The Yankees failed to win a four-game home series against a .500 Rays team looking to sell.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On Friday, I wrote:

For better or worse, Yankees baseball is back. The break is over. The vacation is often. The physical, mental and emotional escape is over. When Gerrit Cole throws the first pitch of Friday night’s game against the Rays, the stretch run will be under way. The last 64 games with Juan Soto under contract as a Yankee will be under way. The glaring issues and problems from the first “half” and from the last four seasons will still be there. We’ll find out is this group handles them differently.

Well, we found out this group doesn’t handle them differently, because it’s the same group. The Yankees faced a .500 Rays team for four games at home after four days off and continued to play the uninspiring baseball they began to play in mid-June.

After winning the series opener 6-1 on Friday behind Gerrit Cole’s best start of the season (6 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR), the Yankees fell right back into being the team that crawled to the All-Star break.

Over the All-Star break, the delusional Nestor Cortes tweeted this:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

Then in his first start since that tone-deaf tweet, Cortes turned in his worst start of the season: 4.1 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 3 HR. A bottom 5 team in runs scored and home runs, the Rays had no problem teeing off on Cortes 

“When you walk … the bottom of the lineup, you give it the chance to turn over, “Cortes said. “That’s not ideal. I just have to be better.”

The Rays’ 9-hitter Alex Jackson entered the game 7-for-85 on the season. He walked and hit a three-run home run off Cortes. 

“It’s tough to pitch in the big leagues when you don’t have your good stuff” Corted said. Early on, it was pretty good and I lost a little bit … and I was behind in the count a lot.’

Aaron Boone knew he couldn’t tell the media Cortes had “good stuff” and not sound like a complete asshole considering Cortes himself said he didn’t have good stuff. So Boone went to his thesaurus for “good stuff” with his evaluation of Cortes.

“I thought the profile of the stuff was there,” Boone said.

In Cortes’ previous start, he put 10 runners on in 4 1/3 innings in Tampa and Boone said he thought Cortes “pitched well” that day. On Saturday, Cortes had the same outing (10 baserunners in 4 1/3 innings), but this time Boone was only willing to say “the profile of the stuff was there.” That’s 20 baserunners, 11 earned runs and four home runs for Cortes in his last two starts, both against the anemic Rays offense.

Cortes didn’t give the offense a chance, but they weren’t going to do anything anyway. Ben Rice led off the game with a double and was stranded and the Yankees didn’t pick up another hit until the eighth inning. Their lone run came on a meaningless RBI groundout down nine in the ninth. Taj Bradley stifled them, pitching seven one-hit, scoreless innings.

2. On Sunday, Boone sat DJ LeMahieu in favor of Oswaldo Cabrera. When you make $15 million per year and are getting benched for the .638 OPS utility man, you know things are bad, and things are bad for LeMahieu.

“It hasn’t given me much hope the last month or so,” LeMahieu said. “As long as I’ve played this game, whatever challenges have presented itself, I’ve always come out of it one way or another.”

I love LeMahieu. I was all for re-signing him after 2020 for what he did in 2019 and 2020. He deserved to be re-signed. After posting a .922 OPS in his first two seasons with the Yankees, he has a .702 since. He suffered season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022, played through injuries last year and missed a large portion of this season because of injuries. It fell apart quickly for LeMahieu after 2022 and while there have been moments over the last three-plus years where he looks like himself, they are only moments, nothing consistent or frequent. On a team full of unplayable names, he is the most unplayable of them all. But because of all of those other unplayable names and because he’s owed about $41 million through 2026, he’s going to keep getting opportunities to prove his career isn’t over.

While last Sunday’s loss in Baltimore was the worst loss of the season, and Saturday’s loss was disappointing, Sunday’s loss was disturbing.

Marcus Stroman allowed a leadoff home run to begin the game as the Rays clubbed their fifth home run of the series with the Yankees still yet to hit one.

Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the first, the Yankees loaded the bases with one out for Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo. Torres swung on the first pitch he saw with the swing of someone behind 0-2 in the count and just trying to put the ball in play and hit a shallow fly ball that wasn’t deep enough to score a a run. Alex Verdugo followed with a lineout to first. Three runners left on.

In the second, still trailing 1-0, the Yankees loaded the bases again with one out, but this time Soto was due up. Rice walked on four pitches to bring Soto up and Shane Baz got behind Soto 3-0. Seven straight balls. Knowing Soto’s eye I was confident the Yankees would at least tie the game in his plate appearance and possibly break it wide open. Soto got a fastball away and rather than go with it to the opposite field like he loves to do or take the borderline pitch and continue his plate appearance, he pulled it to second base for an inning-ending, 4-6-3 double play. The Yankees had gone from bases loaded with one out and Soto and Aaron Judge due up to leaving three more runners on.

In the third, Judge walked to lead off the inning and never moved. Seven runners left on.

In the fourth, with two outs, Stroman hung a slider on 1-2 slider to Randy Arozarena and he hit his third home run of the series as the Rays increased their series home run lead to 6-0. Torres booted a ground ball that would have ended the inning, and a stolen base and a line-drive single on an 0-2 hanging slider later and the Rays had a 3-0 lead.

In the bottom of the fourth, the Yankees drew two walks to begin the inning. Neither scored. Nine runners left on.

In the seventh, Jake Cousins got tagged for a two-run home run by Jose Siri who stared at it for about 15 seconds and then essentially walked around the bases at an even slower pace than Arozarena “trotted” on any of his three home runs in the series.

The Yankees finally got on the board in the seventh when Judge hit his 35th home run a mile into the left-field bleachers. In response to Arozarena and Siri’s long trips around the bases, Judge did the same. The problem is the Yankees were still losing after Judge’s home run in what was the latest failed attempt at trash talking from the captain, a trait that started six Octobers ago when he unfortunately played “New York, New York” on a boombox while leaving Fenway Park after Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS. The Yankees would leave their 10th runner of the day on when Torres hit into an inning-ending double play.

In the ninth, Jose Caballero hit the Rays’ seventh home run of the series to extend their lead to 6-3. The Yankees scored a run on a Soto double in the bottom of the ninth, but that was all they would get as they would leave an 11th runner on in the 6-4 loss.

To summarize: The Yankees failed to score a run despite loading the bases with one out in both the first and second inning. The seven hitters not named Soto and Judge went 4-for-25 with seven strikeouts. Stroman got ahead of Richie Palacios 1-2 before eventually giving up a home run to him, gave up a home run to Arozarena on a 1-2 pitch and allowed an RBI single to Caballero in an 0-2 count. The combination of Jake Cousins and Luke Weaver gave up three earned runs and only recorded seven outs. The Yankees left 11 runners on base.

3. One day closer to Torres no longer being a Yankee is what I told myself after he halfheartedly swung at the first pitch he saw with the bases loaded in the first inning. One day closer. Torres committed an error that led to the Rays’ third run, hit into an inning-ending double play representing the tying run in the eighth and finished the day 0-for-4 with a strikeout. It was the latest spectacular performance in a season full of them for Torres.

4. Since June 15, for hitters with a minimum of 90 plate appearances, Verdugo is last in the majors in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS. He has been the worst everyday player in the entire league for five weeks.

Prior to Sunday’s game, when asked about Verdugo sucking, Boone said, “I think there’s really good out in front of him. Nothing’s changed.” Boone was right: nothing changed. Verdugo went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. 

Boone was ejected in the sixth inning for arguing a called strike against Verdugo for his fifth ejection of the season.

“My hips have been flying toward the first-base side,” Verdugo said. “We’re not trying to hit ground balls.”

It certainly looks like Verdugo is trying to hit ground balls since he has hit more balls on the ground to first base and second base than any other player in the majors this season.

5. Boone spewed his typical bullshit after the loss. He implied that bad luck was the reason the Yankees didn’t score in the first and second innings and that bad luck has been the reason the team has lost more than two-thirds of its game since the middle of June.

“Dugie hits one 103 [for a] line-drive out, Soto has the right at-bat,” Boone said. “We just gotta get one to fall.”

A franchise and brand built on winning has resorted to praying a ball with runners in scoring position drops in. I can see the YES in-game promo now:

(Paul Olden’s voice) Fans, come on out to the Stadium on Sunday, Aug. 11 as the Yankees host the defending-champion Rangers for Anthony Volpe Gold Glove Bobblehead Day, and see if the Yankees can get one to fall. The first 18,000 guests will receive an Anthony Volpe bobblehead presented by T-Mobile.

But with the bases loaded, praying to plate even a single run is all the Yankees can do. Pray for a hit by pitch or wild pitch or passed ball or catcher’s interference or an error or that a ground ball finds a hole. That’s the only way this team is capable of scoring outside of Soto and Judge extra-base hits.

6. Torres isn’t suddenly going to hit like a true middle-of-the-order bat. Verdugo for his career has a 102 OPS+ in 2,968 plate appearances, so the absolute best version of him is slightly above league average. The two of them along with LeMahieu, Cabrera, Trent Grisham, Volpe and Austin Wells are all below league average.

If the non-Soto and Judge bats were just league average, the Yankees would have run away with the division. But they can’t even be that. Average. That’s all anyone is asking. Just be average. And yet, they aren’t even close to being that.

The other day Luis Severino told reporters he is in a group chat with his former Yankees teammates and they have been chirping him about not starting against them in the Subway Series. “They talk trash about me, they say, ‘Oh, you’re afraid of us.’ I’m not afraid. Right now, you only have two good hitters. I can walk those two guys.” I always liked Severino.

7. On Sunday, Boone benched Torres. I’m sure it was only for a day and Torres will be right back in the lineup and batting in the middle of the order on Tuesday against the Mets since was only 10 days ago that Brian Cashman sat in the visitors’ dugout at Tropicana Field and told the media how good Torres was last year and how he’s waiting for him to return to being that player again.

In the series finale, the Yankees won a game started by Carlos Rodon for the first time since June 10. Sicne then Rodon has made roughly $5 million to provide the Yankees with zero wins in six starts, zero quality starts, a 9.67 ERA and a 1.963 WHIP.

After allowing four first-inning runs to the Rays two weeks ago, Rodon only allowed one earned run over seven innings in this one with a season-high 10 strikeouts. A $162 million pitcher shutting down the third-worst offense in the American League? What a concept.

8. The Yankees shockingly scored first in the bottom of the second with back-to-back home runs from Wells and Volpe. Yes, Volpe homered. It was his first home run since May 16. It was the first time he pulled the ball in the air to left field since June 20, which is simply outrageous.

In talking about Volpe, Meredith Marakovits reported he recently said, “If I believe in the process … I know the power is going to come.” Ah, the process. The old more-than-two-months-between-home runs process.

The Yankees added two more runs in the fourth when a Cabrera ground ball when off the glove of a sliding Brandon Lowe at second base. We just gotta get one to fall! (Cabrera went 4-for-8 over the last two games of the series, so there’s no way he should be out of the lineup come Tuesday since those two multi-hit games gives him more multi-hit games than Torres has in July.)

After another Siri home run for the Rays in the top of the fifth, LeMahieu answered in the bottom half with his first home run of the season, ending an 0-for-18 slump.

The Yankees added a run in the seventh on a Soto solo home run and added three more in the eighth on a Soto three-run home run in an eventual 9-1 win. They finished the season series 7-6 against the Rays.

9. The Yankees scored eight runs against the Braves on June 22 and then lost four straight. They scored 16 runs against the Blue Jays on June 28 and then lost the next day. They scored eight runs on June 30 against the Blue Jays and then lost four straight at home. They scored 14 runs against the Red Sox on July 6 and then got shut out the next day, losing the next two. The nine runs on Monday is the most the Yankees have scored since those 14 on July 6. Will it actually be the start of something or just another random outburst that leads to nothing?

I so badly want Sunday to be the start of something, but it’s hard to be optimistic that it was anything other than an anomaly given how the last nearly six weeks have gone. The Yankees spent the four games against the Rays running in place. I guess that’s better than how they spent the previous 28 games.

10. The Yankees are 11-21 since June 13. Their lead on a postseason spot is down to three games in the loss column. On June 14, that number was 13 games in the loss column.

It was a wasted four-game home series against a Rays team reportedly willing to sell and call it a season. Four more games off a schedule that is down to just 60.

The Yankees finished the first “half” of the season by blowing a late lead and losing the last game before the All-Star break for the third time in the last four seasons.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The last four nights have been enjoyable. Four calm, relaxing, peaceful nights free of frustration, anger, depression, elevated blood pressure and the urge to heavily drink. That’s because there was no Yankees baseball. Well, Yankees baseball is back this weekend.

2. I’m still not over the loss from Sunday to the Orioles in Baltimore. A win would have given the Yankees a three-game winning streak going into the break, a 5-5 record against the Orioles for the season and a one-game lead in the division for as bad as the last month has been. Instead, they suffered another inexcusable, catastrophic, ninth-inning loss, negated the positivity of the previous two games, dropped to 4-6 against the Orioles (now needing to sweep the three remaining games against them to win the head-to-head tiebreaker) and trail the Orioles by one game for the division.

3. If you want to view what has gone on through 98 games as the Yankees are only one game back despite being the worst team in the league for a month, go for it. In actuality, the loss on Sunday was a trend of big-moment blowups this team has made a habit of as they had similar losses to the Mariners, Royals and Red Sox. Only once this year have the Yankees had an improbable ninth-inning comeback that led to an unexpected win (the series finals against the Giants). Their other two unexpected ninth-inning comebacks in Cleveland and Kansas City ended in losses.

4. Sunday was a really bad loss. As bad of a loss as you can have in the regular season. It was the worst loss of the season and the only way it will be topped is if the Yankees lose a regular-season game down the stretch that eliminates them from the postseason. Thankfully, for their sake, the “cushion” they built up that Brian Cashman refers to should be more than enough to get them into a postseason in which 40 percent of the teams make it.

5. Unfortunately, the four-day break likely didn’t change the Yankees’ offense from a three-batter lineup with six bel0w-league-average bats. It likely didn’t flip a switch for the rotation to pitch like they did in April and May. It didn’t turn their mediocre-at-best bullpen into a stable of strikeout arms. It didn’t magically make their manager someone capable of using basic logic and reasoning for in-game decisions in close games.

It’s like the opening scene in Mrs. Doubtfire, where Robin Williams’ character, with his marriage falling apart, 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.”

The Yankees’ problems from mid-June through Sunday in Baltimore will be waiting for them on Friday night at 7:05 in the Bronx. How they handle those problems and if they’re able to overcome them in the second “half” will be evident before the end of the night on Friday.

6. The Yankees’ upcoming schedule is brutal. Four against the Rays, two against the Mets, three against the Red Sox and three against the Phillies. You may think they finally have a soft landing on August 2 against the Blue Jays, but the Yankees are .500 against the Blue Jays this season, while the Blue Jays are eight games under .500 against the rest of the league.

7. Ideally, the Yankees’ roster will look a lot different on July 31 after the trade deadline than it does now, but we don’t live in an ideal world. (If we did, Anthony Volpe would be able to cleanly field game-ending ground balls hit right at him and Alex Verdugo would be able to catch game-ending fly balls with a catch probability of 99 percent). It’s hard to envision the Yankees making a move (or moves) to become drastically better, and minor upgrades will be costly with 21 of the league’s 30 teams within 5 1/2 games out a postseason spot. The American League is wide open (even though the Astros are now in a position to pass the Mariners for first in the West this weekend), and the Yankees will likely operate over the next 11 days with the idea the path to the World Series isn’t difficult as is, and will refrain from making themselves the clear-cut team to beat.

8. The Yankees are “in contention” and that’s good enough for them. “Just get in” has been their mantra for the last 15 years, and after they get in and get eliminated, they refer to the playoffs as a crapshoot and talk about small sample sizes and short series. Oddly enough, they talk didn’t like that from 1996-2009 when they went all out to field the best possible team and did everything in their power to put themselves in the best possible position to win.

Just look at Nestor Cortes’ tweet from Tuesday.

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

Cortes is delusional, like the rest of the organization, but his perception of the Yankees in 2024 is understandable since all he has known as a Yankee is a front office that claims they’re “pretty fucking” good after going 82-80 and a manager who lets sloppy play slide and only cares to speak about tomorrow until the season runs out of tomorrows. The Yankees moved on from Joe Girardi in part because they thought his tense nature would rub off on their young roster. The roster under Boone has hasn’t just had Boone’s tendencies wear off on them, they have become him. From Aaron Judge walking through Fenway Park carrying a boombox playing “New York, New York” after winning Game 2 of the 2018 ALDS to Boone saying “the league has closed the gap” on the Yankees after losing the one-game playoff in that same venue three years later to Boone continuously saying “it’s right in front of us” for the last three years and his players using that same phrase over the same time, the Yankees believe they are still the Yankees when they haven’t been in a long time and have never been with this core under this manager.

9. The replies to Cortes’ tweet were alarming with Yankees fans calling him out and opposing fans laughing at his and the Yankees’ expense. Cortes was a Yankee in 2019 and again in 2021, 2022, 2023 and this season. In that time, the team has lost four of the last five games of the ALCS, finished third in the division and fifth in the AL and lost the one-game playoff, were swept in the ALCS and missed the postseason completely. This season’s team has the worst record in the majors since the middle of June and coupled with Sunday’s humiliating loss, the timing of Cortes’ message couldn’t have been worse. I have been hoping all week Cortes would delete the tweet and claim his account was hacked by a Red Sox fan.

10. For better or worse, Yankees baseball is back. The break is over. The vacation is often. The physical, mental and emotional escape is over. When Gerrit Cole throws the first pitch of Friday night’s game against the Rays, the stretch run will be under way. The last 64 games with Juan Soto under contract as a Yankee will be under way. The glaring issues and problems from the first “half” and from the last four seasons will still be there. We’ll find out if this group handles them differently.

The Yankees lost to the Rays 5-4 and lost another series. They haven’t won a series in a month and haven’t won back-to-back games in that time either.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. “Spirited comeback.” That’s what Michael Kay labeled the Yankees’ ninth-inning rally that came up short. A “spirited comeback.”

The bottom of the ninth inning in Games 4 and 5 of the 2001 were spirited comebacks. The eighth inning of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS was a spirited comeback (and also the reason the Yankees are currently managed by the manager they are). What happened on Thursday night at Tropicana Field was just a collapsing team coming up short yet again and losing for the 18th time in 25 games.

2. The Yankees wouldn’t have needed to have a comeback of any sort if they could just situationally hit. Alex Verdugo singled to lead off the game and Juan Soto followed with a double. The Yankees had runners on second and third with no outs and Aaron Judge due up.

Shane Baz was making his second start of the season and his second start since 2022 due to injury. The Yankees had him on the ropes with a chance to win the game in the first inning. Instead, Judge hit a shallow fly ball, Ben Rice struck out on three pitches and Gleyber Torres struck out on four.

2. Two batters into the Rays’ offensive night they had a 2-0 lead. Yandy Diaz doubled off the catwalk and Randy Arozarena clubbed a two-home run. Nestor Cortes was doing his can’t-pitch-on-the-road act yet again in an attempt to mimic Carlos Rodon’s start two nights before.

“I haven’t had success on the road this year,” Cortes said, “but I don’t think much of it when I’m out there.”

What exactly is he thinking about when he’s on a non-Yankee Stadium mound? How quickly can I put this game out of reach?

3. Cortes needed 97 pitches to get 13 outs and allowed five earned runs and 10 baserunners in just 4 1/3 innings of work. It was an abysmal start, but his manager didn’t think so.

“Stuff-wise he was good,” Aaron Boone said.

How could anyone have good stuff and give up five runs and 10 baserunners and only last 4 1/3 innings? You know who had good stuff on Thursday? Paul Skenes. He threw seven no-hit innings for the Pirates with 11 strikeouts. That’s good stuff.

4. Thankfully, Jeff Nelson on the postgame show didn’t sit by and listen to his former teammate in Boone spew bullshit.

“You’re throwing 97 pitches in 4 1/3 innings,” Nelson said. “I don’t know how you have ‘good stuff.'”

5. Boone then went on to talk about how the team is “in control” despite losing yet another series and losing the opportunity to win back-to-back games for the first time in exactly a month from today. (Happy One-Month Anniversary!)

“Missing opportunities, that’s what I think it comes down to,” Aaron Judge said. “There was a lot of fight out of the guys all the way to the end.”

No one fights and loses like the Yankees!

6. “We’re the Yankees,” Jose Trevino said. “If we win, [it’s], yeah, we should have won. If we lose, they like that.”

Does Trevino think it’s 15 years ago when being the Yankees meant something? When the Yankees were the Yankees, acted like it, played like it and won like it. That was a long time ago. I don’t think anyone still thinks the Yankees should win because they’re the Yankees. They have played worse than the White Sox and Rockies for the last month. They are coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs when 40 percent of the league makes the playoffs. They haven’t reached or won the World Series in 15 years and have lost five ALCS in that time.

7. “Nobody likes losing,” Judge said. “Nobody is happy about it.”

The Yankees may not like losing, but they’re accepting of it. They’re comfortable doing it, and they’re pretty good at it.

8. The Yankees are a three-home run game from Rice against the Red Sox and Grisham driving in both runs and making a game-saving catch against the Rays from being in the middle of a nine-game losing streak. That’s scary, but what’s even scarier is for how bad things are, they are set up to get a lot worse over the next three days in Baltimore.

9. The Orioles were just swept at home by the crappy Cubs. Not only were they swept, but they were outscored 21-2 and shut out on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s very realistic they break out and hang 30 runs on the Yankees this weekend.

The Yankees need to sweep the Orioles to have a winning road trip. Rodon is starting on Sunday, so that’s a loss, and the dream of a sweep is gone. They need to win two of three to at worst run in place and go .500 on this trip. I can’t envision a scenario in which the Yankees take two of three from the Orioles in Baltimore, but they need to.

10. “We’re going to play a first-place team right now,” Judge said. “We’ve got to take these good at-bats into Baltimore.”

They’re going to need to bring a lot more than good at-bats to Baltimore. They’re going to need to bring actual runs, quality starting pitching, bat-missing relief pitching, strong defense and a capable manager. Otherwise, the division will be over before the All-Star break and what was once a promising season will be closer to being over as well.