The Yankees’ winning streak ended at seven games thanks to J.A. Happ, and the Yankees only won two of their four games against the Phillies thanks to Aaron Boone. Now the Yankees head to Tampa for their biggest series of the season to date against their only true competition for the division.

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. It didn’t surprise me when DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge weren’t in the lineup on Thursday against the Phillies. That’s because nothing surprises me when it comes to Aaron Boone anymore. Truly nothing. These lines from Stanley Hudson in The Office do a good job of explaining it:

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!

One day Boone will elect to have David Hale close out a game rather than Zack Britton. Then the next day he’ll allow J.A. Happ to remain in a game for much longer than he should and relieve Happ with low-end relievers to put a seven-inning game out of reach. Then the next day he’ll sit his 1- and 2-hitters in the same game, only to eventually use them as pinch hitters anyway. The only days off from Boone’s idiotic decisions are the days the Yankees don’t play. I wrote back on Jan. 3 that my New Year’s Resolution would be to not get upset with Boone this season, but it only took a few games for me to break that promise and I don’t think I will ever be able to go more than three days without vehemently disagreeing with a decision of his.

2. How absurd was it that Boone needed to give LeMahieu and Judge the day off on Thursday? Consider this:

Oct. 19: ALCS Game 6
Oct. 20 to Feb. 11: Off
Feb. 12 to Mar. 12: Spring training
Mar. 13 to June 30: Off
July 1 to July 20: Summer Camp
July 21: Off
July 22: Off
July 23: at Washington (six innings)
July 24: Off
July 25: at Washington
July 26: at Washington
July 27: Off
July 28: Off
July 29: at Baltimore
July 30: at Baltimore
July 31: vs. Boston
Aug. 1: vs. Boston
Aug. 2: vs. Boston
Aug. 3: vs. Philadelphia
Aug. 4: Off
Aug 5: at Philadelphia (double header of two seven-inning games)
Aug 6: at Philadelphia

How much time off do the Yankees need?

3. You want to give players half a game off on the day of a doubleheader? Fine. Given all the time off I just listed (the Yankees have played 12 games in nearly 10 months) and the fact the doubleheader consisted of two seven-inning games, no regular player needed either game off, but OK, you tried to give everyone a game off. To then follow it up the next day saying you’re “trying to pick strategic days off” for LeMahieu and Judge and your strategy is to give them the same day off? What? What are we even doing here? The Yankees are managing this season as if it’s a 162-game season over six months. I get that the Yankees are a lock for the postseason with the expanded field of eight teams per league, but maybe try to finish with the best record in the American League and in baseball for once? Try to play the most amount of games possible at Yankee Stadium in October. Try to do everything you can to put the team in the best possible position to win the World Series for the first time in more than a decade.

4. Essentially, Boone threw away two of the three games in Philadelphia. He threw away the first game of the doubleheader by letting Happ face the lineup a second time in a seven-inning game and then letting his low-end relievers put the game out of reach, and then he threw away Thursday’s game by not playing LeMahieu and Judge in a game the Yankees would lose by one run. You think six, seven or eight more at-bats from LeMahieu and Judge wouldn’t have resulted in the run that was the difference? I can accept losing when the offense gets shut down or when the pitching just doesn’t have it. Only once this season have the Yankees really lost a game they had no chance of winning and that was the second game of the season against the Nationals. Their other two lossers were winnable games. This weekend the Yankees have four games in three days against the Rays, their only competition to win the AL East. One of the days there’s a doubleheader, so two seven-inning games. If Boone wants to prove things are different, play the everyday lineup in each of the four games against the Rays, create real separation in the division and then give guys days off. Boone is managing his lineup like the Yankees have already wrapped things up because they’re 9-3 when they haven’t won a single thing, at 9-3, they don’t have the best record in the AL or in baseball, and yet, they are handing out days off to guys that have essentially been off since October. The Yankees haven’t won anything with Boone managing and they haven’t won anything with the load management strategy the team lives by.

5. LeMahieu is so good. I have been calling him D(erek) J(eter) LeMahieu since last season because of his ability to hit in the cluch and to consistently produce base hits to right field. He was the Yankees’ best overall player in 2019 and if not for Judge carrying the team to wins for a week straight this season, LeMahieu would have to be considered their best player again. After his pinch-hit single in the ninth last night (good thing he didn’t play the whole game), he’s now hitting .429 with a 1.037 OPS. If he were to go 0-for-20 starting on Friday night, he would still be hitting .290. That’s how good he has been. There’s no other hitter I want up in a big spot and there’s no other player on the field I want the ball hit to. I love LeMahieu.

6. The Yankees have a starting pitching problem. Outside of Gerrit Cole’s three starts, they haven’t received at least six innings from any other starter. Only once in the nine non-Cole games did the Yankees’ starter even get to the sixth inning (Jordan Montgomery’s first start). Despite this, the Yankees have won 9 of 12 because their bullpen has been so good, and because Judge hit late-game, go-ahead home runs for nearly a week straight, but it can’t continue. It’s a recipe for disaster to ask you bullpen to get about 15 outs per night. The Yankees purposely tried to use this strategy in the postseason and look where it got them. It got them a six-game loss to the Astros and Zack Britton speaking out about how tired and overworked the bullpen was in the ALCS. To this point, Chad Green, Adam Ottavino and Britton have barely worked, but even the lesser relievers like Luis Avilan, Jonathan Holder and David Hale will begin to get run down, and with how much Boone loves to go to the lesser arms, it won’t end well if they are fatigued.

7. The starting pitching has to be better. If the Yankees’ only consistent starter is Cole this season then they might as well pack up the bats and balls now and try again in 2021 when Luis Severino is back and maybe the team is ready to give Deivi Garcia and Clarke Schmidt a chance. There’s no way the Yankees can get through the postseason with an additional best-of-3 round with only Cole and a bunch of three- and four-inning starts from their relievers. I do believe Masahiro Tanaka will be fine once his pitch count is back to normal and he’s allowed to go a normal length in a game, but even still, that’s only two starters. Montgomery needs to be better than he was on Thursday because Happ and James Paxton seem like lost causes.

8. There’s nothing left to say about Happ that I didn’t write on Thursday or that I didn’t talk about on Thursday’s podcast. He can’t get another start. The Yankees have options like Garcia and Schmidt at the alternate site in Scranton in the event of underperformance or injury on the roster. Well, here is as good of an example of underperformance as you might ever see. Happ hasn’t been good since the start of 2019, and he’s not going to magically return to the pitcher he was in 2018 between now and the end of September. Even if Happ did miraculously turn into that guy, would you feel confident giving him the ball for a postseason start? The Yankees need to give someone else a chance to join the rotation in Happ’s spot, and they needed to be given that chance the next time Happ is scheduled to pitch. The Yankees are long past the point of giving Happ opportunities to turn it around.

9. Welcome back, Gary Sanchez! After taking a fastball in the left arm on Wednesday with noticeably left the seams indented on his skin, Sanchez was back in the lineup on Thursday and hit a two-run, opposite-field home run to finally look like the Sanchez we have all come to know since historically beginning his career in 2016. Sanchez would fly out in his next at-bat, though it was a much better at-bat than we have seen from him over the first two weeks of the season, so maybe that home run will spark his turnaround. I have never stopped believing in Sanchez and as the President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club, I won’t stop believing in him. I might be the only member left in the club, but membership is going to start increase now.

10. What’s going on with Gleyber Torres? The Yankees’ shortstop had another 0-for-4 game on Thursday night and is now batting .132 with one home run and two RBIs on the season. (For as bad as Sanchez has been, he has as many home runs and one more RBI than Torres.) I guess the good news is the Yankees are 9-3 even though Torres and Sanchez have been automatic outs, Aaron Hicks is batting .207 and Brett Gardner has six hits (three of them just happen to be home runs). The Yankees have been scoring runs and winning because of LeMahieu and Judge, which is why it’s even more ridiculous they were both out of the lineup in the same game last night. But if the Yankees can win 75 percent of their games with two outs in their lineup, they will be OK. OK for the regular season that is. The offense can’t collectively slump (minus LeMahieu) in the postseason again.

***

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

The Yankees opened Yankee Stadium in 2020 by sweeping the Red Sox, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

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. I have long wondered what it would be like to get a full season from a healthy Aaron Judge. We almost got it in 2017 when he led the league in home runs, won Rookie of the Year and finished second for MVP, but a nagging second-half shoulder injury kept him from having an even better season that year. This year, Judge would have missed the entire first half of the season with the broken rib/collapsed lung injury that went undiagnosed from last September and we would have once again been deprived of a full season from him. But in this shortened 60-game season, we are seeing what a healthy Judge can do and that’s hit six home runs and drive in 14 runs through eight games, with all six of those home runs coming in the last five games. Judge has been the best player in baseball for the first week-plus of the season and is certainly the heavy favorite to win MVP right now (unless the season gets canceled, which could happen at any second). Judge powered the Yankees to a ninth-inning comeback win on Thursday, gave the Yankees the lead for good on Friday, gave the Yankees an early lead on Saturday and hit two go-ahead home runs on Sunday. Not even James Paxton’s horrible pitching or Aaron Boone’s nonsensical bullpen management can prevent the Yankees from winning when Judge is hitting like this.

2. The Yankees have a starting pitching problem. You might not think they do since they’re 7-1, but having every starter not named Gerrit Cole fail to go at least six innings is a recipe for disaster that will eventually catch up with the team and burn out the elite relievers the way it did in the postseason last year. No one is worried about Cole, and I’m not worried about Masahiro Tanaka, who was limited in his only start this season by a pitch count. After those two, it’s Jordan Montgomery, who looked good in his lone start, but it’s one start, and then it’s James Paxton whose fastball has disappeared and J.A. Happ who hasn’t been good since the moment before he threw his first pitch in Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS. Paxton was given extra days off following his outing in the second game of the season in D.C. when he recorded three outs and was pulled in the second inning with the bases loaded and no outs, and while he lasted longer in his second start (three innings), he was just as bad. Paxton allowed two runs in the first and three more in the third (only one was earned), finishing with this line: 3 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 1 HR. During his in-game interview ESPN, Aaron Boone told the broadcast Paxton “feels really good” despite the results. I feel really good too and also can’t get out major league hitters. Does that mean I can get a start? Paxton’s next scheduled start would come against the Rays next weekend, and I’m sure he’ll make that start, and I’m sure I’ll be writing something to similar to this about him after it.

3. Here was the Yankees’ starting rotation in January:

Gerrit Cole
Luis Severino
James Paxton
Masahiro Tanaka
J.A. Happ

Here was the Yankees’ starting rotation in February:

Gerrit Cole
Luis Severino: Tommy John surgery
James Paxton: back surgery
Masahiro Tanaka
J.A. Happ

Here is the Yankees’ rotation now:

Gerrit Cole
Masahiro Tanaka
Jordan Montgomery
?
?

I put question marks in the fourth and fifth spots because while they technically belong to Paxton and Happ, we are getting closer to both guys losing their spots in the rotation. If those spots were based on performance and not based on money owed they would already be out of the rotation. But the Yankees feel the need to try to find six to seven mph on Paxton’s fastball and try to salvage the sunk cost that Happ is at this point. The expanded postseason field erased any urgency the Yankees might have been managed with this season (though I think they would have been managed the same way if only five teams from the AL were going to the postseason), and it also erased any urgency the Yankees have when it comes to making drastic decisions like taking two veterans out of the rotation.

4. Thankfully, Montgomery looked as good in his season debut as he did in spring training and summer camp. It seems laughable now that it was Montgomery whose first turn through the rotation was skipped so the Yankees could use an opener and let Paxton and Happ pitch as well. If the playoffs started today, Cole gets Game 1, Tanaka gets Game 2 and Montgomery gets Game 3. I don’t even know that Paxton or Happ should be on the postseason roster if the playoff started today since what purpose would they serve? Let a huge lead dwindle? Let a big deficit grow bigger? In actuality, they would both be on the postseason roster considering Happ was on it last year when he was as bad, if not worse, than the duo has been this season. And how did Happ help out of the bullpen in last year’s postseason? By allowing a walk-off home run in Game 2 of the ALCS.

5. Boone needs to get better at managing the bullpen. In his third season as Yankees manager, he’s somehow gotten worse at deciding which relievers to use and when. Last Sunday in D.C., he was saved by the Yankees’ power after questionable bullpen choices. On Thursday in Baltimore, he let Jonathan Loaisiga pitch an unnecessary third inning with his elite relievers completely healthy and got saved by Judge in the ninth. On Saturday, he let David Hale stay in for a two-inning save because Zack Britton had warmed up too much recently, and Hale allowed the tying run to come to the plate in the ninth before getting saved by Andrew Benintendi being completely lost in the box. And on Sunday, he let Michael King pitch a fourth inning with a fully-rested Adam Ottavino, Chad Green and Zack Britton. King allowed a go-ahead home run to Rafael Devers and then Boone removed him from the game for Ottavino. He would rather have Ottavino pitch with the Yankees trailing by a run than in a tie game. Once again, Boone was saved by his offense.

6. The Yankees need two managers the same way some NFL teams have had a kicker for field goals and a kicker for kickoffs. Boone can be the clubhouse manager who keeps the team loose and pals around on road trips and speaks to the media, and then the Yankees can have an in-game manager, who makes every decision from the lineup card until the final out of the game because Boone has proven he can’t handle in-game strategy and he has less than two months to figure it out before his third postseason as manager. This could also go for general manager as well. Brian Cashman can make all the trades since that has been his forte, and another general manager can handle signing free agents, which Cashman has failed at aside from CC Sabathia and Cole, who were the easiest two free agents ever to sign.

7. Aaron Hicks is not a No. 5 hitter. He’s not a leadoff hitter. He’s not a 2-hitter or a 3-hitter or a cleanup hitter. He’s not even a 6-hitter. He’s not a top two-thirds-of-the-lineup hitter. Hicks belongs in the bottom third of the lineup. I don’t care that he’s a switch hitter. I don’t care that he can bat left-handed against right-handed starting pitchers. Hicks is a .241/.341/.432 hitter in a 1,583 plate appearances as a Yankee. He was outstanding for the first three months of 2017 (before getting hurt, of course), and he was very good in the second half of 2018, but that’s been it. He’s been a Yankee since 2016 and has had the equivalent of one full season as someone worthy of being a top two-thirds bat.

8. This is what the Yankees’ lineup should be, no matter which hand the starting pitcher throws with:

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

The Yankees would never write out that lineup though because they HAVE to separeate the right-handed bats, even if they purposely built a right-handed-heavy lineup, and even if the left-handed bats they would use to separate aren’t that good.

9. With Tommy Kahnle’s season and likely his Yankees tenure over after needing Tommy John surgery, the Yankees have 10 relievers on the roster, and only three “elite” relievers left with Aroldis Chapman still out. The “elite” relievers are Zack Britton, Chad Green and Adam Ottavino, and then there’s everyone else. Here is my bullpen pecking order based on trust and based on one inning:

Zack Britton
Chad Green
Adam Ottavino
Jonathan Loaisiga
Nick Nelson
Michael King
David Hale
Luis Avilan
Jonathan Holder
Brooks Kriske

10. I really like what I saw from Nelson in his major league debut over the weekend. How could you not? Nelson looks like he has the ability to join the elite group at some point and I know it was only one outing and one game, but the stuff and poise are clearly there. He deserves a look in a big spot in the near future, certainly more than Hale or Avilan or Holder.

***

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

The Yankees played the Orioles the last two nights, so without checking, we all know the Yankees won the last two nights. The winning streak against the Orioles from 2019 has carried over into 2020, and I don’t know if it will end until 2021.

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. Last season, the Yankees beat the Orioles on Opening Day before losing two straight to them. That was the last time the Yankees lost to the Orioles. The Yankees finished the season by winning 16 straight against the Orioles and going undefeated at Camden Yards. After these last two days, the Yanekes have now won 18 straight against the Orioles and 12 straight at Camden Yards. The Orioles are bad, very, very, very, very bad, and this trend of the Yankees beating up on them isn’t going away anytime soon. At some point, the Yankees will lose to the Orioles to break the streak, but in terms of beating up on them for 13-plus wins a season, that’s going to happen for at least the next few years. The Yankees have eight scheduled games left against the Orioles this season. Normally, visualizing a perfect 10-0 record against an opponent is outlandish, but I don’t think it is here. I think anything less than 8-2 against the Orioles this season is unacceptable, and that might be setting the bar too low.

2. Gerrit Cole wasn’t sharp again in his second Yankees start. He walked the first batter of his night and gave up a run in the first inning. Whenever someone reaches base against him, it feels weird. When a run is scored against him it feels almost fake. But in his first two starts, Cole hasn’t looked like himself, hasn’t thrown like himself and hasn’t resembled the pitcher who became the best pitcher in the world last year. Despite not being anywhere near the level he can and will be at, this is his line after starts against Washington and Baltimore: 11.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 12 K, 2 HR, 3.09 ERA, 0.686 WHIP. It’s rather frightening that Cole has pitched as “bad” as he will pitch all season and has put together numbers like that. His ability to grind out very good performances when he doesn’t have his best stuff is what separates him from nearly every other pitcher in the world, and it’s why these two starts from him are about as “bad” as it will get for him.

3. Why was Cole sent out for the seventh inning with a six-run lead and nine outs to get against the awful Orioles? Each pitcher has so many pitches in their arm over their career and the Yankees shouldn’t be willing to waste any of Cole’s, especially with a lead like that against a team like that. Cole was at 90 pitches, and while he didn’t look tired, this is what would have been his line had he been done after the sixth: 6 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. Instead he finished with this line: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7 K, 1 HR. It wasn’t necessary for him to return for one more inning, not when the Yankees currently have 11 relievers on the roster. If Aaron Boone was somehow worried about the Orioles scoring six runs before making nine outs, he could have turned to Chad Green, Adam Ottavino, Tommy Kahnle or Zack Britton, who had all pitched once so far this season, and who had all pitched once since Game 6 of the ALCS on Oct. 19, 2019. Boone wasn’t worried about blowing the lead though even after the Orioles made it a three-run game as he went to Luis Avilan after Cole.

4. Can Boone and the Yankees play the everyday lineup every day? Is it that hard? This isn’t a six-month, 162-game grind. It’s a two-month, 60-game sprint. While I get that the change to the postseason format made it virutally impossible for the Yankees to miss the postseason, playing more games at Yankee Stadium than on the road in October isn’t nothing. You would think after settling for not having the best record in the American League many times over the lazt 11 years, in which this team hasn’t won a championship and hasn’t even been to the World Series would change the Yankees’ mind about having regular-season urgency, but it hasn’t.

5. Not even this wild, pandemic-threatened season can change the Yankees’ mind. After unexpectedly having Monday and Tuesday off because of the threat of the Phillies being sick, the Yankees had as many off days as games played this season (three) and still don’t feel the need to play their everyday expected lineup every day. Maybe things would be different if the league didn’t change the postseason format to allow 53 perent of the teams into the postseason. Maybe then the Yankees would be playing like winning the division and finishing with the best record is worth something (which it is). I don’t think they would though.

6. Now in his third year as Yankees manager, Boone hasn’t improved with his bullpen managment at all. He actually might have gotten worse. In the second game of the series, leading by a run, Boone turned to Jonathan Loaisiga for the sixth inning following the rain delay. Fine. Loaisiga walked the first two batters he faced, but got out of it with a strikeout and double play. Then he went back to Loaisiga for the seventh. OK. Loaisiga put up another zero. Then he went back to Loaisiga for the eighth. Nope. Loaisiga gave up a two-run home run and the Yankees had blown a 5-0 lead. Ottavino had been used before the rain delay, so he wasn’t available. But that meant there were still nine relievers available aside from Ottavino and Loaisiga. Three of those relievers were Green, Kahnle and Britton, who had all pitched in one game this season, and again, one game since Game 6 of teh ALCS. Boone reported after the game that Kahnle wasn’t available, so that gets him off the hook for not using Kahnle, but not for not using Green. Thankfully, Aaron Judge hit a three-run home run in the top of the ninth and the Yankees retook the lead and went on to win when Britton finally came in and ended the game, but Boone’s bullpen management shouldn’t be forgotten because it’s this exact type of management that cost the Yankees the 2018 ALDS and could cost them again in the postseason. Boone stayed on 16 with the dealer showing a 10, and when the dealer turned over a 5 and pulled an 8 to bust, Boone won and so he thought he made the right decsion. I’m happy the Yankees won. I’m not happy that today Boone believes he made the right call because Judge saved him.

7. The Yankees have a starting pitching problem. Through five games, Cole pitched twice, James Paxton pitched and was pulled in the second inning, the Yankees had a bullpen game and Happ lasted four innings and was awful. Jordan Montomgery will finally pitch on Friday, and he was very good in spring training and Summer Camp, but again it’s spring training and Summer Camp, and Masahiro Tanaka will pitch on Saturday, and I trust him completely. But the Yankees kind of need Montgomery to be good because I don’t know when or if Paxton will bounce back after his back procedure and Happ might have a good start here and there along the way, but he’s finished. Back in February, the Yankees had the best offense and bullpen in baseball and a rotation of Cole, Severino, Paxton, Tanaka and Happ/Montgomery. Tanaka was going to be the fourth strarter! Now they have a rotation of Cole, Tanaka, hope Montgomery is good, hope Paxton can figure out how to throw hard again and hope Happ can give you a handful of quality starts. I have a bad feeling it will be another October of debating who to start in Game 3 because after Cole and Tanaka the Yankees might not have a third starter yet again.

8. DJ LeMahieu is so good it’s absurd. There hasn’t been a time when LeMahieu has been bad as a Yankee. Even with only a 1-for-5 peformance on Thursday, LeMahieu is batting .412 with a 1.059 OPS, and he does it so quietly. RBI single here, base knock there, solo home run here, clutch hit there. With the game so much about strikeouts and home runs these days, it’s refreshing to have a hitter on your team who rarely strikes out, is so hard to get out in general and can put just about any ball in play, and oh yeah, can play nearly everywehre on the infield. D(erek) J(eter) LeMahieu has been a perfect Yankee.

9. As President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club (and possibly the only remaining member of the club with his start to the season), I’m going to refrain from commenting on Sanchez’s offense through five games. I’m going to refer to the five-game sample size for now, but with each passing day without a hit and another game with multipe strikeouts, it’s becoming harder and harder to defend Sanchez. To put it as nicely as possible, his at-bats have been ugly. He’s had a few line drives that have been hit right at fielders, but for the most part it’s been swinging and missing, and it feels like he’s 0-2 before he steps in the box. I don’t know what Sanchez’s plan at the plate is, and right now, it doesn’t look like he has one other than to hope he gets a mistake fastball, even if what he thinks looks like a mistake fastball ends up being a slider low and away. Fortunately for Sanchez, the Yankees are winning because Sanchez is a popular target for criticism even when the team is winning, so if the Yankees were 2-3 or 1-4, he would be hearing it to the point that those who thought Austin Romine should start over him because of his defense would think Kyle Higashioka should start over him for his offense.

10. Sanchez isn’t the only hitless one on the team as Brett Gardner is also hitless, but got Thursday night off, though I’m guessing we will see Gardner back in the lineup on Friday. I’m not worried about either Sanchez or Gardner. They will come around. If I had to pick between the two for who I’m more worried about, I would pick Gardner based on his age and his decline over the last few years (minus the inflated home run numbers because of the super baseball). It would be nice if the two broke out on Friday or at least got a hit, so Michael Kay could stop talking about them being 0-for-2020.

***

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