1. What a comeback win for the Yankees on Wednesday night in Baltimore. Trailing late, the Yankees rallied against the struggling Orioles to win the three-game series and go into their scheduled day off feeling good.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true.

The Yankees didn’t come back to beat the last-place Orioles on Wednesday. Instead, they blew an early lead and then rolled over and lost the way they always do when they trail late in a game. These Yankees only blow late leads. They don’t overcome late deficits.

2. The reason they were in a deficit for most of the game was because of Carlos Carrasco. In his sixth start of the season, Carrasco put together his worst performance: 3.1 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 2 HR.

Carrasco blew an early two-run lead and allowed more hits (8) then he got outs (7), including two home runs. The Yankees lost 5-4 and lost a series to the team with the worst run differential in the American League.

3. It’s time for Carrasco to be designated for assignment. It’s more than time. Someone else needs to get an opportunity to start. I don’t care if it’s someone at Triple-A or Double-A or someone recently waived or released by another team. It’s hard to hear “So-and-so isn’t ready” from the same people employed by the Yankees who think Will Warren is ready and believe Carrasco is still a major leaguer. Something has to change with the rotation. The white flag can’t be waved in two of every five games between Carrasco (5.90 ERA) and Warren (5.63 ERA).

4. The way the torpedo bats don’t seem to work if you can’t make contact, it turns out when the Yankees’ offense isn’t facing an end-of-spring-training-scrap-heap pickup making his first start of the season like they did on Tuesday, they can’t score. Unless, Aaron Judge scores for them.

Judge was 3-for-3 with a walk in the game to raise his slash line to an absurd .427/.521/1.282. (If he were to go 0-for-50 beginning on Friday, he would still be hitting .299.) The first of his three hits was a two-run home run in the first inning, the second a single and the third an RBI single. He drove in three of the Yankees’ four runs with Paul Goldschmidt driving in the other with his first home run since March 29. Unfortunately, Judge didn’t get a fifth plate appearance in the game and was left watching the final out of the game from the on-deck circle because his trusty manager inexplicably decided to bat him third instead of second.

5. Judge, Goldschmidt and Trent Grisham combined to go 5-for-12 with two walks and all four of the Yankees’ RBIs. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-21 with three walks. That includes Pablo Reyes, who is not only a New York Yankee, but somehow started and batted seventh in this one. Remember last year when Boone batted Jahmai Jones leadoff and J.D. Davis fourth in the same game? This wasn’t exactly that, but it was a step just below that. (Jones hasn’t been in the majors since his time with the Yankees and Davis has a -36 OPS+ with the Angels this year. Yes, he’s 136 percent worse than league average.)

6. The Yankees had their chances to erase their deficit, but each time they got close, the sloppiness the Dodgers spent all offseason on a media tour publicly laughing about showed up.

With two outs in the fifth, Judge singled to bring up Ben Rice. Rice was getting a favorable matchup against a righty, but Judge got picked off first, and when Rice came back up to lead off the sixth, the righty was gone and he was greeted by the left-handed Keegan Akin, who struck him out with ease. Judge’s pickoff helped created a nice little sixth-inning lane for Akin, and Akin thanked him by striking out the side.

When the Yankees cut the deficit to one in the top of the fifth, they gave it right back in the bottom of the fifth when Anthony Volpe booted a double play ball. What exactly is it that Volpe does well? His offense is abysmal. Every error of his seems to come in a big moment, and with three stolen bases in six attempts this season, he’s no longer a threat on the bases. When Volpe led off the eighth with a walk, it seemed like the perfect time for him to run and put pressure on the defense representing the tying run. Instead, all he did was his jumps and hops around the bag, acting like he may go, only to never go and never advance past first.

7. That would be the last baserunner of the game for the Yankees, as they went quietly in the eighth and as quiet as anyone could possibly go in a 1-2-3 ninth. Judge getting left on-deck because he was inexplicably batting third was the icing on the cake in the ninth, but the cake was Oswald Peraza getting to bat for himself against the hard-throwing righty Felix Bautista.

8. For a moment it seemed like Rice may have hit a go-ahead, two-run home run in the seventh. After Judge singled with two outs, Gregory Soto threw a wild pickoff attempt to allow Judge to go to second.

“A gift,” David Cone said.

“Can they capitalize on it?” Joe Girardi asked.

No, they couldn’t. Rice flew out to right on a ball that was easily caught, but a ball Michael Kay thought was going to travel 570 feet and break a window on the warehouse across the street from the park with the way he got excited when it left Rice’s bat.

It was a forgettable day for Rice at the plate, as he went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. I don’t think there’s anyone in the league who takes more check swings against left-handed pitching than Rice, and he always goes around. If you’re a lefty who throws Rice anything other than breaking balls away, you’re a fool.

It’s not like Rice is the only Yankee who can’t hit lefties. Pretty much the entire lineup can’t. It’s how they lost a game started by Cade Povich. It’s how they got embarrassed by Andrew Heaney and stifled by Kris Bubic and had no chance against Tarik Skubal. The only lefty the Yankees have been able to hit this season was Nestor Cortes, whose elbow had been hanging by a thread dating back to last season.

9. A 3-3 week against the Blue Jays and Orioles isn’t anything to get excited about. One of the three losses was by two runs (the game in which they blew a one-run lead in the ninth to the Blue Jays), and the two losses to the Orioles were both by one run. The Yankees are 6-10 in games decided one or two runs and 12-3 in games decided by three-plus runs. That’s not a coincidence. The larger the gap in score, the less managing, situational hitting and fundamentals matter. At some point you would think the Yankees would come back and win of these late-and-close games. But when the going gets tough for these Yankees, they get going.

10. Now they’re going home with a day off on Thursday and this frustrating loss lingering until Friday’s series opener against the Rays. The Rays won’t be throwing any Kyle Gibson types this weekend in the Bronx, so it would be welcome if others in the lineup outside of the top third of the order could hit actual major-league pitching. If not, Max Fried is pitching Friday, so the Yankees are assured at least win one game this weekend. 

1. What a difference a day makes. Or what a difference a starter makes.

A day after getting shut down and striking out an excessive amount against the starter with the worst strikeout rate in the majors in Tomoyuki Sugano, the Yankees faced a late-spring-training-scrap-heap signing making his first start of the season in Kyle Gibson. The Yankees bombarded Gibson from the moment he stepped foot on the mound.

2. Trent Grisham homered on the second pitch of the game for his second leadoff home run in three games. Aaron Judge homered on the third pitch of the game for his ninth of the season. Ben Rice homered on the fifth pitch of the game for his seventh. After Gibson retired Paul Goldschmidt on four pitches, Cody Bellinger homered on the second pitch he saw for his third. The Yankees started the game with back-to-back-to-back home runs just like they did in the second game of the season against Nestor Cortes, and just like they did against Cortes, they homered four times in the first inning. Add in back-to-back doubles from Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe after the Bellinger home run, and the Yankees had a 5-0 lead before Carlos Rodon threw a pitch.

3. This was a lead and an offensive outburst and a game not even Rodon could ruin. When you never know which version of Rodon you’re going to get, scoring five runs before he throws a pitch is a good way to negate the possibility of the bad version of Rodon showing up. But not only did the best version of Rodon show up, he took a perfect game into the sixth inning and finished with a strong line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K. It was his third straight quality start after having not thrown one in any of his first four starts of the season.

4. “I was able to attack the zone and just get outs because we had such a nice lead,” Rodon said. “Get outs as quick as we can and get the boys back in the dugout so they can score more runs.”

Rice homered against in the second to give the Yankees a 6-0 lead. They added three more in the fourth, which is when Gibson was finally pulled, finishing the day with this unfortunate line: 3.2 IP, 11 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 5 HR.

The Yankees extended their lead with three more in the fifth, and had a 12-0 lead before the Orioles got on the board in the sixth. A run in the seventh, one in the eighth and another in the ninth for the Yankees led to 15 in total on 19 hits, four walks and two hit batters. Every starter had at least one hit, and 11 of the 12 players to appear in the game had one. The offense hit four doubles and five home runs.

5. “It really starts with Grish,” Judge said. “Grish got it going for us.”

I’m glad Aaron Boone went with my suggestion from Tuesday’s Thoughts to go with Grisham, Judge and Rice at the top of the order. The trio went 6-for-11 with four home runs and two walks. That should be the top of the order for the foreseeable future whether the starter is right-handed or left-handed.

6. Unfortunately, Jasson Dominguez was on the bench for this one and was the only position player to not enter the game. If Dominguez isn’t hurt, he needs to play. He should be playing over Bellinger, but again, owed money trumps performance and development. It’s nice that Bellinger went 2-for-4 with a double, home run and two walks in the game, though it was against Gibson and Matt Bowman, not exactly elite arms. Bellinger’s big day against the scrap heap assures him of indefinite playing time (not that it was ever in question with the more than $20 million owed to him).

7. Chisholm was injured in the game on a swing in the first inning. It looked like an oblique injury and he was attended to mid at-bat before hitting a double down the right-field line on what looked like a half-effort swing. (Maybe good things happen when you don’t try to hit a 750-foot home run with every swing? Or maybe it was just Gibson on the mound.) Chisholm slid into third (thanks to an error) on the hit and when he got up was in obvious pain and was removed from the game. The Yankees reported it as a “right flank” injury mid-game and after the game Boone said Chisholm would go for testing, while Chisholm said he was fine. It didn’t look like he was fine, but if he is, at best I would think he would be back in the lineup on Saturday or Sunday.

8. The big day from the offense and the six innings from Rodon meant a day off for the back end of the bullpen. Ian Hamilton was able to pitch two innings after having pitched once in the last 10 days and Tyler Matzek was able to throw an inning to continue to get his feet wet after having thrown 10 innings since 2022.

9. The bullpen is more than rested for the series finale on Wednesday and with a day off on Thursday I expect Boone to go to the bullpen at the first sign of trouble with Carrasco. There’s no need for him to take one on the chin if he’s off or to eat innings. Luke Weaver has thrown 11 pitches in a week. Fernando Cruz has pitched once in five days. Mark Leiter Jr. has thrown 28 pitches in eight days and Tim Hill has thrown 21 pitches over the same time. There’s at least 12 outs available between those four on Wednesday, and I would think even more.

Cade Povich is going for the Orioles, and while he’s a lefty, which poses an extreme threat to the Yankees, he’s not a good one. If there’s a lefty in the league the Yankees can hit, it should be someone of Povich’s stature. Povich pitched well in his last start against the Nationals, but even with that start, he has allowed 43 baserunners in 25 innings this season.

10. Both teams have a shaky starter going and both teams have well-rested bullpens and both teams desperately want this rubber game with the Orioles trying to climb slowly back to .500 and the Yankees wanting to go into their day off on a high note. If the version of Carrasco who pitched against the Blue Jays on Friday or the offense that lit up Camden Yards on Tuesday, they’ll get that high note.

1. Here is what I wrote about Monday’s Orioles starter prior to the game:

The Yankees will see Tomoyuki Sugano for the first time ever in the series opener. Sugano doesn’t strike anyone out with just nine strikeouts in 28 innings this season, but he doesn’t walk anyone either with five free passes so far.

After striking out nine in his first five starts in the majors, Sugano struck out EIGHT Yankees over five innings in what was an offensive performance from the offense. As advertised, Sugano only walked one in his start and managed to get every big out.

2. Paul Goldschmidt struck out in the first to leave two on and after a Jazz Chisholm hit by pitch, Anthony Volpe left the bases loaded.

In the third, the Yankees had first and third and one out and couldn’t get on the board as Goldschmidt struck out again and Chisholm did the same.

In the fourth, Jasson Dominguez was stranded, and in the fifth, Trent Grisham was as well when Goldschmidt was robbed of a two-run home run by Cedric Mullins.

“We pressured him,” Aaron Boone said of Sugano. “We had some chances and just couldn’t break through on him.”

In typical Yankees fashion, the team wasn’t able to score a run until the seventh, and added two more in the eighth, in what was the latest rally-enough-to-make-you-think-they-may-come-back-and-win-only-to-lose effort.

3. And in typical Will Warren fashion, the right-hander followed up a promising start with a miserable one.

Warren immediately put himself in a jam in the first with second and third and no outs, but miraculously escaped to momentarily make you think he may be figuring out pitching in the majors. That thought was short-lived as he allowed a two-out rally in the second to score a run and then in the fourth, he walked the first two hitters of the inning with his nibbling act and hung a 2-2 sweeper to Ryan O’Hearn that was crushed over the high wall in right for a three-run home run and a 4-0 Orioles lead.

Let’s go through what I wrote about Warren prior to Monday’s game:

Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones.

Last start: 5 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Monday’s start: 3.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 1 HR

He needs to attack the strike zone, believe in his stuff and let the ball get put in play. He can’t be afraid to pitch in the zone and he can’t nibble around the edges, which how he gets in trouble with deep counts and walks.

Two costly walks to begin the third that led to the three-run home run.

4. “It’s been up and down,” Warren said. “I think it’s been a mix where you have some good ones in there.”

Warren has made six starts this season. Three have been good to solid and three have outright disasters. He has done just enough to continue to be part of the rotation despite his 8.14 ERA in 12 career starts because he shows promise at times and because the Yankees have no one else. They traded their starting pitching depth to the Padres for Juan Soto, and then were unable to re-sign Soto. They banked on Gerrit Cole who missed a portion of last season with elbow issues to be healthy moving forward only for him to now be out until next summer. They brushed aside Luis Gil’s entire career being marred by injuries, and did the same with Clarke Schmidt who is 29 and has made more than 16 starts in a season once. Warren is in the rotation because there is no alternative. The same goes for Carlos Carrasco and the same went for Marcus Stroman before his supposed knee injury.

5. Ryan Yarbrough was fantastic in relief of Warren: 3.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Yarbrough hadn’t pitched in a week and after throwing 53 pitches will likely be down for about another week. I would be all for sending Warren down and using Yarbrough as an opener.

6. It’s going to be hard for the Yankees to put together extended winning streaks because of their rotation, considering you don’t know what you’re going to get the 80 percent of the time Max Fried isn’t starting. It’s also going to be hard because you don’t know which version of the offense is going to show up as well. Is it the version that chased Kevin Gausman and got to Chris Bassitt? Or the version that can’t hit the starting pitcher with the worst strikeout rate in the majors?

7. Chisholm had another banner night at the plate: 0-for-3 with three strikeout and a hit by pitch. Chisholm is now hitting .173 on the season. To put into perspective how bad that is (and how good Judge has been), if Judge were to go 0-for-150 beginning tonight, he would then have the same batting average as Chisholm.

8. Another blah game from Bellinger (1-for-4 with a walk), who struck out to end the game. I don’t think there was a person in the world (not even Bellinger himself) who thought he was going to put the ball in play against Felix Bautista in his ninth-inning at-bat.

9. A day after being removed from the closer role, Devin Williams found himself in a one-run game in the eighth. You would think Boone would have found a way to get him into Sunday’s first-game blowout to get some work in. Nope. Not Boone. Throw him right back into a winnable, one-run game in the eighth. Williams pitched his third 1-2-3 inning in 11 outings and even got three whiffs and a strikeout. He’s going to need to do that for about a month before I want to see him in a late-game situation with a lead.

“It’s just little things here that can you your mojo and remind you just how darned good you are this game,” Boone said of Williams. “Hopefully, it’s a step in the right direction.”

I don’t think it’s possible for Williams to go anywhere other than the right direction, after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in his first eight innings of the season.

10. The Orioles have the worst run differential in the American League. Their lineup is struggling and their starting pitching sucks. And yet, they won the first game of the series. The Yankees had their opportunities to win between stranding runners, leaving a runner on third with less than two outs and having a two-run home run robbed, but they still lost. They need a win on Tuesday with Carlos Rodon going against Kyle Gibson in his season debut because Carrasco goes on Wednesday. No one wants to be looking at needing to win a Carrasco start to salvage the third game of a series, especially going against the Yankees’ kryptonite in the series finale: a left-hander.

1. The weekend couldn’t have started out worse with Devin Williams blowing his second games in as many appearances. After blowing a four-run lead on Saturday in Tampa, Williams blew a one-run lead on Friday to the Blue Jays. It was the first time he entered a game with only one run to work with, and he gave up that run and two more without recording an out.

It took Clay Holmes five months of blown saves last season for him to be removed from the closer role. It only took Williams a month after allowing 20 baserunners and 12 earned runs in just eight innings.

“Being a closer is a position you have to earn and you have to keep earning to continue to be in that role,” Williams said. “I haven’t been doing that. It’s disappointing.”

The wild part about how bad Williams’ numbers are is that all of this damage has come without allowing a home run. Eight singles, four doubles, seven walks and a hit batter. An impressive combination of ineptitude.

Everyone treated the update of Williams’ removal from his role as news on Sunday. No one should be surprised that a pitcher who single-handedly cost the Yankees two games in six days was removed from being the closer when the team has another elite option already in place.

2. Luke Weaver has been exceptional since the beginning of last season. This season he has allowed three hits over 14 scoreless innings and has stranded all five inherited runners, and now he moves back into the ninth-inning role where he was at the end of last season.

“I prepare the same way,” Weaver said. “I try to not look at the situation any different. I need to get outs.”

I wish the Yankees would operate without a set closer. Because now Weaver will be attached to the ninth inning (and maybe used for an out or two in the eighth here and there), when he’s most valuable pitching when the game needs him the most. Maybe that’s in the sixth inning with two on and the heart of the order coming up. Maybe that’s in the seventh inning of a one-run game with the tying run in scoring position and the lineup turning over. I don’t like that Weaver is now the “ninth-inning guy” when the game can be ruined before he ever gets into it.

3. The Yankees answered back from their latest late-game collapse with a sweep of Sunday’s doubleheader. In the first game, Max Fried started, and when Fried starts, the Yankees win, and they did again, 11-2.

The Yankees trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the third before Kevin Gausman fell apart.

After a couple of walks and an Aaron Judge single to the wall in right (that Oswaldo Cabrera inexplicably didn’t score from second on in what was another example of the Aaron Boone Yankees’ sloppiness), Cody Bellinger hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game at 1. Gausman was an out away from getting out of the inning, but then walked Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe consecutively to score two runs. (You know you suck if you’re walking Chisholm and Volpe with the bases loaded.) The Yankees led 3-1 when Austin Wells came up with the bases loaded, worked a nine-pitch at-bat, and on that ninth pitch, hit a bases-clearing double to center field to break the game open. (It felt weird to experience the Yankees getting a hit to break a game open.)

With Fried on the mound, the rest of the game became a formality. The Yankees plated three more in the fifth, one in the sixth and one in the eighth. Fried finished the day with one earned run allowed over six innings, to remain undefeated on the season with a 1.43 ERA. The Yankees are 6-0 when he starts.

4. I was worried the Yankees used up all of their runs for the day in the first game, but Trent Grisham took care of that fear with a leadoff home run off of Chris Bassitt. It was the first home run Bassitt had allowed this season.

Clarke Schmidt — in his third start — allowed just one hit over five innings (but did walk four). That one hit was an Anthony Santander blast to the second deck in right.

With the game tied at 1 after five, Boone made the right decision to remove Schmidt from the game (90 pitches) rather than let him face Santander for a third time. The idea anyone would let Schmidt face Santander a third time seems outrageous as a possibility, but with Boone you never know.

Tim Hill pitched a scoreless sixth and Judge greeted Bassitt with a first-pitch home run to lead off the bottom half of the inning. After a Chisholm single, a Jasson Dominguez RBI double and a J.C. Escarra RBI single, the Yankees led 4-1.

Escarra added the first home run of his career in the eighth (a long home run into the right-field bleachers) in the 5-1 win, and we got a look at the new eighth-and-ninth-inning tandem of Fernando Cruz and Weaver. We actually got a look at the new sixth-seventh-eighth-ninth formula with Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Cruz and Weaver. Those four combined to allow two hits and no walks with six strikeouts over four scoreless innings. The first game with Williams out of the late-and-close equation was a resounding success.

5. Volpe looked the best he has in nearly a month in the doubleheader (4-for-7 with a double and home run), but don’t let him fool you. His home run in the first game came off a Triple-A pitcher and we have seen this from Volpe before where he leads many to believe he has turned the corner only to then spend the next four weeks without an extra-base hit while playing every day. He needs to be consistently productive for an extended period of time for anyone to think he has figured out how to hit in the majors.

6. It wasn’t a great day for Bellinger (1-for-7), but what day is a great day for Bellinger? He was in the lineup for both games of the doubleheader, while Grisham sat the first one and proceeded to go 1-for-2 with a home run and two walks in the second one to reach base three times. Bellinger has been on base three times in a game once since March 29. He has one home run since March 29. But he and his .570 OPS are going to keep on playing because he’s owed more than $20M by the Yankees this year and Grisham is owed $5M. Owed money always trumps performance.

7. Judge finally hit his eighth home run of the season after getting screwed in Tampa and then hitting the top of the giant wall in the deepest part of the park in Cleveland over the last week. Judge should always bat second. Either Grisham or Ben Rice can lead off, but then it should be Judge and the other one who isn’t leading off behind Judge. So:

Grisham
Judge
Rice

or

Rice
Judge
Grisham

Either of those work, though I prefer the first one.

That makes the best possible lineup this:

Grisham, CF
Judge, RF
Rice, DH
Goldschmidt, 1B
Chisholm, 2B
Dominguez, LF
Wells, C
Volpe, SS
Cabrera, 3B

That is the optimal Yankees lineup at the moment, even if it’s not a lineup we will see because it doesn’t include Bellinger and has Volpe too low for Boone’s liking.

8. Dominguez quietly had a nice first month in his first full season as a major leaguer. He’s fifth on the teams in hits (despite being seventh in plate appearances), second on the teams in doubles (7), has less strikeouts than Chisholm and Volpe, has yet to be caught stealing (3-for-3), is hitting .315/.383/.500 against right-handed pitching and is hitting nine percent better than league average overall.

Hopefully as he gets more plate appearances against lefties (36) his .450 OPS against them will improve. It’s never going to be the .883 it is against righties, but something respectable in the 6s would be nice. Either way, I’m happy with Dominguez through the first month.

9. Offensively, I’m also happy with Cabrera, who’s hitting .278. Cabrera just needs to continue to hit for average consistently, draw the occasional walk and hit the occasional homer and he’ll be fine, as long as he plays solid defense. The solid defense part seems to be the hardest as Cabrera has been throwing balls to first base all over the place. He has five errors on the year, and while I think he’ll be fine, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the throws coming from the left side of the infield. For as good as Goldschmidt has been over there, things would look a lot worse if an average first baseman had been playing with the way Cabrera and Volpe throws have been.

10. It’s off to Baltimore for the first series of the season against the struggling Orioles. The Orioles are seven games under .500, in last place in the AL East and 6 1/2 games behind the Yankees with an AL-worst minus-39 run differential.

The Yankees will see Tomoyuki Sugano for the first time ever in the series opener. Sugano doesn’t strike anyone out with just nine strikeouts in 28 innings this season, but he doesn’t walk anyone either with five free passes so far.

The Orioles will see Will Warren for the first time ever in the series opener as well. Warren was solid in his last start, but he tends to alternate good starts with disastrous ones. He needs to attack the strike zone, believe in his stuff and let the ball get put in play. He can’t be afraid to pitch in the zone and he can’t nibble around the edges, which how he gets in trouble with deep counts and walks. Go out and challenge the Orioles and make them earn it. If he does that, he should be fine, like nearly every starter has been against the Orioles this season.

1. The Yankees needed a win in Cleveland on Wednesday, and thanks to their offense and Carlos Rodon they got a 5-1 one. And when I say offense, I mean Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt since those three are the Yankees’ offense.

Those three combined to go 6-for-12 with three walks, three extra-base hits and drove in four of the Yankees’ five runs. The rest of the lineup was 5-for-25 with 10 strikeouts. The rest of the lineup is a problem.

2. Jasson Dominguez and Oswaldo Cabrera aren’t necessarily part of the problem since Dominguez has 48 career games to his name and Cabrera is unnecessarily benched nearly every other day. But for the rest of the lineup excluding those two, yes, it’s a problem.

The two biggest problems are Cody Bellinger and Anthony Volpe. One will seemingly be given endless opportunities to bat second, third and fourth in the lineup, and the other has been given endless opportunities since the day he was called up at the beginning of the 2023 season. One is protected by owed money and the other is protected by the organization’s belief he will eventually figure it out. Together, they are destroying rallies, having issues making contact and are magnets for double plays.

3. I wrote this about Anthony Volpe after Tuesday’s game:

It’s hard to watch Anthony Volpe bat. It’s cringeworthy. Volpe went 0-for-3 with a walk and strikeout in the game, but nothing was worse than his final at-bat against Hunter Gaddis in the eighth. With the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, Gaddis blew a middle-middle 95-mph fastball right past Volpe to begin the at-bat. Knowing Volpe’s inability to hit fastballs, even ones in the zone, Gaddis threw three more to set up a 2-2 count. Volpe had seen four pitches, all fastballs. Gaddis then threw a slider about two feet off the plate, but Volpe, guessing fastball and knowing he would need to cheat to catch up to it had committed to swing. Once Volpe recognized slider, his hips had already flown open, his bat was on the plane of where he thought the pitch would end up, and instead he missed it by a laughable amount.

Volpe followed up that performance with an 0-for-5, four-strikeout game on Wednesday. His slash line is down to .198/.295/.385. Volpe hasn’t homered since April 2. He has one multi-hit game and two extra-base hits since April 5. This isn’t a slump. This is what he is, now sitting at an 84+ OPS in 1,395 plate appearances. Continuing to bat Volpe sixth (like he has been) would be unbelievable, and yet totally believable with how he has been treated since he was called up. If Volpe is batting sixth on Friday against the Blue Jays, all you can do is laugh. (Get ready to laugh.)

4. All you can do is laugh if Cody Bellinger is batting third as well. (More laughter coming.) Bellinger has hit one home run since March 29. He has one double this season. He’s hitting .177/.236/.291. For as bad as Volpe has been, Bellinger wishes he had a .295 on-base percentage and .385 slugging percentage.

Here is what I wrote about Bellinger after Monday’s game:

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.

It looks like the Yankees are going to get the version of Bellinger the Dodgers gave up on and not the one who saved his career with the Cubs.

5. Volpe can’t bat sixth. Bellinger can’t bat third. Bellinger shouldn’t even be in the lineup. This is what the lineup should be on Friday:

Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Trent Grisham, CF
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Austin Wells, C
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Oswaldo Cabrera, 3B

6. We all know that won’t be the lineup. Bellinger will play because he’s 3-for-4 with a home run off Jose Berrios. (Bellinger has yet to hit any pitcher this season he has good career numbers off of.) Grisham should be back, and if he is, you have to play with how good he has been. Judge obviously plays and Rice is only a designated hitter it seems. That means it’s likely the development of Dominguez is stunted and he’s benched so Bellinger can play. Not only that, but Boone will continue to do his nonsensical lefty-right alteration throughout the lineup to plan for some late-inning lane that will likely never come.

7. Nothing will change because it takes an inordinate amount of underperformance for the Yankees to make a change, especially if the proposed changes involve the Golden Boy (who has been treated differently than any other prospect during the Boone era) and Bellinger, a player the Yankees traded for, and the team will stop at nothing to prove they were right about a underperforming player they traded for. Just ask Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks and Alex Verdugo.

8. The Yankees have too many holes in the lineup that anyone who is giving them offense needs to play, regardless of their expected role coming into the season, and anyone who isn’t hitting can’t play every day, regardless of their expected role coming into the season. Reward success. It’s a simple concept. Don’t keep running the same players out there in the same order waiting for something to happen. It’s the same way the team operates when they get a pair of runners on with no outs and wait for a three-run home run that doesn’t come before the inning-crushing double play.

9. Carlos Rodon turned in the best start of his season (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K), and didn’t allow a home run for a second straight start. Progress! It’s frustrating to know that version of Rodon exists, but too many times we get the version of Rodon who unraveled against the Diamondbacks, Tigers and Giants. The left-handed A.J. Burnett.

The good news is he is one off the American League lead for strikeouts with 45 (Cole Ragans has 46). The bad news is he leads the majors with 18 walks. Combine a lot of walks with his penchant for giving up the long ball and you have a frustrating starter who at times can be dominant like he was in Cleveland, or a disaster like he mostly is. Rodon can’t be trusted (like Burnett) and likely never will be because he can unravel in any start in the matter of pitches, and once the unraveling start it never ends. You just have to pray he has more starts like he did on Wednesday than he does clunkers.

10. The Blue Jays are in the Bronx this week and they arrive in the middle of a five-game losing streak. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything with Carlos Carrasco getting the ball for the Yankees on Friday. Carrasco in Yankee Stadium is about as good of a matchup you can ask for in the league to end a losing streak. The Yankees are going to need their offense to extend the Blue Jays’ losing streak to six, and by offense I mean more than just Judge, Rice and Goldschmidt.