1. I thought the Yankees would win Game 4 of the ALDS last October and send the series back to Toronto for a winner-take-all Game 5. They had the dramatic five-run comeback in Game 3, had Cam Schlittler starting on an extra day of rest and Toronto was going with a bullpen game with a bullpen that had to get 16 outs in Game 3. The Yankees had the momentum and they had a distinct pitching advantage.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The tired and fatigued Toronto bullpen shut the Yankees down. Eight Blue Jays relievers pieced together 27 outs and the Yankees were eliminated after going 6-for-32 with 10 strikeouts. The Yankees’ defense gave the Blue Jays two unearned runs and the always amazing Camilo Doval allowed a tack-on run in the eighth.

I felt like I was watching that same game on Thursday night (complete with the Doval tack-on run) as the Blue Jays went with a bullpen game and stifled the Yankees, shutting them out 2-0 for their ninth loss in their last 13 games. Five Blue Jays relievers pitched in the shutout as the Yankees went 3-for-29 with a disturbing 14 strikeouts. The Yankees struck out 37 times over the final three games of the series. They struck out 33 times in the three games against the Mets and 39 times in the three games against the Brewers. Yeah, this team is different! They definitely won’t do the same thing in the postseason again against only elite starters and relievers every game!

2. “We didn’t muster much,” Aaron Boone said. “The last two nights we’ve been quieted quite a bit.”

Don’t let Boone fool you into thinking it was just the last two nights. The Yankees now have four games this season with three or fewer hits and no runs scored, which is the second most behind the Giants. (Stat from Katie Sharp.) The Giants have the second-worst record in the NL and are trying to figure out how to unload big contracts. Anytime you’re mentioned in the same conversation with the 2026 Giants, you’re doing something wrong.

3. The Yankees’ offense remains three hitters and when those three hitters don’t hit, you guessed it, they lose. Ben Rice hasn’t hit since his wrist injury (.652 OPS since returning), Aaron Judge hasn’t hit for two weeks now (.600 OPS since May 7) and Cody Bellinger doesn’t have enough power to compensate for the other two (Bellinger has six home runs in 50 games this season, but he has two two-home run games, so he has homered in four of 50 games this season). Rice has still hit a few home runs since his return and Bellinger has been hitting overall, but Judge has done nothing of late. Judge has one home run since May 6 and no RBIs in the last 10 games. At one point during the Blue Jays series, Judge struck out in seven straight at-bats.

4. I understand that Judge is immune to criticism from most, but on a team built around his bat that only has two other consistent, productive bats, he can’t be. He can’t be good to great, he has to be otherworldly and generational. He has to be because you have to make up for the automatic outs from the other six spots in the lineup. You have to make up for Jazz Chisholm being the worst situational hitter and worst hitter with runners on in the league. You have to make up for Paul Goldschmidt eventually being exposed now that his playing time has increased. You have to make up for Trent Grisham reverting back to the player he has always been before 2025. You have to make up for Ryan McMahon swinging through every middle-middle fastball he sees. You have to make up for Anthony Volpe undeservedly being an everyday player for the last week-plus. You have to make up for the unmitigated disaster and embarrassment that is the catching tandem of Austin Wells and J.C. Escarra offensively. You have to make up for the injuries to Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Caballero.

5. Two weeks ago today, the Yankees were tied in the loss column with the Rays and a half-game ahead of them overall. Now they are six games back in the loss column with a three-game series against the Rays this weekend. If Judge has another series like these last four, the division could be over before actual Memorial Day. The worst-case scenario is the Yankees are nine back in the loss column after this weekend. The best-case scenario is they are three back. To be three back they are going to need a lot of things to happen to beat a team that never seems to lose.

6. The Yankees need Judge to be himself. Whatever these last four series have been have made Judge look like the right-handed McMahon or a giant version of Volpe. If Judge doesn’t hit, the Yankees’ only chance offensively is if Rice does. If Rice continues the way he has since his wrist injury combined with Judge being lost, well, the Yankees don’t have a chance. No one is going to help Bellinger with any consistency to score runs.

7. The Yankees need length from their starting pitching. I’m talking at least six innings in every game this weekend and even that may not be enough. The bullpen can barely be trusted to get three outs, let alone nine, so asking them to get double-digit outs against this pesky, annoying Rays lineup is a recipe for disaster. The Rays scored six runs against the Yankees’ bullpen in the April series in Tampa. If the bullpen is in the game in the sixth inning or earlier all weekend, it could get ugly.

8. They need Gerrit Cole to be himself. The Yankees can’t afford to have Cole look like Carlos Rodon did in his first two starts coming back from injury. Friday’s game is one of the most important games the Yankees will play this regular season and Cole can’t pitch like someone who hasn’t pitched in a meaningful game since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. It’s not unfair to Cole because he talked his way into having his next start (this start) be in the majors. As Derek Jeter used to say, if you’re out there playing, there’s no excuses.

9. They need Jose Caballero to be the starting shortstop. I don’t want to see Caballero being used at short one game then third another game then somewhere else. He’s the best shortstop on the team, so he should play shortstop. Volpe undeservedly got called up and did nothing to deserve to be kept up. But because Volpe needs to play (he doesn’t but that’s what the Yankees think), he will play shortstop because he has idiotically never been asked to play another position for the Yankees. (The Yankees not sending Volpe down means he’s going to play with some regularity in the majors.) Volpe’s continued issues at shortstop like his error upon getting called up or his messy footwork (like when he went down to his knees to field a ball and prevented a double play on Thursday) or his lack of arm strength all remains problems.

10. If Judge and Rice show up, the starting pitching gives the Yankees length, Cole doesn’t have a Rodon-like return and Caballero plays, the Yankees should have a good weekend. (There’s always the Boone variable in that he will ruin a winnable game with his in-game decisions, but I think that’s a given and to be expected at this point, so there’s no point in writing or worrying about it.) If one or more of these things doesn’t happen for the Yankees this weekend, they will spend the summer trying to climb out of an enormous hole.

1. I can confirm Trey Yesavage is a problem. I thought maybe there was this small chance his performance in Game 2 of the ALDS last October was just a pitcher having the best game possible against the Yankees at the worst time possible and that it wouldn’t equate to future performance. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

2. Yesavage dominated the Yankees on Wednesday in the same way he did seven months ago. He shut them out for six innings, allowing just two hits with one of those two hits being the result of a miscommunication from the Blue Jays defense when they let a routine out fall in for a fake double. Yesavage didn’t walk a batter and struck out eight

“More of the same,” Aaron Boone said. “He was, for the most part, filling up the strike zone tonight.”

To make matters worse, he outpitched Cam Schlittler. Schlittler was very good once again, but allowed two earned runs in the seventh inning after walking in the game’s first run with the bases loaded.

3. I think we can safely assume any game the Yankees play against the Blue Jays with Yesavage starting will be a loss. The Yankees have beaten Kevin Gausman before, they got to Dylan Cease on Tuesday and it’s been seven years since Patrick Corbin was a name worth worrying about, but Yesavage has now thoroughly dominated them twice. The Yankees had their best on the mound against Yesavage and they still lost. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence with three more series between the teams in the regular season and the possibility of a postseason matchup. Yesavage is my most feared pitcher in the league.

4. Again, Schlittler was very good. He had a shutout going into the seventh before an infield single, walk and misplayed bunt loaded the bases with no outs. Schlittler walked in a run with the bases loaded and then was pulled for Jake Bird, who did a nice job limiting the damage to just one more run. Without the infield single and the misplayed bunt, at worst the Blue Jays would have had a runner on second with two outs. Instead they had the bases loaded with no outs.

“Just unacceptable,” Schlittler said of his performance in the seventh inning. “I walked two guys … You can’t walk the bottom of the order. Just unfortunate I couldn’t close that out.”

5. The misplayed bunt is what changed the inning. The Blue Jays were willing to give up an out to move the runners into scoring position. Prior to the misplayed bunt, the Yankees had a mound meeting, led by Paul Goldschmidt, who likely said he was going to come in and be the one to field the bunt. But when the play unfolded, Austin Wells also tried to field the bunt and no outs were recorded. At some point Wells is going to add positive value to the team, right?

6. Trailing 2-0 in the ninth, the Yankees nearly pulled off an unexpected comeback, but left the tying tun on second in the 2-1 loss. The loss dropped the Yankees to 5-11 in one-run games this season. The offense produced one non-defense-aided hit in the first eight innings. Ben Rice went 0-for-4 and has a .654 OPS since hurting his wrist on May 3. Aaron Judge went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts and has a .646 OPS since May 7. Ryan McMahon, Anthony Volpe and Wells combined to go 0-for-9 with four strikeouts. Volpe wrongly challenged a strike call that showed the entire ball inside the strike zone. If you challenge a pitch that shows the ball in the zone, you should automatically be out regardless of the count.

7. Yovanny Cruz made his major-league debut and was electric. Cruz went six-up, six-down with three strikeouts against the Blue Jays’ 4-through-9 hitters. He reached triple digits several times. Is it too early to make Cruz the closer? In that one outing he showed more ability than just about every reliever on the team.

“It was a long road to get here,” Cruz said. “A lot of injuries, a lot of things that I had to overcome.”

8. The Blue Jays will use Braydon Fisher as an opener in the series finale on Thursday. Carlos Rodon goes for the Yankees. Rodon was dreadful in his first two starts and I have zero expectations for him in this one. I don’t trust Rodon. Never have, never will, and after what he showed in Milwaukee and Queens, it’s hard to envision him pitching well against a team that lit him up in three starts last season, including the postseason: 12.1 IP, 17 H, 12 R, 10 ER, 10 BB, 10 K, 1 HR.

9. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has done nothing in this series. Guerrero Jr. remains at three home runs, which is how many home runs Wells has this year. But Guerrero Jr. has hit .588 with a 1.608 OPS against Rodon in his 21 regular-season plate appearances and hit a two-run home run and walked against him in the postseason. I can’t believe there’s a chance Guerrero Jr. could come to the Bronx for a four-game series and not hit a home run, and it’s going to take a lot from Rodon to that make that scenario come true.

10. Judge hasn’t done much of late. He’s 2-for-11 with seven strikeouts in this series and has one home run and two doubles since May 6. The Yankees are 5-9 since May 6. I find it hard to believe Thursday’s game is anything like the low-scoring pitcher’s duel from Wednesday, and because of that, it would be nice if the Yankees’ biggest bat returned.

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.