The Yankees started a six-game road trip with a humiliating loss to the A’s. The Yankees scored one run against the worst team in baseball this year, and a team threatening to be the worst team in baseball history.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I knew I was making a bad decision and I did it anyway. Like staying out until last call when you know you have to be up in a few hours, I decided to stay up to watch the Yankees play the A’s with a 9:40 p.m. start time on Tuesday night. To say it was a regrettable decision is as big an understatement as saying Josh Donaldson is washed up.

Donaldson did hit a solo home run in his first game back in the lineup after a three-game benching when it seemed like a DFA was imminent for the oft-injured, underachieving, aging third baseman. That solo home run was all of the Yankees offense in their 2-1 loss. Yes, the Yankees scored one run, one single run against an A’s team that entered the game allowing a league-high average of 6.3 runs per game. ONE RUN!

2. This is the same A’s team that is playing out the plot of the movie Major League in real life (minus the “Let’s win the whole fucking thing” part). The same A’s team the Yankees managed to sweep last month at Yankee Stadium. The problem is this isn’t that Yankees team. Not close. That Yankees team scored 22 runs against the A’s in that three-game series. This Yankees team hasn’t even scored 22 runs in their last nine games.

The Yankees managed to go 4-2 on their six-game homestand last week despite being outscored 20-17 and scoring more than four runs in a game only once because of their pitching and only because of their pitching. Averaging 2.8 runs per game of offense is bad. Averaging 3.3 runs per game against is outstanding. The pitching was once again outstanding on Tuesday, allowing two earned runs in the loss. The offense was once again the worst in baseball since the start of June.

Since the start of June, the Braves lead the majors with 156 runs scored. The Yankees rank last with 67 runs scored. They have scored six fewer runs than the next-worst White Sox, eight fewer than the Royals and 15 fewer than the A’s. These Yankees are disgrace.

3. Without Aaron Judge (.291/.404/.674), Billy McKinney (.281/.305/.579) has become a solid “C” version of Judge. If the Yankees go as Judge goes, well, the same now goes for McKinney. McKinney went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts on Tuesday night, and the Yankees lost.

I’m not blaming McKinney for the loss. He doesn’t even deserve 0.01% of the blame for what transpired on Tuesday night. If he never gets another hit as a Yankee, he has done more than enough and more than anyone could have dreamed as a journeyman outfielder who is with his sixth team in six years. He was added as an outfield depth piece for the organization and was never supposed to get a single plate appearance for the 2023 Yankees. He was behind Oswaldo Cabrera on the depth chart, and Aaron Hicks, and Franchy Cordero, and Willie Calhoun, and Jake Bauers, and Greg Allen, and Isiah Kiner-Faleafa, whose an infielder, and even Estevan Florial, who the Yankees would rather give another $70 million to Hicks before ever giving Florial an extended look. It took Judge suffering some bizarre toe injury, Stanton not being allowed to play the outfield, Harrison Bader landing on the injured list for a second time, Cabrera being one of the worst hitters in the entire majors, Hicks being released, Cordero being the same-old bat he’s always been, Calhoun getting hurt, Allen getting hurt, Kiner-Falefa continually proving to not be an everyday major leaguer (and to me, not even a major leaguer) and the Yankees despising Florial for McKinney to get a call. The Yankees don’t deserve any credit for what McKinney is doing for them. He entered the season as the 10th outfield option, and became the 11th once the Yankees started using Kiner-Falefa in the outfield. He was supposed to be a depth piece living in Scranton all season. Instead, he and Bauers have become the Yankees offense because the veteran bats are among the worst in sport.

4. The Not So Fab Five of Stanton, Donaldson, Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres continue to suck, and saying they suck is putting it mildly.

I’m not kidding when I say if the opportunity to give Donaldson’s contract to Stanton and Stanton’s contract to Donaldson presented itself, I would seriously consider it. That’s how bad Stanton has been since he came off the injured list. I don’t know how someone who makes $197,530.86 per game can hit .113/.203/.226 for a month, but it’s happening. Stanton has struck out in 34 of his 114 at-bats in June. He’s hitting .205/.286/.443 in his last 575 plate appearances.

5. The moment Donaldson connected with that ball on Tuesday night that led to the Yankees’ only run, I was furious. Yes, I’m actively rooting against a member of the team I root for to win. It’s illogical, but so was trading for Donaldson and taking on the $51 million owed to him. Donaldson has seven home runs this season and they have all come in Yankees losses. Unfortunately, that meaningless home run will buy him another month of everyday at-bats on a so-called contender.

6. Do you remember the Yankees game on May 20? It was a Saturday afternoon game in Cincinnati. If you remember that game then you remember the last time Rizzo hit a home run. Nine days before Memorial Day and 39 days ago today, Rizzo hit a ball out. He was the only one of this collection of overpaid clowns to produce on last week’s homestand and is the only one who looks like he’s truly coming out of his career-worst slump. But it would be nice if the Yankees’ 3- or 4-hitter (depending on the day) could hit a home run once in a while.

7. LeMahieu doubled in back-to-back games played over the weekend against the Rangers and I was waiting for the game to be stopped so he could take off his helmet and salute the crowd and have the entire team come out of the dugout to give him hugs as if he achieved a historic milestone. The 2019 AL batting title runner-up and 2020 AL batting champion is hitting .227 with an OPS 101 points below his career OPS.

8. Torres had a nice day at Fenway Park for the doubleheader 10 days ago, making some think he was coming out of a slump. If you thought Torres would suddenly go on some sort of tear, you must be new around here. Since that day (June 18), he’s hitting .174/.240/.217 with one extra-base hit.

9. The White Sox have lost 11 of 17 since taking two of three from the Yankees in the Bronx. The Red Sox lost 19 of 30 before playing the Yankees, took five of six from the Yankees and have lost seven of 11 since their first meeting against the Yankees. The Mets have lost seven of 11 since Aaron Boone rested his bullpen and let the Mets split with the Yankees. The A’s have 21 wins this season and had lost 10 of 11 before Tuesday night.

10. “I’m a little confused, this year, being the third week of June, why they’re so upset,” Hal Steinbrenner said of Yankees fans to Michael Kay last week.

I highly doubt Hal Steinbrenner stayed up to watch “his” team lose to an A’s team on pace to lose 120 games. I doubt he even knows “his” team was playing last night. I don’t doubt that he’s still confused as to why Yankees fans are upset with the team’s roster and performance half way through the season. (After Thursday’s game, the Yankees’ season will be half over.)

“I’m a little confused, this year, being the third week of June, why they’re so upset,” Hal Steinbrenner said of Yankees fans to Michael Kay last week.

Can an A’s fan going to the game on Wednesday or Thursday and planning to make a giant sign telling A’s ownership to sell the team also make one for Hal Steinbrenner while they’re at it? Seeing that would at least make staying up late for Wednesday night’s game worth it.

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The Yankees went to Boston for three games and were swept. They have lost eight of 11 and four straight.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I didn’t think things could get worse for the Yankees over the weekend after they were humiliated in a 15-5 drubbing by the Red Sox on Friday night. But not only did things get worse (a lot worse), the 10-run loss in the three-game series opener was actually the best the Yankees looked at Fenway Park.

The Yankees began the series by scoring a run in the very first inning. That run was quickly erased when Domingo German allowed a pair of doubles, a walk and hit a batter for two earned runs in the bottom of the first inning. German, clearly choosing to pitch without sticky stuff, proceeded to allow another three baserunners and two runs in the second. Trailing by three with this Yankees offense meant a comeback would be nearly impossible, and German made sure it was impossible when he, Matt Krook in his major-league debut and the Yankees’ defense combined for six runs and a 10-1 Red Sox lead through three innings. By the end of the fourth, the Red Sox led 13-1. The game was long over when the Yankees scored four meaningless, garbage-time runs.

2. In the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, the Yankees once again got out to an early lead with a pair of runs in the first inning. Considering the Red Sox were willing to punt the game by starting barely-in-the-majors reliever Kaleb Ort as an opener with the plan to use 27th man Chris Murphy making his second career appearance as the bulk reliever, the game favored the Yankees.

Instead of ending the game in the first or taking advantage of Ort or Murphy at any point, the Yankees were shut out for the final 8 2/3 innings. After Gleyber Torres’ one-out home run in the first, they recorded just one hit (a sixth-inning leadoff double by Jake Bauers, in which he was obviously stranded) until there were two outs in the ninth.

Clarke Schmidt eventually imploded because Aaron Boone let him implode despite having an extremely well-rested Michael King ready in the bullpen, as Boone didn’t go to King with the lead, but rather once the game was tied. King couldn’t hold the game at 2-2, and the Yankees lost 6-2.

3. After that game, Boone started to get a little testy with the media, as he does when things aren’t going well for his team, which they haven’t been for a large part of his tenure.

“They’re gonna hit,” Boone said about his offense.

“‘Big G’ is gonna hit,” Boone said about Giancarlo Stanton, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in the day game.

“They’re gonna get it rolling,” Boone said about his offense, much like he said in 2021 and 2022.

Boone even took it one step further, using a prop for his postgame presentation.

“That team we’re rolling out there (he held up the lineup card from the 6-2 loss),” Boone said, “They’re capable of doing damage defensively.”

It was unbelievable comedy from the manager as a desperate man in desperate times. There’s no way Boone could actually believe a lineup featuring a majority of hitters with sub-.300 on-base percentages were capable of doing any damage other than to the Yankees’ postseason odds.

4. I grew up hating the Braves with the Yankees having played them in the 1996 and 1999 World Series (thankfully, winning both). But now I find myself jealous of the Braves and envious of their fans. The Braves have played 72 games and their four core position players (Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies, Matt Olson and Austin Riley) have all played every game this season. It’s no surprise the Braves are 22 games over .500 and have the best record in the National League, and it was no surprise when they trailed 5-0 early on Sunday only to win 14-6. A week ago, in a doubleheader the Braves played all their regulars in both games. Unsurprisingly, they swept the doubleheader. What a concept.

You know Boone is feeling it when he plays Stanton in both games of a doubleheader and claims he was going to play Stanton in the outfield in Boston (though he didn’t like a classmate saying they were going to say an answer to a question only after the answer is announced). Boone tried to play his best available players in both games on Sunday, but it didn’t matter because nearly all of the best available players on the Yankees belong in Triple-A. Unfortunately, Oswaldo Cabrera was the only one of them to be sent to Triple-A after Sunday night.

5. Like the first two games of the series, the Yankees started the series finale with a first-inning run. And then the offense did its daily disappearing act for a second time in the day. The Yankees never scored another run and lost 4-1. Kyle Higashioka committed catcher’s interference with the bases loaded to force in the go-ahead run in the fourth inning, hours after Nick Ramirez forced in a run with a balk in the first game. And hours after Boone said, “’Big G’ is gonna hit,’” Stanton went 0-for-3 with a walk and three strikeouts.

Brayan Bello shut down the Yankees with seven innings of one-run ball, and after scoring two runs on four hits in the day game of the doubleheader, the offense Boone said was “capable of doing damage offensively” scored one run on five hits in the night game. The Yankees produced three runs on nine hits in 18 innings on Sunday at Fenway Park.

6. At various times during Sunday’s doubleheader, Fenway Park broke out in expected ‘Yankees suck’ chants and I too wanted to join in on the fun. The Yankees do suck. Within the last week, Boone and the seemingly alternate captain (with Judge out) Anthony Rizzo both used the word to describe the team’s play.

“Losing sucks,” Boone said last weekend when the Red Sox beat up on the Yankees in the Bronx.

“It sucks,” Rizzo said after being swept over the weekend, “It’s definitely a low in the season.”

7. The Yankees have the lowest batting average and OPS in the majors since June 4, which was the first game Judge missed with his current toe injury that no one seems to know when it will be healed. They have the third lowest team OBP in the majors this season. They have lost four straight, are now 1-5 against the Red Sox (who are 32-34 against everyone else) and just went 3-8 against the Red Sox, White Sox and Mets. Add it all up and you have a team that sucks, though that’s not how Boone sees it.

“For the most part, we have been playing pretty well,” Boone said after Sunday night’s loss. “We just haven’t been scoring.”

Playing well and scoring go hand in hand in a game in which the object is to score more runs than your opponent. It takes a delusional person to see the brand of baseball the Yankees have played since they left Dodger Stadium two weeks ago and consider things to be going “pretty well.”

8. The Yankees are so poorly constructed that even when Judge returns the ceiling for this season remains exceptionally low. There’s nothing to suggest Stanton and Josh Donaldson will become their former selves since both are coming off the worst seasons of their careers and look worse this season than they did last season. The hope that DJ LeMahieu is actually healthy is fading, and once Rizzo’s mid-summer back issues flare up, a resurgence from him will be unlikely.

9. As I wrote last week, Bauers is the hitter I trust most right now on a team that has the second-highest payroll in the sport, and that’s disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is that this horrifically designed roster isn’t just a problem for this season, but is going to be a problem next season as well, as the star of the upcoming free-agent class is Harrison Bader. Bader declined the chance to come off the injured list to play in Boston this weekend, citing not feeling comfortable defensively yet. It was determined he would play two more rehab games and be activated on Tuesday, missing three actual games against a division opponent. I hope he was able to find himself defensively in the two meaningless Double-A games.

10. The Yankees have yet another day off on Monday before beginning a six-game homestand against the Mariners and Rangers. Bader should be back on Tuesday (until his next injury), so the Yankees will get a little healthier, though the only player return that matters is Judge’s.

Maybe on Tuesday Yankees fans will be given a positive update on Judge with an actual timeline for a return. Maybe Carlos Rodon will still be on the right path to eventually pitch for the Yankees as he continues to make about $700,000 each time his spot in the rotation comes up. Maybe at least one of Stanton, Rizzo, Donaldson or LeMahieu will start to hit on the homestand. I doubt it. All of it. It would take a true moron to think one or more of those things is going to happen. Then again, you have to be a moron to still be watching this team.

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The Yankees split the first half of this season’s Subway Series, and the bats expected to step up without Aaron Judge remained cold for another two games. The Yankees haven’t won a series since Judge injured his toe.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Things have gone as expected since Aaron Judge injured his toe at Dodger Stadium nearly two weeks ago. The Yankees lose home series to the White Sox (30-40) and Red Sox (34-35), and just split a pair at Citi Field with the Mets (32-36). Those are three mediocre-to-bad teams and the Yankees lost five of eight to them. That’s because without Judge, the Yankees are a mediocre-to-bad team.

The reason the Yankees are 3-5 over their last eight against third-, fourth- and fifth-place teams isn’t because of the starting pitching despite Luis Severino throwing batting practice every five days and it’s not even because of Aaron Boone’s bullpen decisions, which cost the Yankees the second game of the Citi Field series and nearly cost them the first game of that series as well. It’s because of the offense and the lack of production from the high-priced, veteran bats in the lineup.

2. The Not-So-Fab Five of Giancarlo Stanton ($32 million salary this season), Josh Donaldson ($21.75 million), Anthony Rizzo ($17 million), DJ LeMahieu ($15 million) and Gleyber Torres ($9.95 million) are making a combined $95.7 million this season. They are collectively making more than the entire payrolls of the Royals, Nationals, Reds, Guardians, Rays, Pirates, Orioles and A’s.

Earlier this week, Hal Steinbrenner said, “This is New York City. Fans want the stars.” If that’s the case, Hal, then why don’t the Yankees have any stars other than Judge and Gerrit Cole? The Yankees have former stars, but actual, current stars, it’s only Judge and Cole. And relying on former stars is going about as well as expected.

3. The Yankees traded for Stanton nearly six years ago coming off an NL MVP-winning season. As a Yankee, he has rarely played and his OPS is 78 points lower than it was as a Marlin. He’s hitting .213/.295/.468 in his last 132 games.

4. Donaldson got AL MVP votes for five straight seasons in Oakland and Toronto from 2014-2018, winning it in 2015. His OPS with the Yankees is 171 points lower than his career OPS. He has a .299 on-base percentage as a Yankee, but that hasn’t prevented him from only batting second, third, fourth and fifth this season.

5. Rizzo was a star with the Cubs from 2014-2019 (.901 OPS), but that was a half-decade ago. His Yankees OPS is 47 points below his career OPS, and he’s 1-for-29 with three walks since Judge got hurt. He has one hit, no extra-base hits and no RBIs over the last two weeks despite only batting second, third and fourth during that time.

6. LeMahieu finished in the Top 4 in AL MVP voting in his first two seasons with the Yankees, finished second for the batting title in 2019 and won it in 2020, hitting .336/.386/.536 in 871 plate appearances. Since the start of 2021, he’s hitting .260/.343/.373, had his last two seasons end early due to injury and has the highest strikeout percentage increase in the majors from 2022 to 2023.

7. Torres, who was a two-time All-Star in his first two major-league seasons, hitting 62 home runs in 267 games in 2018-19 has 47 home runs over the last four seasons, was moved off his position of the future and the Yankees have reportedly unsuccessfully tried to move him for the last calendar year.

8. Those five bats are supposed to complement Judge when he plays and carry the team when he doesn’t. They haven’t done either. Here is what they have done since Judge went down in Los Angeles:

Stanton: .115/.233/.269
Donaldson: .091/.222/.364
Rizzo: .035/.177/.035
LeMahieu: .185/.214/.333
Torres: .172/.294/.379

I don’t know what’s worse: Rizzo having a .035 slugging percentage in his last 34 plate appearances or Donaldson batting third for the Yankees with a .091 average in the last two weeks. (Congratulations to Torres for being the best of the bunch with a magnificent .673 OPS since Judge went on the injured list!)

9. It’s not good that the bat I trust most and want up in a big spot right now is Jake Bauers. Yes, Jake Bauers. The negative-career WAR player who is hitting a paltry .222/.308/.456. His .763 OPS is Barry Bonds-ian compared to most of the Yankees and he’s just one of five Yankees with an on-base percentage above .300. Two of the other four are Willie Calhoun and Billy McKinney, also journeymen, below-league-average hitters for their careers. This is a team that Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman have both categorized as “championship-caliber.” (The last two actual champions in the Astros and Braves have a combined three hitters of their 18 starting position players with on-base percentages below .300.)

10. Coming off a day off on Thursday, the Yankees are set up bullpen-wise for the three-game weekend series in Boston. They are expected to get Harrison Bader back, and have another day off scheduled for Monday. They are in as good of a spot health-wise from a position player perspective as they could be with Judge unavailable, and yet, none of it matters if the five veterans who will likely bat 1 through 5 in some order in the series don’t starting hitting like they are paid and expected to.

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The Yankees lost a home series to the last-place Red Sox after losing a home series to the well-below-.500 White Sox. Things are bad for the Yankees without Aaron Judge, and they could get a lot worse with the upcoming schedule.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees returned home from their successful 4-2 West Coast road trip against the Mariners and Dodgers and lost back-to-back series to the White Sox and Red Sox because they returned home without Aaron Judge. They lost two of three to the nine-games-under-.500 White Sox and two of three to the Red Sox who came to New York having lost 19 of 30 and after leaving New York immediately lost at home to the 13-games-under-.500 Rockies. The Yankees lost four of six because they scored 17 runs during the homestand.

2. The Tigers have the worst offense in baseball, averaging 3.6 runs per game. The Yankees without Judge average 3.3 runs per game. Without Judge, the Yankees have the worst offense in baseball. It wouldn’t be that way if someone, anyone could pick up even the littlest bit of slack with Judge on the injured list. It would be nice if one of the veteran bats making good money to be good at baseball would in fact be good at baseball.

3. You can break the Yankees offense down into four groups.

The first group isn’t really a group, it’s Judge, all by himself.

The second group is the veteran bats who are supposed to complement Judge: Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu, Josh Donaldson and Gleyber Torres. (Harrison Bader would go here as well if he weren’t on the IL again.)

The third group is the group no one expects anything from: Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera, Jose Trevino, Kyle Higashioka and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

The fourth group is the group of spring training non-roster invitees and journeymen who the Yankees are forced to play every year because of a lack of depth and a roster of oft-injured players: Jake Bauers, Willie Calhoun and Billy McKinney.

Right now the first group (Judge) is on the IL. The second group is in a collective slump. The third group is performing as expected, which is not performing at all. That leaves the fourth group, which is somehow “carrying” the Yankees, and they are doing about as good of a job as Kevin Malone did carrying his pot of chili into Dunder Mifflin.

4. Even when Judge comes back, whenever that may be, the players around him are still going to be the same players. Torres will hit that timely home run to do just enough to not become the focal points of Yankees fans’ ire, LeMahieu will have that two-hit game to make you think he’s turning it around, Rizzo will hit a short porch home run and have you believing he’s back, Donaldson will run into a middle-middle fastball from a fringe reliever to keep his job and Stanton will hit a ball 492 feet to have you feeling good. But those moments will continue to be far and few between, and not nearly enough make the offense anything more than one dimensional with that one dimension being Judge. Given the way the Yankees play with and without Judge, he’s vastly underpaid. Yes, the guy with the $360 million contract over nine years is underpaid.

5. I joke and complain about the Yankees rostering names like Bauers, Calhoun and McKinney, but without those three since the second game of the Dodgers series, the Yankees may not have a win. The Yankees are relying on three journeymen, career below-league-average hitters to provide offense for them, and yet, Brian Cashman still has a job.

Can you think of anyone you know who isn’t a firefighter, police officer, teacher, doctor/healthcare worker or municipal worker who has the same job they had 25 years ago in 1998? Because that’s how long Cashman has been general manager of the Yankees. And ever since 2, 20, 42, 46 and 51 retired, the Yankees haven’t reached the World Series let alone win it. Under Cashman, the Yankees have never won the pennant with solely players he signed and developed. Likely, because nearly all of the players he signs and develops suck.

6. Do you know who has the lowest on-base percentage of players in the majors? That would be the Yankees’ top prospect Anthony Volpe. Volpe has 67 major-league games and 22 Triple-A games to his name, and he’s not the problem, but he’s a problem. He’s a problem because he can’t hit major-league pitching and because the Yankees are reluctant to admit he needs more seasoning in the minors.

The Yankees went all in on Volpe choosing to not sign any of the highly-touted shortstop free agents over the last two offseasons (like Corey Seager who has a 176 wRC+ for the Rangers this season) because they believed in Volpe so heavily. Maybe their belief will pay off. Maybe Volpe will eventually become a star. Maybe. Right now he isn’t though and he can’t continue his development at the major-league level.

It’s not as if the Yankees don’t have another option. Oswald Peraza has a .980 OPS at Triple-A right now, and in the 28 major-league games he has played in, he has a .714 OPS. If Volpe had a .714 OPS (he doesn’t, he has a .605), the Yankees would have you believing he’s not only going to become Derek Jeter, but that he’s 1999 Jeter right now. At this point, Volpe would have to hit like 2022 Judge for the next month to get his OPS in the realm of .714.

Again, Volpe isn’t the problem, but the Yankees need to optimize their lineup in any way possible and that means not having Volpe in it, as he’s one bad series from having his OPS dip below .600. I’m not going to hold my breath on the Yankees sending Volpe down and calling Peraza up. The Yankees had nearly two months to play Peraza every day with Donaldson out and they didn’t, just like they had a chance to play him all last summer and postseason with Kiner-Falefa being an automatic out at the plate and a liability in the field, and they didn’t. It took Cashman years to give up on Aaron Hicks and four straight offense-less postseasons to admit having an all right-handed lineup isn’t a recipe for success. It’s going to take him a lot longer than two months of having the worst bat in the league in his lineup to make a change.

7. I wish the Yankees would change their approach with playing Stanton, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Here is Stanton’s season to date:

RF
Yankees off
RF
DH
DH
RF
Personal day
Yankees off
DH
DH
DH
RF
Personal day
RF
DH
DH
DH
47 days on IL
DH
Personal day
DH
Yankees off
DH
Personal day
DH
DH
DH
Personal day
Yankees off

The season is 75 days old. Stanton spent 47 of those 75 days injured. In the other 28, he played right field five times, was the designated hitter 14 times, had five personal days off (for injury prevention because that works so well) and four scheduled days off. He makes $197,530.86 per game.

8. No matter the nonsense anyone in the Yankees spews, the Yankees aren’t a championship-caliber team. I don’t know how Aaron Boone could even mention the team being championship caliber since he has no idea what a championship team looks like, having never won as a player or manager. After Friday’s game, he said, “Losing sucks,” and he should know since that’s all he has ever done.

9. The Yankees are likely to do a lot more losing until Judge comes back, whenever that may be. After being embarrassed for six-plus seasons now with wrong diagnoses, missed timetables and outright lies about injuries, the Yankees are keeping Judge’s injury, symptoms and expected return. a mystery to the media and fans. Though that may just be because it’s a mystery to them as well. We are talking about an organization whose star player was going to miss the first half of the 2020 season if it started on time after team doctors weren’t being able to identify broken ribs and a punctured lung for five months. They are likely to do a lot more losing because their ceiling for runs scored each night is three, their high-paid veterans can’t hit and the schedule for the next 11 games is Mets (2), Red Sox (3), Mariners (3), Rangers (3). You would like to think the six games against the A’s and Cardinals at the end of the month would be a nice break, but if Judge isn’t back for those, those will be far from a “break.” (The A’s beat the Rays on Monday night and have a five-game winning streak, which is something the 2023 Yankees haven’t accomplished.)

10. The next two nights the Yankees will face Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, so if you think playing the 31-35 Pete Alonso-less Mets favors the Judge-less Yankees, think again. The Yankees have allowed 18 starting pitchers to complete seven innings against them this season and that’s more than any other team in the majors. With Scherzer and Verlander, who both have owned the Yankees in their Hall of Famer careers both coming off bad starts, expect the Yankees to increase their lead on that humiliating stat.

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