The Yankees tried their best to get swept by the Rays, doing everything they could to lose all three games at Tropicana Field. They managed to eek out a win in the series finale on Sunday, which was a relief, but not satisfying. How could it be with all the issues this team has?

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. At the beginning of Mrs. Doubtfire, with his marriage falling apart, Robin Williams’ character tells Sally Field’s character, “Come on, Miranda. We’ve got problems, but who doesn’t? We could work them out.”

Field responds, “We’ve been trying to work them out for years.”

Williams answers, “Well, let’s take a vacation with the kids …”

Field rebuts, “Our problems would be waiting for us when we got back.”

When I think about the 2021 Yankees, I think about that dialogue. The 2021 Yankees are the same team from 2020. From the final out of the 2020 ALDS until Opening Day 2021, they went on the vacation Williams’ character suggested, and as Field’s character predicted, their problems were waiting for them when they got back.

The nearly six-month layoff that is the offseason didn’t fix the Yankees’ problems. It didn’t change the fact they brought back the same exact lineup that wasn’t good enough to get past the Rays last October. It’s nearly the same lineup that hit .214/.289/.383 in their six-game 2019 ALCS loss to Houston. It’s basically the same lineup that scored 10 runs in their four-game ALDS loss to Boston in 2018. It’s essentially the same lineup that scored three runs in four road games in their seven-game ALCS loss to Houston in 2017.

The break between 2020 and 2021 didn’t enhance the Yankees’ starting pitching. The Yankees chose to turn Masahiro Tanaka into Corey Kluber and Jameson Taillon. Kluber looks nothing like his old self and has pitched 6 1/3 innings over two starts, while allowing 15 baserunners, and Taillon is being so overly protected by the Yankees that I can’t see them ever letting him go more than six innings, and even going six innings sounds like a pipe dream. The Yankees still have the same problem they had last year when it comes to their rotation and that’s never knowing what you’re going to get on days when Gerrit Cole doesn’t pitch.

These problems have been on display for nearly the entirety of the 2021 Yankees’ nine games and 85 innings. The Yankees’ four wins have been provided by a Jay Bruce two-run bloop single, a Jordan Montgomery gem, a Gerrit Cole gem and a Rougned Odor RBI bloop single. Without those two bloop singles, the Yankees might only have two wins right now. Thankfully, the Yankees were able to win on Sunday and salvage the third game of the series against the Rays, though it’s hard to be happy or in a good mood following the win because they did everything they could to lose the game and because the rest of the weekend was so bad.

2. At Brian Cashman’s end-of-the-season press conference last October, he openly said, “The Rays are a better franchise right now than we are.”

Well, they still are. The Yankees did nothing in the offseason to make themselves better, let alone make themselves better than the Rays. Maybe over 162 games the Yankees will have a better record than the Rays because they may fare better against other opponents, but head-to-head, the Rays are still better than the Yankees, and it’s not particularly close.

The Yankees were able to avoid Tyler Glasnow in this series, and they still only one won game, needing an Odor blooper to fall in in the 10th inning of the series finale. That’s not encouraging.

3. It’s nice that Odor provided the go-ahead hit in the 10th inning of his Yankees debut. But when it comes to Odor, the simple fact that he’s a Yankee is an embarrassment for the Yankees. Odor was unable to make the Rangers in spring training, a team that’s expected to finish in last place, and a team that owes him $27 million. That’s a lot of money. The entire Yankees infield of DJ LeMahieu ($15 million), Luke Voit ($4.7 million), Gio Urshela ($4.65 million) and Gleyber Torres ($4 million) will make $28.35 million in 2021. So the Rangers essentially owe Odor one season of the Yankees’ infield, and they would rather pay him to not play for them even though they have no expectations for this season. The Rangers are going to be very, very, very bad, and if they thought Odor could help them in even the slightest, at that amount of owed money, you bet your ass they would have kept him.

Since 2017, Odor is a .215/.279/.418 hitter, and statisically one of the worst everyday players in baseball over that time. The Yankees owe him nothing. Nothing as in $0. The Rangers are paying his entire salary, so in that sense, it’s like why not have Odor on the team? At least he can run into one every once in a while, which is more than you can say about Tyler Wade. That doesn’t change the fact the Yankees didn’t add a single left-handed bat this offseason or change the dynamic of their offense from being completely right-handed, so now they are forced to pick up players like Jay Bruce and Odor off the major league scrap heap and hope that maybe the magic of putting on the pinstripes will tempoarily rejuevanate their careers. Most likely it won’t, and they won’t get another job in baseball after their time with the Yankees like Kevin Youkilis, Travis Hafner, Brian Roberts, Richie Sexson, Kendrys Morales, Andruw Jones, Vernon Wells, Dustin Ackley, Ike Davis and many others, but that’s the hope.

4. The problem with having players like Bruce and Odor is Aaron Boone loves to divide the right-handed hitters in his lineup. If you were to play for the Yankees tomorrow and you’re left-handed, no matter your ability or skill level, you’re batting in the top two-thirds of the lineup, most likely sixth (since Aaron Hicks automatically bats third). So that’s where Odor found himself on Sunday.

Boone decided to break his lineup into thirds on Sunday, using left-handed hitters as the grocery sticks to separate them. Hicks would bat third and separate Aaron Judge (second) and Giancarlo Stanton (fourth), Odor would bat sixth and separate Gleyber Torres (fifth) and Gary Sanchez (seventh) and Brett Gardner would bat ninth and separate Gio Urshela (eighth) and DJ LeMahieu (first). So Odor who wasn’t good enough to be a Ranger, appearing in his first real baseball game of 2021 was immediately inserted as the 6-hitter on the Yankees, one spot ahead of Gary Sanchez and two spots ahead of Gio Urshela. This came a week after Boone batted Bruce fifth, the same Bruce who was moments away form either opting out of his contract with the Yankees or being cut by them before Voit tore his meniscus. Boone’s lineups rarely ever make sense. The lineups this season have made no sense at all.

Boone clearly builds his lineup based on favoritism. It takes Sanchez months of otherworldly production to move up in the lineup and less than a week to move down. It took Torres two years and two All-Star appearancees to move out of the bottom third of the order. Frazier opened the season as the No. 9 hitter behind Bruce. Meanwhile, Hicks is cemented into the 3-hole, and is always in the top third, and he along with Judge and Stanton never get benched for underachieving.

5. That’s mainly because Hicks continues to bat third. Hicks gets treated as if he’s Bernie Williams. The difference is Williams was a career .297/.381/.477 hitter who hit 287 home runs, a postseason legend, the heart of the order for four championship teams and a borderline Hall of Famer. That’s Williams’ number 51 in Monument Park. Hicks is a career .234/.331/.400 hitter, who has hit 89 career home runs, has been a postseason disaster and is being forced into the heart of the Yankees order because he has collectively had one good season in his nine-year career. (I don’t mean one good season out of his nine, I mean parts of a few seasons, totaling the amount of one season.) The closest Hicks will ever get to Monument Park is by playing on the other side of the wall from it like he does each home game.

Hicks isn’t good. He has moments where he is, but any player given the amount of plate appearances and chances Hicks has been given in the middle of the Yankees order will do something productive once in a while. Even Chase Headley would do something every once in a while because he played every single day.

I don’t hate Hicks. I hate how Boone uses Hicks, trying to make him something he’s not. If Hicks batted seventh or eighth or ninth (ninth is where he should be), I would have no problem with the way he’s used and would rarely even need to comment on his performance. As long as he were to stay healthy (which is his biggest challenge) and play good defense, his offense wouldn’t matter, like any 9-hitter. When you bat third, especially for the Yankees, everything you do in the batter’s box is magnified and Hicks has done close to nothing in the batter’s box as the No. 3 hitter.

6. When Scumbag Domingo German was sent down after his awful performance in the second game of the series, I thought the Yankees had finally come to their senses that German is not a good pitcher, just like he isn’t a good person. In his stars, he has pitched seven total innings, allowing seven earned runs, four home runs and 14 baserunners. Remember when his nine scoreless spring training innings were being praised? It’s almost as if meaningless games in March against mostly minor league players don’t mean anything.

The Yankees didn’t come to their senses. Boone said before Sunday’s game that German would most likely be called up the next time the Yankees need a fifth starter. How is he the first option? Unless Deivi Garcia is hurt and we don’t know about it (which you can never count out when it comes to the Yankees) then he needs to be called up the next time the Yankees need a fifth starter. German has already cost the Yankees two games this season. Two more than he should have ever been allowed to.

It’s a disgrace the Yankees kept him on the team following his actions and stuck by him through his suspension, but they can finally rid themselves of him and not lose anymore games because of him. Letting him start another game for the organization is unfathomable.

7. If Kluber is going to get injured, he’s going to get injured. There’s no preventing him from injury, and even if there were, the Yankees would be the last team in the world to know how to do so. Kluber needs to pitch. He needs to pitch as much as possible because it’s the only way he will ever come close to resembling the pitcher he once was. And at $11 million and as the No. 2 starter entering the season, the Yankees better start letting him pitch.

The same goes for Taillon. Yes, he had two Tommy John surgeries. There’s no way to prevent him from needing a third or suffering some other injury. Pitchers get hurt. That’s what they do. Throwing a baseball overhand isn’t a natural motion, and repeatedly doing it at high velocities and torquing your elbow to make the baseball spin in different ways will never end well. Right now, Taillon is healthy. As healthy as he’s been since 2018. He needs to pitch. There doesn’t need to be some unproven slow progression of a pitch count to keep him healthy or an unproven innings limit to keep him from further injury. The Yankees can get four innings from two of their starters each time through the rotation and destroy their bullpen. Especially when their fifth starter (Scumbag German) only gave them seven inings over two starts and when you don’t know what you’re going to get from start to start from Montgomery.

8. At Boone’s press conference to open spring training, he was asked if he sees Clint Frazier at the team’s starting left fielder. Here’s what Boone said:

“I do. Clint has obviously come a long way in every aspect of his game and certainly earned his place last year when obviously nothing was given to him. He had to earn everything really the last couple of years … Last year really proved he was ready to grab an everyday role on this team.”

I never believed Boone. The last time the Yankees had played (2020 postseason), Frazier wasn’t the team’s starting left fielder. Despite posting a .905 OPS, single-handedly carrying the offense when Judge and Stanton once again missed extended time and when Sanchez and Torres couldn’t hit, and improving his defense to the point he was named a Gold Glove finalist, Frazier rode the bench for both games against Cleveland and the last three games of the ALDS against Tampa Bay. Of the Yankees seven playoff games, Frazier started two of them as Boone started and played Gardner over him. So Frazier “proved he was ready to grab an everyday role with the team” so well last year that he wasn’t an everyday player in the postseason.

The last time the Yankees played Frazier wasn’t the team’s starting left fielder, so how did he suddenly earn the job during the offseason? Were there real, meaningful games over the last four months no one is aware of?

9. The second Gardner re-signed with the team I knew Frazier was screwed. I never believed Frazier would actually be the team’s “everyday” left fielder in 2021. He might play at that position more than any other Yankee this season, not because he’s cemented as the “everyday” player for that position, rather because of injuries. When the Yankees’ outfield is completely healthy like they currently are (since Judge is back playing), Boone will continue to inexplicably sit Frazier play Gardner. He did it in the 2020 postseason, so why wouldn’t he do it again in the 2021 regular season? Nothing has changed since then.

Gardner played over Frazier the last two days, and that trend isn’t going to end. Boone wants Gardner to be his left fielder and any time Gardner does something like make a great catcher or sneak a double in down the line, it’s going to get him more of Frazier’s playing time.

10. The Yankees are 2-4 against the Blue Jays and Rays. They can’t play the Orioles and Red Sox every day, and right now they wouldn’t even want to play the Red Sox. The Yankees now play the Blue Jays (3), Rays again (3) and Braves (8) over the next 10 days. Three difficult opponents, all with postseason aspirations.

I don’t expect the Yankees to change who they are or fix the issues that have hindered them this season and the three previous seasons since they aren’t issues that can be fixed and their roster is what it is for now until Voit and Luis Severino return. I thought maybe this season would be different and the team wouldn’t start off the year in such a discouraging way and hover around .500 for more of April. I was wrong, and I’m mad at myself for thinking 2021 would be different when the team is the same as it was the last four years.

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After a miserable weekend against the Blue Jays, the Yankees got just what they needed: three games against the Orioles. The Yankees beat up on the Orioles the way they always do, winning two laughers (7-0 and 7-2), but they weren’t able to pull off the sweep as they left nearly every baserunner they had on base in the series finale.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Aaron Judge is hurt. It took five games, and not even five full games for Judge to get hurt. So much for that new offseason workout regimen Eric Cressey implemented. So much for the yoga routine. Four games in right field and one as the designated hitter and Judge is already hurt and has already missed one game due to a potential injury.

On Wednesday, Aaron Boone described Judge as being “sore” on Tuesday. “With the off day tomorrow I don’t want to take any chances,” Boone said.

How does Boone know Judge is sore? Because Judge must have told him. Judge acts like he wants to play no matter what and will play thorugh anything, yet every time he is “sore” or banged up, the manager knows about it. I find that odd for someone who claims to want to be in the lineup every game.

Judge has a history of oblique injuries, which ended his 2016 season early and took two months of his 2019 season. When asked if it is his oblique again, Boone said it’s “general soreness in his side.” Is that not the definiton of an oblique injury? Now we wait. We wait and find out if it’s more than Boone and the Yankees have led on, which it almost always is. It wouldn’t surpise me if it is more and Judge is placed on the injured list or out for an extended period of time since that’s what I have been trained to think over the last few sesaons.

I don’t want Judge to be hurt, but it’s a good thing he is because ifhe was just being given a scheduled day off on Wednesday, I might have been forced to start to root against the Yankees. After giving Giancarlo Stanton the day off on Sunday and Aaron Hicks the day off on Tuesday, when I didn’t see Judge in Wednesday’s lineup, I freaked out. Judge had gone 5-for-8 with two home runs and five RBIs in the first two games of the series, and it would have been irresponsible and unacceptable to give him the day off. If he’s not truly injured or IL-bound and is just “sore” then it’s still pretty ridiculous he didn’t play. You would think Judge would play through anything these days after having missed 138 of a possible 390 games since 2018 and with his free agency looming after 2022. But nope, he’s the same old injury-prone guy. No offseason workout changes or training or medical staff hires can change that.

2. Boone’s early-season catching plans have worked to perfection for him. He had Gary Sanchez catch Gerrit Cole on Opening Day to hide the Cole-Sanchez relationship storyline to begin the season. Then he let Kyle Higashioka catch Cole’s second start, citing it as just a normal day off for Sanchez. But of all the games to give Sanchez a day off, Sanchez got the day off when Cole was starting, and what do you know, having that day off lines up Sanchez to have this coming Sunday afternoon off in Tampa as well. And guess who’s pitching this Sunday afternoon in Tampa, why none other than Cole. What a coincidence! Boone is going to have Higashioka catch Cole as much as possible, and he will cite games like Tuesday when Cole threw seven shutout innings as the reason why. Even though Higashioka’s start and those seven shutout innings came against the Orioles, who could lose 100 games again, and Sanchez’s came against the Blue Jays, who could win the AL East. This storyline isn’t going anywhere. Boone created a monster last season and he continues to feed it.

3. It’s bad enough Aaron Hicks bats third for the Yankees, but it was appalling when Brett Gardner batted third in the fifth game of the season. When Hicks returned the following night, Gardner was moved down to ninth. So Gardner is going to bath ninth when he plays, unless Hicks isn’t playing and then he’s going to bat third? How does that make any sense? It doesn’t. It’s just another nonsensical decision by Boone. There’s no rule stating a left-handed hitter has to bat third. There’s no rule stating one of the team’s weakest hitters has to bat third. It’s just what Boone chooses to do.

Here is a list of some No. 3 hitters in the majors. One of these names is not like the others. Can you figure out which one it is?

Mike Trout
Bryce Harper
Juan Soto
Christian Yelich
Manny Machado
Freddie Freeman
Jose Abreu
Nolan Arenado
Aaron Hicks

4. Hicks batting third (or Gardner batting third on Tuesday) isn’t an organizational decision. It’s a Boone decision. Here’s what Brian Cashman said at his end-of-the-season press conference this past October:

“In terms of the lineup and in-game strategies, those are the manager’s. It always has been and as long as I’m the general manager, it never will be different.”

Boone makes the lineup. Boone makes the calls to the bullpen. Boone gives the scheduled days off. It’s all Boone. There’s the idea Boone is a puppet and every move is made by Cashman and his team, but Cashman denied that at the same press conference this past October, saying:

“I know there’s that narrative about the manager being a puppet and none of that’s true. I’ve never ordered a manager to do anything specifically and Aaron would be able to testify to that as well as Joe Girardi and Joe Torre. They’ve never been directed at any time by me or our front office to do something they didn’t want to do.”

Cashman also said:

“Does he push back? The answer is yes. Not every manager has agreed with suggestions made, but every manager was allowed to plot their own course. I think there is a healthy debate that transpires and an all-in commitment once that decision is ultimately made.”

Maybe it’s time you stop letting him push back. There are thousands of people who can manage the Yankees and manage them as poorly as Boone. If Cashman wants his staff to tell Boone what to do, what is Boone going to do? Threaten to quit? Oh no! What would the Yankees ever do?!

The unnecessary rest only goes for position players though. On Wednesday, Chad Green entered the game in the 10th inning and was removed in the 11th inning. Green has already appeared in four of the Yankees’ six games this season and in three of his four appearances, he has been asked to pitch more than an inning. Good long-term plan by the manager who is supposedly so great at load management and keeping his guys fresh. Everyone except the elite bullpen arms the team will need to win the division and win in October.

5. Gleyber Torres’ defense is a problem. A huge problem. There shouldn’t be a sense of relief when a major league shortstop successfully converts a routine ground ball into an out, but that’s what it’s become with Torres at short. Forget making a difficult play, Torres can’t simply field ground balls hit right at him and throw accurately to first base. His defense was a significant problem for the Yankees last season, but the Yankees attributed it to the unique and odd circumstances of 2020. Well, nothing has changed for Torres. His inability to throw the baseball in the air to first base cost the Yankees the game on Wednesday night. Yes, the Yankees only scored two runs despite having 12 hits and two walks, but it was Torres’ 10th-inning error that allowed the go-ahead run to score. Any ball that is hit at him I assume is going to an end in either a fielding or throwing error. That can’t go on. Either he needs to immediately get better or a drastic change needs to be made.

It’s possible the Yankees could eventually change their defensive alignment. They gave Gio Urshela time at shortstop in spring training, and while he has barely played there in his career, Torres plays as though he has barely played there. There’s no chance Urshela is worse at shortstop than Torres is. It’s hard to envision any everyday major league shortstop being worse. Put Urshela at short, Torres back at second, where he had two unbelievable seasons in 2018 and 2019, move DJ LeMahieu over to third and pray Luke Voit comes back soon, so the Jay Bruce experiment can end.

6. Jordan Montgomery was great in his season debut: 6 IP, 4 H 0, R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7K. I was waiting for the crooked number to ruin his night at some point since that’s the way Montgomery’s starts seem to go. Four or five scoreless innings sandwiched around a three-run inning is usually the story with Montgomery. That never happened on Monday, and he shut out the Orioles for six innings, giving the bullpen a much-needed rest in the Yankees’ first easy win of the season. Through one turn in the rotation, Montgomery has been the Yankees at worst the Yankees’ second-best starter.

7. Jameson Taillon was good in his first star in 707 days following his second Tommy John surgery. Good, not great. If you heard Michael Kay and David Cone describe his performance on his way to the dugout, you would have thought he was getting pulled in the ninth inning, an out or two away from a complete-game shutout. Kay said, “Taillon gave the Yankees all they could have asked for.” All they could ask for? What?

Here’s Taillon’s line from his Yankees debut: 4.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 2 HR. I know the Yankees are trying to protect him and avoid using him like the family dining room, which only gets used on holidays and when company is over, but at some point they’re going to have to let him pitch and not fear him get injured.

The same goes for Corey Kluber. The Yankees can’t afford to have two of their five starters only going four and five innings at most each start, or the bullpen will get overused and overworked, and come October, it will be rundown and fatigued.

9. The Yankees needed to see the Orioles this week. After the awful season-opening weekend against the Blue Jays, the Yankees needed some easy wins and to start looking and playing like the Yankees. The Orioles will do that for you. The division is likely going to be won by whichever team beats up on the Orioles and Red Sox the most.

10. Now the Yankees are headed to Tampa on Friday for three games against the Rays — a team the Yankees have had enormous trouble beating in recent years — at the Trop — a place the Yankees never seem to win. I’m sure it’s going to be an intense, frustration-filled weekend in which my heart rate and blood pressure will both hit dangerous levels during the seventh, eighth and ninth games of a 162-game season. But these games are that important to the Yankees winning the division and avoiding the one-game playoff. After attending and sitting through three of those in 2015, 2017 and 2018, I never want to have to sit through one again.

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