1. The last time Dylan Cease took the mound at Yankee Stadium (May 7, 2025) he took a no-hitter into the seventh inning. He wasn’t quite as good through the first three innings of Tuesday’s game, but he was still very good, allowing just a broken-bat single to Trent Grisham and a walk to Cody Bellinger. When the Blue Jays scored three runs on four singles and a walk against Will Warren in the fourth inning, it seemed like the Yankees would be destined for another loss.

2. They weren’t. Cease completely unraveled in the fourth inning. He thought he had Aaron Judge struck out to begin the inning, but Judge challenged a 3-2 strike call and started walking to first base before home plate umpire John Tumpane could even announce the challenge. Judge was right and took first base. After a Bellinger flyout, Cease walked Jazz Chisholm. Cease had only walked four batters total over his last three starts and had walked three Yankees in 3 1/3 innings. Trying to rediscover the zone he threw a first-pitch fastball over the plate to Ryan McMahon, and while McMahon has swung through most fastballs thrown over the plate this season, he crushed this over the left-field wall for a game-tying, three-run home run. The next inning, with the game tied at 3, Grisham walked with one out and Ben Rice hit a two-run home run to right field to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead.

“It’s starting to get to the point where you just kind of expect it from Benny,” McMahon said of Rice. “He’s been locked in. He’s an awesome player, and he’s come through for us big time.”

3. With David Bednar and Fernando Cruz unavailable due to recent workloads, the Yankees would have to somehow get 12 outs, while protecting a two-run lead. After blowing a two-run lead nearly every game for the last week and a half, it would be a wild ride to the 27th out.

Tim Hill pitched around a two-out walk in the sixth. Jake Bird and Brent Headrick got through a two-baserunner seventh and Headrick pitched a 1-2-3 eighth. The Yankees were unable to tack on in the sixth, seventh and eighth, and when Camilo Doval emerged from the bullpen to protect a two-run lead in the ninth, I knew nothing good would happen.

4. Before you could blink, Doval walked the light-hitting Andres Gimenez to begin the ninth. (It was Gimenez’s fifth walk in 165 plate appearances this season.) Ernie Clement singled to right and in 15 seconds the Blue Jays had the tying runs on base with no outs. George Springer rocked a line drive up the middle that Doval was able to knock down for an out. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed with a sacrifice fly to make it 5-4 and Daulton Varsho singled to move the tying run to third with two outs and then stole second to put the go-ahead run on second. Somehow, Doval was able to get Kazuma Okamoto to ground out to end the game.

5. Doval could not give up an earned run for the rest of the regular season and I wouldn’t trust him for a second in a postseason game. I will never trust him. I don’t trust anyone who throws 102 mph and has no idea where the ball is going. Look at Doval’s delivery: When he releases the ball he’s not looking at the plate. He’s somewhat looking down and somewhat looking toward the on-deck circle and first-base dugout. The ball does not end up where the catcher sets up, and if it does, it’s not on purpose. When you throw a 103-mph cut fastball and a 91-mph slider and can’t strike anyone out, you know you don’t know where the ball is going and you know you can’t be trusted.

6. “Camilo bent, but he didn’t break,” Aaron Boone said. “To go through the heart of the order there to finish it off, I love that poise.”

What poise? Doval allowed two hits, a walk, an earned run, forgot to cover first base on a ground ball to the right side and had the tying run on third base and the go-ahead run on second base when the game ended. That’s poise?

7. The Yankees are going to lose a lot of games waiting for the trade deadline to improve their bullpen. It’s a strategy that cost them last year as well. There have to be internal options that are better than the options they currently roster. Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough are repetitive as long men who aren’t trusted in high-leverage situations. (Repetitive like having two left-handed catchers, both of whom can’t hit.) Doval can’t be trusted in any situation. Two of those three (if not all three) can be replaced. The problem is they are making a combined $10.6 million and owed money is always the No. 1 determiner in roster spots.

8. Warren was OK: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. Five of the seven baserunners against him came in one inning and that can’t happen. He can’t have these one-inning meltdowns and be great in all other innings. The Yankees need him to be more consistent and more economical. He forced the bullpen to get another 12 outs, and through 10 starts, he has failed to go five innings four times and has made it through six innings just three times.

9. Headrick will likely be unavailable on Wednesday. I would make Bednar unavailable again even if that means a cloudier path to 27 outs than the one on Tuesday night. Cam Schlittler better bring his best stuff to the mound on Wednesday and put up zeros, like seven or eight of them.

10. Schlittler will be going against Trey Yesavage who embarrassed the Yankees the last time he faced them in Game 2 of the ALDS. Yesavage has been very good (1.40 ERA) in four starts this season, but nothing like what he was in that game against the Yankees in October. Aaron Judge has one home run and a .699 OPS in the last 12 games. (A big reason why the Yankees went 5-7 in those games.) If there was ever a time for Judge to break out of this power slump, hitting a multi-run home run off Yesavage would be as good a time as any.

1. The Yankees led the Blue Jays 1-0 after another leadoff home run from Paul Goldschmidt. Then they trailed 3-1 after Ernie Clement and his .694 OPS hit a three-run home run. They tied the game up at 3, only to then trail once again after George Springer and his .566 OPS hit a home run. The Yankees were looking at a third-straight loss after being unable to handle the struggling Blue Jays and their struggling offense. The Yankees were getting beat by the Blue Jays the way they got beat by them throughout last season.

2. Trailing 5-3 with two outs and no one on and seven outs away from another defeat, Aaron Judge singled off Yariel Rodriguez and Cody Bellinger followed with a two-run home run off the top of the wall in right-center. After hitting three balls off the top of walls recently for doubles, Bellinger finally got a friendly bounce on one. Tie game.

Trent Grisham worked a pinch-hit walk and then Jazz Chisholm did something I forgot he was capable of and hit an opposite-field home run, a two-run shot off the left-field foul pole. Four two-out runs and a pair of two-run home runs had the Yankees in front 7-5.

3. After a scoreless eighth, a bad loss was on the verge of becoming a good win if David Bednar could get three outs before allowing two runs, a day after he couldn’t get three outs before allowing three runs. I wouldn’t have gone to Bednar on Monday. After allowing a run on 21 pitches on Friday and three runs on 23 pitches on Sunday, there is no way I would have called on Bednar to close out the Blue Jays. But Aaron Boone did, and the decision nearly cost the Yankees the game.

4. Bednar walked Clement and then gave up a double to Jesus Sanchez to make it 7-6. The tying run was in scoring position and Bednar had already thrown 13 pitches without recording an out. Brent Headrick (who I would have used in the ninth) immediately began throwing with intense urgency.

Bednar bounced back to strike out catcher Brandon Valenzuela and then walked pinch hitter Yohendrick Pinango to load the bases and turn the lineup over. Bednar had thrown 24 pitches and gotten just one out and with the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first, the Blue Jays had Springer due up and Guerrero Jr. on deck.

5. The best-case scenario was the Blue Jays would tie the game, the Yankees would go down in order with the bottom of the lineup due up in the ninth and then hopefully win it with the top of the order in the 10th. I didn’t think there was a chance Bednar was getting out of the jam given his recent workload, his pitch count, fatigue and who was up.

Bednar fell behind Springer 3-0 and my hypothetical best-case scenario seemed impossible. Bednar’s first two pitches to Springer were low and away and the 2-0 pitch missed by a mile. I figured Bednar was either going to walk in the tying run or groove one for Springer to hit off the Poland Spring sign on the facing of the second deck in left field. Bednar threw Springer a 3-0 splitter at the very bottom of the zone, and Springer, looking to do damage, swung through it. Bednar came back with another splitter on the same plane for another swinging strike and then a third splitter on that same plane for a third straight swing-and-miss. Two outs, miraculously.

6. Guerrero Jr. walked to the plate and after picking up his second extra-base hit since April 28 and with as many home runs on the season as Austin Wells, I started to have nightmarish flashbacks from the ALDS. If you believe in due, no one would be more due than Guerrero Jr. facing an exhausted Bednar in the Stadium that has become his the way the old Yankee Stadium was David Ortiz’s. But instead of humiliating the Yankees like he did last October, Guerrero Jr. got an elevated splitter on 3-2 and did nothing with it, hitting a ground ball to second for the final out of the game.

7. “It’s not gonna happen again,” Bednar said he told himself when he fell behind Springer 3-0, not allowing himself to blow a second straight game.

“There a way out of every situation,” Bednar said.

Too many times this year the Yankees’ bullpen has been unable to find their way out of situations. It’s like they have been trapped in a mirror maze that doesn’t actually have an exit. The bullpen was rocked on the 2-7 road trip and Bednar was the worst of all the relievers during that stretch, allowing 11 baserunners, six earned runs and two game-changing home runs in 5 2/3 innings.

8. “Man, that was awesome,” Ryan Weathers said of Bednar bouncing back to retire Springer after falling behind 3-0.

The reason Bednar was needed in the game and the offense’s seven runs were nearly not enough was because Weathers wasn’t any good in what was easily his worst start of the season. He gave up five earned runs and wasn’t able to give the Yankees length (5 1/3 innings) at a time when they desperately need it. It’s been a crazy few weeks for Weathers with his paternity leave then his illness then getting pushed back a day from Sunday to Monday, so hopefully the next time through the rotation is more of a normal setting and routine for him.

9. It will be Will Warren against Dylan Cease on Tuesday night. Both righties are having great years, but Cease is having an All-Star season with a 2.41 ERA and a league-leading 75 strikeouts. Cease has had three games with double-digit strikeouts this season.

Cease pitched against the Yankees on May 7 last season when he was with the Padres. He took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in that game in what was an eventual 4-3 Yankees win in 10 innings. At the time, Cease was struggling mightily and still went into Yankee Stadium and threw 6 1/3 one-hit innings with nine strikeouts. Right now, Cease is pitching the best he has in his career, so yeah, I’m worried about Tuesday’s game.

10. On a non-game note, Gio Urshela announced his retirement from baseball. Urshela spent three years with the Yankees (2019-2021) and they were easily his three best seasons in the majors. Urshela hit .292/.335/.480 with the Yankees and .270/.314/.407 for his career. Urshela was part of The Replacement Yankees of 2019 (after Miguel Andujar got injured diving back to third base on a pickoff attempt at the start of the season), the Covid Yankees of 2020 and then the Disappointing Yankees of 2021.

Urshela was one of only two Yankees (DJ LeMahieu was the other) to hit (.828 OPS) during the 2019 ALCS loss to the Astros. In the crushing Game 6 loss, he walked in his first plate appearance, homered in his second, singled in his third and singled to lead off the ninth. He was on base when LeMahieu hit the game-tying home run in the ninth that is now just a wasted footnote in Yankees history like Alfonso Soriano’s go-ahead home run in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.

The Yankees traded Urshela way before 2022. The wanted to upgrade third base, so they took on the $51.5 million owed to Josh Donaldson.

“We appreciate what Gio has done,” Brian Cashman said at the time, “but he’s not Josh Donaldson.”

Over the next two years, Urshela hit .290/.335/.413. Donaldson hit .204/.293/.386, was released midseason by the Yankees and then paid $8 million by the Yankees in 2023 to not play baseball.

1. After the Yankees were swept by the Brewers last week, Aaron Boone called his team “really good” and said, “We had a bad series.”

Then they had another “bad series” and lost two of three to the Orioles.

Then they had another “bad series” and lost two of three to the Mets.

The Yankees finished their nine-game road trip 2-7. Boone shrugged off concerns about the team’s back-to-back-to-back “bad series” by saying, “We just had a terrible road trip.”

First, it was one “bad series” and then there was a second one and then another one, culminating in the Yankees’ worst regular-season loss since the day after the trade deadline last August. But sure, it was just a terrible road trip! Nothing more. No reason to be concerned. Nothing in the Yankees’ past under Boone has ever started out this way.

Except it has.

2. In 2022, the Yankees went 22-33 from July 9 to September 9.

In 2023, they went 26-42 from June 6 to August 27.

In 2024, they went 10-23 from June 15 to July 6.

In 2025, they went 27-34 from June 13 to August 23.

In each of the last four seasons the Yankees had a midseason meltdown that either pushed them to nearly blowing a 15 1/2-game division lead (2022), caused them to miss the playoffs (2023), forced the division to go down to the wire (2024) or pushed them into the Wild Card Series (2025).

3. This is what the AL East standings looked like during the Yankees’ day off on May 7 before their nine-game road trip began.

This is what the AL East standings look like now after their catastrophic loss to the Mets on Sunday.

Sunday’s loss was very, very bad. That wasn’t a “That’s baseball, Suzyn” kind of loss. That was a humiliating and demoralizing loss to a last-place team decimated by injuries. A day after the Yankees failed to score a run with the bases loaded and no outs in their comeback attempt against against the lowly Mets, they couldn’t protect a four-run lead against the lowly Mets.

4. The difference between winning and losing on Sunday was as simple as David Bednar needing to retire Tyrone Taylor. Taylor entered the game with a .488 OPS, which would make him the worst hitter on the Yankees, a team that rosters Ryan McMahon, Anthony Volpe, Trent Grisham, Austin Wells, J.C. Escarra and Max Schuemann. For some reason, Wells and Bednar agreed on throwing Taylor a first-pitch breaking ball and Taylor sent it a mile down the left-field line.

Bednar is a problem. He’s not the Yankees’ biggest problem, but he’s certainly one of them. Whenever you have a closer whose best pitch isn’t some kind of fastball, it’s a problem, and Bednar’s best pitch isn’t his fastball, and he’s reluctant to even throw fastballs. Bednar has pitched in 20 games this season. He has allowed at least one baserunner in 15 of those games, has allowed at least one earned run in nine of them and has put 33 runners on in 20 innings. He has a 4.95 ERA and a 1.550 WHIP. Those are awful numbers for any reliever, let alone someone who is supposed to be the closer on a supposed contender. I despise Camilo Doval and want him off the team and he has a 5.19 ERA and 1.038 WHIP. Yes, Doval is currently a better pitcher than Bednar, which makes Bednar the worst reliever on the team. The Yankees have the worst reliever on the team closing out games.

5. Crazy, right? Not at all. This is what the Yankees do. They let the worst statistical middle reliever on the team close out games. They let Alex Verdugo play a full season in left field and Stephen Drew a full season at second base. They build an all-world lineup in the mid-2000s and don’t build a rotation around it. They tell you for three years that Volpe is “fucking elite” despite being the worst bat by every traditional and analytic metric for those three years. They construct a left-handed catching tandem with quite possibly the two worst offensive catchers in the majors. They let Clay Holmes blow 13 saves in 2024 before removing him from the role in September. They tell you there’s no room for Bryce Harper on the team because they already have Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Aaron Hicks and Clint Frazier. They tell you how good Hicks is and then eventually release him. They take on $51.5 million owed to Josh Donaldson and call any fans who don’t believe he can still hit “crazy” before eventually releasing him. They do things like continue to bat Grisham leadoff.

6. I don’t know what more Grisham has to do to prove he shouldn’t lead off. Boone had Grisham right back in the leadoff spot on Sunday, and sure enough, Grisham put up another 0-for-5 to drop his slash line on the season to .166/.293/.338. The Yankees are willingly giving the most possible plate appearances to a player batting a .166, who gets on base less than 30 percent of the time. Grisham’s on-base percentage is one point higher than Wells’. Wells is closer to being sent to Triple-A than he is to leading off, and yet, the Yankees are using a player with an on-base percentage one point higher than Wells’ to lead off. Grisham is hitting .123/.277/.228 in the leadoff spot.

7. Again, the offense is THREE BATTERS. THREE. It’s Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. Get those three the most possible plate appearances. Stop starting every game with one out and no one on, especially when you are already giving up outs when McMahon plays and in the catcher’s spot. And that’s not even counting the days Volpe and Jazz Chisholm are also automatic outs, which is a lot of the time.

8. “The boys are playing hard though,” Judge said after Sunday’s crushing loss. “The biggest thing is guys are playing tough and making the plays they need to, but just coming up a little bit short.”

Phew. I thought the biggest thing in Major League Baseball was winning, but thankfully, it’s not. The biggest thing (from someone who has never won anything) is “playing tough.” Maybe the Yankees can hang a pennant on the facing of the 300 level for that next to their last championship pennant of 17 years ago. “2026 Playing Tough Champions.” They can also toss one up for the 2017 championship Brian Cashman has said he feels they won, even though they didn’t even win the American League and would have had to beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

Judge said “Guys are … making the plays they need to, but just coming up a little bit short.” So then they aren’t making the plays they need to? Did Bednar make the play he needed to when he couldn’t get three outs before giving up three runs? Did the five-man infield make the play they needed to when they collided to allow the winning run to score in the 10th inning? No and no. Instead, the Yankees fell to 0-3 on the year in road extra-inning games as they continue to be the worst road extra-inning team since the automatic runner was implemented in 2020. They fell to 3-10 in one-run games on the season and gave the Mets their first win when trailing after eight innings in 92 chances.

9. If you think the Yankees are a “really good team” like Boone because they are 28-19, wake up. They were 26-12 just 10 days ago. And 10 days ago they were a much different team. The team on May 18 is not the team from May 7. That team had Max Fried and Jose Caballero. That team had Brent Headrick dominating the late innings. That team had Giancarlo Stanton almost ready to start running in his rehab, and that team was about to get Carlos Rodon back and Gerrit Cole soon after Rodon.

Then Fried got hurt. Then Caballero got hurt. Headrick allowed at least one run in every game he pitched in on the road trip. Stanton’s rehab has stalled and he’s still not running, and Rodon has been the left-handed Carlos Carrasco since returning. If Cole comes back and isn’t himself, “It’s right in front of us” won’t be too far behind.

10. The Yankees will play the Blue Jays for the next four days in the Bronx. The Blue Jays are four games under .500 with a minus-11 run differential. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has as many home runs as Wells this season and an OPS lower than Amed Rosario’s. After getting dominated by the Brewers, losing a series to the Orioles and being embarrassed by the Mets, the Yankees getting beat up by the struggling Blue Jays and Guerrero Jr. blasting them like he did in last year’s ALDS would be the least surprising result ever. We’re about to find out if the last nine games were “just a terrible road trip.” If not, the annual Boone Swoon will have arrived much earlier than June this year.

1. Friday’s 5-2 Yankees win was a stereotypical Yankees win: Cam Schlittler started and the back-to-back-to-back trio of Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger showed up. When those two things happen, the Yankees win.

Schlittler earned his sixth win of the season with 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball. The one run came on a Juan Soto solo home run on an 0-2 pitch because sometimes generational talents do things no one else is capable of. (It was just the second home run Schlittler has allowed this season.) And Rice, Judge and Bellinger went 5-for-14 with a double and a home run. They finally received some support from Jazz Chisholm, who had his best game of the season, going 3-for-4 with a two-run double and a walk while wearing Giancarlo Stanton’s pants.

2. Rice, Judge, Bellinger and Chisholm hit in the 2-3-4-5 spots in the order on Friday and combined to go 8-for-18 with all of the Yankees’ three extra-base hits and four of their five RBIs. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-18 with three walks and eight strikeouts. The “2” in the 2-for-18 both came from Spencer Jones, who had his first-ever multi-hit game, drove in a run and happened to break Clay Holmes’ leg with a line drive up the middle.

3. Trent Grisham was a total zero in the leadoff spot on Friday with his latest 0-for-5. Again, here is what I wrote about Grisham recently:

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.

And here is what I wrote about Grisham after his three-run home run in Baltimore:

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.

As expected, Grisham is 1-for-11 with five strikeouts since that three-run home run.

4. Anthony Volpe had the second three-walk game of his career on Friday and then a two-walk game on Saturday. Don’t think this is Volpe having good plate appearances or battling up there to earn walks. He did nothing to earn them other than stand there. What do I mean by that?

Volpe’s first walk was a four-pitch walk in which no pitches were close to the zone.

Volpe’s second walk was a five-pitch walk. The only pitch close to the zone was a 3-0 fastball he rightfully took, and even that pitch barely grazed the outside corner.

Volpe’s third walk was a seven-pitch walk in which he fouled off a pitch when the count was 2-2.

Volpe’s fourth walk was a four-pitch walk in which no pitches were close to the zone.

Volpe’s fifth walk was a five-pitch walk in which he never swung the bat.

Volpe swung once in the 25 pitches that produced five walks because every pitch was non-competitive. He didn’t have to battle or grind 0-2 counts into walks. He didn’t have to fight off pitches. Mets pitching made it so he didn’t have to think about swinging.

5. Why does this matter? Because what I wrote a few days ago:

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.

The Yankees love to tell their fans what they have watched isn’t reality even when it is. They will twist and spin any tiny positive about Volpe into reasons why he is breaking out or turning a corner. Five walks that you or I could have also picked up by just standing in the box without a bat on Friday and Saturday should not be used to support Volpe. And yet I’m worried the Yankees will use them to do just that. Volpe remains hitless this season and also left the bases loaded on Saturday with the go-ahead run on base.

6. Volpe wasn’t the only one to leave the bases loaded on Saturday. Amed Rosario and Grisham left them loaded before him. There is no swing-and-miss team among actual contenders like the Yankees, especially in situational-hitting spots. John Smoltz mentioned during the broadcast how it’s unlikely the Yankees will ever win a championship with the amount of swing-and-miss in their lineup. Thanks, John. Yankees fans have only known this for a decade. The Yankees have already struck out 25 times in the series. Forty-six percent of the Yankees’ outs in this series have come via strikeout.

7. The Yankees needed Rosario or Grisham or Volpe to come through with the bases loaded on Saturday because Carlos Rodon was awful for the second straight start. (Reminder, Rodon makes more than $800,000 per start.) So far this season he has produced this line: 8 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 8 BB, 10 K. Welcome back, Carlos! Happy you’re here for this season … and next season … and the season after that.

There should be one more earned run on Rodon’s ledger, but baseball has idiotic scoring rules. Rodon threw a wild pitch with the bases loaded that led to a run on Saturday and he threw away the wild pitch to lead to a second run on the disastrous play. Because the second run came on an error it didn’t count against his line even though it was his error. It was one of the least athletic plays in baseball history as his “throw” home looked like Happy Gilmore’s caddy throwing a rock into the water.

8. Oswald Peraza torched the Yankees when the Angels were in the Bronx a month ago. Ezequiel Duran, who was traded for Joey Gallo, did the same last week. Jake Bauers’ home run off Brent Headrick ignited the Brewers’ comeback last weekend and Gary Sanchez was in the middle of the Brewers’ rallies and throwing out would-be basestealers as the Yankees were swept. Soto is 3-for-5 with a home run and three walks this weekend. The only two home runs Schlittler has allowed this season have been to former Yankees Carlos Narvaez and Soto. Luke Weaver was allowed to leave in free agency because he couldn’t get anyone out at the end of last year and Devin Williams was allowed to leave because he couldn’t get anyone out for nearly all of last year. Those two combined to pitch three scoreless innings against the Yankees on Saturday with Weaver getting out a bases-loaded, no-out jam. The Law of Ex-Yankees performing well against the Yankees never fails.

9. Austin Wells is the luckiest player on the Yankees. Grisham, Chisholm and McMahon being automatic outs this season and the undeserved return of Volpe has kept Wells’ miserable season as a secondary ire of Yankees’ fans. That seems to be changing. Memorial Day is a week away and Wells has one double and five RBIs on the season. Poor roster construction and a lack of options in the minors have protected Wells for this long, but that protection is wearing thin.

10. The Mets have a distinct pitching advantage in the rubber game on Sunday. Freddy Peralta is really good and Elmer Rodriguez’s minor-league command seems to have been greatly exaggerated. The Rangers pummeled Rodriguez in both of his major-league starts over the last two weeks and with the way the Yankees have been hitting on this 2-6 road trip, if Rodriguez has the kind of first inning on Sunday he had last week, the Yankees could be looking at dropping the Citi Field portion of the Subway Series, an unthinkable feat given how bad the Mets have been and are.

Sunday’s game is enormous. It’s not just another game. It’s the difference between going 3-6 or 2-7 on the road trip. It’s the difference between winning the series against the mess that is the Mets or losing a series to the mess that is the Mets. And most importantly, it’s the difference between possibly losing more ground in the AL East or not.

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.