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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The Yankees were swept by the Cardinals. The Yankees blew leads in two of the games and were shut out in the other started by former Yankee Jordan Montgomery, and everything about his team of late feels a lot like last year.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On the morning of June 19, the Yankees were 49-16. They had just shut out the Blue Jays the night before and their division lead was at an unbelievable 12 games through 40 percent of the season. As important, their lead for the 1-seed in the American League was nine games. The Yankees had clinched the division title with three-and-a-half months left in the season and were on their way to ensuring Games 1, 2, 6 and 7 of a potential ALCS matchup against the Astros would be played at the Yankee Stadium. But that Sunday night on June 19, the Yankees blew a five-run lead, lost 10-9 and haven’t been the same team since.

Since June 19, the Yankees have gone 21-23. During this current run of .477 baseball over more than a quarter of the season, they have lost five of seven to the Astros (never leading once in the seven games), split a series with the Pirates (who are on pace for 96 losses), blew three late leads to the last-place Red Sox, lost a home series to the last-place Reds, got swept in the first half of the Subway Series, lost a home series to Mariners (allowing 17 runs to their anemic offense) and were just swept in St. Louis (blowing leads in two of the three games, while getting shut out in the other). The Yankees are 9-16 in their last 25 games and 6-11 since the All-Star break. Against teams not from Kansas City, those records fall to 6-15 and 3-10.

2. Fortunately, the rest of the AL East has failed to take advantage of the Yankees pissing away 27 percent of their season. That 12-game lead on June 19 is now in single digits, but still strong at 9 1/2 games. The race for the 1-seed? That’s now a 1/2-game lead, and I expect the Astros to overtake the Yankees for the 1-seed later this week. And if they somehow don’t this week, they eventually will given their remaining schedule against the Yankees’ remaining schedule.

3. The last nearly two months have felt just like 2021. The Yankees went into last season as the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series, and instead they didn’t clinch a postseason berth until the final pitch of their regular season. They finished as the second wild-card team, had to go on the road for a one-game playoff and that one-game playoff was over four batters into the bottom of the first inning. The season was a disgrace, an embarrassment, a disaster.

Brian Cashman vowed to make changes at his end-of-the-season press conference and then made minimal, marginal changes. The Yankees got off to a 7-6 start in 2022 and it felt like a continuation of 2021. But then the Yankees went off in a way they hadn’t in more than two decades, winning 42 of 52 and drawing daily comparisons to the 1998 team that won 114 regular-season games before going 11-2 in the postseason and sweeping the World Series. But since June 19, this team and this season has felt too much like last season’s and it’s hard to stomach.

Are these Yankees the team that went 42-10 from April 22 through June 18, or are they the team that is 29-30 in the season’s other 59 games sandwiched around that improbable run?

4.. There are five players on the current roster to feel good about: Aaron Judge, DJ LeMahieu, Matt Carpenter, Jose Trevino and Nestor Cortes. That’s it. As for the other 21 …

Anthony Rizzo? He has missed the last three games with back problems, the second time he has missed games for back-related issues this season. After playing in 94 percent of his team’s regular-season games over the last nine years, it’s not surprising at 33 he’s dealing with injuries.

Giancarlo Stanton? He last played on July 23.

Gleyber Torres? Back on June 19, he was on a 40-home run pace, had an .838 OPS and had people thinking the Torres of 2018 and 2019 was back. Since then he’s hitting .227/.292/.348 with three home runs in 154 plate appearances.

Josh Donaldson? If the Yankees didn’t owe Donaldson $24 million this season and next season, he would likely no longer be a Yankee. He has hit one home run in the last month, while slugging less than .300 with an OPS under .550. He’s unplayable. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.

Aaron Hicks? Also unplayable. Hicks went two weeks without getting a hit before picking up three hits on Sunday. His first two hits had exit velocities of 59.3 mph and 27.3 mph with expected batting averages of .220 and .280 respectively. His last home run came at Fenway Park a month ago and his last double came in the game before that one. So no, he hasn’t had an extra-base hit in a month.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa? The homerless shortstop with the .641 OPS … well, that’s all that needs to be said.

Marwin Gonzalez? The backup shortstop last got a hit on July 6. He’s 0-for-20 since.

Andrew Benintendi? The Yankees traded four prospects for Joey Gallo last year. Then they traded three prospects for Benintendi to be his replacement and moved Gallo as well. All they did was get the same player so far. Benintendi is 4-for-30 as a Yankee.

Kyle Higashioka? His OPS is finally above .600 (.603). Congratulations?

Gerrit Cole? In his last three starts, he allowed six first-inning runs to the Mariners, allowed five runs to the Royals and blew a three-run lead to the Orioles.

Luis Severino? He’s on the 60-day injured list.

Jameson Taillon? He has a 6.25 ERA and 5.49 FIP over his last eight starts.

Domingo German? He has a 5.07 ERA, 5.77 FIP and has allowed 28 baserunners in 17 1/3 innings.

Clay Holmes? He has allowed 21 baserunners and nine earned runs in his last 8 2/3 innings and has been so bad the Yankees are thinking of giving Aroldis Chapman his old job back.

Aroldis Chapman? His five straight scoreless appearance streak is going to fool the Yankees into thinking he’s fixed after having allowed 18 walks in 25 1/3 innings this season.

Jonathan Loaisiga? He hasn’t looked right since August of last year.

Wandy Peralta? Fifteen baserunners allowed in his last 8 1/3 innings.

Albert Abreu? The Yankees traded him in the offseason to the Rangers. The Rangers traded him to the Royals. The Royals designated him for assignment. The Yankees gladly took him back and in his last three appearances he came into a 6-6 game and allowed two runs then faced three batters and retied one and then came into a one-run deficit and made it a two-run deficit.

Lucas Luetge? He has allowed 45 percent of inherited runners to score, including both in his last appearance against Seattle.

As for new Yankees pitchers Frankie Montas, Scott Effross and Lou Trivino, well, Montas allowed six earned runs in three innings in his Yankees debut, Effross allowed a three-run home run to Paul DeJong and his .531 OPS on Sunday, and in the same game, Trivino walked in a run.

So like I said, it’s Judge, LeMahieu, Carpenter, Trevino, Cortes, and that’s all to currently feel good about.

5. The Yankees’ trade deadline acquisitions have collectively made the worst first impression possible. Benintendi is 4-for-30, Montas got rocked in his first Yankees start, Effross gave up that three-run home run and Trivino walked in that run. On top of the lack of contribution from those four, the Yankees are choosing to not have the best possible 26-man roster. After recently sending down Clarke Schmidt, on Saturday night, they also sent down Ron Marinaccio, who has been the Yankees’ best reliever of late and had filled in well for the injured Michael King. Schmidt and Marinaccio not being on the major-league roster is irresponsible, and a clear product of roster manipulation. Because the two have remaining options, they don’t have to pass through waivers like other lesser relieves would have to. So rather than designate Abreu or Luetge for assignment, the Yankees are inexplicably choosing to roster a less talented team.

6. This isn’t an uncommon practice under Cashman. It’s very common. As is trading for young, controllable starting pitchers that don’t work out with the Yankees. No, one start after having not pitched in 12 days isn’t enough for me to say Montas won’t work out as a Yankee, but it should surprise no one if it doesn’t. Here is the list of young, controllable starters Cashman has traded for just like Montas:

Jeff Weaver
Javier Vazquez
Michael Pineda
Nathan Eovaldi
Sonny Gray
James Paxton
Jameson Taillon

Cashman traded away the left-handed Ted Lilly in the deal for Weaver, who was a complete bust as a Yankee, while Lilly went on to pitch in the majors until the age of 37. Jordan Montgomery wasn’t traded for Montas, but the addition of Montas led to the trade of Montgomery, so he kind of was. And I can easily see the left-handed Montgomery becoming Lilly 2.0 in a lefty that goes on to have a long, successful career as a middle-of-the-rotation starter, and it’s not hard to envision Montas pitching in New York like those other seven names.

7. I have only rooted against the Yankees once in my life: Game 162 of the 2011 season. A Yankees loss and Orioles win meant the Red Sox would be eliminated from the playoffs and complete the worst September collapse in baseball history, so when the Yankees blew a seven-run lead in that game and Evan Longoria eventually hit a walk-off home run I was ecstatic. Saturday night against the Cardinals was the second time I have rooted against the Yankees.

It’s not that I’m a big Montgomery fan, it’s more about what Saturday represented. Here was an ex-Yankee making his non-Yankees debut against the Yankees, pitching against Domingo German who should have been released by the organization in 2019. The addition of Montas was supposed to be the end of German in the Yankees’ rotation, but then the trade of Montgomery kept German in the rotation. Despite being a scumbag as a person and an awful pitcher, German has maintained his roster spot and has been given endless chances to prove himself at the major-league level. I don’t root for him in any start, so of course I was going to root against him on Saturday night, and with Montgomery starting it meant rooting against the Yankees. So when Montgomery threw five shutout innings and the Yankees lost 1-0 I didn’t care. The Yankees made their bed by acting like they have an abundance of available, major-league-caliber starting pitching in trading away Montgomery and by continuing to start German, so screw them. Add in Montas’ disastrous start on Sunday and Luis Castillo outpitching Cole in the Bronx last week for his second win in the Bronx in a month, and the early returns on the trade deadline have been a disaster. You get what you trade for, and the Yankees chose not to trade for the best available starting pitcher at the deadline, the best available reliever or the best available outfielder, and they have gotten what they traded for.

8. And the returns are likely to get worse. Once Harrison Bader is healthy he’s going to play and he’s going to start in center field. That means Judge moves to right field. That makes Stanton the full-time designated hitter. That makes Carpenter a bench player. And with the Yankees undying loyalty to Donaldson at third, that means LeMahieu or Torres comes out of the lineup. And if it’s LeMahieu, I would actually root against the Yankees in the playoffs. I understand the idea of run prevention, but the Yankees are taking it too far if they plan on playing Bader, Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa in the same lineup.

The Montgomery-Bader trade was nonsensical when it was made, and has a chance to grow into something much worse if Montgomery continues to be a reliable No. 3-4 starter and Bader’s presence eventually screws up the Yankees’ best possible lineup.

9. Judge has been playing center field full time and the acquisition of Bader means the Yankees don’t feel comfortable with Hicks at the backup. A guy who’s under contract for next season, the season after that, and the season after that and then can be bought out the season after that. It’s either the Yankees don’t believe in Hicks or they are worried Stanton’s season is over. The former is fixable. The latter is an enormous problem because unless LeMahieu and Judge are going to carry the offense for an entire postseason, the Yankees desperately need a healthy Stanton back in the lineup.

10. Even after all this losing for the last seven weeks, the Yankees are still going to win the AL East. But without the 1-seed in the AL, it will be nearly impossible to win the AL unless the Astros somehow get knocked off in their ALDS matchup. It would be difficult enough to beat the Astros with home-field advantage, not having it sets the Yankees up for a similar outcome to 2017 and 2019.

Things could get worse before they get better. The Yankees now head to Seattle to play a desperate Mariners team battling for a postseason berth and will face their three best starters in Logan Gilbert, Castillo and Robbie Ray. After that it’s a series at Fenway Park against the Red Sox, who are trying to save their season. Then it’s home against the Rays and Blue Jays, who are fighting for playoff positioning and who likely still believe they can catch the Yankees, and the second half of the Subway Series.

The Yankees can’t afford to continue to put out ‘B’ and ‘C’ lineups, give starters extra rest, test out relievers in big spots and manage like they have everything clinched. They have nothing clinched. I don’t expect them to change their ways and begin to play and manage with urgency, and that’s why it’s getting harder by the day to see this season ending in anything other than disappointment.

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The Yankees lost another second-half series, dropping two of three to the Mariners. The Yankees are now 6-8 since the All-Star break, having played one-game-over.-500 baseball since June 19.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are a better team today than they were prior to the trade deadline. (At least I think they are.) They made necessary upgrades, but also puzzling decisions, and while they did everything they needed to do (add an outfielder, acquire a starting pitcher and get bullpen help), they kind of half-assed doing what they needed to do.

The move to acquire Andrew Benintendi marked the official end for Joey Gallo as a Yankee. All Yankees fans knew for a couple of months Gallo had played his way out of New York, but trading for Benintendi solidified the decision. All the Yankees needed to do was find a home for Gallo, and they did that in Los Angeles with the Dodgers.

2. Before leaving New York, Gallo spoke with Randy Miller about his time with the Yankees, and what he had to say was rather odd. Gallo talked as if he should have immunity from booing and criticism from Yankees fans: a fan base that has booed both Number 2 and Number 42.

“I don’t go out in the streets,” Gallo told Randy Miller. “I really don’t know want to show my face too much around here.”

I would know who Gallo is if I saw him walking down the street. I think a lot of casual Yankees fans and baseball fans know his name, but I don’t think they would necessarily know him walking down the street in Manhattan, and not every person is a baseball fan. Sure, he’s 6-foot-5, which would make him stick out, and yes, he has a rare haircut (which doesn’t help him hide), but I have a hard time believing most people in New York City would know who Joey Gallo is or care to see him on the street.

“In Texas I was playing every day, so it was a little easier to get on a streak,” Gallo said. “It’s a little tougher not playing every day trying to get that streak going, as well.”

Gallo’s memory must be as poor as hit bat-to-ball skills. When he was acquired by the Yankees, he served as the 2-hitter right away. He played in his 22 straight games to begin his Yankees tenure (and hit .152/.302/.367) and in 2021 played in 58 of a possible 61 games after being traded (hitting .160/.303/.404).

To start the 2022 season, he played in the Yankees’ first 21 games despite posting a .570 OPS. After a couple days off, he then played in the next 14 straight games, while posting a .620 OPS. He played in 21 games in April, 20 games in May, 22 games in June and 19 games in July. The Yankees gave him every opportunity to turn it around, kept forcing him in the lineup to let him turn it around, and he never did. For him to say he wasn’t an everyday player with the Yankees isn’t just wrong, it’s a lie.

“I don’t know how (the fans) usually are, but I don’t know how much tougher they can get,” Gallo said. “Pretty much every team we play, players from that team reached out to me to say, ‘Hey bro, keep your head up. Don’t listen to them.'”

Gallo claims to have grown up a Yankees fan. I don’t know how anyone could grow up claiming to be a Yankees fan and not know how the fan base acts. Alex Rodriguez won two MVPs as a Yankee and single-handedly carried the offense to a championship, and it didn’t matter. He was judged by each plate appearance. If he went 3-for-3 with three home runs, but struck out in his fourth at-bat with the tying run on base, he would get booed, and all he did in 12 years as a Yankee was post a 162-game average of 38 home runs, 117 RBIs and a .283/.378/.523 slash line. I don’t see A-Rod claiming the fans made him “feel like a piece of shit.”

“It makes me feel like a piece of shit, honestly,” Gallo said. “I do appreciate people reaching out, but it makes me feel like I’m a problem.”

Clearly, Gallo is sensitive, and this interview made it obvious why he failed as a Yankee. He was always going to be a hard player to accept with his all-or-nothing approach at the plate, but to tell Miller all of this less than a week after speaking in the past tense of his time with the Yankees while still a Yankee to Lindsey Adler, Gallo was never going to be able to handle adversity.

And sorry, Joey, but you were a problem. The Yankees gave up four prospects to acquire him, and he went from the Yankees’ 2-hitter to eventually being the 9-hitter, to becoming a platoon player to being benched. That’s a problem. He was supposed to be a high on-base guy who would hit 30-plus home runs and play Gold Glove defense. Instead, he was a low on-base guy, who stopped hitting home runs and played questionable defense.

3. I’m not mad at Gallo for failing as a Yankee, and I don’t dislike him either. The Yankees knew the type of player they were getting when they acquired him, and any dip in production was going to be an issue, let alone a catastrophic dip. It’s not Gallo’s fault Brian Cashman gave up four prospects to acquire him and then had to give up three more prospects to trade for Benintendi to take the place of Gallo. It’s not Gallo’s fault he became a Yankee, got to play every day and kept on playing even when it was clear his ability to do the things he was supposed to do was gone. He didn’t have a no-trade clause to veto the trade and he didn’t force his way to the Yankees like Giancarlo Stanton (who told the Marlins he would only accept a trade to the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers or Cardinals). Gallo being a Yankee and arguably the worst everyday Yankees of all time is completely on the Yankees.

Maybe Gallo will reclaim what made the Yankees want to acquire him in Los Angeles. He gets a fresh start in a new place on a great team with a fan base that will allow him to walk the streets of the surrounding beach towns and won’t boo him endlessly in his home stadium. (I know this because I’m married to one of those fans.)

4. I tweeted a few weeks ago that Benintendi was a hard pass for me. But if it meant the end of Gallo as a Yankee, then OK. It did mean the end for Gallo as a Yankee, but it also meant a still-cluttered lineup because of the Yankees’ pledge to play Josh Donaldson no matter what, leaving Matt Carpenter, the team’s second- or third-best hitter as the odd man out.

Aaron Boone has showed us time and again that he will play Donaldson no matter what and no matter what hand the starting pitcher uses to throw with, even though Donaldson can’t hit lefties or righties. Donaldson has done everything to prove he’s washed up and undeserving of everyday playing time other than to actually say the words, and the only reason he continues to play is because the Yankees are paying him $24 million this season and next.

As a Yankee, Benintendi has been Gallo. Through seven games, he’s 1-for-20 with six strikeouts and eight walks. He’s Gallo without the occasional home run, which actually makes him worse than Gallo. Boone has hit Benintendi first, third, fifth and sixth so far. And he has had to because Stanton is injured and because the other options to hit in the Top 6 in the lineup are much, much worse like Aaron Hicks, who has a .332 OPS over the last two weeks (his last hit came in the Subway Series nine days ago), or Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose plan at the plate is to swing at the first or second pitch of his at-bat and hope the ground ball he hits finds a hole.

5. The Yankees needed a starting pitcher and they got one in Frankie Montas. Not the one they should have gotten in Luis Castillo, but Montas is still good (but not great) and instead of getting a true No. 1-2 type, the Yankees got a No. 2-3 type. Which is fine if Luis Severino returns this season and returns as a starter. But that’s not exactly a sure-thing given that the Yankees moved Severino to the 60-day injured list, and given his injury history since spring training 2019.

The Yankees added two relievers in Scott Effross from the Cubs and Lou Trivino from the A’s. Both are better options with more career success than Lucas Luetge (who was just out of the majors for six years) and Albert Abreu (who was just cut by the Royals earlier this season), so why is it that neither was allowed to start a clean inning in the Yankees’ 8-6 loss to the Mariners on Tuesday? Why is it that Boone went to both Luetge and Abreu for multiple innings in that game with both pitchers allowing a run in their second inning of work. Luetge gave up the go-ahead (and eventual game-winning run), and Abreu gave up the insurance run.

The Yankees could have traded for Juan Soto, Castillo and Josh Hader, and Boone would find a way to screw it up. Trading for second-tier options only allows him to screw things up easier. Between his lineup choices (like continuing to play and bat Donaldson in the Top 5 and sit Carpenter) and wildly idiotic bullpen decisiosn, if the Yankees’ offense or the Astros aren’t the reason why the Yankees’ season ends without a championship, Boone will be.

6. The Yankees’ deadline moves made sense, until they traded Jordan Montgomery. Since trading Montgomery, it has come out that the Yankees have been looking to move Montgomery for a few years now. I’m not the biggest Montgomery fan, but why? Does this organization have a secret dearth of starting pitching? Because when the Yankees lost one starting pitcher to injury (Severino) it forced Domingo German who flat-out sucks into the rotation. When they traded for Montas, it meant the end of German in the rotation, but trading Montgomery means German stays in the rotation.

The Yankees traded the promising JP Sears to acquire Montas (let’s hope this isn’t a Sonny Gray or James Paxton situation), don’t seem inclined to give Clarke Schmidt an extended look as a starter, Deivi Garcia is back in Double-A, Luis Gil is out for the year, and the team’s highest-ranking pitching prospect now is a soon-to-be 23-year-old in High-A. (For context, Severino was in the majors when he was 21.) The Yankees don’t have the luxury of being able to trade away reliable, major-league starting pitching, even if that pitcher recently got rocked by the A’s and Royals.

7. The return for Montgomery is what makes the move even more puzzling. Harrison Bader, when healthy, isn’t good. Yes, he plays a Gold Glove center field, but he has no bat. If the goal is to have an all-glove, no-bat center fielder, well, Jackie Bradley, who also can hit, was just released by the Red Sox, and won’t cost a middle-of-the-rotation arm.

Bader also needs his feet to play a Gold Glove center field and he’s currently on the 60-day IL with plantar fasciitis with the possibility he could miss the rest of the season. So the Yankees gave up their current No. 3-4 starter for an injured defense-first outfielder with a career .729 OPS.

It gets worse.

8. If Bader returns, he’s going to play as the Yankees have decided having four or maybe five major-league caliber bats in the lineup will help them overcome the Astros in the postseason. Bader playing means the lineup becomes extremely top heavy. Add in the Yankees’ need to play Kiner-Falefa at short and Donaldson at third, and that leaves the DH spot for Stanton, sends Carpenter and his Barry Bonds-like season to the bench and means one of either DJ LeMahieu or Gleyber Torres won’t play. The ramifications of the Montgomery trade are as bad as the actual trade itself. It’s a deal that made no sense when it happened and makes even less sense as I dissect it. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. If Bader doesn’t return in 2022, it will be like the Yankees traded Montgomery for nothing, and that’s actually better than Bader not coming back in 2022, because his presence will make the Yankees’ lineup even more of a clusterfuck with yet another all-glove, no-bat player in it.

9. Not only do the Yankees have a lack of starting pitching, their current starting pitching isn’t very good. The Mariners are fighting for a wild-card berth with an anemic offense and that offense just put up 17 runs on the Yankees in a three-game series. Nestor Cortes is the only reliable starter right now, and Gerrit Cole is about as reliable as German after blowing a three-run lead to the Orioles, allowing five runs to the Royals and giving up six first-inning runs to the Mariners in his last three starts. The Yankees’ starting pitching is a problem and they just traded away a guy who has the same ERA and a better walks-per-nine percentage than the pitcher who they will give the ball to in Game 1 of the postseason.

10. The Yankees might be an outstanding 70-36, but they are 21-20 since June 19. (It s been a while since I heard YES compare them to the 1998 Yankees.) They are barely above .500 for the last quarter of the season, a stretch in which they played 25 games against the A’s, Guardians, Pirates, Red Sox, Reds, Orioles and Royals. They have been trending in the wrong direction since June 19, but even more so since the All-Star break as they have lost seven of 10 to teams not from Kansas City.

Even though the Yankees’ loss-column lead over the Blue Jays is now just 10 games, it’s still insurmountable. If the Yankees continue to play the .500 baseball they have played for the last seven weeks for their remaining 56 games, the Blue Jays will need to 39-18 just to tie them. The division is still as over as it was back in mid-June. It would be nice if the Yankee started playing like they did in mid-June.

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The Yankees won three of four against the worst team in the worst division in the majors, but it was a rather uninspiring, sloppy weekend from the Yankees, who didn’t look like the best team in the American League.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees went into their four-game weekend series against the Royals having lost five of seven since the All-Star break. They might have won three of four against the Royals, but it didn’t alleviate any of the fears I have about this team two months from now in the postseason where a shitty team like the Royals won’t be.

2. On Thursday, the Yankees won 1-0 on an Aaron Judge walk-off home run. The win, the walk-off home run and Judge’s chase of Roger Maris and history masked the fact that the Yankees got two hits in the games. Yes, they had one hit through the first 8 1/3 innings until Judge won the game. The Yankees 2-for-27 with one walk and 12 strikeouts in the game. Brady Singer is a good pitcher, but he has no business allowing one hit and one walk over seven shutout innings with 10 strikeouts against a team with championship aspirations. After scoring just five runs in the first 18 innings of the Subway Series, the Yankees scored just one at home.

Singer was able to do what he did because of the lineup Aaron Boone constructed for the series opener:

Andrew Benintendi, LF
Aaron Judge, DH
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Aaron Hicks, CF
Josh Donaldson, 3B
Joey Gallo, RF
Marwin Gonzalez, SS
Jose Trevino, C

It’s bad enough Boone has been using Gleyber Torres as his cleanup hitter of late, but that 5 through 8 is as bad as it gets in the majors. I don’t give a fuck about alternating righty-lefty throughout the lineup, and under no circumstance should Jose Trevino ever bat below the two names above him there.

3. On Friday, with Gerrit Cole going against the anemic Royals offense, the Yankees were -400 favorites, a type of money line reserved for NFL games. Cole laid a second straight second-half egg, blowing a 3-0 lead after allowing five runs in six innings and letting the team’s only two feared hitters beat him as Whit Merrifield and Salvador Perez drove in all five of the Royals’ runs. A 23-minute rain delay helped reset the game and the Yankees exploded for eight runs in the eighth inning, as Judge’s two homers and six RBIs led the Yankees to a comeback win.

4. On Saturday, Judge led the way again, reaching base four times and hitting his 42nd home run. Nestor Cortes worked through jam after jam and the Yankees won convincingly 8-2.

On Sunday, after falling behind Jordan Montgomery’s latest clunker against a bad team, the Yankees took a 6-4 lead into the eighth. But then Ron Marinaccio had an extremely rare bad day and Clay Holmes continued his recent stretch of not knowing where his sinker is going, and the Royals rallied in the ninth for three runs in a 8-6 Yankees loss.

In Andrew Benintendi’s first games as a Yankee, he got a taste of what life is like as a Yankee in 2022. His manager gave a regular the day off in each games of the series, didn’t play the left-handed Matt Carpenter (who has hit like Barry Bonds as a Yankee) against right-handed pitching, had Aaron Hicks batting fifth, Josh Donaldson fifth and sixth and had the balls to play Joey Gallo, whose future with the Yankees was decided long ago.

5. The trade for Benintendi solidified Gallo’s future with the Yankees which is that he doesn’t have one. In a recent interview with Lindsey Adler, Gallo spoke about his time with the Yankees in the past tense, knowing his time with the team is over sometime between now and 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

“Every time I see a Yankees hat, every time I see a Yankees jersey, it’s something I’m going to have to understand,” Gallo told Lindsey Adler. “I didn’t play well as a Yankee. I wish I had.”

I wish he had too. I actually feel bad for Gallo. It’s hard to feel bad for someone who makes $10.275 million to play baseball, but he grew up a Yankees fan, dreamed of playing for the team and played as badly as one can play and still be allowed to play. I feel bad for him because he didn’t trade for himself. He didn’t give up four prospects to make him a Yankee. He didn’t continue to play himself when he became the worst everyday hitter in the majors.

But maybe he’s not the worst everyday hitter in the majors. The Yankees actually have three candidates for that title between Gallo, Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

6. I don’t know what it’s going to take for Donaldson to stop being an everyday player for the Yankees, but it needs to happen. Donaldson is unplayable, and no I don’t care about his defense. No defense is enough to justify his bat, let alone a bat that continues to hit fifth and sixth with no consequences for performance. (He hit leadoff on Opening Day over LeMahieu!)

Donaldson is hitting .217/.296/.373 on the season. Remember when he homered in three straight games from July 6 to July 8 against three fringe major leaguers and people thought he was finally turning it around. Well, he hasn’t homered since, has driven in three runs in 17 games since and is hitting .158/.200/.211. To go along with that .411 OPS, he has 21 strikeouts to two walks.

If you have been wondering if Donaldson is washed up and finished, you can stop wondering and wonder about something else. The answer is unequivocally yes. He’s done. This isn’t a slump. This is 334 plate appearances for a 36-year-old who has trouble making contract, and even when he does surprisingly make contact, he hits a weak ground ball to short or third. 

7. Donaldson continues to get treated as if it were 2015 when he was the AL MVP. Gallo makes less than half of what Donaldson makes, plays the same type of stellar defense (though Gallo is better at his position than Donaldson is at his), and Gallo went from 2-hitter upon becoming a Yankee all the way to 9-hitter to platoon player to benched, and by Tuesday evening, he will no longer be a Yankee.

Here is what Donaldson has done as a Yankee:
.217/.297/.373, .669 OPS, 9 HR, 35 RBIs, 9.3 BB%, 27.2 K%

Here is what Gallo has done as a Yankee:
.159/.291/.368, .660 OPS, 25 HR, 46 RBIs, 15.4 BB%, 38.7 K%

Pretty equal if you ask me. Yet Gallo won’t be a Yankee by first pitch on Tuesday and Donaldson will be batting fifth or sixth on Tuesday.

8. I’m not defending Gallo and I don’t think the Yankees should keep him. He’s been awful and the experiment was a colossal failure. But the experiment of Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa has been equally as bad, and arguably worse. The Yankees don’t owe Gallo anything after this season, and he was just one player playing a position of depth for the Yankees. Donaldson and Kiner-Falefa take up two roster spots, two starting lineup spots and Donaldson is under contract for next season, while Kiner-Falefa will be out of the Yankees’ plans.

If the Yankees end up having to pay all of Gallo’s remaining 2022 salary, he will have cost the Yankees $14.535 million. Donaldson is owed $48 million between this season and next and Kiner-Falefa is making $4.7 million this season. That’s a total $52.7 million for a couple of good-but-not-great gloves with no offense. The Yankees could have gotten the same defense with the same abysmal offense for the league minimum.

9. Hopefully, once the trade deadline passes, someone else gets a chance to be the Yankees’ everyday shortstop. But if not and the Yankees are really going to try to win a championship with Kiner-Falefa playing every game in the postseason then these are the only nine current names that should be starting playoff games:

C: Jose Trevino
1B: Anthony Rizzo
2B: Gleyber Torres
3B: DJ LeMahieu
SS: Isiah Kiner-Falefa (unfortunately)
LF: Andrew Benintendi
CF: Aaron Judge
RF: Giancarlo Stanton
DH: Matt Carpenter

10. The weekend was a microcosm of the season. The Yankees record for the weekend was 3-1, but they didn’t play like a team deserving of winning three of four. They played like a team that was fortunate to be playing against a team that’s 22 games under .500 and who just traded their best hitter to the Yankees the day before the series began.

The Yankees are going to have to be better than they have been since the All-Star break in August. Not because the division or a postseason spot is in jeopardy, but because the 1-seed is with a two-game lead over the Astros.

The Yankees’ August schedule is difficult. In the first 23 days of the month, they will play 20 games against the Mariners, Cardinals, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays and Mets. The Cardinals are one game out of a playoff spot and the Red Sox are 3.5, otherwise all of those teams are playoff teams. It’s not until the end of the month when the Yankees get a break with a West Coast trip to Oakland and Anaheim.

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