1. Three games against the last-place Nationals and three easy wins for the third-place Bronx Bullies in what was the most predictable series ever. After losing three of four at home to the Red Sox to fall to 5-15 against the Red Sox and Blue Jays this season and 7-19 against the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers and Astros, the Yankees demolished the Nationals for three straight days, outscoring them 26-8.

That’s what these Yankees do: they beat up on the league’s worst and lose to the league’s best. It’s what they have done all season and it’s what has them currently in third place in the AL East and in the second wild-card spot, meaning all road games in the best-of-3 wild-card series at the moment.

2. It’s great the Yankees swept the Nationals. They have to sweep the league’s worst because of their inability to win series against the league’s best. But I evaluate the Yankees with the idea of winning the World Series in mind, so everything I write, analyze or criticize is under that premise. It’s hard to get excited about beating the crap out of the Twins, Cardinals, Rays and Nationals when the team gets humiliated by the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Astros, Tigers, Dodgers and Phillies since those are the teams that the Yankees will potentially play in October.

3. Despite the series sweep of the Nationals, the Yankees were unable to pick up a game on the Red Sox because they were busy sweeping the lowly Orioles and only picked up one game on the Blue Jays, who won their series against the Twins. The Yankees remain behind the Red Sox in the wild-card race because of the head-to-head tiebreaker, which the Red Sox clinched at Yankee Stadium last weekend, and 4 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays for the division with 29 games to play (though it’s really 5 1/2 games since the Blue Jays clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Yankees as well).

4. Before Tuesday’s game I wrote:

Luis Gil needs to be as good (5 IP, 1 ER) as he was on Thursday because we all know first-half MacKenzie Gore — All-Star Gore — is going to be who the Yankees face or make him out to be.

And that’s exactly what happened. Gil gave the Yankees the same five-innings-and-one-earned-run performance as he did in his previous start and the best version of Gore showed up or at least the Yankees made Gore the best version of himself … except for Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton tagged Gore for a bases-clearing, three-run double in the third to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead and then hit a two-run home run off of Orlando Ribalta in the sixth to give them a 5-1 lead, which was the final score. Stanton 5, Nationals 1.

5. “It’s been fun being able to contribute on both sides,” Stanton said. “I’m just making sure I’m mentally prepared for all scenarios when the ball is hit towards me.”

Stanton went 2-for-3 with a double, home run and five RBIs and the rest of the Yankees went 4-for-27 with six strikeouts. Aaron Judge (who continues to play every day over Stanton) had another hitless game and the Development-Failing Duo of Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells went 0-for-7 with a walk (Wells) and three strikeouts.

6. The game was Volpe’s big return to the starting lineup after being held out of it on both Sunday and Monday. Volpe went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in what was another abysmal performance and things would only get worse for him on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Trent Grisham hit a leadoff home run to give the Yankees an early lead and then in the third, the offense exploded for nine runs in typical bully fashion en route to an 11-2 win. Here is how Wednesday’s third inning unfolded:

Ben Rice: single
Aaron Judge: home run
Cody Bellinger: home run
Jazz Chisholm: walk
Jasson Dominguez: double
Anthony Volpe: lineout
Austin Wells: catcher’s interference
Ryan McMahon: home run
Trent Grisham: strikeout
Rice: home run
Judge: single
Bellinger: walk
Chisholm: walk
Dominguez: single
Volpe: strikeout

The Yankees scored nine runs on three singles, two doubles, three home runs and three walks in the inning. Volpe made two of the three outs in the inning in what would be an 0-for-5 day with two strikeouts to drop him to 1-for-37 with 14 strikeouts since the first game of the St. Louis series on August 15. That represents a .027 on-base percentage, which is the lowest OBP by any non-pitcher Yankee in any 11-game span in the 103-year history of the franchise (stat from Katie Sharp). The “fucking elite” Volpe (which is what Aaron Boone referred to him as to Meredith Marakovits earlier this season) is hitting .204/.269/.393 on the season. He has the second-worst batting average in the majors (Oneil Cruz has the worst at .203), the worst on-base percentage at .269 and the 11th-worst OPS. It’s not a major-league bat, it’s an unplayable bat, and yet, he will continue to play every single day.

7. “You go through it as hitters, man. It’s hard,” Boone said when asked about Volpe. “What I’m excited about is he continues to play really good defense.”

Volpe has been going through “it” for three years since his first game in the league. And yes, hitting is hard, which is why you don’t pass on the deepest shortstop free-agent class in history full of proven players for an unknown with the team in a supposed championship window like the Yankees did with Volpe between the 2022 and 2023 seasons. As for being excited about him because he’s not booting ground balls and throwing the ball all over the field, all I will say is shortstop defense grows on trees. You can find yourself an all-glove, no-bat shortstop anywhere, and if that’s what the Yankees are accepting of Volpe being then it’s an organizational failure that it has gotten to this point.

8. Every Yankees starter reached base except for Volpe, as the offense did its usual stat padding against the 53-80 Nationals. Rice, Judge and Bellinger went 8-for-13 with three home runs, Chisholm walked three times, Dominguez had two hits, Grisham homered and even McMahon and Wells homered.

9. Max Fried had his second Fried-like start (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K) as he was staked to a 10-0 lead before he took the mound in the fourth inning. After having just one quality start between June 25 and August 22, Fried has looked like his old self the last two times out, even if one of those two times was against the Nationals with a double-digit lead. Fried’s next three starts will be against the Astros, Blue Jays and Red Sox, so we’ll see if he is really fixed and back to being the first-half Fried (who was a Cy Young favorite and in line to start the All-Star Game before falling apart) or if these last two outings were just a tease.

10. The next four days is another series against a last-place team in the White Sox. The White Sox aren’t as bad as they were last year and when you look at how they have been playing of late, this isn’t the type of cake walk that many feel it is. The Yankees will have to play well to beat the White Sox and keep pace with the Red Sox, who host the Pirates. Based on what we have seen of late from the Bronx Bullies, expect one last impressive beatdown of a bad team before 12 straight games against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox begins next week.

1. Vacation is over and so is the vacation from the Thoughts. A vacation that started out with five straight Yankees wins over teams counting down the days until the end of the season fell apart over the weekend against a team the Yankees can’t seem to solve. Even though the Yankees won the last two days, what transpired from Thursday through Saturday negated the run before the Red Sox series and its stench has lingered into the Nationals series.

The Yankees are bullies. They beat the crap out of the league’s worst teams and the moment a team equal to or better than them comes around they run away and hide. Of course they had a 10-run lead over the Nationals until the ninth inning on Monday, the same way they hit nine home runs in a game against the Rays last week and hung 24 runs on the Cardinals the weekend before. That’s who the Yankees are. They are also the team that lost three of four at home to the Red Sox, lost eight straight to the Red Sox prior to Sunday’s win and are 2-8 against the Red Sox on the season. The Yankees are the team that is 6-19 against the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tigers and Astros.

2. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if the Yankees win five or more games this week against the last-place Nationals and last-place White Sox. I’m expecting the Yankees to do exactly that. That’s what bullies do. I’m also expecting them to then get put in their place like bullies do when they go to Houston next week and follow that up with series against the Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox.

3. At this point, the Yankees are going to the playoffs. They lead the Royals by five games in the loss column, the Guardians by six and the Rangers by seven. Those teams aren’t capable of erasing those deficits with a month to play, and the Yankees have 19 games remaining against the Nationals, White Sox, Twins and Orioles to bully their way into the playoffs.

4. It took nearly three full seasons, but Anthony Volpe was finally “benched” earlier this week. It wasn’t a traditional benching since he entered Sunday’s game as a defensive replacement (which is beyond absurd) and was already told he will be back in the lineup on Tuesday. It was a fake benching to give Volpe time to rest as he’s mired in yet another ridiculous slump that has left fans booing him at the plate and in the field. Volpe has one multi-hit game in August and that came on August 1. Since then he’s 8-for-66 and hitting .121/.171/.242. Yes, he has a .414 OPS for nearly a month.

“It’s just been a scuffle offensively here over the past week, 10 days,” Aaron Boone said of Volpe’s performance.

Ah, yes, it’s only been a week to 10 days of no offensive production for Volpe. That must be why he’s at the bottom of every offensive statistic for everyday players in the league since the start of 2023. No other player gets to play every day with numbers like his over the last three years.

Volpe is a .222/.284/.380 hitter in 1,799 career plate appearances with an 84 OPS+. This is who he is. A fake, not-even-two-full-games benching isn’t going to change him from being the worst everyday hitter in baseball to the player the Yankees told us he would be when they passed over the deepest free-agent shortstop class in history for him. He will be back in the lineup now every game and continue to do nothing nearly every game.

5. Volpe has the second-worst batting average (.208) in the majors and is just one point off the lead. Ryan McMahon is third at .216. That’s quite the left side of the infield Brian Cashman has built. At least McMahon makes every single play and then some at third. Recently, Nathaniel Lowe was between the two with the third-worst average in the majors, but after a big weekend against the Yankees, Lowe is now only the fifth-worst hitter in the league. You have to love that a player the Rangers paid to go away and the Red Sox picked up off the scrap heap only so they could stop playing Abraham Toro at first base was responsible for two of the Red Sox’ wins over the weekend.

6. Monday’s win was enjoyable because it was a relaxing blowout win. Cam Schlittler was awesome, the Yankees hit a bunch of home runs and Volpe and Austin Wells didn’t play. What more could you ask for?

Schlittler is my favorite Yankees pitcher because he isn’t out there trying to fool anyone. Everyone knows his fastball is coming and no one is hitting it. In eight starts he has allowed three runs or fewer each time out and he has allowed one run over his last starts 22 1/3 innings with 25 strikeouts.

“It’s just important for me to do my job,” Schlittler said. “I try to get six, seven innings and put the team in a spot to win.”

Boone called Schlittler “a future staple of our rotation.” Umm, he’s in the rotation in the present and hopefully it’s not “your” rotation for much longer (though we all know it will be.)

If the playoffs started next week, he would be my Game 1 starter because even when he doesn’t have his best stuff, he can still get outs. Unfortunately, the Yankees don’t make on-field decisions based on performance. Money owed, name and reputation will always supersede actual results. 

7. Max Fried finally looked like himself on Friday and Carlos Rodon finally beat a good team on Sunday. But one start from each doesn’t make me feel better about either. I’m going to need to see it every fifth day for the rest of the season to believe they can win in October, considering the postseason histories for both aren’t exactly glowing.

8. It was just last week Boone was using Yerry De los Santos in the sixth inning of a tie game at home the Yankees would lose because he couldn’t retire a hitter, and then on Monday, Boone used him in a 10-run game and De los Santos couldn’t close that out. I laughed at the people who were upset I complained about De los Santos being used in the spot he was in the series finale against the Twins and I’m laughing at them again. De los Santos is fine as a last or second-to-last relief option. He should have been nowhere near that game last week and his season ERA (which the Boone Fan Club cited as a reason for him being in the Twins series finale) has more than doubled since he ruined the Twins series finale.

9. The best hitter on the Yankees doesn’t get to play every day in Giancarlo Stanton. He’s hitting .306/.383/.638 and is the best he’s been as a Yankee and since his 2017 NL MVP season. And yet, he didn’t play on Monday, didn’t start on Friday or Wednesday and got one at-bat in St. Louis. Stanton not being the designated hitter so Judge can is so perfectly the Boone Yankees. Judge is hitting .210/.380/.403 since coming off the injured list on August 5. In that same time, Stanton is hitting .441/.525/1.029.

Stanton has been hitting and hitting no matter who the opponent is, while Judge went 2-for-14 against the Red Sox and 2-for-9 against the Astros — the only two teams with winning records the Yankees have faced in August. One extra-base hit (a double) for Judge in this seven games. It’s a precursor of what to expect in the playoffs, which is what has always happened in this era in the playoffs: Stanton shows up and Judge doesn’t. When we look back on this era of the Yankees, one that is unlikely to include a championship, we’ll know it wasn’t because of Stanton.

10. MacKenzie Gore gets the ball on Tuesday and while he has been bad in July and August, any starting pitcher with a hint of ability is capable of stopping this Yankees’ offense, especially a left-hander with the ability of Gore who is one of the game’s best when he’s on. Here is what I think Boone will do on Tuesday:

Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Aaron Judge, DH
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, RF
Ben Rice, C
Amed Rosario, LF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Jose Caballero, 3B

It’s another big game for the Yankees as they are tied in the loss column with the Red Sox and need to finish one game ahead of them because of the head-t0-head tiebreaker to avoid playing a best-of-3 on the road in the playoffs. Luis Gil needs to be as good (5 IP, 1 ER) as he was on Thursday because we all know first-half Gore — All-Star Gore — is going to be who the Yankees face or make him out to be.

1. It’s no coincidence the Yankees’ starter pitched into the seventh inning and the offense scored six-plus runs in the first two games of the Twins series and the Yankees won both. Aaron Boone looks like a genius when he doesn’t have to think. Pitch well, hit well and play clean baseball and Boone doesn’t get to be a part of the equation. It’s the best kind of baseball there is.

That’s what I wrote after Tuesday’s blowout. Take Boone out of the game and the odds of the Yankees winning increase dramatically. Allow Boone to interject himself into the outcome with in-game decision making and you get the kind of result the Yankees suffered on Wednesday with a 4-1 loss. A complete missed opportunity to make up ground on everyone in the standings as the Blue Jays, Red Sox, Mariners and Guardians all lost.

2. Instead of pulling one game closer to the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Mariners and one game further away from the Guardians, the Yankees ran in place in what was a wasted game against an inferior opponent.

Prior to Wednesday’s game I wrote:

The Yankees will go for the sweep on Wednesday night, and in order to pull it off, they will need to beat the Twins’ best starter in Joe Ryan. The active Yankees have only faced him a couple of times in their careers and their numbers against him are weak. Cam Schlittler will need to match Ryan for as long as he can because after scoring 15 runs over the last two nights, Wednesday has a Yankees offensive no-show written all over it.

The Yankees had opportunities to get to and beat Ryan, Schlittler did his job matching Ryan for the five innings he was in the game and the offense no-showed, scoring just one run on five hits in the game.

The Yankees stranded Trent Grisham on second with no outs in the first when Aaron Judge couldn’t get him over for someone to get him in. (Judge was hitting .394/.490/.779 before Boone kept him out of the starting lineup for the only time all year on June 12 in Kansas City and he’s hitting .235/.373/.536 since.) Ben Rice led off the second with a single and was also stranded. Cody Bellinger took Ryan deep for a solo home run in the third, but Schlittler gave it right back in the fourth. The game remained tied at 1 until the sixth when Boone got his hands on it.

3. The Yankees couldn’t have asked for a better pitching situation heading into Wednesday’s series finale: They had won the first game of the series by four runs and the second game by eight runs to allow their bullpen and elite relievers to rest, and with a scheduled day off on Thursday they could unload their top arms on Wednesday and still have them all for Friday in St. Louis. So knowing all of that, why was Yerry De los Santos the first guy out of the bullpen in a 1-1 game on a night when all of the Yankees’ playoff competition had already lost?

“[Schlittler] set us up,” Boone said, “especially going into an off day with a rested-up pen and felt like we could get there.”

So Boone knew of the advantageous spot the Yankees were in after Monday and Tuesday and after Schlittler pitched five innings of one-run ball on Wednesday and he still made the choice to go to De los Santos.

4. De los Santos is a nice, back-end-of-the-bullpen arm, which is how he has been treated all year. In April, May and June he only pitched in blowout wins or losses. He was sent down in mid-June and when he returned in late July, he continued to be the last or one of the last options out of the bullpen. He was sent down again after all the moves were made at the trade deadline since there was no longer room for him with all of the new relief acquisitions. So De los Santos wasn’t good enough to be a Yankee on August 1, but now two weeks later, he’s good enough to pitch in the sixth inning of a 1-1 game with playoff position jockeying on the line. Not only that, but he was called on to face the 2-3-4 hitters in the Twins lineup.

5. Mark Leiter Jr. to Camilo Doval to Luke Weaver to David Bednar was how the plan should have unfolded. I would have even used Weaver in the sixth there with the scored tied and the 2-3-4 hitters due up. Not Boone. Boone went with De los Santos and it went about as well as expected. He faced three hitters, they all reached and they all scored and when the book was closed on him the Yankees trailed 4-1. Only after De los Santos didn’t retire any of three batters he faced and gave up a two-run double did Boone go to Leiter Jr. So Boone was willing to go to Leiter Jr. in the sixth inning, he just thought he would try to steal an inning with De los Santos before going to his best relievers. Not only did Boone turn to Leiter Jr. with the Yankees trailing by two rather than tied, but then in the eighth he went to Doval with the Yankees trailing by three. So he would rather have Leiter Jr. and Doval pitch with the Yankees trailing than in a tie game.

6. The Twins didn’t score for the rest of the game after getting to De los Santos because the Twins suck. If they were ever going to score it was going to be with their 2-3-4 hitters up. The Yankees didn’t score for the rest of the game either because that’s what they do against the league’s best pitchers like Ryan. And once Ryan was out of the game and the Twins turned to Kody Funderburk and his 5.73 ERA and Justin Topa, the Yankees had already given up as they had just one baserunner against those two in 2 1/3 innings of relief.

7. Boone had to manage one game in the series and he couldn’t even do that. It’s games like that for why he should have lost his job long ago. Not because he has never seen one of his players perform poorly in eight years, not because he exaggerates his evaluations and straight up lies about injuries. It’s because he has spent his entire life around baseball, and not just baseball but Major League Baseball, and still manages as if he were introduced to the game a week ago.

8. It’s hard enough for the Yankees to overcome their top-heavy offense, their shaky rotation, their inconsistent bullpen, their running the bases like drunks as John Sterling said during last year’s World Series and their defensive miscues, but to have to overcome their own manager in any close game too? It’s too much. It’s why no matter how well the team plays or how clean of a game they provide, it’s exceedingly hard for them to win big, close games. (Look no further than Games 1 and 5 of the World Series, the two biggest games of Boone’s managerial career.)

9. So instead of arriving in St. Louis feeling good after a series sweep and tied with the Red Sox in the loss column and two games behind the Mariners in the loss column and a game up on the Guardians in the loss column, the Yankees are in the same spot as they were before Wednesday’s game with one more game erased from the schedule: the third wild-card spot. And they are only in that spot because the Guardians have two games in hand. The Yankees and Guardians are tied in the loss column and if the Guardians win those two games in hand, the Guardians become the third wild-card team since they have a better record against their own division than the Yankees.

10. A missed opportunity in a season full of them. In an era full of them. The Yankees have lost that same game countless times under Boone in which he can’t properly utilize his bullpen because he’s always trying to steal an out or an inning to save an arm for a situation and a game that may never come. Keep managing for tomorrow and there won’t be a tomorrow after Game 162 for the Yankees this season.

1. The Yankees’ odds of winning seemed bleak early on Tuesday as Carlos Rodon allowed a leadoff single to open the game and was at 30 pitches with the bases loaded and no outs in the first inning. Rodon’s Yankees career has been three seasons of letting the team and its fans down, but this time he settled in, allowed one run in the inning and didn’t allow another hit for the rest of his night. The Yankees as a whole didn’t allow a hit for the rest of the night. The Twins went 1-for-28 with two walks and eight strikeouts against Rodon, Tim Hill and Yerry De los Santos.

“We were set up for disaster there, but we got through it,” Rodon said. After the first inning, I attacked the strike zone and made them put the ball in play, and the defense played great.”

2. The Yankees scored nine runs in the game and it could have been a lot more. They racked up 11 hits (five for extra bases) and 11 walks. There was traffic on the bases all game as the Twins failed to have a single 1-2-3 inning. The 9-1 win gave the Yankees back-to-back wins for the first time in two weeks and just the second time in a month.

3. Giancarlo Stanton hit his 12th home run of the season (in only 157 plate appearances) and had his first four-hit game in two years. Stanton is now up to .300/.376/.586 on the season and has been the Yankees’ best hitter since he returned from the injured list. The games he lost sitting on the bench over the last couple of weeks that the Yankees lost because he was on the bench look even worse now than it did at the time.

“It’s refreshing after missing so much time, because I contribute zero when I miss time,” Stanton said. “Anything I can do when I’m back is always nice.”

4. Anthony Volpe hit a three-run home run after what looked like a little help from Jazz Chisholm on second base relaying him the pitches. As long as Chisholm is on second base waving his arms for Volpe to see, Volpe is a great hitter. To his credit, Volpe has been a much better all-around player in recent weeks, especially defensively. I still don’t trust him at the plate and will never trust him in the field, but he’s fine since the boos starting raining down in him at home last month.

5. Aaron Judged homered in the first to tie the game. It was Judge’s first home run since July 23. Yes, he missed a chunk of time on the IL during the last three weeks, but he had gone seven games without a home run, which is an eternity for Judge.

6. Wins by four or more runs are always welcome, like the Yankees provided the last two days. Blowout wins like Tuesday’s are the best. It’s no coincidence the Yankees’ starter pitched into the seventh inning and the offense scored six-plus runs in both games in the series and the Yankees won both. Aaron Boone looks like a genius when he doesn’t have to think. Pitch well, hit well and play clean baseball and Boone doesn’t get to be a part of the equation. It’s the best kind of baseball there is.

7. “Our mission is still the same thing: Go back to the World Series and win it,” Judge said. “We made it a little tough for ourselves the past couple of weeks, falling out of first place, but we have a lot of ballgames left to go do our thing.”

First, let’s settle down with any World Series talk. Right now the Yankees are tied with the Guardians in the loss column and the Guardians have two games in hand. If the Guardians and Yankees finish with the same record for the third wild-card spot, the Guardians will get in based on their record against their own division. Second, you didn’t make it “a little tough” you made it a lot of tough. You went from an eight-game division lead over the Blue Jays to pissing it away entirely in two months. And it hasn’t been a few weeks, it’s been more than two months of bad baseball and you haven’t been in first place since July 3. Third, there aren’t “a lot of ballgames left” as there are now 42 games left.

Unfortunately, the Mariners, Blue Jays, Guardians and Red Sox all won, so the Yankees’ blowout win didn’t change the standings. (The Rangers did lose to fall 4 1/2 games behind the Yankees, so for now they aren’t worth worrying about.)

8. It was another start at catcher for Ben Rice on Tuesday. The Yankees traded away every catching prospect they had because they believed Austin Wells would be their starter for the next decade and that J.C. Escarra would be a worthy backup. Now Wells is benched since he can’t hit sliders or sweepers and Escarra was sent down at the trade deadline and only recently recalled because of the injury to Amed Rosario. The Yankees’ payroll distribution and roster construction are deplorable and their decisions at catcher are a big reason why.

9. I can’t believe I forgot to write about Brooks Kriske in Tuesday’s thoughts after he pitched against the Yankees on Monday. Kriske threw 11 1/3 innings across 12 games for the Yankees in 2020 and 2021 and is best known for his wild pitch meltdown at Fenway Park to lose an extra-inning game in 2021. But my favorite thing about Kriske is just looking at his pitching line as a Yankee: 11.1 IP, 15 H 20 R, 19 ER, 6 HR, 13 BB, 15 K, 1 HBP, 7 WP, 15.09 ERA, 2.471 WHIP. What a masterpiece. That’s 29 baserunners in 11 1/3 innings! That’s an average 11.9 hits, 4.8 home runs and 10.3 walks per nine innings. It has to be the single-worst pitching line in Yankees history for someone who was allowed to pitch in 12 games. And to think the Yankees chose to protect Kriske and Nick Nelson instead of Garrett Whitlock. Now you know how it’s possible the same front office chose Wells and Escarra over Carlos Narvaez and Agustin Ramirez, only to have someone (Rice) they said wasn’t good enough to be a catcher in the majors become their starting catcher.

10. The Yankees will go for the sweep on Wednesday night, and in order to pull it off, they will need to beat the Twins’ best starter in Joe Ryan. The active Yankees have only faced him a couple of times in their careers and their numbers against him are weak. Cam Schlittler will need to match Ryan for as long as he can because after scoring 15 runs over the last two nights, Wednesday has a Yankees offensive no-show written all over it. Yes, it’s hard to sweep any team, even the Twins, but the Yankees need to find a way to. That’s what happens when you spend two-and-a-half months losing more often than not.

1. Oh how easy being a Yankees fan would be if the Yankees were part of the AL Central. In desperate need of a win, the Twins arrived in the Bronx and rolled over for the Yankees like they always do. The Yankees won 6-2 to win the first game of a series for the first time since the July 11-13 against the Cubs (though the Yankees ended up losing the second and third games of that series).

2. Will Warren (6.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 2 HR) was dominant and economical through the first 5 2/3 innings before Byron Buxton got him for a solo home run. Up until that point it felt like the Yankees had the game in the bag with Warren throwing a one-hitter, even though the Yankees only had a 3-0 lead. Warren gave up another solo home run in the seventh and the three-run lead that felt like it would be enough for a win was suddenly down to a single run.

3. Thankfully, the Yankees added two runs in the bottom of the seventh and another in the eighth. Luke Weaver got four outs across the seventh and eighth in relief of Warren and David Bednar got the final three outs of the game. Starter to Weaver to Bednar is a recipe for success and the only formula that can be trusted at this point since no other relievers can be trusted and Boone doesn’t know how to or when to properly use anyone other than those two.

4. “I think we’ve been needing that spark,” Warren said. “The past month hasn’t been how we’re supposed to play baseball.”

The past month? How about the past two months? Because this collapse started back after the win over the Royals on June 12. If you want to go back further, the Yankees are just one game over .500 since April 27.

Cody Bellinger hit a first-inning solo home run, Giancarlo Stanton and Ben Rice hit back-to-back solo home runs in the third and Jazz Chisholm hit a solo home run in the eighth. The solo home run: the only way the Yankees seem to know how to score.

5. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like right there,” Boone said of the win.

And that’s what it’s supposed to look like to take Boone out of the game: 6 2/3 innings from the starter, only needing your best two relievers, six runs from the offense and no errors in the field or on the bases. A Boone-less game is the best kind of game. The manager never had a chance to impact the game and ruin it.

6. Trent Grisham, Aaron Judge and Ryan McMahon each went 1-for-4 and combined for five strikeouts. Anthony Volpe went 1-for-3 with a walk and Paul Goldschmidt went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts as he continues to be unable to hit right-handed pitching, no matter who it is, and demolish left-handed pitching, no matter who it is. The Yankees went 10-for-34 as a team with a double, four home runs, two walks and 12 strikeouts.

7. Do I feel any better about the Yankees after Monday’s game than I did before it? No. The Yankees are still a mess. One win against a team going nowhere and a team that sold nearly half its roster at the trade deadline isn’t exactly feeling-changing. The Yankees could (and should) win on Tuesday and again on Wednesday for their first sweep in more than a month and I would feel the same way about them. The Twins suck and beating up on them should be expected and nothing more. Yes, wins over the Twins are crucial and much-needed, but there is nothing the Yankees could do in this series to make me think the Yankees team that is one game over .500 over their last 91 games isn’t going to show up in St. Louis on Friday.

8. The Blue Jays, Mariners and Guardians were off, the Red Sox lost and the Rangers won, so it was a pretty good night for the Yankees. The Yankees remain in the third wild-card spot (and would play a best-of-3 against the Astros with all games in Houston if the season ended today). Here is where the Yankees are in the standings:

7 games back of the Blue Jays in the division (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)
3 games back of the Mariners for the first wild card
2.5 games back of the Red Sox for the second wild card (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)
Tied with the Guardians in the loss column (Guardians hold intradivision tiebreaker)
3.5 games up on the Rangers (because of the head-to-head tiebreaker)

9. The Yankees really need the Guardians to start losing because it’s going to be very difficult for the Yankees to finish with a better record against the AL East than the Guardians will have against the AL Central.

While the Yankees play the Twins, the Blue Jays play the Cubs (great), the Red Sox play the Astros (great), the Mariners play the Orioles (not great), the Guardians play the Marlins (OK) and the Rangers play the Diamondbacks (not great).

10. Carlos Rodon gets the ball on Tuesday. In his last seven starts dating back to June 30, he has one quality start (July 11 against the Cubs). Outside of that start, he failed to go more than 5 1/3 innings in any of the other six and has put 55 baserunners on in 38 innings. He has been bad for a long time (just like Max Fried has) and that needs to change on Tuesday. It has to change on Tuesday.