Another series against the Rays, another series loss for the Yankees. The Yankees are 18-7 against teams not from Tampa this season, and they went 2-8 against the Rays this season. Thankfully, the season series is over because I can’t take anymore embarrassment of the team with the 28th payroll beating the team with the highest payroll in every facet of the game.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Back in February, the Yankees were the favorite to win the World Series. Aaron Hicks was going to miss the first half of the season. Then James Paxton was going to be out for the first month of the season. Then Luis Severino went down for the season. Then Giancarlo Stanton was going to miss the first half of the season. Then Aaron Judge was going to miss the first half of the season. Then the season was postponed.

With the late-July start to a shortened, 60-game season, the Yankees were still at least the favorite to win the American League. Then Masahiro Tanaka missed the start of the shortened season after taking a line drive to the head. Then Aroldis Chapman got put on the COVID-19 list. Then Paxton lost his velocity. Then Tommy Kahnle went down for the season. Then J.A. Happ pitched like a soon-to-be 38-year-old coming off the worst season of his career. Then Aaron Boone didn’t improve as a manager. Then Gary Sanchez couldn’t make contact. Then Stanton went on the injured list. The Judge went on the injured list. Then the Yankees couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Brett Gardner turned back into the player who looked finished in 2018. Then DJ LeMahieu went on the injured list. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Hicks became the No. 3 hitter. Then Zack Britton went on the injured list. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays. Then Gleyber Torres went on the injured list. Then the Yankees started playing Tyler Wade every day. Then Judge went on the injured list again. Then Sanchez still couldn’t make contact. Then Mike Tauchman turned back into the player the Rockies gave up on. Then Gerrit Cole started giving up home runs like Phil Hughes. Then Boone still didn’t improve as a manager. Then Chad Green turned into his April 2019 self. Then the Yankees still couldn’t beat the Rays.

Once 16-6 with the best record in baseball, the Yankees are now just 20-15. 

2. The division is over. It’s over. Put an asterisk or a lowercase letter next to the Rays in the standings denoting they clinched it. The Yankees are three games back in the loss column and 4 1/2 games back overall against the Rays. According to FanGraphs, the Yankees have a 13 percent chance of winning the AL East. If you’re holding on to the slimmest of hope that they can play better than .750 baseball for the next three-plus weeks or that the Rays collapse, just remember the Yankees are closer to being out of the playoffs (they have a two-game loss-column lead on the ninth-place Tigers) than they are to the Rays.

The Yankees have 25 games remaining and the Rays have 22. If the Rays play .500 baseball the rest of the way and go 11-11, they will finish at 37-23. The Yankees would have to go 18-7 just to tie them, and that would do nothing since the Rays won the head-to-head matchup in an 8-2 landslide. The Yankees would have to go 19-6 to win the division if the Rays play .500 baseball. The Rays aren’t going to play .500 baseball though, not with a rotation of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton. And the Yankees aren’t going to go 19-6. Not with 10 of their remaining 25 games against the Blue Jays, who are much improved and also battling for a postseason spot.

3. The best the Yankees can do now is finish as the No. 4 seed in the AL playoffs. That is the only non-division winner spot that will get to host all three games in the best-of-3 first round. The Yankees are one game back in the loss column from the 4-seed and are tied with the same record as the Astros for the 5-seed, but lose the division record tiebreaker. Right now, the Yankees are the 6-seed, lined up to play the Indians in the best-of-3. That means facing the best pitcher in the AL this season in Shane Bieber in Game 1 and then either Carlos Carrasco (3.75 ERA), Zach Plesac (1.33 ERA), Triston McKenzie (1.69 ERA) or Aaron Civale (3.72 ERA) in Game 2, and another name from that list in Game 3. All three games (if necessary) would be played in Cleveland if there isn’t a playoff bubble.

4. The Yankees just had their current postseason rotation of Cole, Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery perfectly set for a three-game series at home against the Rays, who wouldn’t be starting Snell, and they still lost the series. That’s about as disheartening as it gets. The Yankees not having Judge, Stanton or Torres isn’t an excuse. Even without those three, the Yankees’ lineup is still better than the Rays’ on paper. The problem is the Yankees’ lineup doesn’t hit like it should on paper and neither does the Rays’. And the Rays have their own injury problems, missing Ryan Yarbrough, Nick Anderson, Oliver Drake, Jalen Beeks, Chaz Rose, Mike Zunino, Yonny Chirinos and Jose Alvarado. I don’t see anyone complaining about the Rays’ injuries, all I see them is winning nearly every day and having the best record in the American League.

5. I’m happy the season series against the Rays is over. Now I don’t have to watch the Yankees lose anymore regular-season games to the Rays and I don’t have to hear about the two team’s recent history of throwing at each other. Has there ever been more made of a pitch that didn’t actually hit a player or benches clearing that didn’t actually lead to a fight than there was from Tuesday night? Maybe Chapman meant to throw at Mike Brosseau. If he did, he’s an idiot, considering the Yankees had to have that game and putting Brosseau on with two outs in the ninth would have brought up the tying run. And Chapman isn’t exactly Mariano Rivera or even his old self in terms of confidence in successfully closing out games. He can’t be screwing around with runners on base because it usually doesn’t end well for him. The suspension for him and the suspensions for Boone and Kevin Cash were unnecessary. Nothing happened. No one did anything and no one pushed or punched anyone, outside of Wade for some reason trying to hold the Rays’ dugout back. If you were picking teams in a fight between the Yankees and Rays, Wade would easily be the last pick of the draft, and that’s after you pick the clubhouse attendants and bat and ball boys. I wonder how tough the Rays would have acted if Judge and Stanton were on the IL or if CC Sabathia were still on the team. Probably as tough as they have acted under those circumstances when tempers flared in the past: not tough at all.

6. So much for that grand slam on Sunday leading to Sanchez turning around his season. None of his previous five home runs led to him turning around his season, and homering in three straight games didn’t either. So I’m not sure why I thought maybe, just maybe a go-ahead, extra-inning grand slam would bring the old Sanchez back. Sanchez went 1-for-10 with a walk and four strikeouts in the three games against the Rays and he’s down to .130/.245/.337. It’s appalling that Sanchez’s OPS (.582) looks like what his slugging percentage should be. The other night, Paul O’Neill said that Sanchez isn’t going to hit .300 this season should focus on just hitting well for from here on. .300? .300?!?! Can Sanchez even get to .200 at this point?

7. DJ LeMahieu’s average finally dipped below .400 to .392. If LeMahieu can get to 186 plate appearances, he will qualify for the batting title, and he will win it. He needs 82 over the final 25 games or 3.28 per game. Basically, he just can’t get hurt. The next closest is Franmil Reyes at .336 and Tim Anderson at .333. LeMahieu would become the first player ever to win a batting title in both leagues, and he should have done it last season when he hit .327, but Anderson stole it from him by hitting .335 in only 123 games and 22 fewer games. LeMahieu is the best player on the Yankees. He needs to be extended. The Yankees can’t screw this up, but I wouldn’t count on them not screwing it up.

8. I want to reiterate what I wrote in What is Wrong with Gerrit Cole? on Tuesday because he’s the most important Yankee when it comes to the postseason. If Cole doesn’t turn into his Houston self, the Yankees aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does in October, he’s the single-most important Yankee in the postseason. He was supposed to be like signing two starting pitchers if the Yankees were to face the Astros in the ALCS since the Astros would be without him and the Yankees would be with him. Now that there’s an extra best-of-3 postseason round, the Yankees will need him to beat whichever team they face in that game. Cole has five starts left: Baltimore (2), Toronto, Boston and Miami. He has five stats to go from the guy leading the league in home runs allowed to the guy that couldn’t lose a game for more than a year. If this version of Cole is present in the postseason, it won’t matter if the team is at full strength, the Yankees won’t have a chance.

9. I like how the Yankees keep saying Deivi Garcia is in the conversation to start on Friday. I hope that’s just an unnecessary strategy ploy, so the Orioles don’t overly prepare for him because if it’s not, this team is more poorly run and managed than anyone thought. Garcia produced the best, or at worst, the second-best start of the Yankees’ season in his debut. It was better than any Cole or Tanaka start, much better than any Montgomery start, and the only start comparable would be Happ’s against the Mets. Garcia doesn’t just deserve to start, he deserves to be in the rotation. I would have him pitch Game 3 in the postseason right now over Montgomery based on one major league start. That’s how good he was. I’m sure the Yankees will call him up to start on Friday and make him the 29th man on the roster for the doubleheader and then send him back down after his start because they don’t want to not have Nick Nelson or Ben Heller on the active roster. What would they do without Nelson or Heller?!

10. The last three games were absent of Boone screwing anything up, causing my blood pressure to hit dangerous levels. That’s because Cole ruined Monday’s game in the first inning and the offense could barely make contact against Tyler Glasnow, Tanaka was able to get the ball right to the elite relievers on Tuesday, and Boone was suspended for Wednesday’s game, though it didn’t matter since Montgomery ruined it within the first four batters. It wasn’t fun watching the Yankees lose another series to the Rays, lose more ground in the standings, and ultimately lose the division. But it was nice to sit back and not have any issues with Boone over the last three nights. I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, if at all.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

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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!

The Yankees could have won all five games over the weekend against the Mets. They could have also lost all five games. In actuality, they should have gone 4-1. They should have won every game except for the wild, five-run, seventh-inning comeback game they won. Prior to the series, I said I would sign up for a 2-3 weekend and I ended up lowering my expectations to 1-4. Thankfully, the Mets are abysmal and the Yankees’ “C” team, or maybe even their “D” team was able to win three of five against their cross-city rival.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. A couple weeks ago in an afternoon game against the Rays, Mike Tauchman was listed as the 3-hitter in the lineup. About 12 hours earlier the night before, Tauchman wasn’t allowed to bat in the bottom of the ninth and was pinch hit for by Miguel Andujar. Andujar struck out on three pitches and was sent down to the alternate site after the game. So Andujar was good enough to pinch hit for someone the Yankees feel can bat third in a lineup, but then following the pinch-hit at-bat wasn’t good enough to be on the Yankees.

Twice this season, Luis “Everyday” Avilan was allowed to pitch with the game on the line against the Rays, and both times he blew the game, and the Yankees lost. For the first month of the season, Avilan was good enough to either warm up or come into every game for the Yankees, but this past week he was released by the Yankees, apparently no longer good enough to be a Yankee.

On Sunday, when Michael King ran out of gas in the fourth inning against the Mets, Aaron Boone turned to Brooks Kriske for the final out of the inning. Kriske got the out and returned for the fifth. He was allowed to stay in to face Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Dominic Smith and Robinson Cano, and Cano hit a two-run home run off him. Boone stayed with Kriske after the home run to finish the fith and Kriske came back out for the sixth. He walked Wilson Ramos to lead off the inning and Boone still didn’t pull him. He then walked Andres Gimenez, and finally, Boone had seen enough. Or at least I thought he had. Boone walked to the mound, never signaled to the bullpen and talked with Kriske rather than pull him. Six pitches later, Kriske walked Brandon Nimmo to load the bases via walks with no outs. Then Boone decided to take him out. It was Boone’s Mona Lisa; the complete package of managerial incompetence. Kriske was allowed to pitch in a tie game and keep on pitching with the Yankees barely hanging on to a postseason spot, and then after the game, he was optioned back to the alternate site.

The Yankees continue to allow marginal players and pitchers to determine the outcome of their games only to then determine the players and pitchers aren’t good enough to be Yankees.

2. With each Yankees Thoughts I write, Aaron Boone seems to get worse as a manager. There has been no improvement for him managing the bullpen, which remains his biggest flaw, and the only true in-game decision making he needs to do. He is every bit as bad as he was for the last two years, and each game he manages to do something more ridiculous than he did the game before. He consistently fails to put his team in the best position to succeed by making inconsistent choices. As I have written before, these lines from Stanley Hudson to Michael Scott in The Office do a good job of explaining Boone:

Every day you do something stupider than the day before. And I think, “There’s no possible way he can top that.” But what do you do? You find a way, damnit, to top it! You are a professional idiot!

Boone is a professional idiot. He was wrongfully given the Yankees’ managerial job in the middle of a championship window with no managing or coaching experience, and he hasn’t gotten any better in what’s now Year 3. He remains a more challenging obstacle for his team than the Rays, Twins, A’s, Astros and Dodgers combined. The only way the Yankees are safe from Boone’s destructive decision making is if they score 10 runs in a game, and with their current lineup, that’s impossible.

3. The Yankees’ lineup continues to appear to be picked at random. Thankfully, DJ LeMahieu is back to give the leadoff spot stability, and the Yankees are 3-0 since he came back. Coincidence? No. LeMahieu is the Yankees’ best player and the team is 16-5 when he starts and 3-8 when he doesn’t. LeMahieu has hit safely in 20 of the 22 games he has played in (he had a pinch-hit single). He makes the lineup go even if it’s very hard to get this lineup to go right now with the bottom-third it has and because Boone feels the need to screw around with the middle third of it every day. LeMahieu is the most important defensive player on the team, and while I have long thought Aaron Judge to be the most important player on the Yankees, I think I have changed my mind to it being LeMahieu since you actually have to play in games to be the most important player on the team.

Luke Voit has been otherworldly in the 2-hole in Judge’s absence. The 3-hole has become Aaron Hicks’ and up until his game-tying, two-run home run off Edwin Diaz on Sunday, Hicks has done absolutely nothing to deserve being a Top 3 hitter, even with Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres all on the injured list. Hicks entered Sunday with one home run since July 29, and his on-base percentage which has always been his defenders’ only favorable argument had fallen to .343. But Hicks saved the first game on Sunday and prevented another miserable loss, and the Yankees won a game in which they had a 0.02 percent chance of winning in the seventh inning. It didn’t take long for the real Hicks to return, though, as he was pulled from the second game of the doubleheader with “cramping in both of his calves.” I guess there’s a reason why Hicks never plays both ends of a doubleheader and it’s because he can’t play more than nine innings of baseball on the same day. After the game, Boone was asked about the severity of Hicks’ injury and said, “I don’t think it’s serious at all,” and when Boone says that, it’s a guarantee the player will be placed on the injured list, if not worse.

4. It wouldn’t surprise me if Hicks is placed on the IL since that’s what he does: he gets hurt. I realize some (OK, maybe a lot) of my criticism of Hicks is unfair given his advanced metrics, but the criticism stems from his inability to stay healthy. As a Yankee, Hicks has played in 435 of a possible 680 regular-season games or 64 percent, and he has been on the injured list at least once in each of his first four seasons with the team with back, hamstring, oblique and elbow injuries, and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. If there’s a baseball-related injury, Hicks has had it. It wouldn’t be a baseball season without Hicks going on the IL, and after he was able to avoid a first-half stint if the season began on time in March for Tommy John surgery rehab, it was only a matter of time until he landed on a place he has called home for roughly one-third of his Yankees tenure. No, he hasn’t been placed on it yet, but it’s only a matter of time until he is.

5. I was more nervous for Gary Sanchez and his pinch-hit opportunity on Sunday night than Sanchez was. As President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club, I finally caved and heavily criticized the struggling catcher, while maintaining my belief he will turn it around because he has to … right? When Sanchez stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded and one out and the game tied at 1, I could envision the social media meltdown from another strikeout. My wife, who is a Sanchez critic, sat next to me pulling for Sanchez, though I knew she had no faith in his ability to come through since I didn’t even have any. She was just trying to be nice in the moment, waiting to write another one of her critical tweets about him. Once there were two strikes on Sanchez, I was prepared for the at-bat to end as a complete failure. Sanchez had been unsuccessful in putting Drew Smith’s fastball in play, so Smith tried once more to get Sanchez to swing through it, but instead, Sanchez channeled his 2016 self and sent the pitch deep into the New York night. A pinch-hit grand slam to give the Yankees a four-run, extra-inning lead.

Is this finally the hit to get Sanchez going? I thought it might be any of his other five home runs, but it wasn’t. I thought he might be coming alive when he homered in three straight games earlier this month, and those three games were followed by a 3-for-25 slide. Maybe Sunday night’s go-ahead grand slam will be the spot we look back at for when Sanchez’s season turned around. If it’s not, maybe he will never turn it around this season, a season in which he has yet to have a multi-hit game.

6. The Yankees nearly blew the four-run lead after Sanchez’s grand slam because Boone wouldn’t use Aroldis Chapman, deciding to stay with Jonathan Holder for a second inning. Chapman was unavailable because he had pitched two consecutive days. It didn’t matter to Boone that Chapman had thrown 25 pitches over the last 14 days or that he had thrown 45 pitches since being walked off against on Oct. 19, 2019 in Game 6 of the ALCS. Boone and the Yankees have their bullpen usage rules and no amount of pitches and no amount of importance on a game or situation will change their mind. Boone would have rather lost the game to the Mets and erased the momentum the team had built with two straight walk-off wins to end their seven-game losing streak than use Chapman for a third straight day. Ask Zack Britton, who’s on the injured list with a hamstring injury, or Tommy Kahnle, who’s out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, how not pitching on three consecutive days prevented them from getting hurt.

7. Tyler Wade hit a home run in the second game on Sunday for his first of the season and fourth of his career. On Saturday, Michael Kay said, “The only thing keeping Tyler Wade from regular work is that he has not hit.” Really? Is that all, Michael? The only thing that has kept him from being an everyday major leaguer is that he hasn’t been able to perform half of the game of baseball. The line from Kay reminded me of this exchange from The Mighty Ducks when Gordon Bombay find Fulton Reed taking slap shots in an alley way:

Gordon Bombay: Why don’t you play for us?

Fulton Reed: I can’t … I don’t know how to skate.

Gordon Bombay: Whoa! Is that all that’s stoppin’ ya?

Sure, Wade is extremely fast and a threat on the bases, but you have to actually get on base to be a threat on the bases. As long as he plays great defense while he has to be in the lineup, I don’t care if he goes 0-for-100, representing as close to an automatic out at the bottom of the order as you can have. I just can’t wait until he’s no longer needed to be an everyday player.

8. I think we are watching the final weeks of Brett Gardner’s career. I wanted the Yankees to sign Michael Brantley after 2018, and they instead brought back Gardner. He benefited from the super baseball in 2019, hitting a career-high 28 home runs, and got himself another contract with the Yankees. But now that the baseball has lost its unbelievable flight, Gardner is back to being the player he was in 2018 when he look finished and lost his starting job to Andrew McCutchen. Gardner entered Sunday with a .190/.325/.381 line and then went 0-for-5. He has two multi-hit games and two doubles this season and hasn’t homered since Aug. 3. No, power isn’t supposed to be his game, but it shows how last year was an anomaly and a clear product of the state of the ball. Gardner is still an elite defender, and maybe that’s enough for him to keep getting new contracts with the team. It shouldn’t be enough for him to block other outfield options from a path to playing time.

9. The trade deadline is Monday, and I’m OK with the Yankees doing nothing. There isn’t a game-changing starting pitcher available, and that’s all I would be interested in. Mike Clevinger isn’t that, and given his character following his night out in Chicago, I doubt that’s someone Brian Cashman would want on the team after being so concerned with the clubhouse culture for more than a decade now. And Lance Lynn certainly isn’t that. I don’t care about what he’s done since leaving the Yankees after 2018. There’s no point in trading just for the sake of trading and neither are going to swing a series in the Yankees’ favor. There’s a chance the Yankees found a potential front-end starter on Sunday in Deivi Garcia, and there’s a chance they have another one waiting for his turn in Scranton in Clark Schmidt. The Yankees shouldn’t have waited until now to find out what they have in the organization, but they did, and they should stand pat at this deadline.

10. Garcia became the first Yankees pitcher to pitch six innings and allow zero earned runs and zero walks in their debut. He was as good as advertised and his one start was better than any start Gerrit Cole, Masahiro Tanaka or Jordan Montgomery has had this season, and those three would currently be the Yankees’ postseason starters in order. Garcia doesn’t only deserve another start, he deserves to stay. He actually has ability, unlike most Yankees pitchers, and no matter what his role is, he is a better option that just about every Yankees pitcher.

After Garcia’s start, Boone was asked about his roster spot, and Boone said, “We’ll talk about that and get back to you.” It was comical, but also expected from a manager and a team that has no idea how to properly manage a roster as I depicted earlier in this blog with moves like Andujar, Avilan and Kriske. I wouldn’t be surprised if Garcia is optioned back to the alternate site while the Yankees continue to give J.A. Happ unlimited chances and let Michael King open games and let Ben Heller ruin games out of the bullpen. This is the same team that won’t bring up Schmidt to start because he isn’t on the 40-man roster, as if there isn’t a litany of names eligible to be designated for assignment on the current 40-man roster, and because of service time, as if they’re not the New York Yankees and capable of paying any free agent any amount of money. I would be disappointed and frustrated and embarrassed if Garcia were optioned, but that’s life as a 2020 Yankees fan. (Sure enough, Garcia was sent down to the alternate site. It better just be a technicality for the next four days until he’s needed as a starter again.)

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

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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!