The Yankees have lost three straight series, seven of their last 10 and find themselves tied for last place in the AL East. The season is unraveling.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I celebrated the New Year and start of 2023 by writing ‘New Year, Same Yankees Lineup’ on January 1.

Here are some snippets from that blog:

I never believed Hal Steinbrenner when he told Aaron Judge he had the payroll flexibility to re-sign him and add more to the roster to essentially close the four-win postseason gap between the Yankees and Astros. And because I don’t believe a word this Steinbrenner says — unless he’s talking about how to implement harsher luxury-tax penalties, which in turn are bad for his franchise’s chances of winning and then every word he says is the truth — I’m not surprised that the Yankees’ lineup is the same it was two-plus months ago when they were laughed out of the postseason for the third time in six years by the Astros. Actually, it’s not the same, it’s worse.

That lineup at least had the potential to have a healthy Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi. The 2023 lineup will have neither, and the only addition made to it this offseason has been to re-sign Judge, a move for which Steinbrenner has been praised. Yes, the owner of the highest-valued franchise in the league that makes more money than all the other teams has been celebrated for retaining the team’s star player, in what should be a given. Steinbrenner has been referred as some kind of folk hero or legend for getting on the phone during his Italy vacation to speak with Judge and eventually agree to give him $360 million of the money he inherited from his father.

If you think there’s still a lot of time left in the offseason, there’s not. The Yankees’ roster you see today is most likely the one on Opening Day. The lineup you’re used to seeing underachieve and disappoint is getting yet another chance to “get over the hump” the team’s manager claims the team has been “close” to getting over in his five season as manager, only to come up shorter each time.

It’s not like anything I wrote was far-fetched, and it’s not like I made any wild, long-shot predictions. It was all obvious because everything about this team has been obvious for several consecutive seasons now. The Yankees internally keep thinking everything will change and work in their favor despite statistic, data, logic, reasoning and common sense suggesting otherwise. Only Yankees employees and the biggest of Yankees homers looked at this time on Opening Day and thought it was good enough to win a championship. After a month, only a fucking idiot could still look at this team and think that.

2. The Yankees have scored 116 runs in 29 games. They have scored the least amount of runs in the AL East, and unsurprisingly, they are tied for last place in the AL East with the Red Sox.

The only teams that have trail the Yankees in runs scored in the AL are Oakland (on pace for 129 losses), Cleveland (on pace for 75 wins), Kansas City (on pace for 123 losses) and Detroit (on pace for 103 losses). Even the White Sox (who are 8-21) have scored more runs than the Yankees. Going back to June 30 of last season, the Yankees are 61-63. A 124-game sample size.

3. Over the weekend, the Yankees lost three of four to the Rangers (including three straight) to finish their seven-game road trip at 2-5. In those three losses, the Yankees seemed to be on their way to getting no-hit by Jacob deGrom before he left the game injured, allowed Nathan Eovaldi to throw a complete-game shutout against them and then let the left-handed Martin Perez shut down their nearly-all-right-handed lineup. The Yankees were outscored 24-8 in the four games and scored four runs in the last three games of the series. Four runs in three games. In Texas!

4. In the second game of the series, this was the Yankees’ lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Anthony Rizzo
Gleyber Torres
Willie Calhoun
Oswald Peraza
Franchy Cordero
Oswaldo Cabrera
Aaron Hicks
Kyle Higashioka

Here was the Yankees’ lineup from Apr. 28, 2013, 10 years to the day earlier:

Brett Gardner
Ben Francisco
Robinson Cano
Vernon Wells
Francisco Cervelli
Ichiro Suzuki
Eduardo Nunez
Lyle Overbay
Jayson Nix

After 2013, I never thought I would see the Yankees create lineups as poorly constructed as that season, but here we are. And after the postseason expanded to six teams in each league, I never thought there would be a season in which the Yankees didn’t reach the postseason but here we are. There’s a very real chance the Yankees could not be in the top 40 percent of the AL despite having the highest payroll in the AL.

5. Aside from Aaron Judge (who I’m sure will be held out of the lineup for a few days while the Yankees play shorthanded only to later be placed on the injured lis) there’s no help coming. The Yankees are going to have to rely on the likes of Willie Calhoun, Franchy Cordero and Jake Bauers because there’s no one else. The team chose to not upgrade the everyday lineup through free agency or trades in the offseason and completely disregarded building a major-league-caliber bench on top of that. They purposely assembled a recipe for disaster and did so to perfection. This roster with the second-highest payroll in the sport was built this way intentionally.

6. Unfortunately, there’s no change to be made. This is all on Brian Cashman, but for the guy who has a lifetime contract from the Steinbrenner family, a disastrous 2023 season won’t result in any changes. Ownership and the front office will blame the season on injuries. It’s not like the Yankees’ injuries are surprising. Before last season, Judge would spend have at least one stint on the injured list per season. Josh Donaldson has played one “full season” in seven years. DJ LeMahieu came into this season having had his last two seasons end early due to injury. Anthony Rizzo missed 20 percent of last year with back issues that also flared up this spring. Harrison Bader has missed 30 percent of his games since becoming a major leaguer. Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks have nearly been hurt more than they have been available as Yankees. Carlos Rodon made 31 starts last year and in his other seven major-league seasons made more than 24 once. Luis Severino has started 22 regular-season games for the Yankees since 2019. Jonathan Loaisiga has been the pitcher version of Hicks when it comes to injuries. The Yankees’ injuries aren’t freak, unexpected occurrences. They are the result of oft-injured players getting injured again and again.

7. Injuries aren’t an excuse, but there’s no doubt in my mind the Yankees will cite that as the reason for this season if it doesn’t turn around. This team wasn’t going to be good enough if it stayed healthy. The best-case scenario would have been reaching the ALCS and losing to the Astros for a fourth time in seven years. The worst-case scenario would have been this.

8. The Yankees have buried themselves in the division. The Rays need to go 67-66 to win 90 games. Play one game over .500 for the rest of the season and they win 100 games. The Yankees would need to go 75-58 just to tie them in that scenario. Not only would the Yankees need to play .564 baseball for five months if the Rays play just .504 baseball, but the Yankees would need to separate themselves from the Red Sox and jump the Blue Jays and Orioles before overtaking the Rays. So yeah, the division is over before a game in May has been played.

Seven of the Yankees’ next 13 games are against the Rays, so by the end of play on May 14, we will know if the Yankees officially have a prayer to win the division. We could know well before them if the next few days against the Guardians don’t go well prior to the weekend series at the Trop.

9. I would sign up for a wild-card berth right now. I would take the 6-seed right now and I know what that would mean. It would mean going on the road for all games of a best-of-3, burning two or three of the Yankees’ best starters, and if able to survive, going on the road to Tampa without those two or three best starters. A 6-seed would mean an abbreviated postseason yet again.

In an ideal world, not reaching the postseason would be better than being the 6-seed because not reaching the postseason could lead to front office and managerial changes. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and the Yankees don’t operate in an ideal world where wins and losses matter and payroll is commensurate to team revenue. They operate in a world where “the process is more important than the results” (their words not mine) and everyone’s job is safe and winning is far from the priority. Every Yankees fan knows nothing will change even if this season ends with zero postseason games. Cashman has a job for life and Aaron Boone is his guy. This dynamic duo will be here for a long, long time and seemingly no level of losing, coming up short or incompetence will change that.

10. If the Yankees miss the postseason, nothing will change. If they reach the postseason and lose in the silly best-of-3, the organization will say they were “right there” even though everyone knows they weren’t, aren’t and haven’t been. So I might as well say I would take the lottery ticket 6-seed, which right now feels unattainable with this team.

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The Yankees scored 12 runs on Wednesday. It was four more runs than they had scored in their previous five games combined. One game doesn’t change how bad the offense is and it doesn’t change the fact they have now lost two series in a row.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Things are bad, real bad, and the Yankees’ 12-6 win over the Twins on Wednesday doesn’t change that. All that win did was salvage the final game of the series and momentarily pause the Yankees’ dismal play.

The Yankees opened the series by scoring one run in a 6-1 loss, a ninth-inning run that ended the Twins’ shutout bid. The Yankees were thoroughly dominated by old friend Sonny Gray, who threw seven shutout innings. The former Yankee has a 0.62 ERA in five starts this season. He had a 3.08 ERA in 24 starts last season. He had a 3.49 ERA in three seasons with the Reds and a 3.42 ERA in four-and-a-half years with the A’s. But for whatever reason, he had a 4.51 ERA in 195 2/3 innings as a Yankee, a full run higher than his 3.50 career ERA.

When Brian Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2019, he said, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” and yet, the Yankees are going through the same exercise in 2023 as they did in 2022 and 2021 and 2020 with the offense, and most of the offense was here in 2019 and 2018 as well. So far, the results haven’t been different.

Part of Cashman’s all-or-nothing offenses was Joey Gallo (who the Yankees traded four prospects for) and then traded him away almost exactly a year later. Sure enough, there was Gallo hitting a moonshot against the Yankees on Monday (and again on Wednesday). Like Gray and like every other ex-Yankee, the Law of Ex-Yankees says every former Bronx Bomber has to perform well against them. Whether it’s Gray or Gallo or Thairo Estrada or Gio Urshela earlier this season or pitchers and players like Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Nunez and Steve Pearce in the past, it’s just the way it goes.

2. Monday was the second game in a row and third time in four games the Yankees scored a single run. Tuesday wasn’t much better, but it was technically better as the Yankees scored twice, losing 6-2.

“This was better than yesterday,” Aaron Boone said after Tuesday’s loss.

By Boone’s logic, if the Yankees could add a run each day to their previous day’s total then by the weekend they may have enough runs to win a game.

Thankfully, the Yankees didn’t have to wait until the weekend to score enough runs to win.

3. Wednesday’s 12-run outburst was refreshing. It was the most runs the Yankees have scored in a game this season and just the second time they have scored double digits (11 against the Guardians on April 11). Since that 11-2 win over the Guardians, here are the Yankees’ runs per game: 4, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 9, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 12. That’s a lot of low numbers. That’s 51 runs in 14 games (3.64 runs per game) with 21 of the runs coming in two games. That means in the other 12 games, the Yankees scored 30 runs for 2.50 runs per game.

This isn’t anything new. The Yankees haven’t had a good offense for a long time. Since June 30 of last season they are 60-60. That’s not a small sample size. During that time, they nearly blew a 15 1/2-game lead, squeaked by the Guardians in the ALDS (the Guardians had the tying run at the plate in the bottom of ninth of a winner-take-all Game 5), were humiliated by the Astros in the ALCS, and now are scoring a reasonable amount of runs to win a game once per week.

4. Right now, the Yankees hold the third and final wild-card berth in the American League, so crazy Yankees homers have reminded me “If the season ended today, the Yankees would be in the playoffs.” Well, by that logic, if the season ended today, Willie Calhoun would be a middle-of-the-order bat for the Yankees, they would need to use Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes in the best-of-3 wild-card series, and if they were to survive it, they would then draw the Rays and have a combination of Clarke Schmidt, Jhony Brito and Domingo German starting the first two games of a best-of-5. I’m not sure how saying, “If the season ended today …” can be viewed as a good thing for the Yankees. This is a team that had the second-best World Series odds entering the season and is expected to compete for a championship. Yankees fans are now content with being the last team in a six-team postseason field?

5. As I wrote earlier in the week, this isn’t a slump, this is the Yankees offense. This is who they are, and there is limited help on the way. Harrison Bader and Josh Donaldson are upgrades over some of the current everyday options, but neither are going to carry the offense. They just won’t be the automatic outs their replacements have been. (That may be me underestimating just how bad Donaldson is and can be.)

Things are so bad offensively, that Calhoun and his -2.1 career WAR and career .697 OPS have been batting fifth. Fifth! For the New York Yankees in real games! By WAR, Calhoun is the worst player to have played in the majors since 2020. The entire majors. I thought it was bad 10 years ago when Ben Francisco, Brennan Boesch, Lyle Overbay and David Adams batted fifth for the Yankees, but the lineups the Yankees are playing in the first month of this season are nearly as bad.

“There’s no doubt in my mind Willie Calhoun can bang and is going to hit,” Boone said on Tuesday.

Boone isn’t talking about an early-20s top prospect playing his first games in the majors. He’s talking about the statistical worst player in Major League Baseball since 2020. There’s being positive and sticking up for your guys and then there’s just being an outright liar. Boone is the latter. He’s an outright liar. He lies about everything. He lies about injuries, performance, ability, you name it. I wouldn’t trust him to give me the time or tell me what day of the week it is.

If you’re looking for reinforcements in the minors, Jake Bauers has nine home runs and 20 RBIs with a 1.364 OPS in 19 games at Triple-A. If you forget who Bauers is, he’s a 27-year-old who has played parts of three seasons in the majors for Tampa Bay, Cleveland and Seattle. In the majors, he has hit .213/.307/.348 and has produced a negative WAR, just like Calhoun.

“(Bauers) has definitely caught our eye,” Boone said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Of course Boone and the Yankees have their eye on Bauers! As I wrote earlier in the week, the Yankees went into another season with an oft-injured everyday lineup and despite that, completely disregarded building a reliable bench. That’s how you end up with players like Calhoun and Franchy Cordero batting fifth and sixth for a supposed contender and that’s how you get Bauers on the doorstep of being called up and also batting in the middle of the Yankees lineup.

6. The first four batters in the Yankees lineup is the Yankees lineup. Anthony Volpe, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu. Gleyber Torres is a major-league bat, but he can’t be counted on. Torres’ double and home run on Wednesday were his first extra-base hit in more than wo weeks and his first home run in more than three weeks.

The offense scored five runs in the second inning on Wednesday and it was made possible by a five-run second inning. The rally was started by an error, an infield single and a bunt. It wasn’t until Volpe’s RBI line-drive single and Judge’s three-run, bases-clearing double when the Yankees had something resembling true offense.

7. After Judge’s double, leading by five runs with one out in the inning, he decided it would be a good time to steal third base, so he took off, tried a headfirst slide and ended up faceplanting several feet short of the bag like an infant taking their first steps. Judge got up and ran off the field and down the tunnel with the trainers holding his arm uncomfortably. Thankfully, he was OK, but if he would have been seriously hurt trying to unnecessarily steal third, it would have summed up this shit sandwich season perfectly. Judge is the single-most important Yankee and if he ever gets hurt, just pack up the bats and balls and we’ll see you in 2024. I certainly won’t be sticking around to watch this team without it’s most important player. Think about how bad things are with Judge. Without him? I don’t want to think about it.

8. Since hitting his first carer home run on April 14, Volpe entered Wednesday’s game hitting .263/.404/.421 in his last 11 games and 47 plate appearances. Then on Wednesday he went 2-for-3 with a double and two walks. The scouting report on Volpe at every level has been that he struggles initially and then doesn’t just figure it out but dominates, and that seems to be happening here. The quality of his at-bats are much stronger than they were in the first two weeks of the season (as expected), and he looks like he belongs and looks like he belongs at the top of a major-league lineup. Here’s to hoping he continues to adjust to this level and here’s to hoping he is the Yankees’ solution for a leadoff hitter for a long, long time.

9. It took Boone some time (like most logical things do, if he ever figures them out), but he finally realized that this former leadoff hitter LeMahieu shouldn’t be hitting behind Torres. If LeMahieu isn’t going to lead off, he can’t be hitting behind Torres. Ever. Torres is better than the slop the Yankees have batting 6 through 9, but he’s not better than LeMahieu under any circumstance. LeMahieu isn’t your prototypical cleanup hitter, but neither is Torres. Far from it. The Yankees need to stack as many quality bats together as they can for the time being and that means a 1 through 4 of Volpe, Judge, Rizzo and LeMahieu every day.

10. The road trip continues to Texas where the Yankees begin a four-game series with the first-place Rangers on Thursday. The Yankees will see Andrew Heaney and Eovaldi, who you can expect big starts from based on the Law of Ex-Yankees, Jacob deGrom, who you have to expect a loss against (especially with the state of the lineup) and Martin Perez, who somehow is getting outs in the majors with an extremely hittable repertoire.

The Yankees are not set up well at all to go to Texas right now, considering they’re not set up well to go to Oakland right now. These next four days are likely not going to be good for my health, but I’m prepared for this season to not be good for it. I have Brian Cashman to thank for that.

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The Yankees finished their 10-game homestand with a disappointing 5-5 record. The offense looked every bit as bad as it did from July through October of last season, why wouldn’t it? It’s the same offense.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are 14 percent through their season, and to date, it’s gone exactly as expected: when they get outstanding starting pitching, they win, and when they need their offense to win the game, they lose.

Nothing about this season has been a surprise, and why would it be? The Yankees brought back the same lineup that slogged through July, August, September and October, and for some reason, expected different results. The Yankees just scored 32 runs in a 10-game homestand and nine of the 32 runs (28 percent) came in one game. A 5-5 homestand against the Twins, Angels and Blue Jays is less than acceptable.

2. Where does anyone think help is coming from? Harrison Bader is a glove-first player with a .722 career OPS. Josh Donaldson has been a glove-only player since the beginning of last season and his entire Yankees tenure. Those two are going to play once they are healthy, but expecting them to save this offense is like expecting Albert Abreu to emerge as the next Mariano Rivera.

3. Aside from Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu, no one can be counted on. Gleyber Torres hasn’t hit a home run in three weeks and doesn’t have an extra-base hit in the last two weeks (after the Brian Cashman Fan Club wanted the Yankees to extend him following the first four games of the season). Anthony Volpe has 82 career plate appearances, Oswald Peraza plays infrequently and Oswaldo Cabrera looks overmatched. Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Willie Calhoun aren’t major-league-caliber players, and when Franchy Cordero isn’t getting middle-middle fastballs, he isn’t one either. Neither Yankees catcher can hit and Aaron Hicks has more RBI than I do after nearly a month of baseball. And who knows when Giancarlo Stanton will be back. I expect him to not play another game this season.

(Stanton saying he’s in “disbelief” that he’s on the injured list again is my favorite quote of all time. He has missed one-third of the team’s game since becoming a Yankee, and that number would be even worse if the 2020 season started on time. “Disbelief” isn’t the word I would use to describe him missing another large portion of a season.)

4. The Yankees had all offseason to address their glaring needs and their three offseason moves were to re-sign their homegrown superstar (a move that deserves zero praise when you’re the richest team in the sport), sign Carlos Rodon, who has thrown as many pitches for the 2023 Yankees as Clarke Schmidt has quality starts (zero) and sign Tommy Kahnle, who has thrown as many pitches as Rodon has.

5. Like the organization’s failure to add any new pieces to the everyday offense, they also completely disregarded their bench over the winter. When you have a 34-year-old second baseman who has been shut down prior to the postseason the last two years due to injury, a 33-year-old outfielder/designated hitter who has only played in two-thirds of the team’s games over the previous five years, an oft-injured 37-year-old third baseman who provided no offense in his age 36 season, a 33-year-old outfielder who has played in only 60 percent of the team’s games over seven years and a center field who has missed 30 percent of regular-season games in the last five years, you might want to have some position player depth and a quality bench. The Yankees decided not to. So their bench is full of owed money (Aaron Hicks), players no other team wants (Cordero), players who won’t appear in another game in the majors once released by the Yankees (Calhoun) and players they overvalue for unknown reasons (Kiner-Falefa). None of those four are capable of pinch hitting in a big spot and succeeding, and none of the four are capable of being late-game defensive replacements. The Yankees’ entire bench holds no value.

6. In the case of players like Donaldson and Hicks who are still only Yankees because of owed money, the question is why? The Diamondbacks have the league’s 21st-highest payroll and designated Madison Bumgarner for assignment, despite owing him $37 million. They got rid of their highest-paid player because he wasn’t performing, feel he’s detrimental to the team’s success and believe his roster spot would be better used on someone else. The Diamondbacks see what may be a wide-open NL West and a chance for them to return to the postseason for the first time in six years and they are going for it.

7. The Yankees, on the other hand, are supposed to be a World Series favorite, generate infinitely more revenue than the Diamondbacks and have a payroll two-and-a-half times that of Arizona and still roster Donaldson and Hicks. The extension for Hicks was idiotic and the trade for Donaldson was foolish, but seeing the Diamondbacks operate the way the Yankees should is disturbing.

8. It’s even more disturbing than Aaron Boone using Michael King in Sunday’s game with the Yankees trailing by three runs late. You may be thinking that move wasn’t a big deal because King had only pitched once in the previous eight days, but that’s the problem. When King threw 25 pitches on April 12 against the Guardians, for some reason it made him unavailable two days later to pitch against the Twins in the eighth inning, in the game Clay Holmes ruined. Boone cited King throwing those 25 pitches two days earlier as to why he was unavailable, but didn’t mention it was the only 25 pitches he had thrown in five days. Sure enough, King was only used once within a week’s span and then was used on Sunday just to get work in, and Boone had him pitch multiple innings in a game that was over. So if the Yankees need King on Monday or Tuesday, he won’t be available.

9. At this point, I think the Yankees have to play Hicks. I know Boone despises him and the chance Hicks gives the anything is close to zero, but there is at least a chance, even if that chance is nearly zero. This is the lineup I would use every day for the time being:

Anthony Volpe
Aaron Judge
Anthony Rizzo
DJ LeMahieu
Gleyber Torres
Oswaldo Cabrera
Aaron Hicks
Jose Trevino
Oswald Peraza

It’s less than ideal. It’s about as far from ideal as a New York Yankees lineup should be. But for now, it maximizes what’s available on this irresponsibly-constructed roster.

10. If you haven’t noticed, all five teams in the AL East are over .500. There are no cupcake games this year within the division. The Orioles have a better record than the Yankees, and while the Red Sox have no pitching, their offense is likely to carry them to a .500-ish record. It’s going to be a battle to win the East and avoid the best-of-3 wild-card series this season. It may be a battle just to reach the postseason with the state of the offense and rotation and if the bullpen continues down its injured and unproductive path.

The Yankees now begin a seven-game road trip against the Central’s first-place Twins and the West’s first-place Rangers. After that, the Yankees get the pesky Guardians and their first meeting with the Rays. It’s going to be a long two weeks as is, and if Judge, Rizzo and LeMahieu don’t hit, it’s going to be even longer.

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The Yankees have lost three of five at home, lost a bat they can’t afford to lose for the next six weeks and found out their big, offseason free-agent starter signing is headed for tests on his back. It’s hard to feel good about this team right now.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When Hal Steinbrenner signed Carlos Rodon, he said his Yankees “weren’t done” with their offseason. He lied.

The Yankees were done. They brought back Aaron Judge and signed Rodon. The only other move they made was bringing back old friend Tommy Kahnle. They chose to not address left field. They chose to not move on from Aaron Hicks or Josh Donaldson or Isiah Kiner-Falefa. They chose to not add starting pitching depth to the organization to protect a fragile rotation and refill the depth they depleted to trade for broken-down arms last July. They chose to not address their bench even with a roster littered with oft-injured players.

2. Less than three weeks into the season and Rodon hasn’t thrown a pitch and neither has Kahnle, and Frankie Montas likely won’t throw another one for the Yankees. Luis Severino is on the injured list again, as are IL frequenters Harrison Bader, Josh Donaldson and Giancarlo Stanton. Bader hasn’t played a game this season, Donaldson was unplayable before he became literally unplayable and the Yankees continued their unnecessary rest plan for Stanton to keep him healthy, and once again, it worked about as well as using the 2004 ALCS as a motivational tactic for the 2022 ALCS.

3. Hicks has been even worse than imagined, as has Kiner-Falefa. The bench the Yankees chose to ignore has a career negative-2.0 WAR Willie Calhoun on it, a player who Aaron Boone pinch hit with instead of DJ LeMahieu on Friday night. The limited starting pitching depth the Yankees entered the season with is now part of the actual rotation and filling in about as well as could be expected.

4. If only the Yankees could have seen this coming. If only they could have known players with injured pasts would get injured. If only they could have predicted bad baseball players would continue to be bad baseball players. If only they could have been aware of any of this, maybe they could have prevented all of this.

5. This being playing with a lineup that has at least three automatic outs each night. This being playing with a rotation featuring one starter who has made three career starts, one who has a 6.16 ERA and 1.696 WHIP in eight career starts and another who has allowed 72 home runs in 378 2/3 innings as a starter.

6. Following a day off on Monday, the Yankees were beat rather easily by a crappy Angels team that just got beat up by an even worse Red Sox team over the weekend. The Yankees were lifeless at the plate, foolish on the basepaths and Clarke Schmidt continued to sabotage any future he may think he has a starter in the majors. It was the kind of game the Yankees gave us in July, August and September of last season.

7. Unfortunately, it’s hard not to envision a lot more of these games coming. Prior to the loss to the Angels, it was announced that Rodon will have tests done on his back. The same pitcher who initially said when going on the IL that if it were the ALDS he would be pitching. Do they let pitchers pitch in the postseason who needs to have tests done on their back following bullpen sessions?

8. Along with the Rodon news, the Yankees announced Stanton would be out for six weeks with a hamstring issue. The same hamstring issues he had in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons. The best-case scenario is a Memorial Day return, and the worst-case scenario is a repeat of 2019 when he played 18 games and took himself out of the lineup in that postseason.

9. There’s not much to feel good about with this team right now. This season feels like a continuation of last season, and that’s because it is. Saying “It’s early” or calling the team’s injuries “bad luck” is completely disregarding everything this team and organization has done (or hasn’t done) as a group over the last few years. This season, like the recent others that preceded it, was once again set up as a massive parlay, from both injury and performance standpoints. I have seen how this story ends and it’s going to take a lot of change and unexpected production for this version to not end the same way the others have.

10. The Yankees aren’t bad. They’re 10-7. But to get there, they have needed Gerrit Cole to have the best four-game stretch of his career, Franchy Cordero to save the day a few times and a favorable early-season schedule. Thinking this team can pull the same Replacement Yankees miracle the 2019 team did to weather this injury storm isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s foolish. But that’s all Yankees fans can do right now is think foolishly that this team won’t get buried by the Rays trying to runaway before the end of the first month of the season. Think that this team with this makeshift lineup and this makeshift rotation can stay afloat until the always-injured players return. If they return.

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The Yankees’ weekend in Baltimore started off with their manager doing what he’s done for five-plus seasons: manage the team to losses in winnable games. Thankfully, Jhony Brito was on the mound on Saturday, and the Yankees bounced back to win the final two games of the series.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Another series, another series win for the Yankees. That’s three series, three series wins and a 6-3 record. The Yankees have been slow starters in the Aaron Boone era in the first couple of weeks of March/April, so to be three games over .500 and playing as well as they have has been enjoyable.

The Yankees have lost three games and in all three games they were in it and had a chance to win in the ninth inning. They have yet to lose a laugher or get blown out. On the other hand, they never seem to lose laughers or get blown out. It would be nice if they would just lose like every other team and not make it so painful right down until the final pitch, keeping you hooked and making you think they will come back.

2. By now all Yankees fans should know that unless the Yankees outpitch and outhit their own manager, he’s not going to help them win. After some illogical decisions in the second game of the season (and first loss of the season) and after giving away the fourth game of the season (in what was the second loss of the season), Boone had an all-time Boone game in the seventh game of the season on Friday night.

Clarke Schmidt wasn’t very good in his second start (3.1 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K) and after putting the Yankees in a 4-0 hole, the offense fought back to take a 5-4 lead in the sixth. With one out in the sixth, Oswaldo Cabrera was at third. Franchy Cordero was due up to face the left-handed Danny Coulombe, so Boone went to the bench for a pinch hitter. That pinch hitter? Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

3. How the Yankees got to a place where Kiner-Falefa is the Yankees’ right-handed pinch-hit option off the bench is quite the embarrassment. Aaron Hicks was available, and was certainly the better option no matter how lost he may be or seem to be, but Boone would rather eat from a Manhattan restaurant with a “C” health rating than play Hicks any more than he has to. (The best part about the decision was after the game Boone said he went with Kiner-Falefa over Hicks because the Yankees needed a base hit there and not a walk. Yes, he really said that. He thinks getting more people on base and increasing the amount of runs the team may score is not a good idea.)

There was only one way Kiner-Falefa’s at-bat was going to end and it was without him getting the runner in from third with one out. I wasn’t sure if he was going to strike out, ground out weakly or pop one up in the infield, but the end result was inevitable. Kiner-Falefa went with the old infield popup, hitting it to the first baseman.

4. In the bottom of the sixth, Ron Marinaccio relieved Ian Hamilton to face the top of the order with a runner on first and one out. Jorge Mateo stole second on Marinaccio and moved over to third on a Cedric Mullins ground out. Mateo was now at third representing the tying run with Adley Rutschman at the plate.

The Yankees had first base and second base open. Walking Rutschman would have meant facing Anthony Santander with two on, but if that at-bat wasn’t going well, he also could have been put on to face the right-handed Ryan Mountcastle. It was as if Boone was looking at Google Maps and he had the fastest possible route, a route with a similar ETA and then a route with a 43-minute delay for road work and a detour involved. He chose the last option.

Boone had Marinaccio face Rutschman. Fine. Marinacco went fastball, fastball, changeup, changeup and fell behind 3-1. At this point, putting Rutschman on made the most sense. Why risk throwing a changeup that could catch too much of the plate or a fastball that could do the same? Four pitches and four fastballs later (that Rutschman had now seen six times), he singled to left to tie the game. The next batter, Santander, struck out on four pitches and swung through two Marinaccio fastballs.

5. Boone sent Marinaccio back out for the seventh with the game tied at 5. He walked Mountcastle on five pitches and then struck out Gunnar Henderson while Mountcastle stole second. The go-ahead run was now in scoring position with one out. Removing Marinaccio was the right move, if it meant bringing in Jonathan Loaisiga or Wandy Peralta or even Michael King despite King looking awful in the first week of the season. Boone chose Jimmy Cordero. (We would find out later that Loaisiga was unavailable and would end up on the injured list.)

Cordero’s first pitch was wild, allowing Mountcastle to go to third, and his second pitch was an RBI double for Ramon Urias to give the Orioles a 6-5 lead. Cordero got Adam Frazier to ground out, moving Urias to third, and then threw another wild pitch to allow Urias to score. It gets worse.

6. In the top of the eighth, the Yankees opened the inning with a double and back-to-back singles. The Orioles’ lead was now one run at 7-6 and the Yankees had first and second with no one out. They could tie the game by just making out. Well, the right kind of outs.

Jose Trevino came up and with the whole world knowing he was going to bunt, he didn’t care about showing the whole he was going to bunt and got into a bunting position before Bryan Baker even started his delivery. Baker missed badly on the first two pitches, so Trevino now had a 2-0 count. Trevino could wait and take a strike and the wild Baker might walk him to load the bases with no outs or he could continue to look for a strike to bunt. Boone had other ideas. He took off the bunt for Trevino and Trevino swung away at the 2-0 pitch, hit a grounder to Urias at third who stepped on third and threw to first four a double play, destroying the Yankees’ rally.

Kiner-Falefa followed Trevino and with a chance to redeem himself and drive in the game-tying run he swung through a couple of middle-middle fastballs in his at-bat and struck out.

7. With the Yankees trailing 7-6 in the bottom of the eighth, Boone then turned to Peralta. Yes, Boone had passed over Peralta for Cordero with the game tied at 5 in the seventh, and now wanted him to pitch with the Yankees trailing by a run in the eighth. There’s nothing Boone likes doing more than holding back his elite relievers from tie games to use them when the team is trailing. Now watching him in his sixth season continue to implement this ridiculously moronic strategy, I really, truly don’t want things like this from him to upset me anymore, but they do. Peralta pitched a scoreless eighth because he’s awesome, but the Yankees ended up losing 7-6.

8. Saturday was Johnny Brito day and I love Brito. After shutting out the Giants for five innings his in major-league debut, Brito didn’t have his best stuff with him right from the start on Saturday and faced first and third with no outs and the Orioles’ 3-4-5 hitters in the first. Brito had created a shitstorm for himself two batters into his night, and it seemed like maybe he wasn’t going to run away with a rotation spot after all.

But Brito reset after a mound visit initiated by Anthony Rizzo (and not the dugout) and got a fly ball and two ground balls to limit the damage to a run to get out of the inning. That was all he would allow all night in what was another impressive performance: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 2 K.

Brito is the heavy, heavy favorite right now to remain in the rotation when and if Carlos Rodon and Luis Severino return. I love how he attacks the zone and doesn’t nibble, believing in his stuff to be enough and not trying to make the perfect pitch every pitch. On a night when he didn’t have his best stuff, he kept his composure, battled and grinded through five innings. Put Schmidt or Domingo German in that first-inning situation and the game is likely over. I look forward to his next start.

9. It was a beautiful Easter made possible by Nestor Cortes, who did his thing and Aaron Judge, who did his thing. Not only was Cortes solid (5.1 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K) and not only did Judge hit two more home runs (3-for-4), but Franchy Cordero also had a day, banging his second of the season.

Cordero came to the Yankees as the left-handed Wily Mo Pena, who would hit a 700-foot home run every few weeks, and in between the mammoth blasts would be non-competitive strikeouts. So far as a Yankee, Cordero is 5-for-14 with a double and two home runs and seven RBIs. Cordero is tied with Judge for the team lead in RBIs.

I thought Cordero getting designated for assignment once Harrison Bader returned was inevitable, but right now it can’t be. There’s a lot of time for Cordero to regress to the player he has always been, and if he doesn’t, he has already given the Yankees more than I thought he ever would. I’m rooting for him to be this season’s out-of-nowhere fan favorite. Having the same amount of RBIs as Judge in just 39 percent of the plate appearances is certainly a way to start seeing Cordero shirseys popping up on River Ave.

10. Up next, it’s off to Cleveland where the Yankees last were in Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS. (Game 3 was a Boone special.) The Guardians are pesky and a tough group, and they will get to face Domingo German and Schmidt in two of the three games in the series. (Gerrit Cole is going to need to pitch as well as he did in his first two starts in the second game of the series on Tuesday.)

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