next nine-and-a-half weeks are going to be physically, emotionally and mentally challenging. Anyone with a checkered medical history should locate the nearest exit and remove themselves from this stretch run.

With Yankees baseball back this weekend in Atlanta, let’s get to some questions from readers to welcome the “second half” of the season.

Will the Yankees ever get back that fire? – Don

I’m assuming you mean the fire and drive to win like the teams of the late-90s and early 2000s had. In order to get have that fire, you have to win, and no one on this current Yankees roster other than Max Fried and Cody Bellinger have won anything, including the manager. The team is full of career losers, managed by a career loser himself.

It’s tiring to hear about how the Yankees have screwed up the Aaron Judge era and his prime by surrounding him with inadequate rosters, as if Judge’s postseason OPS (.768) isn’t 259 points lower than his career regular season OPS (1.027). Judge is as big a reason as anyone for this Yankees era being championship-less, if not the biggest reason. That has to change if this group is ever going to win.

But again, the only way to get back that fire is to win first.

Is having Boone as a manager a liability when it comes to signing free agents? – John

Unfortunately, no. I wish it were. If it were, it would definitely make its way to players and up the chain to the front office. If a star player had an equal offer from the Yankees and another team and chose the other team because of Aaron Boone and told friends of his on the Yankees of his decision, I would like to think that would get to the higher-ups and a change would be made.

But then again, maybe not. The Yankees players know they have a good thing going with Boone. They have a boss who doesn’t hold them accountable publicly, and even if Boone holds them accountable privately, who cares? No player cares if the manager rips them in his office or behind closed doors, especially a veteran with guaranteed money to their name. Boone doesn’t hold his players accountable because Boone isn’t held accountable by Brian Cashman and Cashman isn’t held accountable by Hal Steinbrenner.

Whenever you hear Hal talk about winning and his desire to win, it’s all nonsense. When his father said it, it meant something. When Hal says it, it’s empty. We know this because Hal is one of the biggest advocates for the salary cap in baseball. He wants a salary cap so he has a limit to what he asked to spend. If the Yankees have a cap to what they can spend, they are no longer the Yankees. They have enough trouble constructing a complete roster with unlimited spending allowed. If they are capped, they will become just another team and over time they will be viewed as just another team. I mean the aura of “the Yankees” is already fading. There are kids in high school that have never seen them win a championship. Their are college graduates and working adults that weren’t even in elementary school the last time they won. The Yankees haven’t been the Yankees in a long time. With a salary cap, they would likely never be “the Yankees” again.

Do you think the laissez-faire attitude the team has that has been bred into them by Boone can be reversed by a new manager? – Paul

Of course. The Yankees went from a hard-ass manager, but a career winner in Joe Girardi to an inexperienced, buddy-type who cares more about being friends with his roster than winning with it. The next hire will be closer to Boone than it is to Girardi because front offices don’t want to deal with personalities they can’t run all over, but the new person will likely have managerial experience and been successful in the role. But the personality isn’t the reason why Boone needs to go. It’s part of the reason, but not the reason. The reason he needs to go is because of his in-game decisions.

I love when people ask who the Yankees would replace Boone with as if he’s Joe Torre or Casey Stengel. When the question used to be about who will the Yankees replace Girardi with, do you know how many people answered “Aaron Boone?” Zero. Because Boone had never managed before. Now he’s treated by the organization and media as if he’s some managerial savant rather than being equally at fault with the team’s lack of postseason hitting as to why have failed to win it all in seven seasons under him.

The Yankees easily found Boone because no one else was looking for him. They think he’s great even though he isn’t. So if they want to find someone just like him when he’s eventually replaced, it won’t be hard.

Why is the longest-tenured Yankees manager to never win a championship still employed? – Neil

The same reason the general manager who has never won a championship with a core he constructed is still employed: a lack of accountability and the fictitious idea the Yankees only care about winning championships.

Cashman may have been a Yankees employee when the Yankees drafted Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter and signed and developed Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera, but he wasn’t the general manager. He wasn’t in charge. The Yankees won four times with those five and five teams with the Core Four. Since they have retired, the team hasn’t won. It’s not a coincidence.

Cashman’s first chance at his own core started to come together in 2015 when Luis Severino, Gary Sanchez Greg Bird were called up for the first time. More of his first personal core came up in 2016 with Aaron Judge’s debut, and that winter they traded for Gleyber Torres. That core made everyone think the future would be bright when they went from being expected to miss the postseason in 2017 to reaching Game 7 of the ALCS. But then they failed and failed miserably.

Bird got hurt and was out of the majors by 2020. Severino made 44 starts over five years between 2019 and 2023. Sanchez had an .846 OPS through 2019 and has a .701 OPS since and was off the Yankees after 2021. The Yankees let Torres walk after seven inconsistent, frustrating seasons. The only Yankee from the Baby Bombers and Cashman’s first core of his own to remain is Judge.

Not only did the Baby Bombers fail, but the pieces Cashman gave multi-year deals to and surrounded them with did as well. The Yankees went against their no-extension policy Aaron Hicks and it was a disaster. Chase Headley was awful. Jacoby Ellsbury was a joke. The starting pitching trades for Sonny Gray, J.A. Happy, Lance Lynn, James Paxton and Jameson Taillon all flopped.

Now Cashman is on to his second personal core of young talent. It was supposed to include Juan Soto, but it doesn’t. It’s supposed to be led by Anthony Volpe, but it’s not. Austin Wells hasn’t been inconsistent, Jasson Dominguez still isn’t used as an everyday player and neither is Ben Rice. Cody Bellinger will be 31 next season and Trent Grisham will be 29 and Paul Goldschmidt will be 38 before the end of this season and all three are impending free agents (Bellinger can opt out). Jazz Chisholm has been great since becoming a Yankee (.846 OPS in 111 games) and is under contract through next year, but unless the Yankees go against their no-extension policy like they did for Hicks (and Severino), he will probably leave as a free agent after 2026.

Because Soto is gone, some combination of the current young Yankees needs to work out, or the Yankees better be prepared to offer Kyle Tucker more money than any other team this winter. If they don’t and the Yankees go back to the dark days, Cashman will still be the general manager and Boone will still be the manager as long as the tickets continue to be sold and the merchandise and chicken buckets continue to be bought.

Will Cashman include Spencer Jones, George Lombard Jr. or Cam Schlittler in a deadline deal this year? – Donald

I hope not. The Yankees desperately need a third baseman, but the only one worth parting with pieces like that for is Jose Ramirez and there’s no way he’s available, and it would cost those three and more to get him.

Ryan McMahon leads the league in strikeouts and is nine percent worse than league average for his career despite having played half of his games at Coors Field. Eugenio Suarez is a high-power, high-strikeout right-handed bat and the Yankees already have several of those. I would only want either if the price is meaningless, which it should be.

The Yankees seem to love anchors that weight them down. They demonstrate a stubbornness when it comes to moving on. Why? – John

The Yankees think they are smarter than everyone and they want everyone to know it. They don’t want to give up on players they believed in when everyone said they shouldn’t because it makes them look bad and their owner doesn’t want to pay players to not play, whether they are producing or not.

How many times did the manager and general manager tell us Josh Donaldson would he his old self before he was eventually released? How about Hicks? How about LeMahieu? The same thing is going on with Volpe, who is treated differently than any prospect or player during Cashman’s 28-year tenure as general manger. Every other prospect and player has had to earn their playing time and keep on earning it. Not Volpe. He had a good spring training two-and-a-half years ago and that was enough to negate the entire 2023 and 2024 seasons and more than half of the 2025 season. The Yankees defend him to no end and get irritated and aggressive when they have to defend him. Michael Kay said last week Boone told Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” when he got testy when she asked about Volpe’s performance. One day Volpe will be designated for assignment or traded or released and the Yankees will say it didn’t work out even though they spent years telling us it would.

Blogs • MLB

Jul 15, 2025

2025 MLB All-Animosity Team

This year’s team has a few new players.

The All-Star break is here, which means the season is “half” over. For the Yankees, it’s actually 59 percent over with 66 games left.

Another All-Star break means another annual All-Animosity Team. I’ll always remember the teams which featured David Ortiz, Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, Chone Figgins, Dustin Pedroia, Robert Andino, Carl Crawford, Manny Ramirez, Delmon Young, Jose Bautista, Magglio Ordonez, B.J. Upton (when he went by B.J.) and many others. But I also like having a new generation of players to have animosity toward.

Here is the 2025 All-Animosity Team.

C: Danny Jansen
If you’re wondering why a career .219/.308/.414 hitter is on this team, you must have missed a lot of Yankees-Blue Jays games over the years. And not just Yankees-Blue Jays games, but Yankees-Red Sox games and now Yankees-Rays games as well since Jansen won’t just go away and leave the AL East.

Jansen may be a .219/.308/.414 hitter in his career, but he’s a .255/.378/.497 hitter in 51 games against the Yankees with seven doubles, 10 home runs and 26 RBIs. As crazy as it sounds, if you were to ask me the Top 3 hitters I least want to see at the plate with the game on the line against the Yankees, it would be hard for me to not include Jansen in that group.

1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
In 96 career games against the Yankees, Guerrero Jr. is a .285/.352/.533 hitter with 23 doubles, 21 home runs and 70 RBIs. That’s a 162-game pace of 39 doubles, 35 home runs and 118 RBIs. Add in his public comments about how much he hates the Yankees (and rightfully so considering he plays in the same division as them) and it’s easy to see why he’s on this team. Now that Rafael Devers is out of the division and as far away as possible, Guerrero Jr. is the hitter I fear the most within the AL East.

2B: Jose Altuve
The captain of the All-Animosity Team and a future first-ballot All-Animosity Hall of Famer, this job is Altuve’s for as long as he plays in the league.

After hitting .320/.414/.560 with two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2017 ALCS win over the Yankees, Altuve hit .348/.444/1.097 with a double, two home runs, four walks and a stolen base in the Astros’ 2019 ALCS win over the Yankees. He’s responsible for ending the Yankees’ season with a walk-off, pennant-winning home run in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. He’s responsible for a lot of bad memories for Yankees fans. Even when he had a down series against them in the 2022 ALCS, the Astros still swept the Yankees.

He’s the face of this era of the Astros, a team the Yankees have never beat in the postseason, and because of that, he’s the face of this team.

3B: Rafael Devers
It doesn’t matter that Devers is out of the division and off the East Coast. He could be playing in Japan and he would still be on this team. I know Devers no longer plays the field, but he does on this team because what better way to recognize him than to put him back at the spot he was moved off of that led to his dismissal from the Red Sox.

The moment Devers hit that two-strike, opposite-field home run off Aroldis Chapman in 2017, I knew I had a problem. I also knew the All-Animosity Team had a roster spot locked up indefinitely.

In 119 career games against the Yankees, Devers is a .270/.348/.533 hitter with 79 runs, 22 doubles, 31 home runs and 78 RBIs. That’s a 162-game pace of 108 runs, 30 doubles, 42 home runs 106 RBIs. Of course Devers had to hit one last home run against the Yankees as a Red Sox on the day he was traded to the Giants. Thankfully, Devers will only get to hurt the Yankees in three regular-season games each season instead of 13.

SS: Alex Bregman
I’m playing Devers at a position he no longer plays, so I have to play Bregman at a position he hasn’t played in six years. I wouldn’t be a Yankees fan if I wasn’t so willing to play players out of position.

The first thing I used to think about when thinking about Bregman was how hard it is to retire him at the plate. Now when I think of him, I think of him standing there at the Astros’ fan fest after the 2019 season and giving the same rehearsed answer over and over about the team’s sign-stealing scandal with that smirk on his face and that sarcastic laugh. Bregman was the easiest of players to root against and that was before he signed with the Red Sox, which took the level of animosity to another level.

LF: Randal Grichuk
Like Jansen, Grichuk seems out of place on this team, considering he’s not very good and also that he plays for the Diamondbacks and hasn’t been in the AL East in four years. The number of chances Grichuk has each year to hurt the Yankees may have lessened, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make the most of the opportunities he gets against them. His pinch-hit double in the April 2 game this year ignited a five-run eighth for the Diamondbacks in their 7-5 come-from-behind win over the Yankees.

Grichuk has a career .768 OPS, but it’s .825 against the Yankees. He has hit 18 home runs with 35 RBIs in 68 games against the Yankees.

My biggest fear for this trade deadline is that the Yankees will overpay for a third baseman who can’t hit or a third baseman who can’t field, or that they will part with George Lombard Jr. or Cam Schlittler. My second-biggest fear is that Grichuk will be traded to the AL and be an unwanted part of my life as a baseball fan more frequently again.

CF: Enrique Hernandez
My wife is a Dodgers fan, so since 2013 I have watched nearly every Dodgers game. I have watched Hernandez’s entire career, first when he was a Dodger, then with the Red Sox, and again back with the Dodgers. Never has an eight-percent-worse-than-league-average hitter for his career had such a lasting impact against Yankees fans.

The combination of Hernandez and Dave Roberts single-handedly gave the Red Sox the 2018 World Series. Hernandez went 2-for-15 in that series and Roberts kept batting him at the top of the order. (Roberts also used Ryan Madson in every crucial spot in the series as if it were 2009 and not 2018.) So after helping the Red Sox in a championship as an opponent, he nearly helped them win one as a member of the team in 2021, as he went 20-for-49 in the 2021 playoffs. Thankfully, the captain of this team ended the Red Sox’ season.

Hernandez rejoined the Dodgers where he helped beat the Yankees in the 2024 World Series. He led off the season-ruining fifth inning of Game 5 with a single. It was his presence on first base that somehow led to Aaron Judge taking his eye off the line drive he dropped. It was his baserunning that somehow led Anthony Volpe to make a wild throw to third base.

When I think of Hernandez, I think of he and every Dodger doing their dumb post-hit dance when they reach base. I look forward to the day Hernandez is out of baseball.

RF: Juan Soto
Do I actually dislike Soto? No. Watching his 777 plate appearances as a Yankee was as enjoyable as watching someone bat could possibly be. I miss knowing who will be batting second every day for the Yankees and I miss the Yankees having the best back-to-back lineup situation in the league. But he’s gone and he’s never coming back and because of where he went and who he plays for and who roots for him, I have had to create animosity toward him.

Whatever was wrong with Soto through the first two months of the season is clearly resolved. Since June 1, he’s hitting .311/.455/.659 with 14 home runs and 29 RBIs in 39 games. After no-showing the Subway Series Yankee Stadium portion, Soto went 4-for-11 with three runs, a double, a home run, three RBIs and a walk in the Citi Field portion.

I’m glad he’s at least out of the AL. Now I just need to pray he doesn’t win a World Series for as long as he’s a Met.

SP: Nathan Eovaldi
Never trust a pitcher to who throws triple-digit fastballs and has trouble striking hitters out, which is what Eovaldi was with the Yankees and has mostly been in his career. The Dodgers gave up on him and then the Marlins gave up on him. The Yankees thought they could be the ones to hone his incredible velocity, but they weren’t.

As a Yankee in 2015, Eovaldi pitched to a 14-3 record, so every idiot who relies on wins and losses to determine a pitcher’s success thought he had a great season. It didn’t matter that he received 5.75 runs of support per start or that he routinely struggled to get through five innings because he needed 20-plus pitches to get through each inning. In 2016, it was more of the same. Eovaldi pitched to a .476 ERA over 21 starts and 24 games before being shut down for another Tommy John surgery, ending his time with the Yankees as they let him walk after the season.

Eovaldi returned to the mound in 2018 and pitched well with the Rays and was traded to the Red Sox. He went on to shut out the Yankees in an important August series for the division lead and shut them out again in September. He did it again in October (even if he received more run support than any opposing starter had received in a postseason game at Yankee Stadium in history).

In 2018, Eovaldi beat the Yankees and Astros in the playoffs, mixed in a few relief appearances and then became a hero for his bullpen work in Game 3 of the World Series (even though he took the loss after giving up a walk-off home run). Eovaldi helped the Red Sox win the World Series and five years later helped the Rangers win it all after earning five wins in six starts in the 2023 postseason. “Nasty Nate” will be on this team for as long as he pitches.

RP: Aroldis Chapman
When I think of Chapman’s time with the Yankees, I think of three things. The first being him giving up the pennant-winning home run to Altuve in 2019. The second being him giving up the go-ahead home run to Mike Brosseau in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS. The third being him being told to go home after he skipped a postseason workout in 2022.

After leaving the Yankees, Chapman ended up with the Rangers and helped them win the World Series in 2023, alongside this team’s starter in Eovaldi. Now he’s with Red Sox, where at age 37 he was named an All-Star for the first time in four years and has posted a career-best 1.18 ERA, a career-best 0.763 WHIP, a career-best 2.4 walks per nine (4.7 as a Yankee) and a career-best 5.80 strikeouts per walk (2.96 a Yankee). He has allowed only 19 hits in 38 innings with 58 strikeouts this season. He has 17 saves and two against the Yankees.

If you haven’t had a vision of Chapman striking out Volpe to eliminate the Yankees in the postseason and Chapman standing on the mound raising his arms in the air as the Red Sox win their fifth championship since 2004 then you must not understand how things go for ex-Yankees after they leave the team.