The Yankees will be playing baseball in October. The moment the postseason field was expanded to eight teams they were going to be playing baseball in October, but now it’s official.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ winning streak had to come to an end at some point. Unfortunately, it came to an end against the Red Sox and the Yankees finished the season series 9-1 against their “rival.” I use that term loosely now since the Red Sox were bad last season, horrendous this season and there doesn’t seem to be a timeline on when they migth be good again. For the forseeable future, the Yankees and Yankees fans will have to worry about the Rays and Blue Jays.

2. The AL postseason field is essentially set: Yankees, Rays, Blue Jays, White Sox, Twins, Indians, A’s and Astros. The order of the teams isn’t set, but those are the eight teams. With only seven games left for the Yankees and six for other teams, it seems as though they will be the 4-, 5-, 6- or 7-seed, and that means they will likely not face the Astros, Indians or Blue Jays, leaving the Rays, White Sox, Twins and A’s as possible opponents in the best-of-3. My preference for the best-of-3 opponent in order: Twins, White Sox, A’s, Rays.

3. It’s crazy the postseason begins in eight days and it’s sad the Yankees’ season could be over in nine days. It feels like the baseball season is just beginning (because it pretty much is) and now it’s over. And once it’s over it will be back to an offseason hiatus after this past offseason lasted nearly nine months. The postseason is about winning a championship, but it’s also about extending the season and shortening the offseason as much as possible. A series win in the best-of-3 means at least another three games and another week of baseball. A series win in the ALDS means at least another four games and another week of baseball and so on. I’m not ready to go back to a baseball-less world after this past offseason.

4. I agree with Aaron Judge in that I also hate the playoff bubble. I get why the league has to do it and I understand that any positive test could ruin the postseason, I just hate the fact October will be decided in neutral stadiums, even if there would be no fans at teams’ actual stadiums. If the Yankees get through the best-of-3 series and get into the bubble, are they going to wear pinstripes for their “home” games? I hope not. Just wear the road grays for every bubble game. Again, if they get there.

5. Rob Manfred has alluded to the eight-team postseason format becoming a permanent thing. The second it was implemented this season, it was going to be a permanent thing. Did anyone think the owners, who proved they could care less about the actual game or the integrity or long-term future of the sport this year, were going to not want more guaranteed postseason money after 2020? If it were up to the owners, all 30 teams would make the postseason and play a month-long, bracket-style tournament to decide the World Series. They don’t care that a 16-team postseason field would render the regular season meaningless and destroy their fan base over six months as long as they get that guaranteed money in October. They don’t care if regular-season ratings and attendance (when it’s allowed again) decline. Guaranteed postseason money and the most possible postseason games is what drives their decision making.

6. As a Yankees fan, a permanent eight-team postseason means the Yankees will never miss the playoffs. Never. There’s no chance the Yankees aren’t a Top 8 team in the AL in any season. The last time the Yankees weren’t a Top 8 team in the AL was back in 1992. Even when Lyle Overbay was batting cleanup every day in 2013 or in 2016 when they sold and finally gave in to a rebuild, they were still a Top 8 team. It also means it will be signfiicantly harder for them to win a championship with the additional best-of-3 series. I hate everything about the eight-team postseason format. The one-game playoff in the current five-team format is awful enough, but letting more than half the league into the postseason is the worst possible idea.

7. After J.A. Happ laid an egg against the Phillies in the first week of August, I wrote J.A. Happ Can’t Start Another Game for Yankees and recorded a podcast titled Remove J.A. Happ from Rotation. I stand by both of those. If given enough chances, Happ would eventually turn in some good starts, and he was given those chances because of money owed and the Yankees’ refusal to let Clarke Schdmit take his rotation spot. Since that clunker against the Phillies, Happ has been very good in six starts: 37.1 IP, 27 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 5 BB, 36 K, 4 HR, 1.93 ERA, 0.857 WHIP. Now only one of those starts has come against a postseason team (Toronto), a team only going to the postseason because of the ridiculous eight-team format, and the other five have come against the Mets (2), Red Sox (2) and Orioles. Happ has been great of late, but his competiton hasn’t been, and I don’t trust him for a second come October. He could throw a perfect game with 27 strikeouts this week and I still wouldn’t feel confident in giving him a postseason start. The lineups he will face in the postseason are nothing like the four lineups he has shut down over these last six starts. Unfortunately, Jordan Montgomery has been mediocre to bad to horrible in the majority of his starts and the Yankees don’t have another choice other than to let Happ start with no days off in either the ALDS or ALCS.

8. There’s not anyone out there who still thinks Mike Tauchman is a better player or better for the Yankees than Clint Frazier, right? Unless you’re part of Tauchman’s immediate family, you can’t think that. Even if you’re a relative of his, but not in his immediate family, you can’t think that. Frazier has solidifed his role in the 2020 Yankees’ starting lineup and has likely made it so that one of Tauchman and Brett Gardner aren’t on the 2021 Yankees. (I would pick Gardner over Tauchman.) Along with DJ LeMahieu and Luke Voit, he has carried the Yankees’ offense, has vastly improved his defense and has become a complete, all-around player. Now maybe the Yankees will stop batting him at the bottom of the order and several spots behind Aaron Hicks when the “A” lineup is used.

9. I have a bad feeling. A very, very, very bad feeling Hicks will bat third in the postseason against a right-handed starter. The Yankees did it last year with Gardner and it might have cost them the ALCS with his first-inning at-bat in Game 3 against Gerrit Cole with Gleyber Torres inexplicably batting fifth. The Yankees have a lot of options and different ways they can construct their Top 6 for the postseason. It shouldn’t include Hicks. It shouldn’t, but it will.

10. Erik Kratz’s inning of work on the mound was easily a Top 5 moment this season. It might even be Top 3. Everyone loves Kratz. I have called for him to be the Yankees next manager as early as next season. (The Yankees already handed over their team in the middle of a championship window to a manager with no managerial or coaching experience, why not do it again?) But I’m rescinding that wish and wish for him to be re-signed as a third catcher/reliever for 2021. Between his knuckleball and his 81-mph fastball that kept Red Sox hitters off balance (aside from J.D. Martinez who sucks so bad now he can only hit against position players), to me, Kratz is the most trusted current Yankees reliever after Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, Chad Green, Adam Ottavino and Jonathan Loaisiga. I might even trust him a little more than Chapman and Ottavino. But I certainly trust him more than Jonathan Holder, Luis Cessa, Michael King and Nick Nelson. I’m not kidding. Give me that knuckleball over those four.

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

Three days ago, the Yankees were barely better than the Orioles. They were barely better than the Tigers or Mariners. They were a .500 team hanging on to the eigth and final postseason spot. After five straight wins, they finally look like the team that was once 10 games above .500 with the best record in baseball.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. This weekend clinched the Yankees a postseason berth. No, not officially, and no, they shouldn’t start giving multiple players unnecessary rest per game again, but the Yankees are going to the postseason. At 26-21, the Yankees have 13 games remaining. If they were to play under .500 baseball and go 6-7 (.462), they would finish at 32-28. To pass them, the Mariners would have to go 11-3 (.786), the Orioles would have to go 13-2 (.867) and the Tigers would have to go 13-2 (.867) as well. Yes, the Yankees could only win six of their 13 remaining games given their inconsistent play this season, but it’s unlikely with six games left against the Red Sox and Marlins. It’s even more unlikely any of those three teams would win at their needed rates if the Yankees were to go 6-7.

2. The Yankees’ five-game winning streak has them a 1/2 game back of the Blue Jays for second in the AL East and an automatic postseason berth. It has also moved them ahead of the Indians and into seventh place in the AL postseason standings. As of now, the Blue Jays would be the 5-seed and play the 4-seed Twins. The Yankees would be the 7-seed and play 2-seed Rays. I don’t think any Yankees fans needs to be told the difference in magnitude in playing a best-of-3 against the Twins versus playing a best-of-3 against the Rays.

3. It’s still impossible to know which seed to root for the Yankees since the postseason standings change daily, though if I had to rank the seven other AL teams in order of which I want the Yankees to most play to least play, it would go like this:

Twins
White Sox
Blue Jays
Indians
Astros
A’s
Rays

Nothing needs to be said about the Twins. I don’t care that the White Sox are currently in first place in the AL. They’re not the best team in the AL and they’re certainly not the best built or the most feared. They have a solid rotation, an OK bullpen and a free-swinging lineup. The Blue Jays’ pitching sucks. After those three teams, I wouldn’t feel confident against any of the other four.

4. Supposedly, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton will return next week, in time to get a week’s worth of at-bats before the postseason. How much a week’s worth of at-bats will be is unknown since I could see the Yankees playing them on alternating days as the designated hitter in the organization’s latest attempt to prevent injuries. When asked on Sunday about how the return of Judge and Stanton will affect Clint Frazier, Boone said, “I think Clint is very much in the mix.” What? “Very much in the mix?” Frazier is the mix. He has been the one that has actually played this season. He has been the one that has stayed healthy. He has been the one that carried the offense along with DJ LeMahieu and Luke Voit.

5. As I said last week, if Frazier doesn’t play because two guys who never play finally return, I will actively root against the Yankees. That’s not a joke. I will root as hard as I normally do for them to win, for them to lose. I will go as far as to buy apparel for whichever team they face in the playoffs if I have to.

6. If Judge and Stanton do come back (and I will believe they are back when I see them playing in real games), the Yankees will have some lineup decisions to make. They’re not hard decisions to make. At least not to me. However, I could see the Yankees struggling to make these decisions and inevitably making the wrong decisions.

7. This should be the Yankees’ postseason lineup if the entire offense is healthy:

DJ LeMahieu, 2B
Aaron Judge, RF
Luke Voit, 1B
Gleyber Torres, SS
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Clint Frazier, LF
Aaron Hicks, CF
Gary Sanchez, C
Gio Urshela, 3B

But I think the Yankes will either do this:

DJ LeMahieu, 2B
Aaron Judge, RF
Luke Voit, 1B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Aaron Hicks, CF
Gleyber Torres, SS
Clint Frazier, LF
Gary Sanchez, C
Gio Urshela, 3B

Or this:

DJ LeMahieu, 2B
Aaron Judge, RF
Aaron Hicks, CF
Luke Voit, 1B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Gleyber Torres, SS
Clint Frazier, LF
Gary Sanchez, C
Gio Urshela, 3B

A left-handed hitter doesn’t need to bat third. I repeat: A left-handed hitter doesn’t need to bat third.

8. I know it doesn’t mean much, but Gary Sanchez’s at-bats have been much better the last few games. It has nothing to do with his two-game benching since he looked horrible immediately after that. He has looked more confident at the plate, is drawing walks, and the outs he puts in play seem to be rockets lined right at fielders. Sanchez can’t finish the shortened season with respectable numbers. All he can do now is focus on having the best possible postseason he can have because everyone gets a clean slate in October, and a big October from Sanchez will make all of his critics forget and forgive his regular season.

9. It was nice to see Gerrit Cole pitch like Gerrit Cole on Friday. I said on the Yankees Podcast on Friday that Cole needed to go out and pitch all seven innings of the first game of the doubleheader, and he did just (7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 9 K), dominating the Orioles in a game the Yankees had to win. The win was Cole’s fifth of the season and the seven shutout innings lowered his ERA to a more Cole-like 3.20. It’s going to be tough for him to cover my preseason prediction that he would have a sub-2.50 ERA this season since he will only get two more regular-season starts, but I don’t care about that. I care about him building off this start and continuing to pitch like that before he gets the ball in Game 1 of the best-of-3.

10. J.A. Happ can keep pitching the way he pitched against the Blue Jays and the Orioles and it doesn’t matter, he’s not getting a postseason start. He can’t get a postseason start. Under no circumstances is he getting a postseason start. Shutting down the Orioles is nice. Who would feel good about Happ against the offenses of the White Sox, Astros or A’s? Cole in Game 1, Masahiro Tanaka in Game 2 and Deivi Garcia in Game 3. As of now, that’s what it has to be.

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

The Yankees finally won a game. All it took was a 21-year-old starting pitcher who hadn’t appeared in a major league game 12 days ago to prevent the team from falling under .500 for the first time this season.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After benching Gary Sanchez didn’t work to end the Yankees’ losing streak and Brian Cashman traveling with the team didn’t work to end the Yankees’ losing streak and a team meeting didn’t work to end the Yankees’ losing streak, it ended up being Deivi Garcia that did work to end the Yankees’ losing streak. Garcia is the Yankees’ best pitcher. That’s not an exaggeration. Right now, he’s the team’s best pitcher. It’s certainly not Gerrit Cole, who has lost three straight starts and has allowed more home run than any other pitcher in the league. You could make a case for Masahiro Tanaka, but he only just started to give the Yankees any length in his starters. And obviously it’s not Jordan Montgomery, J.A. Happ or Michael King.

Aside from watching DJ LeMahieu try to win a batting title, Luke Voit become one of the best hitters in baseball and Clint Frazier finally put his entire game together, Garcia has been the only other part of the Yankees worth watching this season, and he’s only made three starts. In 17 2/3 innings, he has struck out 18 against just two walks and has looked every bit as good as I hoped he would if he ever made it to the Yankees without getting traded first.

If the Yankees reach the postseason (again I can’t believe not making it is a possibiliy), Garcia has to get the ball in Game 3 (if the Yankees are able to reach a third game of the postseason). Cole will get the ball for Game 1 and Tanaka for Game 2, but there’s no other option in Game 3. Screw James Paxton if he comes back. I don’t want him anywhere near the mound in the postseason. He wasn’t good before he got hurt and now he’s being rushed back and will at best could be an opener. No thank you. Montgomery hasn’t been nearly good enough, and Happ and King would be lucky to even be on the postseason roster.

I knew I would be excited to see a new Yankees pitcher pitch every five days in 2020, I just thought it was going to be Cole, not Garcia.

2. Aaron Boone’s genius plan to bench Sanchez didn’t fix the Yankees’ problems, stop their losing streak or help Sanchez. The Yankees benched Sanchez for two games, scapegoating him for their issues, and they still went 0-2 as part of their five-game losing streak. Since Sanchez has come back, he’s gone 0-for-7 with a walk. It’s almost as if sitting on the bench and not getting at-bats doesn’t help a former star player break out of a horrendous slump. Who could have known?

Like everyone, I wish I knew what was wrong with Sanchez other than the fact he clearly can’t catch up to middle-middle fastballs or recognize a breaking ball. If Sanchez had always hit like this, it would be easy to chalk it up as a typical catcher who can’t hit since almost all of them can’t hit. But everyone knows Sanchez can hit, or used to be able to hit. He hit 53 home runs in 175 games over 2016 and 2017, batting .284/.354/.568. After a rough 2018 regular season (.697 OPS), he single-handedly won the only game of the 2018 ALDS that the Yankees won with a two-home run performance. Last season, he struggled to hit for average (.232) and get on base (.316), but he still managed an .841 OPS with 34 home runs. I don’t know that we’ll ever see 2016-17 Sanchez again, but can we at least get 2019 Sanchez?

3. You might never see an inning as bad as the sixth inning on Monday from the Yankees ever again. The Yankees had a four-run lead and all of their “elite” relievers completely rested.

Chad Green entered for the sixth, and for the third time in two weeks, he didn’t have it. After two walks, a single and a Voit error, the Blue Jays had cut the Yankees’ lead to 6-3 and had the bases loaded and one out. Boone pulled Green and turned to Adam Ottavino, and he didn’t have it either. Ottavino faced six batters and didn’t retire any of them. Three singles, two walks and a grand slam later against Ottavino and the Blue Jays had a 12-6 lead in what was a 10-run inning.

Green and Ottavino combined to produce this line: 0.1 IP, 5 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 4 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. The Blue Jays didn’t swing-and-miss at any of their 58 pitches.

4. I was scared the Yankees were going to blow their lead on Wednesday night as well, but thankfully, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman managed to pitch a scoreless eighth and ninth respectively to end the five-game losing streak. I don’t trust anyone in the Yankees’ bullpen right now, but if I had to give my Level of Trust Rankings on a scale of 1-10, this would be it:

Zack Britton: 7.1
Chad Green: 6.4
Aroldis Chapman: 5.8
Adam Ottavino: 3.7

That’s it. No one else is even good enough to make this list. I purposely didn’t put Clarke Schmidt as an option because he’s not a reliever and doesn’t belong coming out of the bullpen.

5. I guess Schmidt (the Yankees’ top pitching prospect) is now the mop-up man on this awful team? That’s how Schmidt was used in his second career appearance, asked to clean up the mess left by Green and Ottavino. Rather than let Schmidt start, which is basically all he has known as a professional pitcher, the Yankees would rather continue to start Happ, who should have run out of chances to start a long, long, long time ago, or King who isn’t any good, having allowed eight earned runs in 10 2/3 innings as a starter and never going more than four innings and giving the team length.

You would think by now the Yankees’ rotation would include both Garcia and Schmidt, but nope. The Yankees want to continue to pitch Happ because of money owed and want to continue to let King start because of … I have no idea why they want to continue to let King start. Maybe at some point this season Schmidt will get to show why he’s the top-ranked pitching prospect in the organization and even higher than Garcia. I just hope it’s not too late before he’s given that chance.

6. Mike Tauchman can’t play anymore. He just can’t. For as good as Tauchman was last season for six weeks, he’s been that bad this season, looking every bit like the player the Rockies gave up on. He has a .647 OPS and five extra-base hits (all doubles) in 95 plate appearances. I have the same amount of home runs as Tauchman this season. On top of his lack of production, his baseball IQ is horrible as he frequently makes awful decisions on the bases and at the plate, whether he’s trying to advance a base on balls in front of him or swinging at 3-1 pitches high and away after the pitcher walked the previous three batters.

I’m sick of seeing Tauchman in the lineup. The only way he should play is if one of Frazier, Aaron Hicks or Brett Gardner is injured.

7. This should be the Yankees’ lineup every night with their current roster:

DJ LeMahieu, 3B
Luke Voit, 1B
Gleyber Torres, SS
Clint Frazier, RF
Miguel Andujar, DH
Aaron Hicks, CF
Gary Sanchez, C
Brett Gardner, LF
Thairo Estrada (preferably)/Tyler Wade, 2B

Unfortunately, Boone would never allow for five right-handed hitters in a row at the top of the lineup, and he would never allow for three of the last four hitters potentially being left-handed. He certainly wouldn’t hit two lefties back-to-back if Gardner were eighth and Wade were playing and ninth. But that’s what the lineup should be.

8. If the Yankees ever get healthy, this is what the lineup should always be:

DJ LeMahieu, 2B
Aaron Judge, RF
Gleyber Torres, SS
Luke Voit, 1B
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Clint Frazier, LF
Aaron Hicks, CF
Gio Urshela, 3B
Gary Sanchez, C

9. The Yankees were once 16-6. Now they’re 22-21. They were once in first place in the AL East. Now they’re in third place. They were once the 1-seed in the AL playoffs. Now they’re the 8-seed. The Yankees have fallen apart this season to the point that I’m watching the Orioles’ and Tigers’ scores as much as I’m watching the Yankees. I said the Orioles and Tigers! Do you know ridiculous that is? The Orioles lost 108 games last season and the Tigers lost 114, and somehow a year later, the 103-win Yankees are playing at their level. It’s disgusting.

10. I didn’t think a four-game series in September against the Orioles would be a crucial series for the postseason, but here we are as if it’s 2012. There’s 17 games left, and the Yankees need to win all of them. Had they played with urgency earlier in the season when they were OK with giving away games in Philadelphia and Tampa, they wouldn’t be hanging on to dear life for the final postseason berth in the AL. But the Yankees chose to treat a 60-game season like a 162-game season and the injuries piled up in this 60-game season like they did in last year’s 162-game season and the “Next Man Up” mantra was greatly exposed.

The Yankees have to find a way to hold off the Orioles and Tigers and simultaneously get healthy over the next 20 days. The current team should be good enough to win enough to remain in a postseason spot until the everyday lineup is available. The current team, however, isn’t good enough to compete in October, and if the Yankees don’t get healthy and don’t get Judge and Urshela back (I gave up on Stanton coming back long ago), they aren’t going anywhere in the postseason.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

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

The Yankees’ season unraveled even more this weekend as they lost three of four to the Orioles to fall to the eighth seed in the American League. The Yankees now have a one-game loss-column lead on being in the postseason. But everything is fine!

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Aaron Boone had another memorable weekend managing the team into the ground. On Friday, he started Michael King, or at least he had input with the analytics department on starting King. The thing about King is that he isn’t good. Here were his appearances this season before Friday’s start:

3.1 IP, 4 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 2 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 3 ER (start)
3.0 IP, 1 ER (relief)
3.2 IP, 2 ER (start)

King put the Yankees behind 1-0 in the first, but was then given a 4-1 lead to work with. Despite not having completed four innings of work in any of his outings this season, Boone let him stay in for the fourth on Friday. Three batters into the fourth, the Orioles had cut the Yankees’ lead to 4-3, and Boone stayed with King for the entire inning.

This game was the first of a doubleheader and therefore a seven-inning game. So after King’s four innings and three earned runs, the Yankees had a one-run lead to protect with nine outs to get, which meant Chad Green followed by Zack Britton followed by Aroldis Chapman, right? Nope. Boone went to Ben Heller for the fifth inning. Sure enough, Renato Nunez hit a game-tying home run off Heller.

2. At the time of Heller allowing the game-tying home run, here were the recent workloads of the elite relievers:

Adam Ottavino: 29 pitches over the last six days
Chad Green: 19 pitches over the last five days
Zack Britton 29 pitches over the last 16 days
Aroldis Chapman: 32 pitches over the last six days

With the game tied in the sixth, Boone then went to Britton, proving he would rather have Britton pitch against the bottom of the order in a tie game than the middle of the order with a one-run lead (which is when he had Heller pitch) because of the inning number. In fact, he pitched both Britton and Chapman with the score tied. Boone clearly went to Heller in an attempt to steal outs and an inning and save one or more of the elite relievers for the second game of the doubleheader, a move that frequently burns him.

After the game Heller was optioned to the alternate site. A little over an hour prior, he was good enough to protect a one-run lead with nine outs to go, and then suddenly he was no longer good enough to be a Yankee. This has been on an ongoing trend all season of players and pitchers being used in high-leverage situations only to then be optioned or designated for assignment or released.

3. In the second game of the doubleheader, Deivi Garcia started strong, but finally gave up his first runs as a major leaguer (4.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 1 HR). It was what you would expect from a 21-year-old in his second career start. In relief of Garcia, Boone decided to have Clarke Schmidt make his major league debut.

Clarke has made 27 minor league appearances, starting 25 of them. He’s ranked as the Yankees’ top pitching prospect, one spot ahead of Garcia and has been trained and prepared as a starter. So how did Boone use him? Not as the starter in Game 1 of the doubleheader. That went to King, who sucked per usual. Instead, he brought Schmidt in with runners on first and second and one out in the fifth. The Yankees would rather waste starts with King or J.A. Happ than let Schmidt start, and they are completely fine bringing Schmidt into his first game in a situation he has little to no experience with: entering mid-game, with runners on and having to pitch out of the stretch. Talk about putting your players in the best possible position to succeed.

4. On Saturday, things got worse. With the Yankees reeling and struggling to score runs, Boone elected to give the team’s best hitter in DJ LeMahieu the day off. But as always with Boone’s days off, LeMahieu didn’t even get the full game off as he was needed as a pinch hitter with the team losing.

Gerrit Cole wasn’t good again. Five days after writing What Is Wrong with Gerrit Cole?, nothing changed. Yes, he dominated the Orioles for five innings, but he fell apart in the sixth, allowing yet another home run to add his to league lead and then another four runs after a Thairo Estrada error. Cole only got charged with one earned run out of five, but he took his third straight loss. What a letdown he has been. I was worried the Yankees might get Pittsburgh Cole instead of Houston Cole, but it looks like they have neither.

After the Yankees recently lost two out of three to the Rays, Boone talked about all the “good things” he has seen out of his team that has gone from World Series favorite to postseason bubble. And after losing a Cole start to the Orioles, he did the same.

“We gotta continue to take a lot of really good positive things that happened,” Boone said, “and finish some of these off now.”

What “good things?” Cole pitched well for five innings. That was the only good thing that happened in the game. He lost the game in the sixth inning, the offense scored one run, left 10 on base and struck out 12 times. Boone acts like Alec Baldwin’s character Parker on Friends who is over-the-top positive about everything to the point that he annoys everyone he encounters.

5. If you thought things were bad after Saturday and back-to-back losses to the Orioles, Sunday was the worst of all. The day started with Boone benching Gary Sanchez, who went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts the night before. During the Sunday game on YES, the broadcast team talked about how decisions within the organization are made unilaterally, but it didn’t seem that way with what Boone said about the decision to bench Sanchez.

“I deliberated on it a lot last night,” Boone said. “I just feel like this is the way I need to go right now. Hopefully a day off or two, or however I decide to do it here, can help get him going. It’s on all of us to get around him and try to help him get to what we know he can be.”

Boone used “I” four times, never using “we,” and made it clear it was his decision to bench Sanchez and that it’s his decision on when he will play again. Boone doesn’t appear to be the front office puppet everyone makes him out to be. There’s no way the Yankees’ analytics team would recommend or approve Sanchez sitting in favor or Erik Kratz or Kyle Higashioka. And there’s no way the analytics team would approve any of Boone’s bullpen decisions.

Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are on the injured list like they always are; Gleyber Torres just came back from the IL; Aaron Hicks can’t hit, Brett Gardner is finished; Cole has been awful; Masahiro Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery have been inconsistent; Happ and James Paxton have sucked; the bullpen has been a disaster and Boone has been idiotic. Yet it’s Sanchez who becomes the scapegoat for the 2020 Yankees. Mike Tauchman and Tyler Wade play every day no matter how many outs they make at the plate or on the bases and Mike Ford plays every day even though he’s a one-dimensional player who’s lacking his only dimension. None of them have the track record of Sanchez, but it’s Sanchez who gets benched.

6. Sanchez wasn’t the only one with the day off on Sunday. A day after coming off the IL, Torres was given the day off in an unproven attempt to prevent further injury. Hicks was also once again on the bench too for load management reasons. Do you think Torres and Hicks were given the full game off though? Of course not. Sure enough, the Yankees were in need of offense and needed to use Torres and Hicks in pinch-hit roles. Sanchez wasn’t used as a pinch hitter as Boone chose to let Kratz bat in the seventh, representing the tying run at the plate.

7. Boone didn’t mention that he saw “good things” from the Yankees after Sunday’s loss. Maybe someone finally got to him and told him how embarrassing he sounds talking about the positives for a team whose season is spinning out of control. A day after scoring one run against the Orioles, Boone said he thought Sunday would be different.

“I felt like the energy coming in today was really good,” Boone said. “I felt like the mindset was, ‘This is the day were going to go out and start turning it around.’”

It’s time Boone stops reading minds as the Yankees scored one run on a day when Boone thought his team was going to turn it around. Not only did they only score one run, they got shut down by Dean Kramer, who one-hit the Yankees in his major league debut (6 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K). This came the day after Keegan Akin shut out the Yankees for 5 1/3 innings in his second career start. And not even two weeks ago, the Braves’ Ian Anderson one-hit the Yankees over six innings in his major league debut.

8. On the first 12 pitches he threw on Sunday, Tanaka allowed three hits, a walk and two runs without recording an out. He settled down to hold the Orioles to the two runs through five. In the sixth, a Miguel Andujar error began the inning, but Tanaka bounced back to strike out Ryan Mountcastle. After Rio Ruiz singled on a ground ball, Boone decided to go to the bullpen. With two on and one out and the Yankees trailing by one and desperately needing a win and with a completely rested bullpen available, Boone brought in … Luis Cessa! Two singles and a walk later and the Orioles’ one-run lead had become a three-run lead.

Meredith Marakovits bluntly asked Boone about this after the game, asking, “Why Cessa there in relief?”

Boone didn’t know how to answer. He paused, then picked up his hat off his head with his right hand and placed it back on his head. He let out his patented “Ummmmm” and then struggled trying to come up with an excuse which would justify his managerial blunder.

“As opposed … you mean … ,” Boone said fumbling his words. “Why did I take Masa out?”

“No, why did you choose to go with Luis Cessa,” Marakovits repeated. “Did you consider going to any of the other guys?”

Then Boone gave the most run-around, non-answer of all time. 

“Obviously not Britt or Chappy at that point,” Boone said, making it clear the inning dictates who pitches and not the situation. “So the only one I was considering was Otto in the sixth there to start if I was gonna take Masa out. But I felt like Masa … as the day went on, especially his slider started to play more and Cessa has been obviously throwing the ball really well for us … and I felt like, down a run, Cessa was a guy that for that bottom part of the order and then at the top to hand the ball off to Otto or something. It felt like that was a good matchup. He just gave up the base hit.”

No, that wasn’t a coherent answer from Boone. It sounded like Billy Madison’s answer using The Puppy Who Lost His Way in the academic decathlon. It didn’t answer Marakovits’ question and it didn’t come close to making sense. That’s the answer from the man the Yankees decided to hand their team over in the middle of a championship window.

9. On Sunday’s Yankees Podcast, I talked about what will happen with Clint Frazier when Judge and Stanton come back (if they ever do), and Ken Singleton brought it up on YES as well. If Frazier, who has been one of the Yankees’ only three hitters (along with LeMahieu and Luke Voit) to consistently produce, doesn’t play because two guys who never play finally return, I will actively root against the Yankees. That’s not a joke. I will root as hard as I normally do for them to win, for them to lose. I will go as far as to buy apparel for whichever team they face in the playoffs if I have to. That is if they get to the playoffs.

10. Remember when the Yankees were a lock for the postseason because of the eight-team format? Well, now they’re the 8-seed in the AL, trailing the Blue Jays by one game, and their lead for the eighth and final postseason berth is one game in the loss column on the Tigers and two games in the loss column on the Orioles.

The Yankees were 16-6 and now they’re 21-19. They just lost three in a row to the Orioles and have lost five of seven. I wonder who will get the day off on Monday.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

***

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

Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. The Yankees are 18-7 against teams not from Tampa this season, and they went 2-8 against the Rays this season. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore embarrassment of the team with the 28th payroll beating the team with the highest payroll in every facet of the game.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Back in February, the Yankees were the favorite to win the World Series. Aaron Hicks was going to miss the first half of the season. Then James Paxton was going to be out for the first month of the season. Then Luis Severino went down for the season. Then Giancarlo Stanton was going to miss the first half of the season. Then Aaron Judge was going to miss the first half of the season. Then the season was postponed.

With the late-July start to a shortened, 60-game season, the Yankees were still at least the favorite to win the American League. Then Masahiro Tanaka missed the start of the shortened season after taking a line drive to the head. Then Aroldis Chapman got put on the COVID-19 list. Then Paxton lost his velocity. Then Tommy Kahnle went down for the season. Then J.A. Happ pitched like a soon-to-be 38-year-old coming off the worst season of his career. Then Aaron Boone didn’t improve as a manager. Then Gary Sanchez couldn’t make contact. Then Stanton went on the injured list. The Judge went on the injured list. Then the Yankees couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Brett Gardner turned back into the player who looked finished in 2018. Then DJ LeMahieu went on the injured list. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Hicks became the No. 3 hitter. Then Zack Britton went on the injured list. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Gleyber Torres went on the injured list. Then the Yankees started playing Tyler Wade every day. Then Judge went on the injured list again. Then Sanchez still couldn’t make contact. Then Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on. Then Gerrit Cole started giving up home runs like Phil Hughes. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Chad Green turned into his April 2019 self. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays.

Once 16-6 with the best record in baseball, the Yankees are now just 20-15. 

2. The division is over. It’s over. Put an asterisk or a lowercase letter next to the Rays in the standings denoting they clinched it. The Yankees are three games back in the loss column and 4 1/2 games back overall against the Rays. According to FanGraphs, the Yankees have a 13 percent chance of winning the AL East. If you’re holding on to the slimmest of hope that they can play better than .750 baseball for the next three-plus weeks or that the Rays collapse, just remember the Yankees are closer to being out of the playoffs (they have a two-game loss-column lead on the ninth-place Tigers) than they are to the Rays.

The Yankees have 25 games remaining and the Rays have 22. If the Rays play .500 baseball the rest of the way and go 11-11, they will finish at 37-23. The Yankees would have to go 18-7 just to tie them, and that would do nothing since the Rays won the head-to-head matchup in an 8-2 landslide. The Yankees would have to go 19-6 to win the division if the Rays play .500 baseball. The Rays aren’t going to play .500 baseball though, not with a rotation of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton. And the Yankees aren’t going to go 19-6. Not with 10 of their remaining 25 games against the Blue Jays, who are much improved and also battling for a postseason spot.

3. The best the Yankees can do now is finish as the No. 4 seed in the AL playoffs. That is the only non-division winner spot that will get to host all three games in the best-of-3 first round. The Yankees are one game back in the loss column from the 4-seed and are tied with the same record as the Astros for the 5-seed, but lose the division record tiebreaker. Right now, the Yankees are the 6-seed, lined up to play the Indians in the best-of-3. That means facing the best pitcher in the AL this season in Shane Bieber in Game 1 and then either Carlos Carrasco (3.75 ERA), Zach Plesac (1.33 ERA), Triston McKenzie (1.69 ERA) or Aaron Civale (3.72 ERA) in Game 2, and another name from that list in Game 3. All three games (if necessary) would be played in Cleveland if there isn’t a playoff bubble.

4. The Yankees just had their current postseason rotation of Cole, Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery perfectly set for a three-game series at home against the Rays, who wouldn’t be starting Snell, and they still lost the series. That’s about as disheartening as it gets. The Yankees not having Judge, Stanton or Torres isn’t an excuse. Even without those three, the Yankees’ lineup is still better than the Rays’ on paper. The problem is the Yankees’ lineup doesn’t hit like it should on paper and neither does the Rays’. And the Rays have their own injury problems, missing Ryan Yarbrough, Nick Anderson, Oliver Drake, Jalen Beeks, Chaz Rose, Mike Zunino, Yonny Chirinos and Jose Alvarado. I don’t see anyone complaining about the Rays’ injuries, all I see them is winning nearly every day and having the best record in the American League.

5. I’m happy the season series against the Rays is over. Now I don’t have to watch the Yankees lose anymore regular-season games to the Rays and I don’t have to hear about the two team’s recent history of throwing at each other. Has there ever been more made of a pitch that didn’t actually hit a player or benches clearing that didn’t actually lead to a fight than there was from Tuesday night? Maybe Chapman meant to throw at Mike Brosseau. If he did, he’s an idiot, considering the Yankees had to have that game and putting Brosseau on with two outs in the ninth would have brought up the tying run. And Chapman isn’t exactly Mariano Rivera or even his old self in terms of confidence in successfully closing out games. He can’t be screwing around with runners on base because it usually doesn’t end well for him. The suspension for him and the suspensions for Boone and Kevin Cash were unnecessary. Nothing happened. No one did anything and no one pushed or punched anyone, outside of Wade for some reason trying to hold the Rays’ dugout back. If you were picking teams in a fight between the Yankees and Rays, Wade would easily be the last pick of the draft, and that’s after you pick the clubhouse attendants and bat and ball boys. I wonder how tough the Rays would have acted if Judge and Stanton were on the IL or if CC Sabathia were still on the team. Probably as tough as they have acted under those circumstances when tempers flared in the past: not tough at all.

6. So much for that grand slam on Sunday leading to Sanchez turning around his season. None of his previous five home runs led to him turning around his season, and homering in three straight games didn’t either. So I’m not sure why I thought maybe, just maybe a go-ahead, extra-inning grand slam would bring the old Sanchez back. Sanchez went 1-for-10 with a walk and four strikeouts in the three games against the Rays and he’s down to .130/.245/.337. It’s appalling that Sanchez’s OPS (.582) looks like what his slugging percentage should be. The other night, Paul O’Neill said that Sanchez isn’t going to hit .300 this season should focus on just hitting well for from here on. .300? .300?!?! Can Sanchez even get to .200 at this point?

7. DJ LeMahieu’s average finally dipped below .400 to .392. If LeMahieu can get to 186 plate appearances, he will qualify for the batting title, and he will win it. He needs 82 over the final 25 games or 3.28 per game. Basically, he just can’t get hurt. The next closest is Franmil Reyes at .336 and Tim Anderson at .333. LeMahieu would become the first player ever to win a batting title in both leagues, and he should have done it last season when he hit .327, but Anderson stole it from him by hitting .335 in only 123 games and 22 fewer games. LeMahieu is the best player on the Yankees. He needs to be extended. The Yankees can’t screw this up, but I wouldn’t count on them not screwing it up.

8. I want to reiterate what I wrote in What is Wrong with Gerrit Cole? on Tuesday because he’s the most important Yankee when it comes to the postseason. If Cole doesn’t turn into his Houston self, the Yankees aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does in October, he’s the single-most important Yankee in the postseason. He was supposed to be like signing two starting pitchers if the Yankees were to face the Astros in the ALCS since the Astros would be without him and the Yankees would be with him. Now that there’s an extra best-of-3 postseason round, the Yankees will need him to beat whichever team they face in that game. Cole has five starts left: Baltimore (2), Toronto, Boston and Miami. He has five stats to go from the guy leading the league in home runs allowed to the guy that couldn’t lose a game for more than a year. If this version of Cole is present in the postseason, it won’t matter if the team is at full strength, the Yankees won’t have a chance.

9. I like how the Yankees keep saying Deivi Garcia is in the conversation to start on Friday. I hope that’s just an unnecessary strategy ploy, so the Orioles don’t overly prepare for him because if it’s not, this team is more poorly run and managed than anyone thought. Garcia produced the best, or at worst, the second-best start of the Yankees’ season in his debut. It was better than any Cole or Tanaka start, much better than any Montgomery start, and the only start comparable would be Happ’s against the Mets. Garcia doesn’t just deserve to start, he deserves to be in the rotation. I would have him pitch Game 3 in the postseason right now over Montgomery based on one major league start. That’s how good he was. I’m sure the Yankees will call him up to start on Friday and make him the 29th man on the roster for the doubleheader and then send him back down after his start because they don’t want to not have Nick Nelson or Ben Heller on the active roster. What would they do without Nelson or Heller?!

10. The last three games were absent of Boone screwing anything up, causing my blood pressure to hit dangerous levels. That’s because Cole ruined Monday’s game in the first inning and the offense could barely make contact against Tyler Glasnow, Tanaka was able to get the ball right to the elite relievers on Tuesday, and Boone was suspended for Wednesday’s game, though it didn’t matter since Montgomery ruined it within the first four batters. It wasn’t fun watching the Yankees lose another series to the Rays, lose more ground in the standings, and ultimately lose the division. But it was nice to sit back and not have any issues with Boone over the last three nights. I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, if at all.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

***

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