The Yankees won back-to-back games against the Braves and are off on Thursday before having the chance to further embarrass the Red Sox this season. But the Yankees might have to do so without their most important player as Aaron Judge is once again hurt.

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. Yes, the Yankees won two games in a row, but let’s start with the most important story: Aaron Judge. On Tuesday night, Judge hit his league-leading ninth home run in the fifth inning and the Yankees had an 8-0 lead after five. In the sixth inning, Judge was removed from the game for Mike Tauchman. Had Aaron Boone removed Judge from the game because it was a “blowout” even though it wasn’t? That was the most likely answer, but still a ridiculous answer since the game was far from over at the time and would be far from over as the Braves would eventually bring the tying run to the plate. Was Judge hurt? This was less likely of an answer since Judge had just hit a home run, and unless he got hurt running the bases following a home run (something I could see Giancarlo Stanton doing), how had he gotten hurt between the home run and being removed from the game? Judge was seen leaning up against the railing in the dugout and laughing and smiling with his teammates after he was removed from the game, so I wasn’t worried. If he had gotten hurt in the game, he would have been in the clubhouse getting treatment or somewhere other than the dugout. After the game, Boone distinguished my fears when he said, “Coming off of four days on the turf and with a little bit of of leverage there, just trying to be smart with these guys. Judgie hasn’t really had that day down. I gave him the DH day and I just want to make sure we’re being smart with everyone.” As expected, Judge being removed from the game was just Boone being an idiot and Judge wasn’t hurt. The amount of times Boone has held a player out and cited himself for “being smart” is comical given how many players eventually do get hurt after he praises himself for being “smart about giving unnecessary days off. The next day, on Wednesday, it became known that Boone wasn’t trying to be “smart” about Judge, instead he was lying about him.

2. On Wednesday, when the lineup came out, Judge’s name wasn’t listed. Boone was asked about Judge not being in the lineup and said, “It’s kind of all over the lower body where he’s dealing with some rigor. The hips and down into the hamstrings and calves. I think it’s a result of the four games’ pounding in three days down in Tampa.” So now Judge was hurt and Boone had lied on Tuesday, and Boone wasn’t trying to be “smart” about Judge when he removed him from the game. Joe Girardi spent his first season as Yankees manager lying to the media and then broke down on the final day of the season because of the way he handled the media and injuries all season. If Judge isn’t actually hurt and can play on Friday then what happened the last two days will be worse for Boone than lying. It would mean Judge can’t handle playing four games and 32 innings over three days (since two of the games were seven innings). It would mean he needs even more time off than he has received and he just had a game off last week in Philadelphia (he pinch hit late in the game), and the Yankees have had an abundance of days off through the first 18 games of the season, including having had Monday off before the Braves series and Thursday off after the Braves series. Maybe the injury really is nothing and Judge will play on Friday, but when it comes to the Yankees’ handling of injuries, you always have to expect the worst.

3. The Yankees’ handling of their injuries since Judge went down with a fractured wrist in July 2018 has been nothing short of ridiculous. The amount of times a Yankees player has been properly evaluated or correctly diagnosed or has returned from injury within the team’s original timetable can be counted on one hand, and you might not even need all your fingers on that one hand to do the counting. Judge hasn’t exactly been the most healthy player in his three-plus seasons as a major leaguer. He was shut down for the final two weeks of the 2016 season with an oblique injury. In 2017, he battled a second-half shoulder injury which cost him the AL MVP (along with Jose Altuve and his teammates knowing which pitches were coming). He missed one third of the season in 2018 after getting drilled by a pitch on his wrist, which certainly was a freak injury, and then he missed two months last season after suffering another oblique injury. Judge missed about 25 percent of the last three seasons due to injury and if the 2020 season had started on time, he wouldn’t have been available until the shortened version of the 2020 season began. Judge is the most important player on the Yankees and not having him for part of any season is an issue, especially in a shortened season. If any injury were to linger or keep him out for significant time this season, winning the division would be in jeopardy and winning the postseason would be extremely hard.

4. Welcome back, Clint Frazier! I have long wanted Frazier to get a chance to be an everyday player on the Yankees, but between Frazier getting hurt every time he’s given a chance or playing horrific defense or underperforming, it hasn’t worked out. But now Frazier has another chance to prove to the Yankees he should be part of the future, and he started his 2020 season off with a home run and followed with a rocket single and crushed double. I get that Mike Tuchman is vaulable for now and has a place on this team, but Frazier has a future. Frazier is 25 and Tauchman is 29. On Opening Day next year, Frazier will be 26 and Tauchman will be 30. Brett Gradner can’t be a Yankeee forever (and with the way he’s playing, he won’t be one in 20201) and the Yankees will need major league outfield depth. Frazier needs to use this opportunity to prove he should be an everyday player when the frail outfield inevitably gets hurt. This might be his last chance to do so.

5. DJ LeMahieu is the best player on the Yankees. Judge is the most important, but LeMahieu is the best. LeMahieu is hitting .431(!) with a 1.048 OPS as a leadoff hitter. (It’s actually unbelievable.) On top of that, he gets a hit every time there are runners in scoring position, is the most clutch hitter on the team and can play all over the infield. He was the team’s MVP last season and will be again this season if Judge can’t stay healthy. LeMahieu is 32, but doesn’t play like it, and the Yankees have to extend him this season or re-sign him after the season. This team needs LeMahieu’s contact, unshiftable bat, and it can’t survive without him.

6. Jonathan Holder isn’t elite and he can’t be trusted to be elite. He’s a good, middle-tier reliever. He’s not someone who should be asked to close out a game with a four-run lead in the ninth. I don’t care that the run Holder allowed on Wednesday was the first earned run he’s allowed all season. A 6 1/3 inning sample size isn’t how I judge Holder. I judge him over his career. Yes, in 2018 he had a crazy scoreless streak, but John Flaherty once had a 27-game hitting streak in the majors. Crazy things happen with mediocre players sometimes. In 2018, Holder also pooped his pants in the biggest game of the season to open a four-game series in Boston with the division on the line when he allowed seven earned runs without recording an out. And last season, Holder had a 6.31 ERA and 4.45 FIP and pitched himself off the team. He’s good enough to be on the Yankees, he’s not good enough to be treated as a trustwothy option when Boone is inexplicably trying to steal outs without using Zack Britton.

7. Luis Avilan (or “Everyday Avilan”) pitched on Wednesday because why wouldn’t he? He has to warm up or come into every game as a Yankee. It’s a rule. Boone loves Avilan and that love will likely carry over into October. In the 2011 ALDS, Girardi used Luis Ayala twice in the series before using David Robertson once. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar happen this postseason with Boone going to Avilan before he goes go any of his elite relievers. Remember, Boone doesn’t only try to steal outs in the regular season. He does it in the postseason too.

8. I don’t expect to see Giancarlo Stanton again this season. the recovery time for a Grade 1 hamstring strain is three to four weeks for an average person. Stanton isn’t average in terms of rehabbing injuries and getting healthy. Last season, Stanton had a biceps strain turn into a shoulder strain while rehabbing the biceps strain and that turned into a calf strain. He played in 18 regular-season games and then got hurt in the postseason as well. He would have missed the first half (or more) of this season if it had started on time, and then after 14 games as the DH in this shortened season, he has a hamstring strain. If Stanton comes back and is the player he can be when healthy and going right, it will be a bonus for the 2020 Yankees. I wouldn’t count on seeing him again this season and I won’t believe he will play again in 2020 until he’s actually standing in the batter’s box in a real game.

9. The Yankees got the Rays’ season back on track for them. The Rays have won five in a row and are 1 1/2 games behind the Yankees. The Yankees are off on Thursday and the Rays will most likely beat the Red Sox with the Yankees off, so the lead will be one game. The Yankees need to beat up on the Red Sox this wekend at the Stadium the way they did two weeks ago and the way the entire league has beat up on them this season. Whichever teams beats up on the Red Sox more this season will likely win the division. It’s good to have the Red Sox at the basement of the division. It would have been even better if this were a 162-game season with fans so their fanbase would have had to sit through this miserable season for even longer.

10. The Yankees need to win the divsion and have home-field advantage throughout the postseason. Michael Kay gave a stat the other night that the Yankees have now won 26 straight home series. That’s because the Yankees are built to play at the Stadium with power hitting and power pitching. We saw how badly the Yankees are at the Trop and we know their struggles in Houston and Oakland as well. They need do everything they can to make sure they play the most games possible at the Stadium in October and that means playing their everyday lineup every day. Just getting into the postseason isn’t enough. It hasn’t been enough for a long time.

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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!

On Friday morning, the Yankees were 9-3 and had a four-game lead in the division. Now they’re 10-6 and have a two-game lead after losing three of four in Tampa. It was a bad weekend against the Yankees’ only competition in the AL East, and it proved the Yankees need to avoid playing as many as games as possible at Tropicana Field in October.

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. Last week when I was criticizing Aaron Boone for his lineup and bullpen decisions in blogs and on podcasts and social media, many Yankees fans were quick to say, “They’re 8-1!” or “They need to rest guys because they have four games in three days against the Rays!” in defense of Boone. Well, now the Yankees are 10-6, having lost five of seven and just dropped three of four in Tampa. It turns out giving away winnable games against the Phillies for no reason isn’t a good strategy. The idiotic decisions of the Yankees manager caught up with the team and the offense was overmatched by the Rays’ bullpen all weekend. Thankfully, the Yankees were able to hold off the Rays’ comeback in the first game on Saturday or the Yankees’ four-game division lead would have been erased in three days.

2. The Yankees’ division lead has been cut in half to two games. Yes, the Yankees are going to the postseason, but in order to win the pennant for the first time in 11 years and get back to the World Series, there is a very good chance the Yankees will see the Rays at some point in October. Now having lost 14 of 23 games at the Trop since 2018, it would be wise for the Yankees to make sure that in a series against the Rays, there are more games at Yankee Stadium than Tropicana Field. Unfortunately, the Yankees have proven over the last decade they could care less about home-field advantage in the playoffs, as long as they get in. After a decade of being eliminated early in the postseason, including four ALCS losses in the decade (in three of them they didn’t have home-field advantage), you would think the Yankees would change their approach to the regular season. They haven’t.

3. Back on May 5, 2009, Joba Chamberlain racked up 12 strikeouts in a start against the Red Sox. YES and many Yankees fans acted as if Chamberlain had joined Don Larsen, David Wells and David Cone in the Yankees’ Perfect Game club. You would have never known from the reaction of the Yankees’ network and fans that Chamberlain allowed eight baserunners and four earned runs in 5 2/3 innings in that game. Yesterday’s James Paxton start reminded me of that Chamberlain start. As soon as Paxton blew the 3-0 lead in the seventh, I was quick to call him out on social media, and either there a lot of Paxton fans on social media or a lot of his immediate family members use social media to defend him. Yes, Paxton looked unbelievable for the first six innings of the game, allowing one hit and striking out 11, and had he only pitched six innings, I would be writing about how Paxton might have figured out whatever was wrong for him in his first two starts. But the seventh inning counts. It’s part of his pitching line. It’s part of the story. It’s the main story. He was unable to finish the job, and not only did he not finish the job, he essentially left early for a two-week vacation without completing what he was working on, leaving his co-workers to handle his tasks while he was out. After Paxton allowed the two-run home run, he should have been removed from the game. His pitch count was at 85 and he had only thrown 41 and 62 pitches in his first two starts returning from back surgery. But if you thought Boone would make the right move or press the right button when it comes to the bullpen, you probably also still think a tiny fairy was the one putting money under your pillow when you lost a tooth growing up. Yes, Paxton looked much, much, much better than he did against the Nationals (1 IP, 3 ER) or the Red Sox (3 IP, 3 ER), but his start against the Rays has absolutely no bearing on how he will fare in his next start. He’s not someone who can be relied on to deliver six innings each time, and he’s not someone who can be relied on to keep the team in the game each start. When Paxton walked off the mound after giving up the game-tying home run, YES showed him staring into the Rays’ dugout after being chirped by opposing players. If you don’t want to get chirped, maybe don’t give up moonshots to Mike Brosseau and Brandon Lowe. On the same day Paxton was unable to get through seven innings, Justus Sheffield and Erik Swanson (two pitchers traded by the Yankees in exchange for Paxton), no-hit the Rockies for seven innings.4

4. Because I’m a nice person, back at the beginning of February, I said I would give Giancarlo Stanton a clean slate for the 2020 season. No sarcasm to start the season, no snarky comments, no “Ladies and gentlemen” tweets on Opening Day. I said I would be positive when it came to Stanton for as long as he let me be positive. Well, he didn’t let me be positive for very long. Stanton is the Yankees’ new Jacoby Ellsbury. After suffering a calf injury in February that would have kept him out of the first half of the season had it been played in full this year, it took Stanton playing in 14 games and zero in the outfield for him to now have an injured hamstring. This coming after he played in only 18 regular-season games in 2019 when he suffered a biceps strain which mysteriously turned into a shoulder strain which unfathomably turned into a calf strain. After hitting home runs in the first two games of the season and having everyone praise him for his new approach at the plate, slimmed-down body and physique, Stanton had turned back into the Yankees’ version of Stanton over the last two weeks. And now he’s hurt, so he’s really back to being the Stanton Yankees fans have come to know.

5. Boone said after Saturday’s doubleheader he expected Stanton to land on the injured list. In the past when Boone has said a player is healthy or fine or dealing with something minor, they have landed on the injured list and at times missed months. For Boone to outright say Stanton is likely to go on the injured list, it most likely means he’s done for the season. Stanton is 30 years old. He missed all of his 29 season, he was going to miss half of this season if it had been 162 games and now he’s going to miss a large portion of it as a 60-game season. The Yankees did all they could to protect him this season by continuing to refer to him an outfielder despite not allowing him to play the outfield for a single batter this season, and he still got hurt. If Stanton is incapable of running the bases as the designated hitter without getting hurt at the age of 30, what’s he going to be like when he’s 31 or 32 or 33 or 34 or 35 or 36 or 37, because the Yankees have him through his age 37 season. (Thankfully, the $10 million buyout for his age 38 season is covered by the Marlins.) Stanton took himself out of the lineup in the ALCS last October, playing in only two of the six games against the Astros. Given his history of being a slow healer, I doubt he will even be available for this postseason.

6. The siutational hitting of the Yankees is abysmal. In Friday’s 1-0 loss, the Yankees had the leadoff hitter on in four of the nine innings, and in the seventh and eighth innings, they had a runner on second with no outs. Clearly, none of those runners scored as the team was shutout, but neither time with the runner on second and no outs were the Yankees even able to get the runner to third with one out. When a fly ball or ground ball to the right side would be enough, the Yankees step in the box with one goal: hit a 500-foot home run. Each swing in an at-bat is bigger than the last, and outside of DJ LeMahieu and Gio Urshela, I’m not sure if anyone on the team changes their approach the worse the count gets for them. On Sunday, it was more bad situational hitting, as the Yankees were stifled by the Rays’ bullpen after Charlie Morton left the game early in the third inning. Unable to expand their 3-0 lead, the Yankees were eventually walked off on in the ninth inning. The only good thing to come from the walk-off single against Zack Britton was that we didn’t have to painfully sit through a 10th inning where the Yankees would have undoubtedly stranded the automatic runner on second with no outs.

7. It didn’t surprise me that Britton blew the game on Sunday. Entering the game, Britton had appeared in six of the team’s 15 games over 18 days. He had thrown only 59 pitches in games since July 23, or an average of 3.3 pitches per day this season. It’s a fine line with elite relievers and closers. They need work, but not too much work. They need rest, but not too much rest. They need just enough to stay sharp. Joe Girardi was very good at toeing the line. Boone isn’t sure where the line is and when it comes to Aroldis Chapman, he has no idea where the line is. We’ll see that soon enough when Chapman returns and Boone gives him a week off between appearances and then wonders why he’s wild in his outings.

8. The Yankees’ bullpen is no longer the best in baseball. Sure, it’s good, but without Tommy Kahnle and Aroldis Chapman it’s just good. And on days when Chad Green is unavailable (like Sunday) or on days when Boone doesn’t want to use Adam Ottavino (also like Sunday) and on days when Boone wants to stay away from Zack Britton (nearly every game this season), there aren’t many options remaining I’m confident in. There can’t be anyone who feels good about the Yankees’ chances in a close game when they see Luis Cessa or Jonathan Holder or Ben Heller or Luis Avilan enter a game. The Rays spent the weekend bringing in their top relievers into high-leverage situations and pitching their closer outside of the ninth inning when needed. Boone spent his weekend letting Holder face the top of teh Rays’ order in the eighth inning while Britton watched from the bullpen becaues Britton’s usage is based on the save stat and not on in-game situation. The bullpen is still better than many others in the game, but it’s nowhere near the Rays’ bullpen. The Rays’ bullpen pitched six scoreless innings on Friday night and another seven scoreless on Sunday. I’m more scared of the Rays than any other team in the AL when it comes to the postseason. They have three great starters in Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Charlie Morton and a shutdown bullpen. Their lineup isn’t any good from a power standpoint, but they seem to get timely hits and hit the big home run when it’s needed. Every Yankees fan should be scared of the Rays come October, especially if they were to have home-field advantage.

9. In a big spot, in order, these are the Yankees I want up:

1. DJ LeMahieu
2. Aaron Judge
3. Gio Urshela
4. Mike Ford
5. Gleyber Torres

The first four, you know you’re getting a good at-bat from. The only way they are putting the first pitch they see in play is if it’s middle-middle and they can hit it hard somewhere. Torres, also normally will give you a good at-bat, except for lately.

10. When it comes to Torres, he needs to bat third. He was the No. 3 hitter on Opening Day, and now two weeks later, he’s batting sixth. A small slump to begin the season shouldn’t be enough to get a player demoted in the lineup, let alone a player like Torres. The Yankees need to stop treating the 3-hole like a merry-go-round and putting anyone on any day there. This weekend Aaron Hicks hit third, as did Mike Ford. The Yankees don’t think Ford is good enough to play every day, but somehow they think he’s good enough to bat third when he does play. As for Hicks, the Yankees need to stop forcing him into a premium lineup spot any chance they get. Please. It’s Torres vs. Hicks. It’s not a competition. When Hicks slumps, he never loses his top two-thirds spot in the lineup. When someone else slumps, Hicks takes their spot. Again, I don’t care that Hicks is a switch hitter. I don’t. Put him and his two good half-seasons in his major league career sixth or lower in the lineup.

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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!