The Yankees momentarily ended their second-half slide with a five-game winning streak, but after losing back-to-back games to the worst team in the American League, the second-half misery is as bad as ever.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After the Yankees were able to salvage the final game of their four-game home series against the Blue Jays a week ago and then beat the Mets twice at the Stadium, you know Aaron Boone, Brian Cashman, the entire front office and ownership breathed a sigh of relief. They definitely thought the Yankees were “turning the page” Boone seems to always reference in his postgame press conferences, and that the team was putting their abysmal second-half performance to date behind them. When they opened their four-game series in Oakland with a 13-run outburst, it likely only further reinforced the idea within the organization that the team was back, and scoring 13 runs without hitting a single home run would quiet the critics that the team too desperately relies on the long ball. But over the weekend, the post-June 18 Yankees returned after a five-game hiatus, posting back-to-back losses to the worst team in the American League and the second-worst team in baseball.

2. Not only did the Yankees lose back-to-back games to the A’s on Saturday and Sunday, they recorded one hit in their 11-inning loss on Saturday and scored one run on Sunday. Over the final 22 2/3 innings in the series, the Yankees got five hits, all singles.

After losing the series finale, Boone was asked about the offense’s struggles, and after tipping his hat to another fringe major-league starter he actually referenced the shadows in Oakland because of the West Coast start times as a reason why the offense didn’t show up against a team on pace for 102 losses.

The fact that the word “shadows” came out of Boone’s mouth is despicable because it means that he truly thinks that’s a valid excuse for why the Yankees were embarrassed over the weekend. Are the shadows the reason why the under in Yankees games is 15-3 since August 9? Are the shadows the reason why the Yankees have multiple everyday players with sub-.700 OPS? Did the A’s not have the same shadows covering the home plate area when they batted?

3. Prior to Opening Day, the Yankees tweeted their 2022 slogan:

No moral victories. No excuses. No storylines. No narratives. Talk is cheap.

Remove the four uses of “No” and change “cheap” to “everything” and you have the 2022 Yankees.

4. It’s not like the Yankees were shut down by (now former A’s) Sean Manaea or Chris Bassitt in Oakland. They were shut down by Adam Oller (who entered Saturday with a 6.41 ERA) and Adrian Martinez (who entered Sunday with a 6.08 ERA). Both starters managed to have the best starts of their careers on back-to-back days against a team that’s supposedly vying for a championship.

Yes, the two losses on Saturday and Sunday erased whatever feel-good mirage the Yankees had created over their previous five games. The wins over the Blue Jays (1), Mets (2) and A’s (2) leading into the weekend weren’t a sign the Yankees were getting back to being the pre-June 19 Yankees.

5. Not a single person other than Aaron Judge should receive a first-place AL MVP vote this season. The Yankees hold a rather comfortable AL East lead (though it has been cut in half over the last two months) with five weeks left in the season. With Judge, the Yankees are going to finish with the second-best record in the AL and get a first-round bye in the playoffs. Without him, they are likely on the postseason, wild-card bubble.

From mid-April until mid-June when the Yankees were keeping pace with the 1998 Yankees, I consistently wrote the reason the Yankees were where they were was because of Judge, the starting pitching and the combination of Michael King and Clay Holmes. But since King went down for the year (and likely next year), Holmes became ineffective and got hurt, and the starting pitching regressed, the only constant has been Judge. He is the sole reason the Yankees are where they are, and has been the only consistently productive presence on the team all season.

6. Judge homered on Monday and Tuesday against the Mets and on Friday against the A’s (all Yankees wins). Those were the only home runs hit by the Yankees all week. The last time a Yankee other than Judge homered was last Sunday when Andrew Benintendi hit his first home run as a Yankee. The team that relies on the home run to produce a biggest percentage of its runs than any other team in the majors hit one home run in 38 innings against the A’s and had only one of its players hit home runs in a six-game span. Yeah, the Yankees are fine!

That’s sarcasm, obviously (have to tip my hat to Boone any time I use the word “obviously”). The Yankees aren’t fine. Fare from it. They are now 29-34 since June 19. They are 14-22 since the All-Star break. They are 9-16 in August.

Judge’s historic season combined with the starting pitching and the early-season backend-of-the-bullpen dominance has masked an abundance of issues with the team. The same issues that have existed since Opening Day that the Yankees continue to choose to do nothing about.

7. I have no idea how the Yankees can consider themselves championship caliber if Isiah Kiner-Falefa is starting at shortstop on Monday night in Anaheim and not either Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe.

Kiner-Falefa is down to .262/.310/.314 on the season. His .625 OPS is the lowest it’s been all year and there’s an incredibly good chance it dips below .600 by the end of the year if he continues to play. He has two extra-base hits since July 27 and three since July 15. We are almost at the point where he has grounded into as many double plays (13) as he has extra-base hits (18).

Josh Donaldson is equally as bad of a problem. His numbers are nowhere as bad as Kiner-Falefa, but given Donaldson’s salary, career numbers and the fact he continues to bat in the heart of the order based on his career numbers, actually makes him worse than Kiner-Falefa. Donaldson is as washed up as it gets, but because the Yankees are paying $24 million for this season and owe him $24 million next season, his leash is endless. We know it’s endless because he keeps batting fifth with a .694 OPS.

On Sunday, Aaron Hicks started his first in a week, and singled, scored the Yankees’ only run and walked, so you can be sure he will be back in the lineup in Anaheim, as if reaching base twice in one game somehow makes up for his .216/.337/.302 slash line.

8. Because the Yankees won a few games last week with Benintendi hitting leadoff, you can bet your ass the plan for the rest of the season will be to bat him leadoff against righties and DJ LeMahieu against lefties. I hate it. Pick a leadoff and stick with it. And if it’s between those two, give me LeMahieu. But really, give me Judge.

This is the lineup I want to see if the Yankees ever get back to full strength:

Aaron Judge, CF
Matt Carpenter, DH
Giancarlo Stanton, RF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
DJ LeMahieu, 3B
Andrew Benintendi, LF
Oswald Peraza/Anthony Volpe, SS
Oswaldo Cabrera, 2B
Jose Trevino, C

Yes, that means Gleyber Torres, Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa (and Harrison Bader if he ever actually plays) on the bench. It means a better Yankees team.

That lineup will never happen.

9. It will never happen because the Yankees aren’t going to call up Peraza (who is hitting .290/.357/.496 in Triple-A since May 25) or Volpe (who is hitting .293/.383/.544 in Double-A since May 28).

Here is how Kiner-Falefa performed at each level of the minors:

Triple-A: .479 OPS
Double-A: .699 OPS
High-A: .700 OPS
Single-A: .617 OPS
Rookie: .705 OPS

(The fact he made the majors is remarkable. Him being an everyday player for the New York Yankees is like he won a contest to do so.)

It will never happen because the Yankees won’t bench Donaldson (who they regrettably traded for and took on his entire salary, but reportedly tried to trade him at the deadline) or Torres (whose offensive career is a lost cause and who the team also reportedly to move at the deadline). And the second Bader is healthy, he is playing every day, whether he’s the outfield version of Kiner-Falefa or not.

10. This was supposed to be an “easy” West Coast trip, against the A’s (who are on pace for 102 losses) and the Angels (who are on pace for 92 losses). Instead, the Yankees are 2-2 on it and now head to Anaheim to see an Angels team that just swept the Blue Jays in Toronto. The same Blue Jays that won three of four against the Yankees in the Bronx a week earlier. After the three games in Anaheim, it’s off to Tampa for three with the Rays.

On June 18, the Yankees had a 15 1/2-game lead in the AL East. That lead is now down to 7 1/2 over the Rays and seven in the loss column. A bad few days in Anaheim and a bad Labor Day Weekend in Tampa, the Yankees could be on the verge of an all-time collapse. I’m sure Boone’s hat is ready to be tipped to Jose Suarez, Mike Mayers and Patrick Sandoval in Anaheim.

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The Yankees are 2-5 on their current homestand, and it’s not over yet. They still have to face Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom before this miserable week at home ends.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees lost another series. And not just “another” series, but a four-game series to the Blue Jays, the team still trying to catch them in the AL East.

It was another frustrating and disappointing week for the Yankees as their once-15 1/2-game lead is now down to eight games, and seven games in the loss column. If they could just find a way to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish at 94-68, and in doing so, the Blue Jays and Rays would have to go 29-13 to tie them, and likely 30-12, as right now, the Yankees hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over both teams. Because of this math, the Yankees have a 91.2 percent chance of winning the division still, despite losing 14 of their last 18.

2. The Yankees lost three of four to the Blue Jays and were outscored 20-8 in the series. They have now put together these rather horrific records over the last two months:

The Yankees are 25-32 since June 19.

The Yankees are 10-20 since the All-Star break.

The Yankees are 5-14 in August.

3. As the Yankees’ division lead has been significantly cut into, Aaron Boone has gotten testier and more sensitive with each passing day. On Saturday, Boone got snippy with Meredith Marakovits and freaked out on the media after the Yankees lost 5-2 for being asked about the dwindling lead in the standings.

“I gotta quit answering these questions,” Boone exclaimed right before he slammed the table. This came a day after he said, “I don’t give a crap about the division lead.” It’s literally his job to answer questions from the media and to give a crap about the division lead.

If Boone doesn’t answer questions from the media, then the media doesn’t cover baseball. If the media doesn’t cover baseball, there’s no attention paid to baseball. If there’s no attention paid to baseball, then fans don’t exist. If fans don’t exist then Major League Baseball doesn’t exist. If Major League Baseball doesn’t exist then Boone’s entire life is different since everything he has had in life has been a result of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball was the way his grandfather earned a living to pay for his father’s life. Major League Baseball was the way his father earned a living to pay for his life. Major League Baseball is the way he has earned a living to pay for his family’s life. He might want to shut up and answer questions about the game that has given him everything.

4. The Blue Jays went into this season as the favorite to win the American League. When they were 46-42 through July 12, they fired their manager for failing to meet expectations as they were 15 1/2 games back in the division and barely holding on to the final wild-card berth. Since then they have taken 7 1/2 games off the Yankees’ lead and are tied for the first wild-card berth with the Rays.

The Yankees went into last season as the favorite to win the AL. They finished fifth in the AL and third in their own division. Their manager’s contract was up, and instead of moving on from Boone (who had failed to meet expectations in each of his four seasons as Yankees manager), the front office gave him a new three-year contract with an option for a fourth year.

Unless the Yankees collapse to the point of not winning the division and having to play in the best-of-3 round and losing there, I don’t think Boone’s job is in jeopardy. Even then, I think he would be safe. I think if the Yankees were to miss the playoffs completely, he would still be safe. But for the last week he hasn’t been talking to the media like someone who has never been held accountable for a single second in his position. He has been talking like someone who is on the hot seat, which he has never been on. Despite his endless nonsensical lineups, idiotic in-game decisions, incredible lies about injuries and unbelievable sugarcoating of poor performances, Boone has never once had to worry about his job as Yankees manager.

5. In the Derek Jeter documentary The Captain, Buck Showalter talked about leaving the Yankees after 1995 and how George Steinbrenner wanted to fire all of his coaches. Showalter said he couldn’t have stayed with the Yankees and had “any credibility” with all of his coaches being let go. After 2021, the Yankees fired Boone’s third base coach and friend since childhood Phil Nevin as well as his hitting coach Marcus Thames, assistant hitting coach P.J. Pilittere and first base coach Reggie Willits. This comes two years after firing his bench coach Josh Bard and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Boone has maintained his job while everyone around him has been replaced.

The only person who hasn’t been replaced is the one person who unconditionally loves Boone: Brian Cashman. The only way Boone isn’t the Yankees manager in 2022 is if the Steinbrenners move on from Cashman with his contract expiring at the end of this season and the new general manager wants his own manager. But Cashman isn’t going anywhere. For as much as he loves Boone, the Steinbrenners love Cashman more. Hal Steinbrenner has never once blamed Cashman or Boone for the organization’s shortcomings over the last four-plus seasons and always blames the players.

It’s hard to believe Boone has any credibility in the clubhouse. He might be a nice guy and could be the nicest guy of all time, but it’s hard to believe the players on the team experience decisions he makes and think he should be in the role he is in. If a manager is going to be given credit for a team’s run following a team meeting then they should be criticized when a team meeting has an opposite effect. Since Boone’s team meeting in Seattle, the Yankees are 4-9. I wonder why his message didn’t get across to his players.

Boone said himself on Saturday, “We’ve got great friggin’ players in there.” So if you truly believe you have great players then why have they played .439 baseball for more than two months? Why didn’t they listen to what you had to say in Seattle?

6. A day after saying he manages “great friggin’ players,” the Yankees blew an early 1-0 lead and a late 2-1 lead before finally winning a game with Andrew Benintendi finally doing something at the plate. Even with a .951 OPS over the last six games, Benintendi is still hitting just .211/.322/.368 with the Yankees, which tells you how bad he has been since becoming a Yankee on July 28.

7. The Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day at the Stadium with the organization retiring Number 21. I loved O’Neill growing up as a Yankees fans in the ’90s, but in no way should his number be retired. He was a great Yankee, but number retirements should be for iconic Yankees. The Yankees have diminished what it means to get your number retired with the Yankees, and the fact that people have conversations about if CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner should have their numbers retired tells you all you need to know about how much (or how little) it now means.

I was at Ron Guidry Day in August 2003 when Number 49 was retired. For gifts, George Steinbrenner gave Guidry an SUV, a tractor, golf clubs, a digital camera, a gold ring, mountain bikes for his kids and five roundtrip train tickets from Louisiana to New York because Guidry doesn’t like to fly. George’s son gave O’Neill a replica of his plaque in Monument Park, a single bottle of wine, a Number 21 jersey signed by the 2022 Yankees (that probably goes right in the trash) and a gimmick gift of a $29.97 Gatorade cooler from Dick’s Sporting Goods with band-aids on it and a bat through it. Hal isn’t just cheap when it comes to the actual Yankees roster.

The fact that the Yankees won on Paul O’Neill Day has definitely raised the idea to Hal that the Yankees don’t need to buy players to win games they can just retire more undeserving numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sabathia and Gardner get their numbers retired at some point, and it will likely happen after Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius get theirs.

8. On Sunday, Boone first asked Lou Trivino to come into a 2-2 game in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and two outs and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. up. Trivino successfully got him to ground out to end the seventh. Then he asked Trivino to start the eighth and he produced a 1-2-3 inning. Then he sent him back out for the ninth and he pitched around a one-out walk to save the game for the Yankees. It was the Yankees’ most impressive relief pitching performance of the season. They had to have the game on Sunday and going to Trivino for seven outs was an absolutely insane ask, but he Trivino handled it just about perfectly, needing only 32 pitches to get through 2 1/3 innings.

9. Alek Manoah hitting Aaron Judge is a non-story. First base was open and Manoah was going to pitch Judge inside and if he happened to hit him in doing so, so be it. It was a good strategy for the Blue Jays. Gerrit Cole trying to play the role of tough guy or enforcer and hopping over the dugout railing to chirp Manoah as if he was going to do anything to do the 6-foot-6, 285-pound Manoah was comical. What Cole should worry about is pitching like Manoah. Cole was awful in his start in the series on Saturday, allowing four earned runs on five hits and two walks across six innings. His manager (friend and neighbor) did say “he threw the ball well,” though, so there’s that.

10. The Yankees need to find a way to win of these two Subway Series games against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Starting Domingo German against Scherzer on Monday would be bad at any time, but with the state of the Yankee’s offense it’s especially egregious. Then asking the Yankees to beat the best pitcher in baseball the following day is just unfair, let alone with Frankie Montas starting, who will likely give up a run per inning.

After the second half of the Subway series, the Yankees head to the West Coast for seven games in seven days against the A’s and Angels, two teams they are a combined 6-0 against this season. But that doesn’t mean anything because these Yankees aren’t he same Yankees that went 6-0 against the A’s and Angels, outscoring them 33-12 earlier this season.

I expect the Yankees to have trouble with the Mets this week. If they have trouble against the A’s and Angels, then I think we will all officially know how this season is going to end.

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The Yankees ended their latest losing streak with a come-from-behind, walk-off win on Wednesday against the Rays. They still lost the three-game series and have lost five straight series, but for one game the Yankees gave their fans a night off from being depressed.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. It’s nice to write these Thoughts coming off a win. It would have been better to write them coming off a series win, something the Yankees haven’t had in three weeks, but I will take what I can get att this point as the Yankees continue to make me sweat my over 91.5-win preseason wager. (They need to go 19-25 to clinch for me.)

I’m happy the Yankees won on Wednesday and I’m happy they scored eight runs (seven if you don’t count the automatic runner in the 10th). I’m happy they finally called up two position players to give the roster and lineup a new look, and I’m happy they finally brought back the organization’s best reliever since Michael King went down and Clay Holmes turned into Jonathan Holder. But the happiness is only as good as the next day’s game, and if the Yankees get embarrassed by the Blue Jays over the next four days the way every team other than the Royals has embarrassed them since the All-Star break, Wednesday’s much-needed come-from-behind win will be forgotten the way every other win since June 19 that has been labeled as “The Possible Turning Point” has been.

No team with a 73-45 record should have as big of a win in mid-August as the Yankees had on Wednesday night over the Rays. The Yankees were a an an early four-run deficit and eventually three outs away from yet another loss and from seeing their once-15 1/2-game division lead falling to just seven games in the loss column. But then Josh Donaldson (one of the faces of everything wrong with the 2022 Yankees) stepped up and had his biggest hit as a Yankee.

2. The “Owed $48 Million Man” hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning off Jalen Beeks to prevent the Yankees from losing a fourth straight game, and for at least one night, brought some good vibes back to the Bronx.

Do I expect Donaldson to now go off and turn around his season and make his situation and contract with the Yankees anything more than the disaster it’s been (which is why they reportedly tried to trade him at the deadline, but no general manager was as dumb as Brian Cashman to take on his money owed)? No, I don’t. I don’t because this isn’t the first time Donaldson has had a game in which he tried to fool fans into thinking he was anything other than washed up only to continue his drastic decline.

On Opening Day (April 8), Donaldson went 2-for-6 with a walk-off single against the Red Sox as the leadoff hitter. He then hit .207/.343/.345 with two home runs over his next 105 plate appearances.

In Chicago against the White Sox on May 12 and May 13, Donaldson went 4-for-10 with a double, two home runs and six RBIs. He then hit .213/.283/.336 with two home runs over his next 138 plate appearances.

From July 6 through July 9, Donaldson went 5-for-13 with three home runs and nine RBIs. He then hit .192/.259/.295 with one home run over his next 85 plate appearances.

In Seattle on August 8, in the middle of a five-game losing streak, Donaldson went 4-for-5 with two doubles, a home run and three RBIs. He then hit .120/.241/.120 over his next 29 plate appearances before Wednesday.

And then on Wednesday he hit the grand slam. Even with the grand slam, his OPS is at .698 on the season.

So I’m sorry if I don’t think Wednesday night’s moment was anything more than that: a moment. I don’t expect 2015 AL MVP Donaldson to now appear for the Yankees, and I don’t even expect 2021 Donaldson to appear. I expect the version of Donaldson we have seen for nearly the entire season to continue to be the Donaldson we see, and if he continues to play every day like he has all year, he will have occasional moments like he did on Wednesday. Not enough to warrant him being an everyday player for a championship team, but just enough for him to keep playing and to bat in the middle of the order for these Yankees.

3. Welcome back, Estevan Florial, and welcome, Oswaldo Cabrera. It took scoring one run (on an error) over three games and watching the Yankees 15 1/2-game division lead get cut in half for them to finally make some roster changes. Florial is back after four games with the team earlier this year (and after hitting .300/.440/.550 in 11 games last year), and Cabrera made his major-league debut at third base on Wednesday. Aaron Boone said both are going to play, and we’ll see if Fletcher Reede actually means what he says.

4. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit his first home run of the season and drove in all three Yankees runs in their win on Saturday when the outrage about his play and the calls for Oswald Peraza were as loud as they have ever been (and still remain that loud). Donaldson finally did something at the plate in a big spot for the Yankees on the day one of the Yankees’ top prospects made his major-league debut at Donaldson’s third base. It’s almost as if sending messages and not being complacent can lead to positive results! Who would have known? (Well, clearly the defending-champion Braves who have called up their prospects with less Triple-A time and production than the Yankees’ prospects and have had immense success.)

I hope Florial and Cabrera both flourish in their opportunities. I want the Yankees to roster likable players, and Florial and Cabrera having success in the majors means less of Aaron Hicks, Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa. (I don’t actually think it will mean less Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa since the Yankees clearly think they are good, everyday-worthy, winning players. But it should mean less of them if this duo plays well.)

If Peraza keeps hitting in Triple-A, he should get a chance too. Just because the Yankees traded for Kiner-Falefa as a 2022 stopgap to bridge them to Peraza or Anthony Volpe doesn’t mean they have to wait until 2023 to turn to either. Kiner-Falefa has done enough (or rather not enough) for the Yankees to already have reason to be playing either of them now in the majors. If Kiner-Falefa continues to be an atrocious at-bat with an untrustworthy glove, give someone else an everyday chance.

5. It was nice to see Gleyber Torres finally do something as well on Wednesday, as he hit a two-run home run to get the Yankees on the board. But then in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and one out and the Yankees trailing by one run, Torres came to bat, swung at the first pitch and grounded into an inning-ending double play. Aaron Judge had walked on four straight pitches right before Torres came to bat and it’s likely what happened in Judge’s at-bat never crossed Torres’ mind. It was an ill-advised swing from a player who continues to boast arguably the lowest Baseball IQ I have seen from any player since Nick Swisher.

6. Boone did everything he could to try to extend the Yankees’ losing streak on Wednesday. After Lucas Luetge allowed a run in the sixth, he sent him back out there for the seventh. Luetge was allowed to put two more runners on in the seventh (after putting on two in the sixth) before Boone turned to “Roster Manipulation Ron” Marinaccio to get out of the jam. If Boone was willing to go to Marinaccio in the seventh, why didn’t he just start the inning clean? Why do I find myself writing a sentence similar to that in every one of these Thoughts blogs?

7. Thankfully, Marinaccio was recalled and available on Wednesday. It’s comical that Marinaccio entered in what was the highest leverage situation in the game to that point. Good enough to be used as the most important reliever last night, but not good enough to be a Yankees the previous 10 days. Well, that’s not true. He has always been good enough to be a Yankee, he was just used as a pawn in the Yankees’ roster manipulation strategy. The Yankees lost seven of nine will Marinaccio was wasting away in Triple-A, losing games because of meltdowns from Albert Abreu, Scott Effross, Lou Trivino and Holmes. The Yankees likely have a couple more wins if Marinaccio is on the Yankees over that nine-day period, as well as if Clarke Schmidt were too (who is still wasting away in Triple-A).

8. In the bottom of the ninth, Boone sent up Hicks as pinch hitter for Kiner-Falefa. Boone operated under the idea that Hicks had a better chance of ending the game with one swing than Kiner-Falefa, but that concept is meaningless since I too had a better chance of ending the game with one swing that Kiner-Falefa. Hicks has also homered in 1.6 percent of his plate appearances this season, so let’s not act like Matt Stairs was coming off the bench in that situation. Hicks struck out.

9. Then in the 10th, Boone brought in Aroldis Chapman. I was fine with that decision. What I wasn’t fine with was staying with Chapman with the bases loaded and one out and Francisco Mejia up. Mejia is a .225/.248/.384 hitter against righties and a .386/.397/.561 hitter against lefties. Even down 0-2, Mejia was able to hit a go-ahead, three-run double off Chapman.

As I said on the Keefe To The City Podcast earlier this week, Chapman could pitch 30 straight perfect innings and I will never trust him. The narrative of Chapman of late had been that he had resolved his issues and was his old self, and deserving of being the No. 1 arm in the Yankees’ bullpen. Then he went out on Wednesday night, got two outs and allowed two walks and a double, nearly ruining the game and handing the Yankees another loss before the walk-off in the bottom half of Chapman’s disastrous inning.

10. All Wednesday’s win should have done was make Yankees fans feel good in the exact moment of the walk-off grand slam. That’s it. Be happy until the moment Donaldson crossed the plate and then get back to reality. Because all the Yankees did was win one game. They still have a long way to go to getting back to being even remotely close to the team they were from mid-April to mid-June and to proving their postseason isn’t going to last only a handful of days.

Wednesday was one game and it was one win. Maybe it’s the start of something for the first time in two months. No win since June 19 has been the start of anything, but maybe this win will be different. I pray it is.

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The Yankees lost another series, this time to the last-place Red Sox finish their 2-7 on their nine-game road trip.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I haven’t heard the YES broadcast booth or any Yankees fan compare the 2022 Yankees to the 1998 Yankees lately. I wonder why that is.

Maybe it’s because the only Yankees the 2022 Yankees are comparable to are the 2021 Yankees. A team whose season was based around one hot streak and who ultimately (to use Aaron Boone’s second-favorite word after “obviously”) underachieved. The 2022 Yankees’ hot streak might have lasted longer than the 2021 Yankees’, but it looks like they are headed down the same path with the same inevitable fate: an early postseason exit.

2. The Yankees are 23-27 since June 19. They are 8-15 since the All-Star break. They are 2-9 in their last 11 games. They were shut out on Sunday night for the third time in eight games. If not for the rest of the AL East playing nearly as poorly as they have for the last eight weeks, they could have easily blown their massive division lead. The lead was at its highest at 15 1/2 games and now sits at 10 games. So while they have managed to erase 35 percent of their lead, it’s still a double-digit lead because the Blue Jays and Rays failed to capitalize on an opportunity to overtake the Yankees.

“If you would have asked me at the start of the year, would I like a 10-game lead in the middle of August?” Aaron Judge said to the media after Sunday night’s shutout loss, “I think any of us would have signed up for that.”

That’s true. But that’s also like being given $1 million, losing one third of it and then trying to justify being fine with it just because you didn’t expect to have the $1 million in the first place.

3. At 3-10 since the trade deadline, the Yankees’ marginal upgrades at the time haven’t even been that. Andrew Benintendi looks like the guy the Red Sox gave up on, and while he was always expected to regress, regressing to be worse than Joey Gallo is certainly something else. Scott Effross’ only earned runs came on one mistake pitch (a giant mistake at that) and Lou Trivino has been OK, but both have them have been used at times after Albert Abreu and Lucas Luetge have pitched and been allowed to blow games. Frankie Montas has pitched like a No. 5 starter in two starts, and a bad No. 5 at that, and Harrison Bader still isn’t close to playing for the Yankees. Add in Jordan Montgomery putting together two scoreless starts for the Cardinals (with one coming against the Yankees), and to date, the Yankees couldn’t have botched the deadline any worse than they did.

The new Yankees are only a small portion of the team’s problems. The majority of the rest of the team is the still the problem.

4. Anthony Rizzo finally decided to halt his non-injured list stint after a week of missing games and is 1-for-15 with six strikeouts since returning.

A week ago, for the third time, people thought Josh Donaldson was finally going to turn his season around after he went 4-for-5 with three RBIs in the series opener in Seattle. Since then he’s 2-for-18 with nine strikeouts, and his season OPS is back below .700 yet again.

The idea that 2018-19 Gleyber Torres was back was always an illusion. Since July 28, Torres is hitting .154/.167/.200. His OPS was at .802 at the beginning of play that day. It’s now at .729 as he tries to become another everyday Yankees to have a sub-.700 OPS.

Aaron Hicks is part of the sub.-700 OPS club. His is at .650. Remember when he homered in three of four games from July 6 through July 9 and there was this perception his power (or whatever power he has ever had) has returned and he was going to turn his season around? Well, July 9 was the last time he homered, 37 days ago. Since then he’s hitting .165/.297/.165 with no extra-base hits.

Benintendi is an exceptional candidate for worst deadline acquisition of all time, hitting .196/.323/.294 with the Yankees. If you want to say “Oh, it’s only 16 games,” well, the Yankees traded for him prior to Game 100, so he has played more than one quarter of the games he will be a Yankee for.

Want to call Saturday’s win over the Red Sox the “Isiah Kiner-Falefa Game?” Go ahead. That’s the only game he has had as a Yankee that could be considered that. After 104 games played, he’s hitting .269/.315/.323 with one home run as he tries to be the worst everyday player to play for a championship team.

5. The Yankees aren’t currently a championship team. Not with the combination of an abundance of underachieving players and an abundance of injuries. Maybe in late April, May and early June they were when they were getting seven innings of one-run or shutout ball every night from their starting pitching and they were completely healthy. But even then, the offense was severely flawed, and as the injuries have mounted, the offense has only gotten worse.

6. The only players to be consistent this season have been Judge, Jose Trevino, Nestor Cortes, DJ LeMahieu, Matt Carpenter, Jose Trevino, Nestor Cortes, Michael King, Ron Marinaccio and Clarke Schmidt. Judge is the AL MVP and Trevino and Cortes All-Stars. LeMahieu is now injured, which is why he didn’t play on Sunday night. Carpenter is out for possibly the season and King is out for this year and maybe all of next, while Marinaccio and Schmidt are both wasting away in Triple-A because they have options to allow the Yankees to manipulate the team’s depth. Everyone else has been inconsistent, awful or has underachieved.

7. I never thought Clay Holmes would be a part of the inconsistent group on this team. Not after how good he was for the first three months of the season. But now that he doesn’t know where the ball is going and walks at least one batter an appearance, he can’t be trusted just like the rest of the bullpen. He’s been so bad since mid-July that Aroldis Chapman has jumped him on the bullpen pecking order and Chapman is the least trustworthy reliever given the high-leverage situations he’s used in. Holmes has allowed 11 earned runs, 11 hits and 10 walks in his last 9 2/3 innings with opposing batters hitting .282/.482/.385 off him.  Prior to July 9, batters had hit .165/.213/.188 off him and he allowed two earned runs, 22 hits and five walks in 38 innings. The Yankees’ bullpen is too beat up and too shallow now to have Holmes be Jonathan Holder.

8. It would be nice if Giancarlo Stanton could play baseball in the near future. Stanton has missed 35 games this season, the equivalent of 32 percent of the season. (I thought Eric Cressy and his team has solved injuries! It’s almost as if you can’t prevent injuries, especially for historically injury-prone players.) But what you can prevent is the amount of time it takes for Stanton to return. Stanton has taken one day to shag balls, another to swing a bat, another to run the bases, another to go through a pregame routine, and so on. Basically one day per baseball-related activity. It’s all pretty ridiculous and there’s no evidence this will prevent him from getting injured in his first game back.

With Rizzo out and now back but being unproductive, LeMahieu now out, Carpenter out, the Yankees could desperately use Stanton. But I’m sure he will need to brush his teeth on Monday and then go through buttoning his jersey on Tuesday and then try to tie his cleats on Wednesday and maybe at this rate he will be cleared to play by Labor Day.

9. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, and I don’t know how much worse they can get for a team that has the second-worst record in the AL since the All-Star break, trailing only the Tigers. On Monday, the Yankees begin a nine-game homestand against the Rays (3), Blue Jays (4) and Mets (2). For a team that in the last month has split a series with the Pirates, lost a home series to the Reds, has lost five of nine to the Red Sox, got swept by the Mets and Cardinals and lost four of six to the Mariners, I don’t know how anyone could feel good going into these nine games. Add in the unknown with LeMahieu’s foot injury, the underperformance of every offensive player not named Judge or Trevino, the shakiness of the rotation after Cortes, the instability of the entire bullpen, the front office’s unwillingness to call anyone up, and the incompetency of the manager, and you have a team that could really screw up its season over the next nine days.

10. Now that the comparisons to the 1998 team’s success have stopped, the comparisons to the Septembers of the 1998 and 2000 teams have started. Two teams that finished out their regular seasons like these Yankees have played for the last eight weeks. The difference is those teams knew how to flip a switch and they could flip the switch once the postseason began. They also earned the right to be allowed to flip the switch with four championships in five years and six championship appearances in eight years.

These Yankees haven’t earned that benefit. They haven’t earned anything other than for fans to think this season will end the same way every other season has ended with this group and this core: early. The Yankees may be headed to the postseason and headed there with a bye to the ALDS, but that doesn’t mean they will do anything once they get there. After these last eight weeks, the only thing I can see them doing is holding an end-of-the-season press conference while the ALCS is going on without them.

They have six-and-a-half weeks to change that.

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When Aaron Hicks said his goal was to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in 2022, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was as realistic of a goal as me looking to be part of the Yankees’ rotation in 2022. Hicks had never hit 30 home runs in a season, and had never hit more than 15 outside of the 27 he hit in 2018 at a time when the baseball was juiced more than Alex Rodriguez ever was with the Rangers. (He didn’t use performance-enhancing drugs as a Yankee!) His career high in steals was 13 back when he was 25 years old, before he became a Yankee. So yeah, me slotting in as the Yankees’ No. 5 starter was about as likely as Hicks doubling his non-juiced ball career high in home runs and stealing 57 percent more bases than he ever had in a single season.

Some people might defend Hicks for shooting for the moon. It’s good to have goals! Hicks’ goal of being the first 30/30 Yankee since peak Alfonso Soriano wasn’t a goal, it was a dream. A pipe dream. He should have made a goal of not going on the injured list for an entire season as a Yankee, something he has never been able to accomplish, but while still unrealistic, it was at least something to strive for (and something he actually has achieved to date this season).

The Yankees have played 110 games, and Hicks has played in 97 of them. He has six home runs and nine steals. Earlier this week, he told The Athletic he’s “definitely going to be short” of joining the 30/30 club. (He only needs to hit 24 home runs and steal 27 bases in the team’s final 52 games.)

The problem is Hicks won’t come close to playing in all of those games. Once Giancarlo Stanton returns, and if Harrison Bader plays for the Yankees this season, Hicks will be the odd man out in the outfield. The Yankees didn’t trade for both Andrew Benintendi and Bader to not play them. Hicks will be the one on the bench, and rightfully so, after failing to take advantage of endless opportunities since becoming a Yankee and signing a seven-year extension prior to the 2019 season.

Hicks went from everyday center fielder to everyday left fielder to now looking at being an everyday bench player once the Yankees get healthy. This year he’s hitting .224/.349/.317 and that’s coming off last season when he was appointed as 3-hitter in spring training and then hit .194/.294/.333, lasting only 32 games before needing season-ending wrist surgery.

That surgery on the sheath of his wrist sapped his power (or what there ever was of his power) like it has to others that have had the same surgery. When he homered in three of four games from July 6 through July 9, the idea his power (or what he has ever had of it) was returning was a common theme among Yankees fans for those four days. But July 9 was the last time Hicks homered. A month ago. And in the 23 games he has played in over the last month, he’s hitting .171/.318/.171 (yes, slugging .171 over the last month), highlighted by an 0-for-32 streak that went for nearly two weeks. 

“I started off the season good,” Hicks told The Athletic. “I was hitting for a high average for a while. I wasn’t really hitting for much power.”

When Hicks says he “started off the season good” he means literally the start of the season and no more. He was “good” for nine games (seven starts). He hit .348/.464/.478 over the first week of the season. Then he put together back-to-back 0-for-4s and it’s been downhill since. The last time his average was above .300 was on April 20. The last time it was above .275 was on May 3. The last time it was at.250 was on May 9. It’s at .223 today with 13 extra-base hits.

Hicks’ on-base percentage has carried his OPS (he has a higher on-base percentage than slugging percentage) because while he can’t hit, he is smart enough to take walks. His approach at the plate has always been to not swing and hope the pitcher throws four balls before he throws three strikes, and it works out for him often. (I wish more Yankees would have this approach.)

“All we’re trying to do is win a championship here,” Hicks told The Athletic. “So if I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is.”

If I were ownership or the front office I would expect a little more fire and motivation about being in the lineup, especially from a player who is under contract for next season and the season after that and the season after that and then will be bought out for $1 million to not play baseball for the Yankees the season after that. Saying it’s “cool” if you play “but it is what it is” if you don’t doesn’t make Hicks sound like a good teammate and team-first guy, it makes him sound like a loser. Hicks talks like a guy who signed a seven-year, $70 million guaranteed contract because he is that guy. And since receiving that extension, he has played in 242 of a possible 494 regular-season games (49 percent).

I have long wanted Hicks off the Yankees, and was vehemently against the extension he was offered in 2019. (The keyword there is “offered.” The extension and the endless treatment of him as if he’s Bernie Williams 2.0 is all on the Yankees. They created this mess. What is Hicks supposed to do? Not accept $70 million to play baseball?) I have been appalled year after year in their belief he could stay healthy and be productive and be counted on to be an everyday player for the Yankees.

It seems like the Yankees finally agree. By trading for two outfielders in Benintendi and Bader they made it clear they no longer believe in Hicks being the player he told The Athletic he “knows he can be,” which is a player he has rarely ever been in his seven years with the Yankees. Hicks is only playing now because of injuries and the only way he will play regularly for the rest of the regular season and the postseason will be because of injuries.

If Hicks has a future with the Yankees as the fourth outfielder, “cool.” If his future in baseball after this season isn’t with the Yankees, well, “it is what it is.”

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!