1. It’s beginning to look a lot like last season, everywhere you go …

The Yankees can’t beat good teams, they can’t win one-run games, they can’t win road extra-inning games, they have a top-heavy lineup (because of course they do since they ran it back with the same lineup from last year), an untrustworthy bullpen and now their Opening Day starter could be lost for the season and more. I have written many times that the 2026 season is just a continuation of 2025 and it’s never been more true.

2. The title of this blog was going to be ‘Max Fried Is a Mess’ as the lefty struggled through yet another start pitching out of the stretch, but then Matt Blake got on the phone in the dugout after the third inning and you knew nothing good was going to come from that. It was announced during the game that Fried exited with left elbow posterior discomfort, which will require imaging on Thursday. Sometime around 4 p.m. on Friday, it could be announced that Fried needs surgery.

3. The good news is we now know why Fried hasn’t looked like himself the last two starts and really for most of this season. (It was never the windup vs. the stretch.) The bad news is there’s a very good chance Fried is gone for this season and most of next season (if there is a next season). As I wrote after Tuesday’s game, the supposed rotation crunch would have a way of working itself out.

As Joe Torre would say, “These things take care of themselves,” and it’s possible that between now and Cole returning that someone else in the rotation goes down (knock on all the wood that that doesn’t happen).

I guess I didn’t knock on enough wood.

4. Wednesday’s 7-0 loss in Baltimore was as predictable as a getaway-day game at the end of a six-game road trip leading into a scheduled day off can be. Fried had nothing before exiting after three innings and the offense was lifeless. Most teams light up a starting pitcher they are seeing for the second time in 11 days, especially when they lit him up the first time. Not the Yankees. They allowed Kyle Bradish to throw six one-hit innings against them. The Yankees went 1-for-26 in the game with five walks and seven strikeouts. A truly pathetic effort.

5. Pathetic, but not unexpected. Six of the nine Yankees in the lineup on Wednesday boasted an OPS under .700. The three who didn’t were Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger and they combined to go 0-for-11 with a walk and three strikeouts. Because those three are the offense, when they don’t do anything, the Yankees don’t have a chance. They didn’t do anything on Wednesday and the Yankees didn’t have a chance.

6. Trent Grisham was back in the leadoff spot on Wednesday because why wouldn’t he be? Jazz Chisholm had the Yankees’ only hit in the game. Chisholm briefly went below a .200 average, but the fifth-inning double got him back above the Mendoza Line. Chisholm is 46 home runs and 39 stolen bases away from his 50/50 season. Remember the five minutes when it looked like Ryan McMahon may be coming out of his early-season slump? He went 1-for-18 with seven strikeouts on the six-game road trip. Spencer Jones had three plate appearances, walked twice and didn’t strike out. Progress? J.C. Escarra put up the latest 0-for day at catcher for the Yankees. I don’t know how the team thinks it can win a championship with the worst hitting catcher tandem in the majors.

7. And then there’s Anthony Volpe. Wednesday represented Anthony Volpe’s undeserved return to the lineup, and he responded by going 0-for-3 with a shallow flyout, a strikeout and a pop-up. The strikeout was magnificent. The Yankees trailed 3-0 and Volpe came up with two on and two out. Bradish threw him seven pitches and six of them were outside the zone, and inevitably, Volpe struck out swinging. The one pitch Bradish threw in the zone, Volpe took.

If only an 0-for-3 day at the plate was the worst part of Volpe’s 2026 debut. For the cherry on top, Volpe made an error at short in the eighth inning, booting a routine ground ball. Jose Caballero hadn’t made an error at shortstop since April 13 and then Volpe and Max Schuemann made errors at the position in back-to-back games.

Offensively, Volpe looked like a player who had a .565 OPS in Triple-A. Defensively, he looked like the same player with poor footwork and without the arm strength to make up for his fielding technique. He continues to not be a major-league shortstop (and likely not a major-league anything). At least Yankees fans don’t have to worry about Caballero losing his job because of this injury.

8. The only good to come from the loss was that the bullpen got a break as Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough ate the final six innings. All middle relievers got Wednesday off and will get Thursday off. That sets the Yankees up nicely for the weekend at Citi Field. With two days off and Cam Schlittler going on Friday, there is plenty of rest to be had for Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill and David Bednar.

9. I wish I felt better about this 27-17 team, but with Giancarlo Stanton not yet running, Caballero on the IL with a broken finger and Fried now headed for tests on his elbow, things are much different than they were when they left New York last Thursday. Six days ago, they were 14 games over .500, Volpe was in Triple-A, Fried was working on his command, Jasson Dominguez was getting a chance to bat cleanup and play left field and they were getting Carlos Rodon back. Then Dominguez sprained his shoulder, they got swept by the Brewers, Rodon got rocked in his return, Caballero broke his finger leading to the undeserved call-up for Volpe and Fried is injured. They have lost four games in the loss column to the Rays in the last six games.

10. There’s no better landing place for a team mired in a 1-5 run with a litany of injuries than the Mets. However, I’m now petrified that this banged-up, slumping, shitty version of the Yankees could get humiliated in Queens this weekend and jumpstart the Mets’ season. That can’t happen. I mean it totally could with the way the Yankees have played over the last six days, but it can’t in the sense that it would be demoralizing. I thought I would be able to spend Thursday’s day off relaxing with a night off from watching Grisham, Chisholm, McMahon, Volpe, Wells and Escarra play baseball, but I guess I will just spend it being worried about the possibility of losing to the Mets instead.

1. The Yankees held a 2-0 lead for the fourth straight game, but unlike the previous three games, they won this one. They won this one because they were able to extend their 2-0 lead into a 6-0 lead and held on to beat the Orioles 6-2 and end their four-game losing streak.

Trent Grisham was removed from the leadoff spot with left-handed Trevor Rogers starting, and Paul Goldschmidt — the leadoff hitter against lefties — hit the first pitch of the game out for the earliest 1-0 lead possible.

The Yankees exploded for five runs in the third. Cody Bellinger hit a one-out, bases-loaded RBI groundout to make it 2-0, Amed Rosario produced an RBI single on a ground ball to third and Grisham — batting sixth — hit a three-run home run to break the game open. (The Yankees were held scoreless for the final six innings.)

2. I have ripped Aaron Boone recently for continuing to bat Grisham out of the leadoff spot, and rightfully so. His three-run home run out of the 6-hole doesn’t change that. Let Grisham hit in the middle of the order and run into one every once in a while. If you remember, this is what I wrote about Grisham last week:

Grisham always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

After going 1-for-11 with two walks and four strikeouts in the first four games of the road trip, Grisham hit the three-run home run on Tuesday to reset his performance. That was likely his production for the next week. We’ll continue to see Grisham every day from now through the last game of this series and the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series and the four-game Blue Jays series, but we likely won’t see him add positive production again until Memorial Day Weekend. (But hey, the Memorial Day Weekend series is against the Rays, so it would be a good time for him to provide something offensively!)

3. Will Warren came an out shy of giving the Yankees six innings, but he actually gave the Yankees roughly eight unofficial innings. In the third, the Orioles had a runner on first with no outs and Warren got a double play ball that Max Schuemann threw away. Warren then got a second straight double play ball that Ryan McMahon fielded brilliantly and threw to second where no one was covering and all runners were safe. After getting a shallow fly ball for the second out of the inning, Warren produced his third double play ball of the inning and the Yankees turned it to end the inning unscathed.

In the fifth, Amed Rosario let a two-out ground ball go right through his legs to extend that inning. The Yankees have played extremely sloppy defense in the infield on this road trip, but that’s no surprise. That’s the way it’s been during the entire Boone era.

4. Warren was good, but not good enough for me to pass Ryan Weathers on the starting pitching depth chart. If it were up to me, Warren would be the odd man out once Gerrit Cole returns, but a lot can happen between now and then. As Joe Torre would say, “These things take care of themselves,” and it’s possible that between now and Cole returning that someone else in the rotation goes down (knock on all the wood that that doesn’t happen). But if everyone is healthy, and the Yankees don’t use a six-man rotation, Warren should lose his spot, even though he’s been very good this season.

5. Warren gave up a couple of runs in the sixth, but Fernando Cruz was able to get out of the inning without further damage. Jake Bird could only get out one of the three batters he faced in the eighth as he continues to do everything possible to not become a trusted reliever at a time when the Yankees are desperate for one. Tim Hill cleaned up Bird’s mess to get through the eighth and David Bednar pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to close it out.

6. It wasn’t all positive for the Yankees despite ending their losing streak. Jose Caballero was placed on the 10-day injured list with a broken finger, claiming he will be back after the 10 days are up. To make matters worse, Anthony Volpe was called up to play shortstop in Caballero’s absence.

After finally being sent down three years too late, Volpe is now back in the majors having done nothing to earn it. If Caballero doesn’t slide back on a pickoff attempt on Sunday, Volpe is in Triple-A right now, where he has hit .205/.238/.333 in 42 plate appearances. Volpe is undeserving of the call-up and simply “lucky” that an injury brought him up. I would have called Oswaldo Cabrera up and continued to play Schuemann at shortstop. Schuemann has provided strong at-bats and outside of the botched double play on Tuesday, you know he can make major-league throws from short to first.

7. Boone said “the expectation” is that Caballero will regain his starting role once off the IL, but I wouldn’t trust Boone to tell me what day of the week it is. He said during the offseason that Volpe would be the starting shortstop once he returned and look how that turned out. I know how this plays out. Volpe hits .350 for the next nine days and Caballero returns as a utility player.  Then Volpe goes back to being the non-major-league bat he was in 2023, 2024 and 2025, but the Yankees believe those first nine days with Caballero out were indicative of who he really is, so they continue to start him at shortstop for the rest of 2026. You may be laughing. I’m not. I know how Volpe plays and I know how the Yankees operate. The Yankees desperately want Volpe at shortstop over Caballero and this dumb, freak injury opened the door for them to get what they want without Volpe having to prove it in Triple-A. Any production, any at all will have Caballero on the bench when his injured-list stint is over.

8. With Volpe up, and Boone saying he’s going to play, I could see this being the lineup on Wednesday:

Trent Grisham
Ben Rice
Aaron Judge
Cody Bellinger
Jazz Chisholm
Spencer Jones
Ryan McMahon
Anthony Volpe
J.C. Escarra

It’s not the lineup I would use, but it’s likely the lineup Boone will use.

9. Kyle Bradish goes for the Orioles, and 11 days ago, the Yankees handed him his worst start of 2026: 4 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 2 HR. Bradish rebounded to strike out 10 over seven innings against the Athletics in his most recent start. The Yankees need to get to Bradish the way they did earlier this month because with the way the bullpen has been used since Saturday, the options are going to be limited and not very good on Wednesday.

10. Max Fried can’t have the lack of command he had in his last start against the Brewers or the last time the Yankees faced the Orioles on May 3. He has to give the Yankees length on Wednesday with the start time pushed up and the bullpen on fumes. The Orioles offense is obviously in another stratosphere compared to the shitty Red Sox offense, but the eight shutout innings he gave at Fenway Park back on April 22 would be very much appreciated in the series finale at Camden Yards. If Fried gives six innings and it’s a close game, it’s going to be hard to like the Yankees’ chances with who will be made available in relief.

1. No team blows a 2-0 lead like the New York Yankees. They held a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning on Saturday and lost. They held a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning on Sunday and lost. And they held a 2-0 lead again in the seventh inning on Monday and lost. Not only did they have a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning on Monday, but Ryan Weathers had a no-hitter going in the seventh inning and the Yankees still lost and fell to 0-4 on this nightmarish road trip.

The 3-2 loss on Monday dropped the Yankees to 3-9 in one-run games this season. They are the second-worst team in the majors in one-run games, they are 1-8 against teams over .500, they are 0-2 in road extra-inning games and the worst team in baseball in road extra-inning games since the automatic runner was implemented. But yeah, it’s early! It’s just bad luck! It’s a small sample size! It’s a coincidence! It has nothing to do with the manager, roster construction or history repeating itself.

2. The Yankees wasted six scoreless innings from Cam Schlittler on Saturday and 6 1/3 one-hit innings from Weathers on Monday. They have scored eight runs in the four games in Milwaukee and Baltimore and have lost them all.

Here is what I wrote about the Yankees’ offense on Monday:

The Yankees have a three-hitter lineup (Rice, Judge and Bellinger) no matter who you bat or the order you bat them in the other six spots, so just put those three at the top of the lineup, get them the most plate appearances and hope you score every time their turn in the lineup comes up. It’s the only way this offense can produce. And if they aren’t hitting, well, hope for dominant starting pitching because otherwise the team has no chance of winning.

The Yankees got a two-run home run from Rice and a dominant starting pitching effort on Monday and still lost. They lost because the non-Rice, Judge and Bellinger lineup spots are automatic outs. Those three combined to go 3-for-10 with a double, home run and two walks in the series opener against the Orioles. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-21 with a walk and six strikeouts. Those “2” were a Max Schuemann seventh-inning double and a Paul Goldschmidt ninth-inning single. Schuemann only played because Jose Caballero is dealing with a finger issue and Goldschmidt entered the game as a pinch hitter for Spencer Jones. (I love how Boone has removed Jones for a pinch hitter in two of four games so far. It took him three full years to remove Anthony Volpe for a pinch hitter.) So the regular, everyday starters not named Rice, Judge or Bellinger went 0-for-16 with a walk and six strikeouts.

3. Judge led off the sixth with a double when the Yankees were leading 2-0, but was unable to score after Bellinger moved him over to third. He was unable to score because Jazz Chisholm is the single-worst situational hitter in baseball. There’s no one I want up less than Chisholm with a runner on third and less than two outs. There isn’t a count Chisholm isn’t in an 0-2 hole in, and the combination of him always swinging for the fences and flailing at breaking balls away is maddening. I look forward to the day he is no longer a Yankee, even if that day should have been this past offseason.

For as bad as Chisholm is, Austin Wells is worse. It’s the middle of May and Wells has five RBIs. FIVE! He has one double this season. ONE! Wells needs to be 100 percent right with his challenges and throw out every would-be basestealer to negate how horrific he is at the plate.

4. Wells is awful, and yet, he has a higher on-base percentage than Trent Grisham, the $22 million man who is locked into the leadoff spot no matter how bad he is. Across a season or in an individual game, the leadoff hitter will have more plate appearance opportunities than any hitter on the team. So each day, Aaron Boone is willingly having a player with a worse on-base percentage than AUSTIN WELLS potentially get the most plate appearances on the team. So each game, the Yankees start with one out and no one on in the first inning and take away the guarantee of a first-inning plate appearance for Bellinger. Add in all of the automatic outs at the bottom of the lineup and the Yankees are playing each game with roughly 12 outs to work with offensively instead of the allotted 27.

5. The Yankees’ best chance to score is when Rice is set to lead off an inning because it means Rice, Judge and Bellinger will all bat in the same inning. This happened in the eighth inning on Monday with the Yankees trailing by a run. It was their last chance to tie the game or take the lead. The trio couldn’t have had a less competitive inning as Rice struck out swinging on four pitches, Judge flied out on the first pitch and Bellinger struck out swinging on four pitches against Rico Garcia. Where do other teams find relievers like Garcia when the Yankees are running out Camilo Doval? Oh, that’s right. Garcia was a Yankee last year for one game before being designated for assignment. Opposing hitters are 1-for-57 against him this season. I’m glad they don’t have an arm like that in the bullpen.

6. Garcia has been the Orioles’ closer and best reliever, so Craig Albernaz didn’t hesitate to use him against the Yankees’ best three hitters on Monday even though it was the eighth inning. Get through the eighth and worry about the ninth when you get there is how Albernaz managed. It’s a concept that is impossible for Boone to understand. It’s why you saw Doval face the top of the Brewers lineup in the eighth inning on Saturday instead of Bednar. Because Boone would rather manage to the save stat and not the actual situation, the Yankees lost a winnable game. The closer role is beyond dumb. Use your best reliever when the game calls for it. Maybe Bednar would have blown Saturday’s game. At least Boone would have lost the game making the right call. At least he would have put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Let Bednar face the top of the order in the eighth and worry about the ninth when you get there. Maybe the Yankees would have tacked on, or maybe Doval would have been more successful facing the bottom of the order.

7. After watching the same game unfold on Saturday and Sunday, the Yankees blowing a 2-0 lead once they went to the bullpen was inevitable on Monday. The Yankees failed to tack on, failed to do anything offensively the entire night except for one Rice swing and it was only a matter of time until the Orioles broke through. The breakthrough came on the very first batter the bullpen faced as Brent Headrick allowed a go-ahead, three-run home run to Coby Mayo, who has been so bad this season that he would be the worst hitter on the Yankees. He entered the game with a .495 OPS. To put into perspective how bad that is, J.C. Escarra has the lowest OPS on the Yankees at .567. Even with the three-run home run, Mayo’s OPS is still only .541. So he would still be the worst hitter on the Yankees by 26 points. And yet, he was the difference in the game on Monday.

8. It’s hard to be upset with Headrick for giving up the bomb since he has been overused and overworked. He leads the majors with 22 appearances. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most-used reliever in baseball in the first seven weeks of the season has allowed late-game home runs in his two most recent appearances. Headrick is tired and fatigued and when you’re tired and fatigued, the next steps are underperformance and then injury. We’re at the underperformance portion of Headrick’s season.

9. Boone has no idea how to manage a bullpen in Year 9 on the job as we saw on Saturday, but at some point he needs new options. Headrick, Tim Hill, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar are pitching all the time because Doval sucks, Jake Bird isn’t trusted, Paul Blackburn is the supposed long man and Ryan Yarbrough is like a fan who won a sweepstakes and a year-long experience to be a Yankee and just never appear in a game. The ‘Run It Back’ offense was an ill-advised strategy and remains so, but the ‘Run It Back’ bullpen is problematic. The Yankees’ offense isn’t good enough collectively to score consistently against anything other than No. 4 and No. 5 starters and the bullpen isn’t good enough to hold anything less than a three-run lead. They have the best rotation in baseball and they are going to piss it away with Grisham leading off, Chisholm batting fifth, a catching tandem of Wells and Escarra and a bullpen that lacks triple-digit velocity in an era in which every team other than the Yankees seems to have multiple triple-digit velocity options in the bullpen.

10. After a career year in 2025, Trevor Rogers is back to being a mediocre starter this season. But Rogers throws with his left hand, and if you do that, the talent and ability level barely matters when you face the Yankees, given the lack of right-handed quality bats they can run out there. Rogers will go on Tuesday for the Orioles against Will Warren, who is coming off his worst start of the season, and who is clearly going to be the odd man out of the rotation once Gerrit Cole returns with how good Weathers has looked. Warren needs a big performance on Tuesday to pull himself closer to Weathers in the battle to be the fifth starter. But even if Warren has a big performance, will the offense score more than three runs and will the bullpen be able to hold a late lead? So far on this road trip they have proved they won’t.

1. What a shitty weekend. The only positive from the weekend was that Cam Schlittler put up another scoreless start. Other than that it was the most frustrating, annoying and disappointing series of the season, a season which includes a sweep by the first-place Rays in Tampa. And with the sweep by the Brewers, the Yankees are now two games behind the Rays in the loss column in the division.

2. Max Fried was bad on Friday: 6 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 5 K. It was the second time in nine starts this season that Fried has allowed five earned runs. He allowed five or more earned runs twice in 32 starts last year. He has walked three batters in a game four times this season. He did so just five times last season. The Yankees are only 5-4 in Fried starts this year after going 22-10 when he started last year. As you can tell, Fried is nowhere near as good in 2026 as he was in 2025.

The biggest reason for this is his command. He stopped pitching from the windup a few starts ago to combat a lack of command, and while it may have looked like it helped against inferior lineups in Boston and Texas, it was a mirage. Fried stayed out of the stretch against the Orioles and couldn’t give the Yankees a quality start and stayed out of it against the Brewers and produced his worst start of the season.

Fried was bad, but he could have pitched nine innings of one-run ball and it wouldn’t have mattered because the Yankees were shut out. They had no answer for Jacob Misiorowski and they had close to no answer for the entire Brewers pitching staff all weekend, scoring six runs in three games with one of those six runs being the automatic runner in the 10th inning on Saturday. The Yankees struck out a ridiculous 39 times in the series and are now 1-8 against teams above .500.

3. If you think that stat doesn’t matter, you’re kidding yourself. It was just last year that the Yankees racked up 94 wins by feasting on the league’s worst teams from late August through the end of the regular season and then barely eked by an injury-ravaged Red Sox team and were humiliated by the Blue Jays, two teams they couldn’t beat during the regular season. Beating up on bottom feeders for six months is how the Yankees are built, but getting shut down by the league’s best is also how they are built.

The idea the Yankees were unfortunate to draw Jacob Misiorowski, Kyle Harrison and Logan Henderson in a three-game series is silly. The Yankees had Fried, Schlittler and Carlos Rodon going for fuck’s sake. It’s not like they were trotting out Luis Gil, Elmer Rodriguez and Carlos Carrasco. If anything, the Brewers with their lack of power were unfortunate to draw Fried, Schlittler and Rodon. But the Brewers — a team with limited slug that succeeds on making contact and limiting strikeouts — beat up on two of the Yankees’ starters, came back against their best middle reliever, walked off their second-best middle reliever and also walked off their closer. The only way the Yankees were winning a game in the series was if Schlittler pitched a complete-game shutout in the second game because asking the Yankees’ untrustworthy bullpen to preserve a two-run lead with nine outs to go was too much to ask.

It didn’t have to be that way. The Yankees could have won on Saturday if not for a lack off offense, a lack of Baseball IQ (Judge’s baserunning in the 10th and Hills’ decision to throw to third in the 10th), a lack of defense and a lack of a competent manager in the game. Somehow Aaron Boone is making Year 1 mistakes in Year 9. There is only one person in the world who thought Camilo Doval in the eighth inning of a one-run game against the top of the Brewers lineup was the right call on Saturday. Unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually gets to make the decisions.

4. I don’t blame Doval for coughing up the lead in the second game. Doval sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t keep himself on the roster when he couldn’t get anyone out last year. He didn’t put himself on the roster to begin this year and he hasn’t kept himself on it either. Boone had roughly 57 different ways to navigate the late innings on Saturday and chose an option that wasn’t any of those.

If you’re of the mindset “Blame the pitcher, not the manager,” you’re a fucking fool. If I were asked to get through the eighth inning on Saturday and coughed up the lead, would those same fans be saying “Blame the pitcher, not the manager” after the inevitable result? (Let’s be honest: I would have protected the lead.) The only job a manager truly has is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Boone fails to do that in nearly every close game the Yankees play. It’s why the Yankees suck in one-run games. It’s why they are the worst team in all of baseball on the road in extra innings. Because it takes strategy, creativity and intelligence to win in that setting. Boone lacks all of those things. He has since the day he was wrongfully given the job.

“We’re really good,” Boone said after getting swept, “like, we had a bad series.”

Oh shut the fuck up. You sound just like Brian Cashman calling his 82-80 Yankees “really fucking good” after the 2023 season. You’re a fake good team, Boone. The same kind of fake good you were last year when you were run out of the playoffs and the same kind of fake good you were in 2024 when you were given a red carpet to the pennant through two AL Central opponents before getting embarrassed in the World Series. If you ever wondered how anyone could have used using Nestor Cortes over Hill in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, well, it’s games like Saturday that remind you what Boone is capable of.

5. I should have seen Sunday’s loss coming. I’m still upset with myself for thinking the Yankees coming off back-to-back losses with just two non-automatic runner runs in the series would show up on Sunday. I should have known better with Carlos Rodon starting.

If you’re playing in a Major League Baseball game, there are no excuses for your performance. Rodon missed the first six weeks of the season rehabbing from offseason surgery and was deemed ready to start on Sunday. I don’t want to hear that it was his first start of the season. Whether his first start came in March in San Francisco after not needing rehab starts or on Sunday in Milwaukee after needing them, it doesn’t matter. The games all count and all count the same and Rodon was putrid.

Rodon blew a two-run lead, walked five (three on four pitches), hit a batter and allowed three earned runs in 4 1/3 innings. Welcome back!

6. When the Yankees failed to score in the ninth inning on Sunday the game was essentially over and I’m glad it ended it when it did in the bottom of the ninth. If Bednar didn’t give up the walk-off home run in the ninth, then only one of these two endings was going to unfold with Doval warming up as the next reliever to come in.:

1. The Yankees don’t score in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.
2. The Yankees score one run in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.

The Brewers could have given the Yankees 25 extra innings to score on Sunday and they wouldn’t have. They had no answer for the Brewers bullpen — a staff full of triple-digit fastballs — while the Yankees only triple-digit arm in their pen is Doval, who has no idea where the ball is going once it leaves his hand. The Yankees’ best relievers are Bednar, a closer whose best pitch isn’t a fastball, Tim Hill, a left-on-left ground ball specialist, Fernando Cruz, whose best pitch is a splitter, and Brent Headrick. The Yankees don’t possess a single arm that can come in and miss bats or miss spots and still succeed because of velocity. Their relievers have to have impeccable command because they all rely on trickery and deception to get outs.

7. Fried and Rodon stunk, the bullpen wasn’t very good, Boone proved he’s still an idiot all these years later, but the worst part was the offense. Ben Rice did nothing all weekend and is 0-for-13 since returning to the lineup and Aaron Judge hit a solo home run on Sunday. When those two have a series like that, it’s always going to be hard to win.

To make matters worse, Jake Bauers hit a home run in Friday’s comeback against the Yankees, Gary Sanchez was in the middle of the Brewers’ comeback rally on Sunday and also gunned down Judge trying to steal second late in the game. Here’s what I wrote before the series started:

Ezequiel Duran had a monster series against his former team (5-for-10 with a double, home run, five RBIs, four walks and a steal) because why wouldn’t he? That’s the Law of Ex-Yankees. Oswald Peraza did it to them last month with the Angels. Carlos Narvaez hit the only home run against Cam Schlittler this season. Randal Grichuk will likely get a big hit against them when they play the White Sox. That’s how it goes. The Brewers employ both Gary Sanchez and Jake Bauers, so get ready for that duo to do something special this weekend.

8. It’s disturbing that Trent Grisham is still batting leadoff for the Yankees. Why would anyone want Grisham to theoretically receive the most plate appearances on the team? Why would anyone not want Cody Bellinger getting a guaranteed plate appearance in the first inning? Again, only one person in the world could believe in the Yankees lineup construction, and unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually fills out the lineup card.

9. This should be the lineup against right-handed starters:

Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Trent Grisham, DH
Spencer Jones, CF
Jose Caballero, SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Who cares, C

This should be the lineup against left-handed starters:

Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Amed Rosario, 3B
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Spencer Jones, CF
Who cares, C

Yes, bat Rice leadoff against both, since he hits both. Yes, sit Grisham against lefties. Yes, DH him and play Jones in center field against righties. Yes, pit the catcher ninth, I don’t care which catcher it is, they both suck.

The Yankees have a three-hitter lineup (Rice, Judge and Bellinger) no matter who you bat or the order you bat them in the other six spots, so just put those three at the top of the lineup, get them the most plate appearances and hope you score every time their turn in the lineup comes up. It’s the only way this offense can produce. And if they aren’t hitting, well, hope for dominant starting pitching because otherwise the team has no chance of winning.

10. I’m sure the Yankees will beat the shit out of the Orioles the next three days. Lose to a good team and beat up on bad teams. It’s the Boone era summed up. It’s why he has so many regular-season wins in an era of tanking and limited quality teams. Beating up on the Orioles has been the signature of the Yankees over these last nine years and this week should be no different. Improve the record, inflate the run differential and have everyone thinking being 1-8 against the Athletics, Rays and Brewers isn’t a big deal, when in fact, it’s a huge deal.

1. After Paul Blackburn “opened” Thursday’s series/season finale with the Rangers with a scoreless first inning, the Yankees hit two “triples” in the span of three batters to take a 1-0. lead Paul Goldschmidt hit a defense-aided triple in the leadoff spot, and after an Aaron Judge lineout to third, Cody Bellinger hit a defense-aided triple to right field.

Amed Rosario and Jazz Chisholm both struck out to strand Bellinger at third and from innings 2 through 5 it seemed like the Yankees may have missed their opportunity to get to MacKenzie Gore and take a sizable lead. The Yankees stranded a leadoff double in the second and two runners in the fourth. The Yankees trailed 2-1 in the sixth before Trent Grisham hit a bases-clearing, three-run double off Gore to take a 4-2 lead. They would add three more in the sixth, and another in both the seventh and eighth on their way to a 9-2 win. The Yankees finished the season 4-2 against the Rangers with all six games oddly coming in a 10-day span. The only two losses were in games started by Nathan Eovaldi.

2. It was the Yankees’ sixth straight series win, and because the Rays never lose, the win kept the Yankees a half-game ahead in the division. On a day when the Yankees won once again, it wasn’t all good as Ben Rice was kept out of the lineup for a third straight game, Jose Caballero was held out after getting hit by a pitch on Wednesday and Jasson Dominguez crashed into the left-field wall making a catch to lead off the game. Dominguez suffered a sprained AC joint that will put him on the injured list for some time, but he seems fortunate to have avoided a concussion.

3. Suddenly, the healthy-to-begin-the-season lineup is now without Giancarlo Stanton, Rice has missed three-and-a-half games, Caballero missed a game and Dominguez is headed to the IL. One-third of the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup is injured to some degree and the Yankees’ cleanup hitter throughout this week is now out as well.

4. All of this means Spencer Jones is headed to the majors. The left-handed body double of Judge, Jones has been the minors’ best power hitter for a second straight season, but his power is accompanied by an extreme strikeout rate. I don’t know if Jones will come up and hit a flurry of home runs this weekend in Milwaukee or if he will look like Todd Frazier swinging against Justin Verlander in the 2017 ALCS. All I know is Jones will provide more entertainment and a much higher potential ceiling than if Anthony Volpe or Oswaldo Cabrera — the only other two 40-man position players available — were called up instead of Jones.

5. It’s not ideal that Jones’ major-league debut will come with Jacob Misiorowski on the mound for the Brewers. Given Jones’ biggest flaw (striking out) and Misiorowski’s biggest strength (striking batters out), it’s as bad as a debut matchup as you could ask for. Misiorowski leads the majors with 14 strikeouts per nine innings and 59 in 38 innings this season). Maybe Jones gets missed-spot fastball and puts one in the seats.

6. If I know Aaron Boone, and I think I do as good as any Yankees fan, he will give Jones a soft landing spot in the lineup for his debut. I wouldn’t. I would put him right in the middle of the order. I would bat him cleanup and play him in the outfield.

Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, DH
Cody Bellinger, LF/RF
Spencer Jones, RF/LF
Trent Grisham, CF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Austin Wells, C
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Jose Caballero, SS

That’s the lineup I would use. But we all know there’s no possibility of that happening. It’s probably more likely that Jones hits cleanup than it is that Boone removes Grisham from the leadoff spot.

7. Grisham had a big day yesterday after I wrote the following about him:

I don’t know what it’s going to take for the Yankees to remove Trent Grisham from the leadoff spot, but with each 0-for-4, I would like to think it’s drawing closer. Grisham is hitting .164/.298/.353 on the season, and always seems to do just enough to reset his place atop the order. After a bad week, he’ll hit a ball out or pick up a pair of doubles to maintain his place in the lineup and then suck for the next week and then do something positive, over and over.

Grisham loves to beat up on bad pitching. He had a career year doing it last season, hitting 34 home runs. But none of those 34 home runs came against a pitcher who started a postseason game. He had a big weekend against a bunch of bad Orioles pitchers (5-for-15 with four doubles, a home run and three walks) and then in two games started by Jacob deGrom and Eovaldi, he went 0-for-8. Grisham will always hit bad pitching and then be an automatic out against elite starters, the kind of starters you see in October.

One day doesn’t change how I feel. Grisham did what Grisham does in the series: he went 0-for-8 against deGrom and Eovaldi and then hit the inferior Gore, who entered the game with 4.67 ERA and left with a 5.18 ERA. I want Rice or Judge getting the most possible plate appearances on the team. Not Grisham.

8. For the next three days, not only do Yankees fans need the Yankees to win, they also need the Red Sox to win. It’s a dirty, disgusting place to be, but that’s what’s needed with the Rays hotter than the Yankees. The Red Sox suck. They’re going nowhere. There’s no fear in them winning a couple or a few games against the Rays. The Rays are the real threat and they need to be stopped. After the weekend, Yankees fans can go back to laughing at a team batting Trevor Story’s .528 OPS in the cleanup spot and having Brayan Bello and his 7.44 ERA in the rotation. For now, the Rays need to lose.

9. Ezequiel Duran had a monster series against his former team (5-for-10 with a double, home run, five RBIs, four walks and a steal) because why wouldn’t he? That’s the Law of Ex-Yankees. Oswald Peraza did it to them last month with the Angels. Carlos Narvaez hit the only home run against Cam Schlittler this season. Randal Grichuk will likely get a big hit against them when they play the White Sox. That’s how it goes. The Brewers employ both Gary Sanchez and Jake Bauers, so get ready for that duo to do something special this weekend.

10. There’s nothing like going into a weekend series with Max Fried and Schlittler getting the ball in the first two games. Then in the third game, Carlos Rodon will make his first start of the season. Rodon instead of Luis Gil or Elmer Rodriguez will be a welcome change. Last season the Yankees scored 36 runs in a three-game, season-opening sweep of the Brewers in the Bronx. The year before, the Yankees scored 36 runs in a three-game series in Milwaukee with their only loss coming via a walk-off in Michael Tonkin’s first game as a Yankee. Whenever the Yankees play the Brewers, the bats seem to show up.