The Yankees beat the Red Sox. It only took until their eight game against them of the season, but they did it. The Yankees won the weekend series and have now won six of nine to inch closer to holding a postseason spot.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The weekend didn’t start well. A rainout on Thursday caused a postponement, though that was far from the worst Yankees news to begin the second half of the season. Luke Voit was placed on the injured list for a third time this season, and Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela, Kyle Higashioka, Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes and Wandy Peralta were placed on the COVID-19 IL and would be out at least 10 days. Add in Clint Frazier still being out with vision issues, Miguel Andujar’s absence for a wrist strain, a finger contusion for Michael King and Darren O’Day’s season-ending hamstring injury and the 2021 Yankees had become the 2021 RailRiders. (To make matters worse, Tim Locastro tore his ACL in left field on Friday and then Trey Amburgey suffered a hamstring injury on Sunday.)

This type of injury bug and protocol misfortune is “adversity,” a word Aaron Boone has used frequently and improperly this season to define the team’s horrific play against the Red Sox, Rays, Tigers, Mets and all of their improbable losses, of which there have been too many to keep track of. None of that was adversity. That was just a bad team playing badly and being managed badly. Adversity is the lineup used on Sunday, featuring Amburgey, Chris Gittens, Ryan LaMarre and Greg Allen, and a roster that now has Rougned Odor being as important as Robinson Cano once was compared to some of the other names the Yankees are turning to.

2. On Friday, against a left-handed starter, Boone batted Odor third. Then 48 hours later, against a left-handed starter, with less roster options and inferior personnel, Boone batted Odor seventh. Nothing the Yankees manager does makes sense. Nothing.

3. The Yankees losing all of these players made it easy to understand how they were shut out on Friday, dominated once again by Eduardo Rodriguez, who gets knocked around by every other team he faces. The Yankees produced three hits, gave Jordan Montgomery yet another game without any run support and fell to 0-7 against the Red Sox. After Friday’s game, if the Yankees hadn’t played a game against the Red Sox this season, they would have been only one game back in the loss column. Instead, they were eight. The Red Sox, of all teams, have single-handedly ruined the Yankees’ season to date.

Both Trey Amburgey and Hoy Jun Park made their major league debuts on Friday night. In typical Yankees fashion, Park played right field, a position he has NEVER played professionally. That’s just Boone putting his players in the best possible position to succeed again.

4. The Yankees should have traded Luke Voit in the offseason. His value was never going to be higher than it was after leading the league with 22 home runs in the shortened 2020 season. Now he’s on the IL for the third time this season, though when he has played this season, he’s been pretty awful: .241/.328/.370.

Voit played in 118 games in 2019, hurting himself while unnecessarily going for two in London then was left off the postseason roster after his performance declined following the injury. He managed to play in 56 of the 60 games in 2020, but this season, he has played in 29 of 92 games (32 percent). Next season, Voit will turn 31 before spring training, and as an oft-injured, right-handed first baseman who’s not good defensively, the Yankees really missed the opportunity to get something for him and to move one of their abundance of right-handed bats.

5. I believe the Red Sox aren’t good. Their starting pitching makes the Yankees look like mid-90s Braves, their lineup has three hitters and their bullpen is far from reliable. On Saturday and Sunday, we saw the Red Sox I feel are the real Red Sox, a team that lost both games to the Makeshift Yankees and scored only two runs in 15 innings.

6. It turns out Gerrit Cole can pitch to Gary Sanchez. Amazing. Not only that but Cole was infinitely better with Sanchez catching him against the Red Sox (6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 11 K) than he was with Kyle Higashioka catching him a few Sundays ago in Boston (LINE).

Cole needing to have his security blanket in Higashioka always catch him (and yes, it’s Cole’s decision, not Boone’s), has made me think less of him since someone of his stature and ability and reputation shouldn’t need a personal catcher. It was good to finally see the best pitcher on the team throwing to the best catcher on the team, and it working out yet again. It worked out because it doesn’t matter who catches Cole. No catcher has that much of an impact (if any at all) on a pitcher’s ability, and certainly not one of Cole’s level.

7. The rain-shortened game on Saturday may have saved the Yankees’ season. It was a miracle they scored three runs in the game, and had the game continued, Cole would have come out following a delay (because of the delay and because he was at 96 pitches), and the Yankees’ bullpen would have had to get nine outs to hold a two-run lead with one viable option (Chad Green). If the rest of that game gets played, there’s a good chance the Yankees lose, fall to 0-8 against the Red Sox, lose yet another series and suffered their third straight loss since the debacle in Houston on July 11. If the Yankees go on to reach the postseason or doing anything special this season, we can look back at the six-inning win over the Red Sox that made it possible.

8. Boone mismanaging the sixth inning on Sunday night was inevitable. Two times through the order, Taillon had shut out the Red Sox, and even though the 2-3-4 hitters were due up in the sixth and even though the numbers against Taillon a third time through the order look like Mickey Mantle’s 1956 season, Boone was fooled by what he had seen to that point in the game, completely disregarding the numbers and everything Taillon has done in a Yankees uniform.

Taillon was able to strike out Alex Verdugo, the most inferior of the heart of the Red Sox’ order, but J.D. Martinez singled on an 0-2 pitch and then on the seventh pitch of his at-bat, Xander Bogaerts doubled to right field. Suddenly, the Red Sox had second and third and no outs and the tying run at the plate in Rafael Devers, who owns the Yankees. While all of this unfolded, Green was warmed up and ready to enter game.

Boone decided to go to Green for Devers, bringing him into a rather unpleasant situation, rather than just giving him a clean inning. Thankfully, he struck out Devers and got Hunter Renfroe to ground out to end the inning.

The majority of Boone’s nonsensical bullpen management has been hidden since 2018 because he has been able to call on Green or Zack Britton or Aroldis Chapman or Dellin Betances or Adam Ottavino or Tommy Kahnle. The Red Sox didn’t score in the sixth inning on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean Boone made the right call. Far from it.

9. Giancarlo Stanton’s presence on the Yankees is a problem. Not only because of his immovable contract, but because he isn’t good and he can only be the designated hitter, which means when someone needs a “half-day off” they have to come completely out of the lineup. Over teh weekend, Boone said Stanton playing the outfield is “on the horizon” as they continue to stretch him out to play nine innings of a baseball game in the outfield, in which he may not actually have to do anything. You would think Stanton is training to run a marathon.

Stanton sucks. It’s painful watching his at-bats and him running into a middle-middle fastball and hitting it 500 feet every other week isn’t nearly enough. I don’t know how this is going to go on for the next six years.

Stanton was 0-for-12 with five strikeouts against the Red Sox over the weekend, and is now 3-for-30 (all singles) with 15 strikeouts against them this season.

In 18 games from April 1 to April 25, Stanton hit .186/.250/.414. Then in eight games from April 26 to May 5, he hit .571/.595/.943. In the 46 games he has played since May 6, he has hit .220/.342/.719. On the season, he’s hitting .258/.350/.462. Those numbers aren’t good and are the only somewhat respectable because of those eight games at the end of April and beginning of May. Stanton has been good for an eight-game stretch in 92 games. Six more years of this.

10. The Yankees won the series against the Red Sox and have now won three straight series, going 6-3 over their last nine games. It’s a start, but it can’t end. They now need to do to the Phillies what the Phillies did to them in Philadelphia in two games and then go to Boston and beat the Red Sox again. The Yankees need to win four of the six games they play this week. There’s no alternative. In order to keep their postseason aspirations alive, they can’t do any worse than that, and they will have to do it with the most Makeshift Yankees lineup since mid-2013.

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The Yankees suck. I have used that phrase (with credit to the Red Sox fans chanting it over the years) at times during this soon-to-be lost season in jest, but it’s true. They do suck.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I keep thinking we have reached the lowest point in the 2021 Yankees season, and the Yankees keep going even lower. I thought getting swept by the Red Sox to fall to 0-6 on the season against them and six games back in the loss column to them, while only scoring seven runs in 27 innings at the most right-handed-hitter-friendly park in the league despite facing two left-handed starters would be the lowest point. I was wrong. The Yankees followed up their atrocious weekend in Boston by losing to the Angels on the day Aaron Boone declared “the season is on the line,” and two nights later, they lost to the Angels again despite scoring seven runs in the first inning and having a four-run lead in the ninth. We have yet another new low.

After the Red Sox series, the Yankees had 13 games remaining before the All-Star break. I thought they had to win at least eight of those, which would mean going 8-5 at worst. They are 1-2. With Thursday’s rainout, they now have 12 games in total from the end of the Red Sox series until the All-Star break, and they have to win seven of the nine remaining. I feel like I have a better chance at winning the Powerball this weekend, and I don’t even have a ticket for the drawing.

2. The Yankees have lost fix of six, have the second-worst offense in the AL, a negative run differential, a worse record than the historocally-bad Mariners, three more losses than the $54 million Indians and after Friday’s game (if it takes place with the forecast), the season will be half over. Things aren’t just bad, they’re miserable. It’s painful to watch this team play each night knowing they will either not score any runs or allow too many runs, and even if things are going well, their manager will find a way to ruin the game. They invent new ways to lose each game to the point it’s actually unbelievable. Like The OC after Marissa Cooper’s departure or The Office after Michael Scott left, it’s unwatchable, but yet people keep watching.

3. Monday’s game wouldn’t have been a Michael King start without him allowing some first-inning runs (he gave up two) and without him giving the team length (he went 4 1/3 innings and allowed eight baserunners). After the game, he was asked why he struggles in the first inning. “I like to set guys up for their second and third at-bats.” It was arguably the worst answer I have ever heard at a postgame press conference, and I don’t miss Boone postgame press conferences. King is apparently willing to sacrifice runs and putting his team in an early hole to get outs later in the game. What? How is that a real answer he gave? What makes it even more ridiculous is that the Yankees don’t allow King to face a lineup a third time.

I don’t know when the Yankees will stop letting King start games, but it doesn’t appear to be anytime soon. Deivi Garcia isn’t doing well at Triple-A, but he’s only at Triple-A, so the Yankees can roster King and/or Scumbag Domingo German. Garcia not performing well at Triple-A simply doesn’t matter to me. What he did last year for the Yankees is what matters. He should have never been in Triple-A in the first place this season.

4. King isn’t good, and neither is Jameson Taillon. The Yankees scored a season-high 11 runs on Tuesday (10 of them while Taillon was pitching), and he still couldn’t get through six innings. Taillon lasted 5 1/3 innings, allowed five earned runs, put 10 runners on and gave up another three home runs. An embarrassing performance in what has been a season full of them for a pitcher Brian Cashman was called a genius for trading for. Taillon has now given up 14 home runs in 69 2/3, which is a 40-home run pace over 200 innings. In a rotation that features, King and Scumbag German, Taillon has been the worst. Congratulations!

5. King isn’t good, neither is Taillon, and neither is Scumbag German. As expected, German put the Yankees behind 2-0 before they could even bat on Wednesday, and even though he was given SEVEN runs of support in the bottom of the first inning, that didn’t stop him from allowing a third run in the second inning, as he finished the game with three innings pitched, while allowing three earned runs and seven baserunners.

So the Yankees’ rotation is King (sucks), Taillon (sucks), Scumbag German (sucks), Jordan “Crooked Number” Montgomery and then Gerrit Cole, who just had the worst start of his Yankees tenure in the biggest regular-season game of his Yankees tenure, and has looked more like the other four than his former self since the crackdown on foreign substances. Why do I spend three-plus hours of each day watching this team again? That’s not rhetorical. I’m really asking. I need help. All Yankees fans still watching do.

6. It’s not all on the pitching. Yes, the offense has been great the last two games, scoring 19 runs, including their second double-digit output of the season, but where were they when the pitching was actually good in May? That’s when they were putting up two and three runs per game like they did last weekend in Boston.

The entire team is a problem. The starting pitching is awful, the offense is mostly non-existent, the manager looks like someone hired to do a job they were unqualified to do, the coaching is comical, the defense is poor and the baserunning is worse than all of those other things combined. Put it all together and you get a team that’s 41-39, just two games over .500 through 80 games with the season about to be half over.

7. On the day (Monday), Boone said, “The season is on the line,” his team scored three runs and lost. Two nights later after stopping the four-game losing streak, the season must have no longer been “on the line” as he chose to sit Aaron Judge and Gio Urshela. Boone claimed the day off for Judge was one “he really needed.” The night before Judge hit a ball off the batter’s eye bar in center field. He looked real fatigued.

Following Wednesday’s unimaginable loss, Boone was asked what he has to say to Yankees fans. “I feel bad for them,” Boone said. “They deserve better than this.” Then resign. If you truly feel Yankees fans deserve better than the team’s performance, and you are the one leading and guiding the team, then resign and step away from the job. Boone would never do that because he wouldn’t give up the seven-figure salary. No one would. But in reality, Boone doesn’t think this season (or any of the last three) are any bit his fault. He thinks he has made every right decision and pushed every right button, and his players have failed him. Unfortunately, Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner agree.

8. The Yankees went into yet another season with Brett Gardner as their fourth outfielder despite rostering Judge (one full season in his career), Hicks (no full seasons in his career), Stanton (can’t play the outfield and hasn’t played a full season in three years), Clint Frazier (unproven with history of injuries) and Mike Tauchman (can’t hit major league pitching). They had to know Gardner would become an everyday player at some point, and were OK with it, and he has been an everyday player now pretty much all season. Just like he was in 2019 and 2020.

Here were Alex Rodriguez’s 2016 numbers at the time of his forced midseason retirement by the Yankees:

65 games
9 HR
31 RBIs
.200/.247/.351
.598 OPS

Here were Gardner’s numbers in 65 games (through Tuesday):

65 games
3 HR
8 RBIs
.195/.301/299
.599 OPS

How was A-Rod forced into a midseason retirement (with a year to go on his contract), but Gardner is playing EVERY DAY for the Yankees?

If Gardner sits this weekend, it won’t be because the Yankees have a better option. The Yankees acquired outfielder Tim Locastro on Thursday. In 200 games and 480 career plate appearances, he has hit .234/.339/.324. That right-handed bat wih a .663 OPS will fit in nicely on this Yankees team as they have yet another outfielder who can’t hit because Gardner, Hicks, Miguel Andujar, Frazier and Ryan LaMarre weren’t enough. I fully expect to see Locastro playing this weekend against the Mets and won’t be surprised to see him bat ahead of other established major leaguers. Maybe Boone will even have him bat third since he has let everyone else have a turn in that spot this season.

9. It’s a miracle the Mets were able to get their game in on Thursday, a game started by Jacob deGrom, which takes him out of the equation this weekend. This lineup against deGrom would have been as automatic and as much of a guaranteed loss as there can in this sport. While most Yankees fans have given up on the season, I still think there is time (though not much) to turn it around. I’m like Rudy’s fellow scout team member who tells him, “I’m under the delusion that I might get a chance to run out that tunnel.” The delusional part of me is ecstatic the Yankees are missing deGrom. The part of me telling me to do something else with my weeknights and weekday afternoons for the next three months is sad they are going to get further embarrassed this season by potentially being no-hit by deGrom.

10. The Yankees are in real danger of not having a season. I have long said they are in trouble, going back to early April, but they are well past trouble, and now sitting on the brink of disaster. After this weekend, the Yankees have Monday off and then go the Seattle for three and finish the first “half” of the season in Houston with three games.

After the All-Star break, the Yankees play four against Boston, two against Philadelphia, four against Boston and three against Tampa Bay. The latest we will know if there’s any point in watching the last two months of this season will be on Thursday, July 29. At worst, all Yankees fans will have one month of their summer not wasted by this team.

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Well, that sucked. The Yankees had a chance to have a big weekend in Boston and it couldn’t have gone worse. The Yankees were swept by the Red Sox for the second time this season and are now 0-6 against their rival.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. If you thought the Yankees getting swept by the Rays at Yankee Stadium in mid-April to fall to 5-10 was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought getting shut down by Matt Harvey at the end of April was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought getting shut down by Jordan Lyles in mid-May was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought getting swept by the Tigers at the end of May was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought losing 10 of 13 at the end of May and beginning of June was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought allowing a complete-game shutout to Ryan Yarbrough (he has pitched to a 1.56 ERA and 0.692 WHIP in three games against the Yankees and a 5.43 ERA and 1.333 WHIP against every other team) was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you thought getting swept by the Red Sox at the beginning of June was the low point of the season, it wasn’t. If you think going to Boston with a chance to erase the loss-column deficit in the AL East and instead get swept to increase that deficit to six games, well it is. This weekend was the lowest point of the 2021 season.

2. It’s hard to take the Yankees seriously as anything more than an average team. The preseason AL favorite, they are now 6 1/2 games back in the division and five games out of the second-wild card berth.

It’s hard to take them seriously because they can’t hit with consistency, can’t pitch with consistency, can’t field with consistency, can’t run the bases with consistency and can’t manage with consistency. Most importantly, they can’t win with consistency, now just three games over. 500.

“Inconsistency has kind of defined us so far,” Aaron Boone said after Sunday’s embarrassing 9-2 loss.

“Kind of?” “Kind of?!” “KIND OF?!” Boone likes to sugarcoat everything that comes out of his mouth, but adding a “kind of” in that sentence might be the most ridiculous bullshit he has ever said as Yankees manager. There’s no kind of. The Yankees are inconsistent. It’s why they’re in fourth place in the division after 77 games and 48 percent of the season.

“We have the people in that room to get this done,” Boone said after getting swept by the Red Sox for the second time this season. “We can’t wait and look around for a magic move to make us better.”

What exactly is “this” anyway? Simply making the postseason? Winning a wild-card berth? Hosting the wild-card game? “This” should mean winning the World Series, considering Boone took over a team that came within one game of the World Series and the team has gone backward under his leadership though I think by “this” he meant making the postseason, and simply making the postseason shouldn’t be acceptable. But when you have a loser manager who has done nothing in his career but lose, is OK with losing and has made his players believe it’s OK to lose, then doing the bare minimum becomes acceptable.

A lot of Yankees fans forgot about the movement to replace Boone as manager over the three series prior to this one because the Yankees had gone 7-2. I didn’t forget. Because even when they were beating the Blue Jays, A’s and Royals, Boone was doing everything he could to not put his players in the best possible position to succeed, and was doing everything he could to manage his team to losses.

What “magic move” could the Yankees make to make the team better other than to get a whole new team? All offseason I wrote and talked about how poorly constructed the 2021 roster was and my worst fears have come true and then some. I thought the Yankees would have issues fending off the Rays and Blue Jays in the division and at best would lose in the first round of the playoffs. Making the first round of the playoffs is now a pipe dream. The first time I said I would sign up for the Yankees settling for the second wild-card spot was back on April 14. Two-and-a-half months later and they need to jump the Blue Jays, Mariners, Indians and A’s for a postseason spot.

3. If your name isn’t DJ LeMahieu (7-for-19) or Gary Sanchez (.400 OBP), you didn’t do much this weekend. That includes Aaron Judge who went 3-for-12 with a home run, two RBIs and a walk. Judge continues to be a huge disappointment with runners on base (.961 OPS with the bases empty and .781 OPS with runners on) and in late-and-close situations (.765 OPS). It’s gotten to the point where it might be best to bat Judge leadoff, so he has at least one at-bat per game with no one on to increase his chances at hitting a home run (12 solo home runs and five multi-run home runs). Judge did hit a two-run home run in Sunday’s game when the Yankees trailed by six runs. But when he came up with the bases loaded representing the tying run in the seventh inning, he popped out to first base. The night before he had a chance to tie the game or give the Yankees the lead the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth, but he struck out against Adam Ottavino.

4. The Yankees are paying Ottavino to pitch for the Red Sox. Rather than retain Ottavino and sign Darren O’Day and Justin Wilson, the Yankees chose to trade Ottavino to the Red Sox of all teams to shed payroll to stay under the luxury-tax threshold. Staying under the threshold was more important to the Steinbrenners than winning, and because of it, the Yankees gifted the Red Sox a right-handed reliever who possesses the Yankees’ kryptonite: high-velocity fastballs and impossible breaking balls. Knowing they could face Ottavino up to 19 times in the regular season and that their expected everyday lineup would feature at least eight right-handed hitters, the Yankees still willingly made the move to save money to avoid exceeding the imaginary salary cap. Ottavino has pitched in four of the six games between the Yankees and Red Sox this season, and the Red Sox have won all four. Of course they have since they have won all six games in the series.

5. To make matters worse, Red Sox’ right-handed reliever Garrett Whitlock continues to get important outs against the Yankees. Whitlock was a Yankee, but they let him go in the Rule 5 draft and the Red Sox selected him. The Yankees thought it was more important to keep Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske on the 40-man roster than Whitlock. In eight games this season, Nelson has pitched to a 9.75 ERA and has put 23 baserunners on in 12 innings. Kriske pitched to a 14.73 ERA last season and has an 11.25 ERA this season. Kriske’s career line: 7.2 IP, 9 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 9 BB, 11 K, 3 HR, 12.91 ERA, 2.348 WHIP.

Here is what Ottavino has done against the Yankees: 4.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 2.08 ERA, 0.924 WHIP

Here is what Whitlock has done against the Yankees: 5.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.750 WHIP

6. Even with the left-handed Eduardo Rodriguez and his 6.07 ERA pitching for the Red Sox, the Yankees weren’t going to overcome a first-inning, four-run deficit. And they didn’t as Rodriguez turned in arguably his best start of the season (6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 8 K, 1 HR).

“I do think we were prepared,” Boone said. “I felt like we were ready to go all weekend.”

The Yankees “were prepared” and yet they trailed 4-0 after an inning, couldn’t hit a bad left-handed starter and lost 9-2? Boone “felt the Yankees were ready to go all weekend” and they went 0-3 and scored seven runs in 27 innings at the most right-handed-hitter-friendly park in all of baseball?

Clearly, Boone can’t read his own clubhouse, and clearly, whatever message he is delivering to his team isn’t getting through. A change is long overdue. I don’t expect the Yankees to make one midseason since the Yankees under Hal Steinbrenner have become perfectly content with mediocrity. The only way the Yankees move on from Boone is after the season. So either the Yankees have a miraculous turnaround over the remaining 85 games or they continue to slog through a season that had great expectations and Boone gets fired. It’s a win-win position.

7. I despise Nathan Eovaldi. (Spoiler alert: he will be the starting pitcher on my 2021 All-Animosity Team.) He couldn’t have been a worse Yankee, pitching to a 4.45 ERA and 1.387 WHIP before eventually needing Tommy John surgery. Despite throwing 100 mph, he couldn’t strike anyone out, could never go more than five innings and every five days we had to hear the Yankees refer to him as “Nasty Nate.” Since joining the Red Sox, he has helped them win a championship and has thoroughly dominated the Yankees in a way I thought Gerrit Cole would dominate the Red Sox.

Cole had to win on Sunday. He had to. He had to go out, dominate and have one of his best starts as a Yankee. Instead, he might as well have been wearing uniform number 47, 50, 55 or 73 because there was no difference between Cole or any of the other awful Yankees starters. It was easily the worst start of Cole’s Yankees tenure and he should be embarrassed of his performance. I know all Yankees fans are.

8. “I think from the beginning his stuff wasn’t as sharp as I’m used to seeing,” Higashioka said. “As the game went on, he got a lot better.”

“His stuff wasn’t sharp?” Thanks for that insight, Higashioka! One pitch into Cole’s day and the Yankees were down 1-0 on an Enrique Hernandez home run, the same Enrique Hernandez who boasts a career .730 OPS. Eight pitches later and the Red Sox had second and third and no outs. Five pitches later, the Red Sox had a 4-0 lead after Rafael Devers hit a three-run home run and the game was over.

As for him getting “a lot better” as the game went on, who cares? The game was over after five batters. And it’s not like Cole shut down the Red Sox after the first as he allowed a home run and another two runs in the third. Cole finished the game with this line: 5 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 3 HR. An embarrassment indeed.

9. There’s nothing left to say about the unnecessary pairing of Cole and Higashioka. If Higashioka is going to get a lot of the credit when Cole is dominant (even though Higashioka has nothing to do with Cole’s success) then Higashioka should get a lot of the blame when Cole is bad (even though Higashioka has nothing to do with Cole’s failures like Sunday).

Cole has gotten lit up in three of his last eight starts and one of them was against Tampa Bay and one against Boston, the two teams the Yankees are chasing for a postseason berth. Not good. In Cole’s last four starts, Boone used Sanchez as a pinch hitter for Higashioka, so even when he’s getting a “day off,” he’s not really getting the full day off.

10. Everything the Yankees did in the nine games prior to this weekend was erased. The Yankees went from putting themselves in a position to have the division lead by the end of June to now being buried in both the division and wild-card standings and they accomplished it in 45 hours.

Between now and the All-Star break, the Yankees have 13 games against the Angels (4), Mets (3), Mariners (3) and Astros (3). They either need to win every series or the equivalent of every series, and that means going 9-4. It’s lofty and might seem unreasonable and borderline impossible given the way the team has played this season, but because of the way they have played this season, they are going to have to start achieving unreasonable and borderline impossible goals.

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The Yankees have won seven of nine and three straight series. They have cut their deficit in the AL East to three games in the loss column and have a chance to possibly erase that deficit completely with a back weekend in Boston.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was told many times the 2016-17 version of Gary Sanchez no longer existed. That a lot of players come up and take the league by storm only to fade away and become nothing more than an average or replacement level player. That Sanchez would never return to being the player who was the face of the Yankees for the last half of 2016 and 3-hitter in 2017 and who represented their greatest lineup advantage.

I have taken a lot of criticism over the last couple years, (even from within my home) about my unwavering support for Sanchez. I defended him against the Austin Romine Fan Club and the Kyle Higashioka Fan Club. I stood by him when he .186 in 2018 and .147 in the shortened 2020 season. When he was wrongly benched by the idiot and loser that is Aaron Boone in the postseason, I was told it was the right move. When the Yankees tendered Sanchez a contract (as if there was ever any other choice), I was told it was foolish and they would regret it. Now all I can do is laugh at everyone who told me Sanchez would never be the player he once was, not even for a week.

2. Two weeks ago I wrote this:

In a perfect world, if every Yankees hitter was hitting to the best of their abilities of their career and healthy and able to play the field, this would be the optimal Yankees lineup:

1. DJ LeMahieu, 2B
2. Aaron Judge, RF
3. Giancarlo Stanton, LF
4. Gary Sanchez, C
5. Luke Voit, 1B
6. Gleyber Torres, SS
7. Miguel Andujar, DH
8. Gio Urshela, 3B
9. Aaron Hicks, CF

Over the last nearly month (since May 27), Sanchez is hitting .338/.410/.743 with six doubles, eight home runs and 18 RBIs in 83 plate appearances. Since returning to his former home in the 3-hole, he’s 6-for-15 with two doubles, three home runs and seven RBIs. In the four games he has batted third, the Yankees are 4-0, and Sanchez is single-handedly responsible for two of the wins (June 20 against Oakland and June 23 against Kansas City), and he was arguably the most important player in the other two games as well (June 19 against Oakland and June 24 against Kansas City). He’s once again the Yankees’ biggest lineup advantage since no catcher can do or is doing what he does at the plate.

I have long been mocked for being the self-proclaimed President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club, telling the mockers that I believe the Sanchez of 2016-17 is still in there and still exists. That version of Sanchez not only exists, but is here.

3. Either Boone is so adamant about not wanting to play Sanchez with Gerrit Cole that he was willing to let Sanchez catch a day game after a night game this week, or Cole is so adamant about not wanting to throw to Sanchez. I’m beginning to think it’s the latter, and that’s a horrible look for Cole, who is clearly not who I thought he was if he needs a personal catcher as a security blanket, and it’s a bad look for the the Yankees, who will continue to play an inferior lineup when Cole starts.

It’s also because Giancarlo Stanton can’t play the field. I’m not sure who is to blame here. Is Stanton saying he doesn’t feel comfortable in the outfield or is it the Yankees not wanting him to risk injury? In case you haven’t noticed, Stanton does a fine job getting injured when only serving as the designated hitter, so it’s not like that role has kept him healthy and in the lineup DH and not have Sanchez’s bat in the lineup when Cole pitches because Cole can’t handle throwing to someone he didn’t grow up with in California. Stanton needs to play the outfield. If he gets hurt doing so, so be it.

4. After Boone managed his bullpen and his team to a blown lead and loss in the first game of the series against the Royals, he did his best to do it again in the second game of the series. With runners on first and third and two outs in the ninth and Carlos Santana up, Boone went out to the mound to hold a conference on how to pitch to Santana. Aroldis Chapman, Sanchez, Boone and the infield were in agreement on how to handle Santana and Boone returned to the dugout. Right before Chapman could throw the first pitch to Santana, Sanchez called time and stood up. I figured they were going to go through the signs again. Instead, Boone had signaled to Sanchez to intentionally walk Santana and bring up Sebastian Rivero, who was still looking for his first major league hit.

The move would force the bases loaded, and with Chapman being extra wild lately (coinciding with the crackdown on foreign substances for pitchers), there would be no margin for error. And Chapman needed that margin for error, as he walked Rivero on four pitches with the fourth pitch nearly headed for the backstop. Chapman blew the Yankees’ one-run lead and when he left the mound the Royals had the lead. Boone had betrayed his closer and catcher and his team and had gone against what they had agreed to.

5. “He wanted to pitch to Santana,” Boone said after the game. “In hindsight, and not just because it didn’t work out, I think the right move was probably to go ahead and let [Chapman] pitch to him. I just didn’t want to let [Santana] beat us in that spot or get too careful pitching around, leading to a wild pitch or something.”

How is this guy still managing the Yankees? I will say it again: Boone is the Yankees’ biggest obstacle to a championship. Not the Rays or Red Sox or Blue Jays or Astros or A’s or White Sox or the National League winner. The Yankees’ own manager is what stands in the way of their success. The Yankees’ offense is the only thing that can combat Boone because they have the ability to outscore his idiotic decisions. And they had to on Wednesday night, as Sanchez and Luke Voit won the game for the Yankees and erased all of the bad Boone had done. There’s no doubt Boone thinks his moved was the right because the Yankees came back and won, like a fool at a Blackjack table who stays with a 16 against a 7 and miraculously wins the hand.

6. “When I got back to the bench and just kind of looked out there, that’s why there was a little bit of a pause,” Boone said of his mound visit with Santan due up. “I just felt like I wanted to take our shot the other way. It was my call in the moment, and I think that led to some of the frustration. But Chappy and I absolutely talked about it, and we’re good.”

I doubt “they’re good” the way Boone says they are. Back in February, he said the clubhouse would be fine with the return of Scumbag Domingo German and within a day Zack Britton had openly said it wasn’t fine. Last October, he said he talked with Sanchez about the decision to go with Higashioka in the postseason, and then in the offseason, Sanchez said he was never told. No one should believe anything Boone ever says. So when he says he and a player have a good line of communication or have worked through whatever issue there is, don’t believe him. The simple fact he has to address means they’re not good.

7. “We’re playing for a lot. These guys care,” Boone said of his decision to go against his closer. “Sometimes you’re going to get upset. That’s part of playing the high-stakes game of Major League Baseball.”

No one is saying the Yankees don’t care. Michael Kay thinks every night he needs to ask the question, “You think these guys don’t care?” Who is saying they don’t care? Being bad and underachieving and losing like they have done for the majority of the season doesn’t mean they don’t care. But the Yankees players certainly don’t need their lead play-by-play man and manager to petition for them that they care.

8. I’m sure Michael King cares. He just isn’t any good. The Yankees are now 2-3 in games he has pitched since he became a starter or opener or whatever you want to call him. In only one of those five games did he not allow first-inning runs. This is after he was incapable of being a starter/opener last season and the Yankees’ decision to stick with him throughout the shortended season nearly cost them a postseason berth. King needs to be removed from the rotation. He can’t possibly be the team’s “best” option. I know he isn’t the best option as long as Deivi Garcia is in the organization, regardless of what he’s doing in Triple-A.

9. Having King and Jameson Taillon back-to-back in the rotation opens the door for losing streaks to start or be extended. King isn’t good and doesn’t give the team length, and the same goes for Taillon. And I say this coming off King’s best start of the season and Taillon’s as well. I’m not foolish enough to think one OK King start and one good Taillon start is enough to think one or both of them are now going to be trustworthy starting options. Thankfully, neither of them will pitch this weekend in Boston (since the Yankees will have enough problems with a lefty starting at Fenway in Jordan Montgomery and Scumbag German who gives up home runs at an unbelievable rate), but they will both pitch next week against the Angels and Mets. For now, it seems like the Yankees are fine with continuing to use both of them as starters and fine with leaving them pitching on consecutive days in the rotation, considering they have had the chance to pull them from the rotation and break them up within it and they haven’t done either.

10. This a very, very, very important weekend. At the end of play on Sunday night, the Yankees will either be tied in the loss column with the Red Sox, trailing by two games, trailing by four games or trailing by six games. Each game is incredibly important and could be the eventual difference between an ALDS spot and a wild-card spot or a wild-card spot and no postseason. Three weekends ago when the two teams met, the Yankees blew late leads in two of the three games (King lost them the other game within the first five batters). That can’t happen again.

This is the most important series of the season to date. We’ll have a good idea of who the 2021 Yankees are after it.

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That’s more like it. A sweep of the Blue Jays (who had been 6-3 against the Yankees in 2021), the return of the offense and three games of ground made up in the division over the last three days. It’s been a wonderful few days to be a Yankees fan, even if it’s been a mostly miserable two-plus months to be one this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees were fortunate to win one of the three games in Buffalo, let alone all three. In the series opener, Jordan Montgomery put them in a first-inning hole and they trailed by three runs entering the sixth. In the second game, Kyle Higashioka started over Gary Sanchez because Gerrit Cole started and because Aaron Boone is an idiot, and the Yankees needed Sanchez to save them with a two-run, pinch-hit home run in the seventh, and then needed Aroldis Chapman to escape a second-and-third, no-out jam in the ninth. In the series finale, Michael King was his usual awful self and needed a triple play as a result of horrible Blue Jays baserunning to escape the first inning, and the Yankees needed another seventh-inning comeback after Boone let Lucas Luetge give away the lead rather than giving Chad Green a clean inning to work with.

2. It was yet another forgettable series for Boone, who made idiotic lineup decisions, like continuing to pair Higashioka with Cole, and disastrous bullpen decisions, like allowing King and Luetge to start innings they should have already been pulled for. I have said it for years and I’ll say it again: the Yankees’ biggest obstacle to ending their championship drought is Boone. It’s not the Rays or Blue Jays or Red Sox or White Sox or A’s or Astros or Dodgers or any team, it’s their own manager. The Yankees’ offense has to overcome their own manager’s decision making, and because the offense has been so bad this season (worst in the American League before Thursday’s game), the Yankees are where they are at only four games over .500 through 68 games.

3. In the second game of the series, the Yankees loaded the bases with no outs in the first inning for Giancarlo Stanton. I went to read Goodnight Moon and I returned to Marcus Semien stepping on home plate after hitting a home run. I was confused, but then quickly realized the Yankees had once again failed to score more than one run with the bases loaded and no outs. I was happy they even scored the one run. But it took two pitches for Semien to tie the game against Cole, who continues to have serious issues with giving up home runs (two more on Wednesday).

The Yankees’ 17 runs in the three-game series (5.7 per game) were a welcome sight. (They now have a one-run lead on the Tigers to avoid being the worst offense in the American League.) But their inability to get runners in from scoring position with no outs is a major concern, and the reason their offense as a whole has been so bad, and the reason they are facing an extremely difficult uphill battle the rest of the season for a postseason spot.

4. King can’t continue to start or open. He really can’t. In his latest poor outing, he put seven baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings and if not for the most ridiculous and unexpected triple play, the game might have been over in the first inning with runners on second and third and the Blue Jays’ 3-4-5 hitters coming up. King started a game the Yankees won, but it had absolutely nothing to do with him as he allowed three earned runs and only recorded 13 outs.

Unless the Yankees’ offense returns to normalcy, it’s going to be hard for them to ever have an extended winning streak with both King and Jameson Taillon in the rotation. Not only are they both in the rotation, but they are lined up to start consecutively. The Yankees have enough trouble winning games started by Gerrit Cole, having both King and Taillon starting 40 percent of the games is a problem.

5. I don’t want to hear that Deivi Garcia hasn’t been good lately in Triple-A. King hasn’t been good … ever. If Garcia had started the season in the Yankees’ bullpen like King did before being inexplicably inserted into the rotation, then Garcia never pitches in Triple-A this season and then that can’t be used as an excuse for why he’s not starting the games started by King. King isn’t a starter. At least not a good one. He’s not an opener. Again, at least not a good one. Call up someone who can actually start, and who has had success starting games in the majors.

6. Boone is at the point where not playing Sanchez just because Cole is starting is going to cause him a lot of issues with the media. Cole’s next start is on Tuesday against the Royals, following a day off on Monday. If Higashioka is the starting catcher for that Tuesday game, Boone is going to have to answer for it, and he’s going to have to give an answer that makes sense. Unfortunately, there isn’t one.

Sanchez is up to 10 home runs on the season (third on the Yankees behind Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton) and has a .785 OPS. In 63 plate appearances since May 27, Sanchez is hitting .333/.397/.667 with four doubles, five home runs and 11 RBIs.

In 65 plate appearances since April 28, Higashioka is hitting .136/.215/.220 with two doubles, one home run and three RBIs.

7. Offense can’t be used as a reason by Boone. And on Wednesday, after Boone went to Sanchez over Higashioka in the seventh to win the game for the Yankees, Sanchez had to catch Cole in the seventh and eighth innings for the first time since Opening Day. How did it go?

Joe Panik: groundout on four pitches.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr.: Flyout on two pitches.
Cavan Biggio (who had hit a solo home run of Cole earlier in the game with Higashioka catching): Strikeout on six pitches.
Rowdy Tellez: Groundout on three pitches.
Marcus Semien: Groundout on six pitches.
Bo Bichette: Groundout on four pitches.

Six up, six down on 25 pitches, 19 of which were strikes to preserve a one-run lead.

As I have written and said all along, no catcher makes Cole great, he’s great all on his own. And because of that, unless he starts a day game after a night game that Sanchez had caught, it’s time to give up on the idea that Higashioka deserves any bit of credit for his success.

8. The Yankees recently designated Mike Ford for assignment. This led to the Yankees trading Ford to the Rays for cash considerations and a player to be named later. There’s a 100 percent chance this move will backfire on the Yankees.

I liked Ford. He was an easy guy to root for, had strong left-handed power and great plate discipline. He hadn’t been put in the best of situations this season and last with the Yankees’ poor roster construction and management, but he was someone I felt confident with at the plate becuase I knew he would put together a competitive at-bat. I can’t say the same for Rougned Odor, who is somehow still a Yankee, and will undoubtedly bat in the top half of the order and play every day if Gleyber Torres needs to miss time following Thursday’s injury.

The Rays have no money, so the idea that they were willing to give money to the Yankees to acquire Ford should tell you everything you need to know about this deal. If the Rays want one of your players, you know you’re missing something. The Rays rarely ever screw up in player evaluation and it won’t surprise me to see Ford batting fourth, fifth or sixth for them in the coming weeks and helping them win the AL East, while beating the Yankees in the process. I don’t want the Rays to do well, but I want Ford to do well. Here’s to missing his in-between-pitch routine and that sweet left-handed swing.

9. The eight-game road trip is over and the Yankees went an underwhelming 5-3. Now it’s home for six games, starting on Friday night against the A’s with a capacity crowd allowed at the Stadium for the first time since the Yankees won Game 5 of the 2019 ALCS.

James Kaprielian starts for the A’s in the series opener against Taillon. The matchup couldn’t be a better way to sum up Brian Cashman’s inability to trade for and away starting pitching in his tenure as general manager. The Yankees picked Kaprielian in the first round of the 2015 draft and traded him to Oakland in 2017 to acquire Sonny Gray. The Yankees traded Kaprielian, Dustin Fowler and Jorge Mateo for Gray. They ended up trading Gray after 2018 to the Reds for Shed Long. They then traded Long to the Mariners for Josh Stowers. Stowers was traded to the Rangers for Odor. The Yankees used Kaprielian (2.51 ERA and 35 strikeouts in 32 1/3 innings for first the first-place A’s) to acquire Gray (3.14 ERA and 1.148 WHIP in 52 starts for the Reds) and all they have to show for it is the .195/.267/.376-hitting Odor who the Rangers are paying $27 million to not play for them.

10. The A’s are good. Very, very good. They started the season 1-7 and have gone 42-20 since. They come to the Bronx riding a six-game winning streak and have won eight of nine. If it were October, I might not be scared of the Yankees playing the A’s, but right now, when the Yankees need wins and a lot of them more than ever, the A’s are a horrible matchup for the Yankees.

It was nice to see the Yankees’ offense go off in Buffalo, where every offense goes off, but this weekend against the A’s, a true contender, will be a great litmus test for the Yankees to see if the last three days against the Blue Jays were an anomaly or if the Yankees have finally turned the corner Boone has been searching for since April 1.

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