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.

***

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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***

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

The Yankees could have won all five games over the weekend against the Mets. They could have also lost all five games. In actuality, they should have gone 4-1. They should have won every game except for the wild, five-run, seventh-inning comeback game they won. Prior to the series, I said I would sign up for a 2-3 weekend and I ended up lowering my expectations to 1-4. Thankfully, the Mets are abysmal and the Yankees’ “C” team, or maybe even their “D” team was able to win three of five against their cross-city rival.

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. A couple weeks ago in an afternoon game against the Rays, Mike Tauchman was listed as the 3-hitter in the lineup. About 12 hours earlier the night before, Tauchman wasn’t allowed to bat in the bottom of the ninth and was pinch hit for by Miguel Andujar. Andujar struck out on three pitches and was sent down to the alternate site after the game. So Andujar was good enough to pinch hit for someone the Yankees feel can bat third in a lineup, but then following the pinch-hit at-bat wasn’t good enough to be on the Yankees.

Twice this season, Luis “Everyday” Avilan was allowed to pitch with the game on the line against the Rays, and both times he blew the game, and the Yankees lost. For the first month of the season, Avilan was good enough to either warm up or come into every game for the Yankees, but this past week he was released by the Yankees, apparently no longer good enough to be a Yankee.

On Sunday, when Michael King ran out of gas in the fourth inning against the Mets, Aaron Boone turned to Brooks Kriske for the final out of the inning. Kriske got the out and returned for the fifth. He was allowed to stay in to face Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Dominic Smith and Robinson Cano, and Cano hit a two-run home run off him. Boone stayed with Kriske after the home run to finish the fith and Kriske came back out for the sixth. He walked Wilson Ramos to lead off the inning and Boone still didn’t pull him. He then walked Andres Gimenez, and finally, Boone had seen enough. Or at least I thought he had. Boone walked to the mound, never signaled to the bullpen and talked with Kriske rather than pull him. Six pitches later, Kriske walked Brandon Nimmo to load the bases via walks with no outs. Then Boone decided to take him out. It was Boone’s Mona Lisa; the complete package of managerial incompetence. Kriske was allowed to pitch in a tie game and keep on pitching with the Yankees barely hanging on to a postseason spot, and then after the game, he was optioned back to the alternate site.

The Yankees continue to allow marginal players and pitchers to determine the outcome of their games only to then determine the players and pitchers aren’t good enough to be Yankees.

2. With each Yankees Thoughts I write, Aaron Boone seems to get worse as a manager. There has been no improvement for him managing the bullpen, which remains his biggest flaw, and the only true in-game decision making he needs to do. He is every bit as bad as he was for the last two years, and each game he manages to do something more ridiculous than he did the game before. He consistently fails to put his team in the best position to succeed by making inconsistent choices. As I have written before, these lines from Stanley Hudson to Michael Scott in The Office do a good job of explaining Boone:

Every day you do something stupider than the day before. And I think, “There’s no possible way he can top that.” But what do you do? You find a way, damnit, to top it! You are a professional idiot!

Boone is a professional idiot. He was wrongfully given the Yankees’ managerial job in the middle of a championship window with no managing or coaching experience, and he hasn’t gotten any better in what’s now Year 3. He remains a more challenging obstacle for his team than the Rays, Twins, A’s, Astros and Dodgers combined. The only way the Yankees are safe from Boone’s destructive decision making is if they score 10 runs in a game, and with their current lineup, that’s impossible.

3. The Yankees’ lineup continues to appear to be picked at random. Thankfully, DJ LeMahieu is back to give the leadoff spot stability, and the Yankees are 3-0 since he came back. Coincidence? No. LeMahieu is the Yankees’ best player and the team is 16-5 when he starts and 3-8 when he doesn’t. LeMahieu has hit safely in 20 of the 22 games he has played in (he had a pinch-hit single). He makes the lineup go even if it’s very hard to get this lineup to go right now with the bottom-third it has and because Boone feels the need to screw around with the middle third of it every day. LeMahieu is the most important defensive player on the team, and while I have long thought Aaron Judge to be the most important player on the Yankees, I think I have changed my mind to it being LeMahieu since you actually have to play in games to be the most important player on the team.

Luke Voit has been otherworldly in the 2-hole in Judge’s absence. The 3-hole has become Aaron Hicks’ and up until his game-tying, two-run home run off Edwin Diaz on Sunday, Hicks has done absolutely nothing to deserve being a Top 3 hitter, even with Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres all on the injured list. Hicks entered Sunday with one home run since July 29, and his on-base percentage which has always been his defenders’ only favorable argument had fallen to .343. But Hicks saved the first game on Sunday and prevented another miserable loss, and the Yankees won a game in which they had a 0.02 percent chance of winning in the seventh inning. It didn’t take long for the real Hicks to return, though, as he was pulled from the second game of the doubleheader with “cramping in both of his calves.” I guess there’s a reason why Hicks never plays both ends of a doubleheader and it’s because he can’t play more than nine innings of baseball on the same day. After the game, Boone was asked about the severity of Hicks’ injury and said, “I don’t think it’s serious at all,” and when Boone says that, it’s a guarantee the player will be placed on the injured list, if not worse.

4. It wouldn’t surprise me if Hicks is placed on the IL since that’s what he does: he gets hurt. I realize some (OK, maybe a lot) of my criticism of Hicks is unfair given his advanced metrics, but the criticism stems from his inability to stay healthy. As a Yankee, Hicks has played in 435 of a possible 680 regular-season games or 64 percent, and he has been on the injured list at least once in each of his first four seasons with the team with back, hamstring, oblique and elbow injuries, and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. If there’s a baseball-related injury, Hicks has had it. It wouldn’t be a baseball season without Hicks going on the IL, and after he was able to avoid a first-half stint if the season began on time in March for Tommy John surgery rehab, it was only a matter of time until he landed on a place he has called home for roughly one-third of his Yankees tenure. No, he hasn’t been placed on it yet, but it’s only a matter of time until he is.

5. I was more nervous for Gary Sanchez and his pinch-hit opportunity on Sunday night than Sanchez was. As President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club, I finally caved and heavily criticized the struggling catcher, while maintaining my belief he will turn it around because he has to … right? When Sanchez stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded and one out and the game tied at 1, I could envision the social media meltdown from another strikeout. My wife, who is a Sanchez critic, sat next to me pulling for Sanchez, though I knew she had no faith in his ability to come through since I didn’t even have any. She was just trying to be nice in the moment, waiting to write another one of her critical tweets about him. Once there were two strikes on Sanchez, I was prepared for the at-bat to end as a complete failure. Sanchez had been unsuccessful in putting Drew Smith’s fastball in play, so Smith tried once more to get Sanchez to swing through it, but instead, Sanchez channeled his 2016 self and sent the pitch deep into the New York night. A pinch-hit grand slam to give the Yankees a four-run, extra-inning lead.

Is this finally the hit to get Sanchez going? I thought it might be any of his other five home runs, but it wasn’t. I thought he might be coming alive when he homered in three straight games earlier this month, and those three games were followed by a 3-for-25 slide. Maybe Sunday night’s go-ahead grand slam will be the spot we look back at for when Sanchez’s season turned around. If it’s not, maybe he will never turn it around this season, a season in which he has yet to have a multi-hit game.

6. The Yankees nearly blew the four-run lead after Sanchez’s grand slam because Boone wouldn’t use Aroldis Chapman, deciding to stay with Jonathan Holder for a second inning. Chapman was unavailable because he had pitched two consecutive days. It didn’t matter to Boone that Chapman had thrown 25 pitches over the last 14 days or that he had thrown 45 pitches since being walked off against on Oct. 19, 2019 in Game 6 of the ALCS. Boone and the Yankees have their bullpen usage rules and no amount of pitches and no amount of importance on a game or situation will change their mind. Boone would have rather lost the game to the Mets and erased the momentum the team had built with two straight walk-off wins to end their seven-game losing streak than use Chapman for a third straight day. Ask Zack Britton, who’s on the injured list with a hamstring injury, or Tommy Kahnle, who’s out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, how not pitching on three consecutive days prevented them from getting hurt.

7. Tyler Wade hit a home run in the second game on Sunday for his first of the season and fourth of his career. On Saturday, Michael Kay said, “The only thing keeping Tyler Wade from regular work is that he has not hit.” Really? Is that all, Michael? The only thing that has kept him from being an everyday major leaguer is that he hasn’t been able to perform half of the game of baseball. The line from Kay reminded me of this exchange from The Mighty Ducks when Gordon Bombay find Fulton Reed taking slap shots in an alley way:

Gordon Bombay: Why don’t you play for us?

Fulton Reed: I can’t … I don’t know how to skate.

Gordon Bombay: Whoa! Is that all that’s stoppin’ ya?

Sure, Wade is extremely fast and a threat on the bases, but you have to actually get on base to be a threat on the bases. As long as he plays great defense while he has to be in the lineup, I don’t care if he goes 0-for-100, representing as close to an automatic out at the bottom of the order as you can have. I just can’t wait until he’s no longer needed to be an everyday player.

8. I think we are watching the final weeks of Brett Gardner’s career. I wanted the Yankees to sign Michael Brantley after 2018, and they instead brought back Gardner. He benefited from the super baseball in 2019, hitting a career-high 28 home runs, and got himself another contract with the Yankees. But now that the baseball has lost its unbelievable flight, Gardner is back to being the player he was in 2018 when he look finished and lost his starting job to Andrew McCutchen. Gardner entered Sunday with a .190/.325/.381 line and then went 0-for-5. He has two multi-hit games and two doubles this season and hasn’t homered since Aug. 3. No, power isn’t supposed to be his game, but it shows how last year was an anomaly and a clear product of the state of the ball. Gardner is still an elite defender, and maybe that’s enough for him to keep getting new contracts with the team. It shouldn’t be enough for him to block other outfield options from a path to playing time.

9. The trade deadline is Monday, and I’m OK with the Yankees doing nothing. There isn’t a game-changing starting pitcher available, and that’s all I would be interested in. Mike Clevinger isn’t that, and given his character following his night out in Chicago, I doubt that’s someone Brian Cashman would want on the team after being so concerned with the clubhouse culture for more than a decade now. And Lance Lynn certainly isn’t that. I don’t care about what he’s done since leaving the Yankees after 2018. There’s no point in trading just for the sake of trading and neither are going to swing a series in the Yankees’ favor. There’s a chance the Yankees found a potential front-end starter on Sunday in Deivi Garcia, and there’s a chance they have another one waiting for his turn in Scranton in Clark Schmidt. The Yankees shouldn’t have waited until now to find out what they have in the organization, but they did, and they should stand pat at this deadline.

10. Garcia became the first Yankees pitcher to pitch six innings and allow zero earned runs and zero walks in their debut. He was as good as advertised and his one start was better than any start Gerrit Cole, Masahiro Tanaka or Jordan Montgomery has had this season, and those three would currently be the Yankees’ postseason starters in order. Garcia doesn’t only deserve another start, he deserves to stay. He actually has ability, unlike most Yankees pitchers, and no matter what his role is, he is a better option that just about every Yankees pitcher.

After Garcia’s start, Boone was asked about his roster spot, and Boone said, “We’ll talk about that and get back to you.” It was comical, but also expected from a manager and a team that has no idea how to properly manage a roster as I depicted earlier in this blog with moves like Andujar, Avilan and Kriske. I wouldn’t be surprised if Garcia is optioned back to the alternate site while the Yankees continue to give J.A. Happ unlimited chances and let Michael King open games and let Ben Heller ruin games out of the bullpen. This is the same team that won’t bring up Schmidt to start because he isn’t on the 40-man roster, as if there isn’t a litany of names eligible to be designated for assignment on the current 40-man roster, and because of service time, as if they’re not the New York Yankees and capable of paying any free agent any amount of money. I would be disappointed and frustrated and embarrassed if Garcia were optioned, but that’s life as a 2020 Yankees fan. (Sure enough, Garcia was sent down to the alternate site. It better just be a technicality for the next four days until he’s needed as a starter again.)

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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!

Six days ago, I wrote the Yankees Are Falling Apart. Well, they’re still falling. After getting swept in a doubleheader in Atlanta, the Yankees have now lost five straight and after Thursday’s off day, they will play five games in three days against the Mets with a roster representing a mid-March spring training 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. Wednesday’s doubleheader sweep increased the Yankees’ losing streak to five straight games. They have gone from 16-6 to 16-11 and they have gone from having a 2 1/2-game lead in the AL East to having a 2 1/2-game deficit. They are about to play five games in three days against the Mets and won’t have Gerrit Cole or Masahiro Tanaka for any of the five games, and will be without DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton and likely Aaron Judge for the series as well. At the same time, the Rays will be playing the Marlins. The Yankees had a chance to end the division race last week, and instead they were swept by the Rays to begin this losing streak. The Rays have a chance to end the division race this weekend, and they just might. The Yankees should feel extremely grateful that 53 percent of the AL is going to the playoffs because right now the Yankees would be clinging to a spot in the wild-card game in a five-team postseason format. For a team that was 10 games over .500 nine days ago, the Yankees only have a four-game lead on a postseason spot.

2. Masahiro Tanaka has made five starts this season. In his first start, he threw 51 pitches. Since it was his first start of the season and he was coming back from being hit in the head on a Stanton line drive, the Yankees were being overly cautious, the way they always unnecessarily are. A pitch count is normally elevated by 15 pitches from one start to the next for a pitcher coming back from injury. So if Tanaka had thrown 51 in his first start then he should have been able to throw roughy 66 in his second start and 81 in his third start and then been able to throw as many as needed for his fourth start. Here are Tanaka’s pitch counts this season for his first four starts: 51, 59, 66, 71. There is no rhyme or reason to these numbers. They increased by eight then seven then five and not the standard 15. The only conclusion I could come to is that the Yankees decided in the offseason Tanaka is now roughly a 70-pitch pitcher or a five-inning pitcher, whichever comes first. You might think conclusion is absolutely ridiculous, but it’s something the Yankees would definitely do, thinking they have unlocked some revolutionary strategy. On Wednesday night, in the second game of the doubleheader, Tanaka was removed after five innings. His line at the time: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K. He had dominated the Braves the same way Ian (Jethro Tull) Anderson had dominated the Yankees in the first game of the doubleheader. But Tanaka was pulled and he was pulled after 66 pitches. After the game, Boone said Tanaka could have thrown up to 85 pitches in the start, but that Tanaka told him, “The tank was starting to empty a little bit.” Tanaka also said, “Basically, I told him, ‘I’m good with whatever you decide.’” Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka. You never tell Boone “you’re good with whatever he decides” no matter what the situation is, let alone in a one-run game. The Yankees’ goal is to limit the amount of decisions Boone has to make. When he’s needed to make a decision in a close game, he will ultimately make the wrong decision, and he did.

3. There was no reason to remove Tanaka from the game unless Tanaka said, “I’m done.” But the second Tanaka gave Boone the option to remove him, Boone was going to remove him. And if you’re going to remove Tanaka with two inning and six outs to go, the right move is to go to Chad Green, which Boone did. Green got two quick outs and then allowed an infield single to Dansby Swanson and a two-run home run to Freddie Freeman, and the Yankees had gone from being four outs away from ending their losing streak to trailing 2-1 in what eventually be their fifth straight loss. Boone had made the right decision and it backfired. I like to think it backfired for all the wrong decisions he has made that have worked out for him and there is an endless list of those. Green had essentially done his job and was unlucky that Swanson’s weak ground ball led to a baserunner. The inning should have been over if not for the unfortunate placement of Swanson’s weak contact. The pitch to Freeman that led to the opposite-field, two-run home run was supposed to be more away than it was. It caught too much of the plate, and being the great hitter that Freeman is, he was able to muscle it out to left field. Green has been so good that I was stunned he had blown the game. Even after Swanson had reached, the thought of Freeman giving the Braves lead didn’t worry me because of how good Green has been. When Green entered the game, I was worried that he hadn’t pitched in a game in 10 days (and that number was high because of Boone and not postponements), but after striking out the first two hitters, I didn’t think Green looked rusty or off. He just can’t miss his spot against a hitter like Freeman and he did.

4. As disappointing as getting swept on the day was, the latest Judge injury news was even more disappointing. Judge apparently re-injured his calf running from first base to second base. I joked about Judge needing perfect weather and wind and grass and temperature conditions for the Yankees to allow him to play, but maybe it wasn’t a joke after all. Judge is becoming the joke. fter having his 2016 season cut short due to an oblique strain he played through the second half of 2017 with a shoulder injury that required offseason surgery. He needed more than double the expected recovery time from a hit by pitch on his wrist in 2018 and missed two months of 2019 with another oblique injury. He would have missed half of this season had it started on time with a broken rib and collapsed lung from diving a ball last September, and now he might miss half of this 60-game season. He’s only played in 18 of the Yankees’ 26 games, and if he were to be put on the injured list as of Wednesday and somehow miraculously come off the IL after 10 days, he would miss 12 games. Judge can claim he’s healthy and able to play through it and he can say whatever he wants, but if he were able healthy and able to play through whatever is ailing him, he would stop telling the training staff or Boone of his status.

5. Judge’s health continues to hinder the Yankees’ present and his own future. I don’t know how anyone could think giving Judge a long-term contract is a sound business decision.Yes, when he plays he’s one of the top players in the game and the Yankees’ best player, but “when he plays” is the most important thing. Since 2018, he has played in only 66 percent (232 of 350) of the Yankees’ regular-season games. His age 26 and 27 seasons were decimated injuries and an ability to heal in a normal timeframe from injury and his age 28 season was going to be cut in half if it hard started on time and is likely to be cut in half after all anyway.That’s a problem. It’s a problem if he can’t play on artificial turf at the Trop without destroying his lower body at age 28 considering the Yankees play nine to 10 games per year there, and it’s a problem if he can’t run 90 feet from first base to second base without hurting his calf. Judge has become Stanton, and maybe there’s a reason those two are in their own class in the sport in terms of height and body type for a position player. Maybe it’s because that body type can’t handle playing baseball for six straight months. If the Yankees could get out of Stanton’s contract, I’m sure they would in a heartbeat given that they didn’t win with him in his age 28 season, his age 29 season consisted of him playing in 18 of 162 regular-season games and five of nine playoff games and his age 30 season is shaping up to be like his age 29 season. Judge is 28 now and will turn 29 a month into the 2021 season. Do the Yankees really want nearly $50 million a season tied up into two players who can’t stay healthy?

6. It would be nice if Gerrit Cole pitched like the Gerrit Cole I thought the Yankees were getting. Here are Cole’s seven starts:

@ WSH: 5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR
@ BAL: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7K, 1 HR
PHI: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR
@ TB: 4.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 10 K, 1 HR
BOS: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K, 1 HR
TB: 6.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 10 K, 2 HR
@ ATL: 5 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 9K, 3 HR

He’s had some good starts, but he has yet to be the dominant pitcher he became in Houston who has challenged Jacob deGrom for best pitcher in the world status. The strikeouts are there, but so are the home runs. Somehow, he’s given up a league-leading 10 home runs in 41 innings, or one every 4.1 innings which seems impossible. Last season, he allowed a home run every 7.3 innings, and the year before, one every 10.5 innings. Supposedly, the actual baseball in 2020 is playing like it did in 2018, yet Cole is giving up home runs as if the super ball from 2019 is even more super. I’m not worried about Cole. He’s been good, just not great, and I want him to be the guaranteed win every five days I thought he would be, and not the guy who throws 100 pitches in five innings and give up multiple home runs per game.

7. When Aaron Hicks bats right-handed, it looks like he’s doing it for the first time. Hicks went 0-for-Wednesday in the doubleheader and when Hicks is allowed to play both games of a doubleheader, you know the Yankees are banged up. Hicks continues to bat third, even as his on-base percentage has declined to .344, which is the one stat that has kept him in that spot. But for how bad as Hicks’ extra-base hitting has been (.384 slugging), he’s going to keep hitting near the top of the lineup because the options are limited right now. He was hitting there when the team was completely healthy, so he’s not going to stop now. Torres was removed from the 3-hole for a bad start to the season despite coming off the best young offensive middle-infield season since Alex Rodriguez. Hicks is now 1-for-18, boasts a .192 average and has one home run since July 29, but he maintains his place in the order.

8. This should be the Yankees’ lineup while their Top 4 hitters are out and I don’t care what hand the pitcher throws with:

Aaron Hicks (unfortunately, there’s no other option)
Luke Voit
Gio Urshela
Clint Frazier
Gary Sanchez
Mike Ford
Mike Tauchman
Thairo Estrada
Brett Gardner
Tyler Wade

Sanchez could strike out in 19 of 20 at-bats, as long as the other at-bat is a home run it doesn’t matter. The team right now has enough trouble getting guys on base, let alone scoring a run (12 runs in the last five games), and they need to give at-bats to those who might get the team on the board with one swing. “Singles” Tauchman certainly isn’t going to and neither is anyone else behind him in the order.

9. J.A. Happ needs to shut up. The Yankees have used off days and postponements to skip his starts and he isn’t happy. “You guys [in the media] are pretty smart,” Happ said. “It doesn’t take too much to figure out, sort of, what could be going on.” Happ is talking about his vesting option for 2020, which was tied to innings pitched prior to the shortened season, and though unknown, is likely still tied to innings pitched or possibly starts. The Yankees aren’t avoiding starting Happ to save money. If Happ were pitching like it was 2018, they would gladly send him to the mound and would want him on the team for 2021. Instead, Happ has been as bad and possibly worse in 2020 than he was in 2019. He’s only been allowed to make three starts (I would have never allowed him to start for the team again after two), and has given up nine earned and put 20 runners on base in 12 2/3 innings. He has walked 10 against only six strikeouts and has allowed four home runs. Happ being on the 2020 Yankees has been detrimental to the team and him being on the 2021 Yankees would be detrimental to next season. CC Sabathia with whatever is left of his shoulder would be a better option than Happ in the rotation. Happ needs to shut up and be thankful he’s still on the Yankees given his performance since Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS. He should feel lucky he still gets to call himself a major leaguer in 2020 because he doesn’t deserve to be one and shouldn’t be one in 2021.

10. In February, on paper, the 2020 Yankees were going to be so good. So, so good. Seven months later and their rotation after Cole includes a five-inning pitcher at most, a pitcher in his first “full” season after Tommy John surgery, a pitcher who has more walks than strikeout and a 6.39 ERA and no fifth starter. Their bullpen lost one elite option for the season and another is on the IL. Their lineup is currently missing four of it’s nine everyday players, including the 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-hitters. It feels like a minor miracle when the Yankees are able to score a run that isn’t the result of a Luke Voit home run and it will feel like an actual miracle the next time they win a game.

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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!