1. When the Yankees get shut down by the opposing starting pitcher, they tend to have an opportunity early on to get to them, don’t and end up being stifled for the remainder of the outing.

It happened on April 2 against the Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen. The Yankees had second and third with one out against the righty in the second inning and failed to score and Gallen settled in to throw 6 2/3 scoreless innings (with 13 strikeouts).

It happened on April 8 in Detroit against Tarik Skubal. The Yankees led off that game with back-to-back singles, couldn’t get either of them in and Skubal found his groove to retire 16 straight in a Yankees’ shutout loss.

It happened again on Monday in Cleveland. Gavin Williams isn’t Gallen or Skubal, but he certainly has the stuff to be, and like the other two, Williams was in trouble early in the game. The Yankees were gifted a leadoff error by defensive wizard Brayan Rocchio and also had two walks in the first and didn’t score a run. Cody Bellinger unsurprisingly hit into a double play and Jazz Chisholm struck out and the Yankees were held scoreless.

2. Williams kept the Yankees off the board until the seventh when he gave up a two-run home run to Jasson Dominguez right before being relieved at 104 pitches. While Williams (6.1 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 1 HR) was throwing up zeros, Clarke Schmidt (4 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 2 HR) was throwing batting practice to light-hitting Guardians.

“I felt like he was a little off command-wise,” Aaron Boone said, stating the obvious.

Schmidt put 10 baserunners on in four innings, allowed up five earned runs and two home runs. Lefties mashed off of him, especially Jose Ramirez and Kyle Manzardo who hit back-to-back homers off Schmidt in the third.

“We did a good job limiting the damage,” Schmidt said in all seriousness.

3. Prior to Monday, Schmidt had made three career starts at Progressive Field with this line: 13 IP, 16 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 9 BB, 17 K, 3 HR, 6.23 ERA, 1.923 WHIP. Add in him blowing Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS, being unable to get through five innings in Game 4 of the 2024 ALCS and Monday night, and it’s a good thing the Yankees don’t play in Cleveland again this season.

“I think I was able to make some good pitches,” Schmidt said after getting lit up.

4. The Guardians had a 6-0 lead after six, but the Yankees put together one of their patented trick-you-into-thinking-they-may-actually-come-back comebacks that fall just short. The Yankees scored two in the seventh (Dominguez home run) and another two in the eighth on a Chisholm home run. In the ninth, they brought the tying run to the plate in Aaron Judge, but he struck out against Cade Smith to end the game.

If only the Yankees had scored in the first when they had three baserunners and Williams had tiring at 25 pitches. It may have not mattered since Schmidt was so bad anyway, but the inability to move runners over and get them in and score runs while making outs continues to be a problem during the Boone era. It’s why the team has been awful in extra innings games since the implementation of the automatic runner. The situational hitting remains poor and the manager doesn’t have the creativity to build runs unless someone is hitting the ball over the wall.

5. When you remove two Yankees from the lineup who have been hitting the ball over the wall in Ben Rice and Trent Grisham (who is out on paternity leave), it’s hard to win. Rice was held out of the game after being hit on the elbow on Saturday (despite all tests coming back negative), however, he was able to pinch hit in the ninth. So Rice (who is only used as the designated hitter) was healthy enough to bat once in the game, but not four times? Was his elbow going to break with three more plate appearances?

6. It’s hard to win without Rice and Grisham because so much of the lineup sucks. Austin Wells went 0-for-5 and his OPS is down to .687. Bellinger (.548 OPS) may as well not bring a bat to the plate and hope the pitcher throws four balls before three strikes. Chisholm (.680 OPS) seems to hit a home run every few days and do nothing else in between. Anthony Volpe has a .614 OPS since April 2 with 20 strikeouts in 60 at-bats. Pablo Reyes isn’t a major-league player.

The lineup is essentially Judge, Rice, Paul Goldschmidt (who is basically a singles hitter), Oswaldo Cabrera (who is also a singles hitter), Dominguez against righties (.926 OPS against righties and .390 OPS against lefties) and Grisham when he plays, which isn’t every day since the Yankees have to play Bellinger because of owed money.

7. Bellinger is a big problem because he’s going to play because of owed money and his name and for the front office to justify the trade for him. The problem is he’s going to bat near the top of the lineup when he plays because of those things, whether he’s producing or not. The biggest problem is that there’s precedent for Bellinger being this bad.

Bellinger won the NL MVP in 2019 when the baseball was juiced and Brett Gardner (28 home runs) and Gleyber Torres (38 home runs) became power hitters. Since then, Bellinger has a 99+ OPS in 575 games and 2,352 plate appearances. He’s a .242/.304/.421 hitter since the start of 2020.

Within these last five-plus seasons, Bellinger posted a .542 OPS in 2021 and a .654 OPS in 2022, and the Dodgers moved on from him. The Dodgers –the best organization in baseball — moved on from their homegrown, 2017 Rookie of the Year, 2019 MVP and Gold Glove center fielder after his age 26 season. That’s not great.

8. The Yankees have used Bellinger in the 2-hole hoping he would mash in-zone pitches expected with Judge behind him. They have used him as Judge’s protection. They have used him to clean up. He has done nothing in every spot. The season may only be 14 percent through, but again, there is precedent for Bellinger being a complete zero at the plate for an entire season. And if this is one of those seasons from Bellinger in a year where a single game could decide the AL East or a wild-card berth, the Yankees can’t afford to play him over other bats, whether those other bats are owed less money or not.

9. Bellinger isn’t the only problem, he’s just the biggest once. Chisholm, Volpe and Wells have been atrocious, Devin Williams has been a joke and every starter not named Max Fried has an ERA of at least 4.34. Despite their glaring issues, the Yankees are fortunately 14-9.

Schmidt was bad and Williams was solid, but the Yankees hit into three double plays in the game (one of them was bad luck on a Chisholm line drive), and when you hit into three double plays in six innings, it’s going to be difficult to win.

10. It’s going to be difficult to win on Tuesday as well. Will Warren gets the ball and based off of his Thursday night showing in Tampa (1.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K), it’s hard to have much confidence in him. Tanner Bibee goes for the Guardians. Bibee has made four starts this season. Two of them were against the Royals, in which he 10 1/3 scoreless innings. The other two were against the Angels and Orioles, and he allowed 13 earned runs and seven home runs in 9 2/3 innings. The Yankees are going to need that Bibee to show up. They’re also going to need some combination of Bellinger, Wells, Volpe and Chisholm to show up and for Rice to play.

1. When the Yankees led off Thursday’s home game on the road against the Rays with three straight singles to take a 1-0 lead, I was feeling great about where the game was headed. When only one of those three baserunners came around to score, that great feeling quickly turned ominous.

The Yankees have struggled in the past against Taj Bradley (one run in 13 innings) and with runners on first and third with no outs and one run already in and the 4-5-6 hitters in the lineup due up, they had the opportunity to break the game open and didn’t. After Aaron Judge’s single scored Paul Goldschmidt, Bradley faced one batter over the minimum for the next 4 1/3 innings.

2. During those 4 1/3 innings, Will Warren gave a reminder to anyone who thought he may have turned the corner last Saturday against the Giants that he hasn’t. With Marcus Stroman on the injured list, Warren paid tribute to his teammate by putting up a Stroman-like line: 1.2 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K. Warren couldn’t get through the second inning, needed 53 pitches to get five outs and got one swing-and-miss on those 53 pitches. When he was removed from the game, he left the bullpen needing to get 22 outs in the middle of a 13-game-in-13-days stretch, and he left with the bases loaded.

3. It’s rare for Aaron Boone to make a wise in-game pitching decision, considering his lack of feel for what’s unfolding on the field in front of him. But his decision to remove Warren in the second inning and turn the ball over to the bullpen saved the game, and helped lead the Yankees to a win. Had Warren stayed in with two outs and the bases loaded, he was either going to walk in a run or allow the bases to clear. Boone got in front of it for the first of only a handful of times in his seven-plus years as manager.

Ryan Yarbrough (2.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 1 K) managed to keep the damage to a minimum in relief of Warren, despite putting seven baserunners on in 2 2/3 innings, and Tim Hill (2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K) put up a couple of zeros following Yarbrough.

4. The Yankees trailed 3-1 with one in the fifth until Oswaldo Cabrera hit his first home run of the season off of Bradley. I keep writing it in each of these Thoughts, but let Cabrera play every day at third. He had three hits in the game and his average is up to .308 and his OPS up to .757. PLAY HIM EVERY DAY until he gives you a reason not to.

5. After Cabrera homered, Goldschmidt singled and Ben Rice doubled. Judge walked and Cody Bellinger — with the bases loaded — hit the ball on the ground to score Goldschmidt and tie the game at 3. (That’s about all anyone can expect or ask of Bellinger at the moment: put the ball in play. He did his best to end the rally and inning with a double play, but managed to beat it out.)

6. The Yankees added a run in the sixth on a Jasson Dominguez groundout, and later in the inning, with the bases loaded and two outs, Rice singled in two more to give the Yankees a 6-3 lead, which is how it would stay.

Rice finished the game with a career-high four hits. He has a .317 average and 1.064 OPS and with each passing game he looks more and more like this is for real at the plate. He’s doing in front of Judge what Juan Soto did last year.

7. Jazz Chisholm has gone out of his way to complain about the weather since the start of the season as the Yankees have only played in frigid New York, Pittsburgh and Detroit. But now they’re in Tampa and Chisholm still went 0-for-3 with a walk. He was a pitch away from having a second walk, but the umpire called a 3-2 pitch low and away for a strike and Chisholm went wild, getting himself tossed in the process. Minutes after getting tossed he took to social media to voice his displeasure with the call only to later delete the message. Keep it together. One missed strike call isn’t why you’re hitting .169 with a .723 OPS. Having one non-home run hit in your last 11 games is why. Maybe try an approach that isn’t think every pitch thrown is going to be the equivalent of a middle-middle, 3-0 fastball and not take your “A” swing with every swing?

8. On a night when Boone needed to go to his bullpen in the second inning and clearly made Luke Weaver unavailable, he was able to piece together 22 outs between Yarbrough (8), Hill (6), Ian Hamilton (5) and Devin Williams (3). Williams had the easiest outing of his Yankees tenure with a six-pitch ninth. Williams, Weaver and Fernando Cruz will all be available on Friday.

9. They’ll only be needed on Friday if Carlos Rodon doesn’t suck the way he has in three of his four starts this season, and the way he has so many times as a Yankee. Rodon has allowed five home runs in 23 innings this season, and his ability combined with Steinbrenner Field isn’t ideal with the way the ball has been flying out of there.

10. The Yankees will need their offense to show up with Rodon on the mound, and unfortunately, they’re going against Drew Rasmussen, who has allowed one earned run and no home runs this season across three starts. It’s never been easy for the Yankees against the Rays in the Boone era and it won’t be for the rest of the weekend.

1. Earlier this week, Juan Soto went out of his way to call Aaron Judge “the best hitter in baseball” and essentially told the world he misses being a Yankee.

During the three-game series against the Royals, Judge went out of his way to make his former teammate’s claim stand up. Judge went 2-for-4 on Monday, 2-for-3 with a walk on Tuesday and then 3-for-3 with a double, home run and walk on Wednesday. That home run (Judge’s first in 10 games) was a go-ahead shot to lead off the seventh. It gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead and was enough to carry them to a series sweep.

“I just feel like, in any situation, he’s going to come out on top,” Cody Bellinger said. “He’s the best player on this planet.”

2. Judge also scored 25 percent of the Yankees’ runs in the series and is now hitting .409/.519/.803 on the season. He joins Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Paul O’Neill as the only other Yankees to have a .400 batting average, .800 slugging percentage, 20 RBIs and 10 walks through the team’s first 18 games of the season (per Katie Sharp).

“I want to get on base. That’s the biggest thing, hitting in the middle of the order and hitting second a lot,” Judge said. “I’ve got to touch first base. That’s my job.”

3. Judge touched ‘em all with his seventh-inning shot off of John Schreiber. His late-game heroics were made possible because of another solid pitching performance from the Yankees staff. Clarke Schmidt made his season debut and wasn’t as good as Carlos Carrasco was on Monday or Max Fried was on Tuesday, but he was good enough (5.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 2 K) to get into the sixth inning on a night when the bullpen was shorthanded.

“The whole rotation has to step up,” Schmidt said. “I know that my job is to go out there and be as consistent as possible every five days and give my team a chance to win.”

4. Going into the game without Luke Weaver and Devin Williams (to a lesser degree) meant a close game may get tense and trusting Aaron Boone to push the right buttons without his best arms available would likely prove challenging. Boone went to Mark Leiter Jr. for four outs and Fernando Cruz for a two-inning save, and it all worked out.

5. It all worked out thanks to Cody Bellinger’s lead-saving catch with two outs in the ninth when he laid out in right field to prevent a game-tying extra-base hit.

“That’s the reason he’s got gold on his glove,” Judge said. “Very few people make that catch, especially in a big moment like that with the game on the line.”

Bellinger has been atrocious at the plate (.538 OPS), but managed to sneak a hard-hit ground ball inside of first base for an RBI double in the fourth and let his defense make up for his bat with the spectacular grab in the ninth.

“That might be my first game-saving catch,” Bellinger said. “I was just glad I was able to catch it and get the win.”

6. Anthony Volpe had a big, two-run double in the third to cap off a two-out rally. There’s nothing better than a two-out rally. Nothing. Judge doubled, Jazz Chisholm walked and then Volpe crushed a ball to left to score both runners. The Yankees managed to score three runs (on seven hits and four walks) off of Kris Bubic after he had allowed just two earned runs in his first three starts and 18 2/3 innings.

7. Chisholm had that third-inning walk to go along with a single to center off the end of his bat in the first. (He was also hit by a pitch in the seventh.) The first-inning single was the first non-home run hit for Chisholm since the series finale in Pittsburgh 10 days prior.

8. A night after going 3-for-3 with the game-changing, three-run double, Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-3 with a walk, but he did get to play all nine innings of the game with Judge as the designated hitter. No balls were to hit to Dominguez in the eighth or ninth after Judge made it a one-run game.

9. The Yankees have been playing with three near-automatic outs in their lineup in Bellinger, Chisholm and Austin Wells, and yet, they lead the American League in runs scored with 107 and a plus-24 run differential. (Thanks, Brewers.) The lineup has been heavily reliant on Judge, Ben Rice, Paul Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham (when he plays) and some timely hitting from Volpe and Dominguez. The Yankees need their three “everyday” left-handed bats to contribute, especially this weekend in Tampa.

10. It’s off to Steinbrenner Field where the Yankees will be visitors at their own place. (Maybe a trip back to spring training is what Bellinger needs to get going after he had a 1.214 OPS in 19 games during spring training.) It will be Will Warren against Taj Bradley. Now in his third season, Bradley has made two starts against the Yankees over the last two years, holding them to one run over 13 innings and a .331 OPS. But he has never faced the Yankees at their spring training home in real game where they are accustomed to playing and where the ball has been flying out of this season.

1. For the first time since Opening Day the Yankees won a game in which Max Fried didn’t start and the offense didn’t score at least eight runs. It took 15 games, but the Yankees finally proved they can win if their ace isn’t on the mound or if the offense doesn’t go completely off. They have Carlos Carrasco and solo home runs to thank for that.

2. Carrasco was outstanding in the Yankees’ 4-1 win over the Royals on Monday (5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR). One hit allowed in five innings? Sure, it was the Royals’ who are averaging 3.1 runs per game, but one hit allowed in five innings is one hit allowed in five innings.

3. After Carrasco walked two of the the first three batters of the game, I figured it was only a matter of pitches until the game would be out of hand and out of reach, especially with Seth Lugo starting for the Royals. But Carrasco managed to get out of the jam, pitched a perfect second, allowed a solo home run to Bobby Witt Jr. in the third and went six up, six down in the fourth and fifth.

“Everything we did before the game was working,” Carrasco said. “In the first inning, we got two walks and I was able to hold it right there.”

4. Six days after getting blasted for four home runs by the Tigers while Casey Mize shut down the Yankees, this time Carrasco shut down the Royals while the Yankees blasted four home runs against Lugo, all from left-handed hitters.

Trailing 1-0 in the fourth, Jazz Chisholm tied the game with a shot to right-center. Then in the fifth, Trent Grisham led off the inning with a home run, followed by Ben Rice two batters later and Austin Wells two batters after that. The Yankees led 4-1 through five and that’s how it would end thanks to four scoreless innings from Fernando Cruz (three of four outs for strikeouts), Tim Hill (two outs), Luke Weaver (1-2-3 eighth) and Devin Williams (save).

5. I don’t know that there’s anyone who thought the tying run wouldn’t come to the plate with a three-run lead in the ninth against Williams. And sure enough, Williams gave the Royals two cracks at the tying the game with one swing before getting out of it. Williams has now allowed 13 baserunners in in five innings. He nearly blew a three-run lead on Opening Day, a four-run lead in Detroit, made everyone nervous with a four-run lead against the Giants and let the tying run come up against the Royals with a three-run lead. What’s going to happen when he enters a game with a one- or two-run lead? I don’t know want to find out. At least not until he gets himself right and who knows when that will be.

6. Jasson Dominguez had an awesome night in left field, but that didn’t stop Aaron Boone from removing him from the game for a defensive replacement (Cody Bellinger) in the eighth. Bellinger struck out in his only at-bat and his OPS is down to .539. Maybe Bellinger should be the fourth outfielder and late-game defensive replacement? Grisham (1.124 OPS) certainly doesn’t deserve to sit.

7. Wells hit his first home run since the second game of the season against the Brewers, Rice improved his slash line to .300/.417/.680), Aaron Judge (1.212 OPS) and Paul Goldschmidt (.909 OPS) each had two more hits and Oswaldo Cabrera bumped his average up to .278.

8. After going 0-for-24, Chisholm has homered in the last two games. He’s hitting .175 with a .246 on-base percentage, but his OPS (.738) is being propped up by his six home runs (not that a .738 OPS is anything to feel good about). Maybe sprinkle in a walk or a single with runners in scoring position here and there? That would be nice.

9. It’s getting more difficult with each game to not think Anthony Volpe’s hot start to the year was nothing more than what it was last year. Going back to the Sunday walk-off loss in Pittsburgh, Volpe is 2-for-24 (both singles) with six walks and eight strikeouts. He’s walking more than did in either of the last two seasons, but he also has one stolen base through 16 games since you need to get on base with some frequency to steal a base.

10. Michael Wacha gets the ball for the Royals on Tuesday night, and unfortunately for him, he’s going against the Yankees’ ace in Fried. If Carrasco could hold the Royals to one hit through five innings, it’s hard not to envision the possibilities for Fried against that lineup if he pitches the way he did last Wednesday in Detroit.