After winning the first game of the three-game series at Fenway Park, the Yankees dropped the next two and were humiliated along the way.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was sitting down the first-base line at Fenway Park on Apr. 26, 2009 for Sunday Night Baseball. Andy Pettitte was on the mound and trying to end the Red Sox’ early-season dominance over the Yankees, but he couldn’t.

With the game tied at 1 in the fifth, he allowed a two-double to David Ortiz, which scored Jason Varitek and moved Jacoby Ellsbury to third. After intentionally walking Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew came to the plate with runners on the corners. With a 1-1 count on Drew, Pettitte came set on the mound and as he stared at Youkilis at first base, Ellsbury took off. With Pettitte’s back to Ellsbury, he couldn’t see him running for home and by the time Jorge Posada realized what was happening to alert Pettitte, Ellsbury was too far down the line. Ellsbury stole home to give the Red Sox a 3-1 lead. He popped up, clenched his fists in celebration and made his way to the dugout where Terry Francona was laughing. (The Red Sox would win eight straight games against the Yankees to open the year.) The Yankees got the last laugh that season when they went on their own run against their rival, won the division and won the World Series. But that night at Fenway Park was demoralizing. I had seen (and have since) a lot of awful Yankees moments at Fenway Park, and the Ellsbury steal of home remains up there.

Yes, things are much different now than they were 15 Aprils ago: the Yankees have the best record in baseball and are 12 games ahead of the Red Sox in the division. But the level of embarrassment of watching the Red Sox steal nine bases in a single game against the Yankees is every bit as bad as it was when Francona put his arm around Ellsbury and the two shared a laugh at the Yankees’ expense.

2. “I think it’s matchup-dictated,” Aaron Boone said of allowing nine steals. “They had the right matchups out there on the field, and they took advantage of it.”

What matchup? The Yankees used six different pitchers in the game and the Red Sox stole off three of them (Marcus Stroman, Ian Hamilton and Luke Weaver). They couldn’t steal against Tommy Kahnle because he pitched a perfect inning, they didn’t need to steal against Caleb Ferguson because he was busy giving up hits all over the place and there wasn’t enough time to steal off Michael Tonkin. So the matchup is the entire Yankees’ pitching staff and Jose Trevino? Every team in the league watched the Red Sox run wild on the Yankees, and they will all now being doing it.

3. “That was good baseball tonight,” Alex Cora said. “Expect that from us. We’re going to push the envelope.”

Ken Rosenthal reported this week that if the Yankees were to suffer an early postseason exit or not reach the World Series that they would possibly replace Boone with Cora. If failing to meet expectations the last six years, culminating in the worst Yankees season in 30 years last year wasn’t enough for Boone to be fired, he’s not going anywhere if the Yankees simply reach the postseason (which is all they truly care to do). But even with an injury-riddled, mediocre roster that has Rob Refsnyder batting second, Dominic Smith as a middle-of-the-order bat and a center fielder playing shortstop, Cora still managed to manage circles around his counterpart yet again.

4. The nine steals against the Yankees served as the latest embarrassing accomplishment for the Yankees under Boone. Here’s some highlights on his managerial resume:

• First Yankees manager to get a fifth season without having won a championship (and now a sixth and seventh season too)
• Oversaw most lopsided home postseason loss in franchise history (Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS)
• Managed the Yankees to their worst full-season record in last 30 years in 2023
• Managed the Yankees to their worst month record-wise in 31 years in 2021
• Most steals allowed in a game by the franchise in 109 years

Boone wasn’t needed in Friday’s 8-1 Yankees rout and there was nothing he could on Saturday thanks to the $162 million man. But on Sunday, after the Yankees had turned a late three-run deficit into a one-run deficit, the Yankees needed their manager to put the team in the best possible position to succeed over the final two-plus innings and he couldn’t.

With the Yankees trailing 4-3 entering the bottom of the seventh, Boone’s elite relievers were rested in Weaver and Clay Holmes, having yet to pitch in the series, and with a day off scheduled for Monday, he could afford to use them in a game the Yankees were currently losing. Instead, Boone went to Caleb Ferguson for the seventh, and after Ferguson faced the minimum three batters, the Red Sox had runners on the corners with one out, threatening to add to their one-run lead.

The seventh inning screamed Luke Weaver’s name, with the righty having pitched just twice in the last seven days, but Boone figured he could try to steal an inning with Ferguson and then go to Weaver in the eighth. The plan backfired and Boone ended up calling on Weaver to clean up Ferguson’s mess. If Boone was willing to use Weaver in the game and willing to use him in that inning, why not just give Weaver a clean inning to start with? That exact situation has now been played out countless times per season for six-plus years under Boone.

5. The loss on Sunday wouldn’t have hurt so bad if Carlos Rodon showed up on Saturday. But he didn’t. A national TV game in a hostile environment against a divisional rival? It was foolish for anyone to think Rodon would be anything other than the worst version of himself.

Rodon needed 109 pitches to get through five innings and allowed five earned runs and 10 baserunners.

“It just looked like he was in the heart of the plate a lot,” Boone said. “I thought his stuff was good.”

Boone has yet to see a starting pitching performance in six-plus years in which his starter didn’t have “good stuff.” I don’t know how he can say Rodon “was in the heart of the plate a lot” and then in his next breath say he “thought his stuff was good.”

Rodon has now struggled against the Red Sox (5 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 7 K), Orioles (4 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 3 HR) and Blue Jays (4 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 5 K). Guess who the Yankees play the most games against each season? The Red Sox, Orioles and Blue Jays (and Rays who Rodon has yet to face this season).

If Rodon is healthy come October, he will undoubtedly get the ball for a playoff game because money owed is more important than performance or logic, and Rodon is owed a lot of money (he makes roughly $800,000 per start) and the Yankees’ postseason plans are rarely created with logic (like using an opener in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS or having Clarke Schmidt be the first guy out of the bullpen. Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS or a million other examples during the Boone era). Rodon has only made one playoff start in his career (2021 ALDS Game 4) and he didn’t get through three innings (2.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 3 K). Saturday night was a postseason-like atmosphere, just like it was in May in Baltimore, and unsurprisingly Rodon’s two worst starts of the season came in those two games. Thankfully, he won’t get to face the Orioles this week.

6. Thankfully, Luis Gil will face the Orioles this week. Gil couldn’t command his fastball or changeup on Friday night and still gave the Yankees five innings of one-run ball to lead them to their only win of the series. He’s so good.

7. Gleyber Torres isn’t good. In fact, he sucks. He flat-out sucks. When he isn’t dropping pop-ups, booting grounders, getting picked off or rushing throws, he’s putting together disgusting and disturbing at-bats.

Torres went 0-for-Fenway over the weekend and reached base once via a walk in 12 plate appearances. Between Friday and Saturday, he left 11 runners on base, and yet, he was somehow worse on Sunday.

In the series finale, the Yankees trailed 4-3 in the seventh. They were able to load the bases with no outs and Torres coming to the plate. Torres got ahead 3-0 because new reliever Zack Kelly wasn’t even close on any of his first three pitches. Then Torres took back-to-back fastballs down the middle on 3-0 and 3-1 to run the count full. The Red Sox knew Torres would be swinging at the 3-2 pitch unless it hit him in the head, so Connor Wong called for a sweeper away, Kelly threw it away and in the dirt and Torres struck out swinging to add three more runners left on base to his weekend tally of 14.

If you like Torres, you don’t like the Yankees. How could you when his very presence in the field, on the bases and in the batter’s box is detrimental to the success of the team. Torres doesn’t hit for average (.222 batting average) or power (.333 slugging percentage). He doesn’t provide speed (four steals) and doesn’t get on base often (.298 on-base percentage). He’s a horrific defender (leads all second baseman in errors) and has the worst Baseball IQ of any player I have ever watched (Nick Swisher is off the hook). Torres is a losing player who provides no value to the team, and yet, he’s the only Yankee Boone has decided needs no days off.

8. The offense is so bad outside of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge that when the Yankees don’t score when the duo is up, you immediately start to count how many innings it will be until they may get up again. Because the rest of the lineup is so blah, being average or the slightest bit above average has fooled the perception of the production of hitters like Alex Verdugo, Anthony Volpe and Giancarlo Stanton.

It’s a good thing Alex Verdugo had a big night on Friday in his return to Fenway because he didn’t do anything for the rest of the series. Verdugo’s home run was his first in June, and the Yankees’ “cleanup hitter” is hitting .260/.313/.426.

7. I nicknamed Brett Gardner “The Streak” during his playing days because he was the streakiest player of all time. Well, it looks like the Yankees’ latest leadoff solution is ready to inherit that title. Here is Volpe’s season broken down into four parts:

March 28-April 14: .382/.477/1.041 (1.518 OPS)
April 15-May 5: .163/.247/.238 (.485 OPS)
May 7-June 5: .333/.368/.539 (.907 OPS)
June 6-16: .154/.154/.192 (.346 OPS)

He hasn’t walked in June., Volpe has one extra-base hit in June. He hasn’t walked in June. He has one home run since May 9.

8. Stanton leads the league in strikeouts and only has a .293 on-base percentage, but there’s nothing really to say about him. This (.776 OPS) is the best version of Stanton at this point, so he’s playing as well as he can play, unfortunately.

9. The Yankees need lineup depth. I thought they would get that in Jasson Dominguez, but now he’s on the injured list, so it’s back to hoping Verdugo can be better than he has been (unlikely since he has a 108 OPS+ and a 106 OPS+ for his career) and that Volpe can find some consistency. It’s back to praying some combination of Torres, Anthony Rizzo (if healthy) and DJ LeMahieu can hit even a little bit.

The rotation is fine and the bullpen is what it is until they either get healthier this summer or acquire help in the next six weeks.

The Yankees have the best record in baseball, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have glaring issues. Fortunately, their issues are masked a lot of games because they have the best two hitters in the world hitting back-to-back in their lineup. But the issues still exist. The Red Sox exposed the Yankees’ lineup with mediocre pitching, beat up a bullpen that has trouble generating strikeout and demoralized a staff that can’t hold runners on and a catcher with one of the weakest arms in the league at the position.

10. Don’t think the Orioles weren’t watching. The Yankees were an Oswaldo Cabrera two-run home run away from being swept in four games in Baltimore last month and over the next three days at the Stadium, the Yankees will try to avoid letting the Orioles overtake them in the division.

The Yankees are going to miss Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez and Corbin Burnes with Bradish now hurt and Rodriguez and Burnes having pitched on Saturday and Sunday. This is the most important series of the season to date and one of the four most important series of the season overall. If the Yankees play this week like they did over the weekend, the Orioles will be in first place.

The Yankees were one out away from a four-game sweep of the Royals in Kansas City, but bad defense and bad pitching led to a 4-3 loss.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. There wasn’t a Yankees fan who had confidence in Clay Homes closing out Thursday’s ninth inning. I don’t know many Yankees fans who have confidence in Holmes normally, so when you add in him having not pitched since Sunday, having only pitched once in six days and entering a one-run game, well, you have a recipe for disaster. And disaster it was as Holmes blew a 3-2 lead in the ninth and the Yankees lost 4-3 to the Royals.

2. Ever since Holmes’ mirage ERA of 0.00 vanished with his four-earned-run performance against the Mariners on May 20, he has been incapable of pitching clean innings. In his last 10 innings, he has put 20 runners on base with just six strikeouts. In eight of his last 14 appearances, he has no strikeouts. As I have written in these Thoughts many times, when you allow the ball to be put into play bad things can happen. And because Holmes relies on balls in play to get outs, bad things happen.

3. The bad thing on Thursday was a ground ball hit between Holmes and Anthony Rizzo that neither wanted to claim. Eventually Rizzo fielded it and shoveled it to Holmes, but not before the runner slid headfirst safely into first. Rizzo’s indecisiveness to take balls to the bag himself has been a constant this season and negated his first home run since May 10 in the loss.

“We’re down, not much going, and scored three runs there to give ourselves a chance to win,” Rizzo said. “Just didn’t work out today.”

Well, yeah, it didn’t work out because you didn’t pick up the ball and make a play.

4. “Stuff is going to happen here and there,” Nestor Cortes said. “[We hope he] keeps on pitching the way he’s been pitching.”

That makes one of us, Nestor (who finally had a good road start). If Holmes keeps pitching the way he has been pitching, the Yankees are going to blow a lot of close games in the ninth inning.

On Thursday, he struggled against the bottom of the Royals order (with two outs, he couldn’t retire hitters with OPS of .632 or .675). On Sunday, with two outs, he let Gavin Lux and Enrique Hernandez bring Mookie Betts to the plate as the go-ahead run in the ninth. He struggled against the Angels and got knocked around for four runs recording just two outs against the anemic Mariners. He had trouble with the Rays and Diamondbacks, and if not for defensive heroics in the season-opening series in Houston, his ERA would have been destroyed for the year before the Yankees played their first home game.

5. It’s always an adventure with Holmes and rarely a pleasant one. Easy 1-2-3 innings are infrequent as are innings in which he throws fewer than 20 pitches. There’s always traffic on the bases because he relies on contact on the ground to get his outs. The Yankees need a closer who can strike out hitters to get outs, not one who needs ground balls hit right at fielders to get them.

6. The loss was the first since Juan Soto returned to the lineup. In the series, he went 4-for-11 with five walks and ended the no-hitter on Thursday and also drove in the go-ahead run in the eighth in that game as well. He did what he could to keep the winning streak going and sweep the Royals on a day Anthony Volpe, Aaron Judge and Alex Verdugo went 0-for-12 with six strikeouts.

7. The 5 through 9 hitters was a who’s who of miserable seasons with Torres (.654 OPS) batting fifth, Rizzo (.626) sixth, DJ LeMahieu (.497) seventh, Austin Wells (.615) eighth and Trent Grisham (.520) ninth. The Yankees really need Stanton to be better than a .288 on-base guy who only hits the ball out of the park when the score is lopsided because it doesn’t seem like any of the other options are going to hit. Stanton had a pair of lopsided-score home runs on Wednesday with the Yankees up six runs and on Thursday with the Yankees up nine runs. No one hits the ball farther when the game is out of hand than Stanton. (Torres also added a stat-padding home run on Wednesday with the Yankees up six runs.)

8. As for Rizzo, it’s nice to think that his second hit of June on Wednesday and his first home run in over a month on Thursday could be what he needed to get going, but let’s be honest, Rizzo isn’t going to go anywhere, other than hopefully the bench with diminished playing time. All his home run on Thursday did was buy him more time (think Aaron Hicks and Josh Donaldson) and add more fuel to his manager’s fire of telling everyone his first baseman is going to get it going soon.

9. I look forward to the day Jasson Dominguez is back in the majors where he belongs. Dominguez has hit .358/.402/.630 with six home runs in 87 plate appearances in the minors. He’s the bat they need protecting Judge and extending the depth of the lineup. Not Verudgo (who’s hitting .259/.314/.418 and only bats fourth because he’s left-handed), not Stanton and certainly not Rizzo.

10. This weekend is the first Yankees-Red Sox series of the season despite the season being nearly halfway complete. The Red Sox are mediocre at 35-34, and have surrounded Rafael Devers with close to nothing. The Yankees have been letting Devers beat them since he entered the league seven years ago, so it won’t surprise me if they let him do the same this weekend, but there’s no reason to. He is the offense, the way Judge was the offense before Soto arrived. Put him on and make others beat you and have an enjoyable weekend before the Orioles come to the Bronx next week.

Juan Soto returned to the field, Aaron Judge returned to the lineup and the Yankees blew out the Royals 10-1.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Brady Singer owned the Yankees in his previous two starts against them in 2022 and 2023: 13 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 19 K. Singer hadn’t allowed a home run to the Yankees since his first of four career starts against them back on June 22, 2021 when Luke Vogt and Kyle Higashioka took him deep. With Singer and Marcus Stroman on the mound on Tuesday night in Kansas City, I expected a low-scoring game.

2. Stroman held up his end of my expectation (5.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 1 K), but Singer got rocked. Anthony Volpe led off the game with a triple, Juan Soto walked, Aaron Judge singled in Volpe and Soto eventually came around to score on a groundout. Five batters into the game, the Yankees had scored as many runs off Singer as they had in the previous 13 innings against him and had a 2-0 lead.

3. The Yankees scored four more runs off him in the fourth, which included an Austin Wells three-run home run. (What was the camera work on that home run? It was made to believe Wells had hit an infield pop-up, when instead it was a straightaway-center bomb.)

“I was comfortable with that pitch to lefties,” Singer said of the pitch Wells hit 417 feet. “Maybe he was looking for it, but I just got to execute better.”

The Yankees scored a seventh run (unearned) against Singer in the sixth and had a 10-0 lead before the Royals scored their first and only run. Stroman threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings and he didn’t need to with the way the offense attacked Singer.

4. “The way these guys are swinging, it just makes this game fun,” Stroman said. “I feel like everybody is in their element and riding off of one another.”

Well, everybody but Rizzo, who was the only starter to not reach base safely.

Rizzo hit into an inning-ending double play in the first. He grounded out to first in the fourth. He reached on an error by the second baseman on a ground ball in the sixth. He hit a slow roller right in front of the plate for a groundout in the seventh and popped out to third in in the ninth. It was an 0-for-5 night for Rizzo as he remains 1-for-June (1-for-34 with a walk).

5. I don’t know what else the Yankees are supposed to do with him. He was just given back-to-back games off to clear his head and work on mechanics and returned to not hit the ball out of the infield in five at-bats. He’s not even walking anymore. He has one walk in June and two walks since May 11. Today is June 12.

6. The 25-year-old first baseman Ben Rice had 12 home runs and an .894 OPS in Double-A before being promoted to Triple-A where he has three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.571 OPS in nine games. I would think the Yankees would want to get a look at him in the majors within the next six weeks to see what they have and if they will need to make a trade for a first baseman. (Or they know what they have and won’t call him up to keep his value high and use him in a trade.) Because they can’t have a complete zero at the plate from an offensive position.

7. Gleyber Torres needs to hit and then one of Rizzo or DJ LeMahieu has to as well. Torres has a .786 OPS over the last month (but just .661 in June), so he has been much better than he was in the first month of the season. LeMahieu has still only played in 11 games, so he’s owed some more time. But Rizzo seems more washed up by the day. I don’t see how he comes out of this.

8. Judge hit his 25th home run of the season in his 68th game. In 2022, he hit his 25th home run in his 60th game, so he’s not far off that pace. The 25th was a two-run shot off of Nick Anderson in the seventh inning. Giancarlo Stanton also tagged Anderson for a home run in the seventh. (In typical Stanton fashion, he hit a 446-foot blast with the Yankees already leading 9-0.)

Remember when Anderson was unhittable for the Rays against the Yankees? In his first two seasons with the Rays (2019-20), Anderson had 77 strikeouts in 37 2/3 innings. Then he got hurt in 2021, missed all of 2022, and between last season with the Braves and this season with the Royals, he has 54 strikeouts in 61 innings.

9. The Yankees have the starting pitching edge in the third game of the series on Wednesday with Cody Poteet going against Dan Altavilla, who will be used as an opener. Altavilla pitched a scoreless inning with two strikeouts in the series opener on Monday and it was his first major-league appearance in three years. He looked good against Alex Verdugo (strikeout), LeMahieu (strikeout) and Trent Grisham (groundout), but that’s a lot different than Volpe, Soto and Judge to open a game.

10. The Royals will be trying to piece together an entire game from their bullpen to avoid a fourth straight loss. Neither team has used its best relievers so far in the series, and I’m guessing the Yankees are hoping for five innings from Poteet before going to a combination of Caleb Ferguson, Tommy Kahnle, Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes for the final 12 outs. If the offense shows up on Wednesday like it did on Tuesday, it could be another night off for the elite relievers.

The Yankees used a spring training-esque lineup and a reliever with zero career ninth-inning saves to close out a game in Kansas City. It didn’t matter because Carlos Rodon was great again, and the Yankees beat the Royals 4-2.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. In Game 160 of the 2023 season, Carlos Rodon started for the Yankees against the Royals in Kansas City. He went into that game with a 5.74 ERA and .790 OPS against in 13 starts. He had missed about 60 percent of the first year of a six-year, $162 million deal, and the time he didn’t miss, he pitched horribly. In a season in which he was injured, bad and blew a kiss to heckling fans, nothing was worse than that start against the Royals.

Single
Walk
Double
Home run
Single
Single
Single
Walk

Rodon faced eight batters and retired none. The three that were on base when he exited in the bottom of the first all came around to score. He turned his back on Matt Blake during a mound visit. His final line: 0 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. His ERA ballooned to 6.85 and his WHIP to 1.446. Rodon made roughly $800,000 for a performance that any fan from the bleachers could have rivaled and any position player could have bested.

2. On Monday, Rodon took the mound in Kansas City for the first time since the worst start of his career and pitched the way someone owed $162 million over six years should pitch. Five days after taking a perfect game into the sixth inning in a win over the Twins, Rodon took a no-hitter into the fifth inning against the Royals.

“I definitely knew this game was coming,” Rodon said of his start on Monday. “It was circled on the calendar, and I wanted to show up and give my team the best chance to win after coming out of here last year with what happened and not pitching well. I definitely remembered that.”

Every Yankees fan remembers it. It was as low a point in the lowest Yankees season in 30 years. The star free-agent signing unable to record an out against a 106-loss team.

3. Rodon threw his seventh straight quality start (7 IP, 5 H 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3 K), picked up his league-leading ninth win and the Yankees improved to 11-3 when he takes the ball, which he has every turn through the rotation this year.

“I thought he threw the ball really well,” Aaron Boone said. “He made some big pitches the couple of times when they did pressure him there a little bit.”

4. It was a wildly managed game for Boone from the moment the lineup was posted right through the final out. Boone started the day by sitting Aaron Judge — the hottest hitter in baseball —despite his 20 home runs in the last 40 games.

“I never like him out of the lineup, of course,” Boone said, “but I feel like he needs a day.”

That’s a very ominous “I feel like he needs a day” from Boone. Is Judge hurt? Did Judge say he needs a day? Did Boone and training staff notice something? Unfortunately, these are the questions all Yankees fans are left to wonder whenever someone is held out of the lineup because of the lack of transparency with injuries in the six-plus seasons with Boone as manager.

5. “I had been marking this one down,” Boone said. “He had played every day and this time of the year … it’s important to get off.”

Either Judge is banged up or hurt, or when the schedule came out, Boone saw a Sunday Night Baseball game against the Dodgers followed by a night game in Kansas City and was going to sit Judge in it no matter what. Whether he hit four home runs the previous day or if he has been the hardest out in baseball over the last six weeks (which he has been), he was going to sit. (We’ll know on Tuesday afternoon if it was really just a day off or something more if Judge is held out again.)

6. Holding Judge out wasn’t the only oddity of the lineup. Giancarlo Stanton had to sit to get Juan Soto back in the lineup as the designated hitter since apparently it’s another season in which Stanton can’t play the field, and Anthony Rizzo was benched for a second straight game as he’s 1-for-June at the plate. (Boone said Rizzo’s absence with last “a couple of days.”) Gleyber Torres and his .640 OPS was promoted to third in the lineup and singles-only hitter DJ LeMahieu to fifth. Trent Grisham started again and batted sixth and Jahmai Jones got his first start in over a month. Jose Trevino and Oswaldo Cabrera rounded out the lineup at eight and nine.

Going against one of the season’s best starters in Seth Lugo with that lineup seemed like a bad idea, but Lugo had troubled locating his eight different pitches in the first inning and the Yankees jumped all over him for a pair of runs. They did the same in the fourth to extend their lead to 4-0.

7. The wildness continued once Rodon came out after the seventh. Boone went to the shaky Ian Hamilton for the eighth and Hamilton tried his hardest to blow a three-run lead, but only ended up allowing a run. Clinging to a two-run lead for the ninth and with Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver unavailable, and Boone trying his hardest to stay away from Tommy Kahnle, Michael Tonkin was called on to close out the game.

Tonkin went from the Mets to the Twins back to the Mets to the Yankees this season. In his first day as a Yankee he was asked to close out an extra-inning lead in Milwaukee and he failed miserably. After that he was relegated to blowout and mop-up duty, which he pitched admirably in with a 1.23 ERA over his next 10 games with the Yankees. On Friday, he pitched a scoreless 1 2/3 innings in a 0-0 game against the Dodgers before going back to mop-up duty in Saturday’s loss to the Dodgers. He had Sunday off and then was being asked to serve as the interim closer on Monday.

8. Tonkin worked around a one-out walk, struck out two and picked up the save to secure the win.

Tonkin had a 5.14 ERA in seven innings for the Mets and a 9.00 ERA in two innings for the Twins. He has a 0.89 ERA in 20 1/3 innings for the Yankees. He has gone from last man on the roster and the DFA bubble to being an important piece of the bullpen. It’s been a remarkable turnaround for an arm that looked like it was going to be a one-weekend pickup when signed.

9. The Yankees faced one of the best starting pitchers and league and sat the hottest hitter in baseball, started four hitters with OPS off .638 or lower, dropped down three sacrifice bunts, hit no home runs, used a 34-year-old journeyman reliever to attempt the first ninth-inning save of his career and still came away with a win. If that’s not a sign how well this season has gone to date, I don’t know what is.

10. I expect Judge to be back in the lineup for the second game of the series along with Stanton and Rizzo, and the trio of Kahnle, Weaver and Holmes should all be available. The Yankees will need another strong start on the mound with Brady Singer going for the Royals. It will be Marcus Stroman for the Yankees, coming off his worst start of the season (4.2 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 2 HR). Stroman has followed up each mediocre start with a good one this season and he’ll need to do that again on Tuesday.

The Yankees lost the first two games of the Dodgers series before bouncing back to salvage the series finale. The weekend served as a look into life without Juan Soto for the Yankees.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I spent every available second on Friday checking for the results of Juan Soto’s left forearm tests. Thankfully, the results came back with no structural damage to either his forearm or elbow. It was as good of news as possible given the ominous feeling around the Yankees on Thursday night, even if it meant he would go on to miss the entire weekend series against the Dodgers.

The weekend series against the Dodgers was the Yankees’ version of It’s a Wonderful Life starring Soto. Every Yankees fan was treated to a glimpse of life if the Yankees hadn’t traded for Soto and what life will be like without Soto if the Yankees don’t re-sign him. The result: the 2023 Yankees.

“It’s a big bat out for us right now,” Alex Verdugo said. “But we always know when one guy is down, the next guy has to step up.”

Except there’s no guy who can step up and be Soto. Pitching-wise? That’s a different story. Gerrit Cole goes down and Luis Gil becomes Cole. Things like that happen. But you don’t find or create a Soto replacement. There isn’t one.

2. The Yankees didn’t score for 10 innings on Friday, and only eventually plated a meaningless run in the 11th thanks to the automatic runner. They lost the series opener 2-1 and then got pummeled 11-3 in the second game. Through 20 innings without Soto, this was the Yankees offense:

First run: Aaron Judge singles in the automatic runner.

Second run: Scores on an RBI groundout (was initially called a double play).

Third run: Judge solo home run.

Fourth run: Judge solo home run.

Judge, the automatic runner and a groundout. Welcome back to 2023, indeed.

3. Not only did the Yankees look like their 2023 selves at the plate, but Aaron Boone reminded everyone that he still hasn’t figured out how manage the actual game on the field. His only redeeming quality as manager continues to be his relentless defense of his players’ performance. He defended Gleyber Torres’ defense on both Friday and Saturday. He defended Alex Verdugo’s misread on a line drive on Saturday. And after Dennis Santana got knocked around yet again on Saturday, he said the reliever threw ball well.

4. Despite his manager thinking he threw the ball well against the Dodgers, Santana was designated for assignment ahead of Sunday’s game. Unfortunately, with John Sterling’s retirement, Michael Kay will likely be the only emcee of Old Timers’ Day, and therefore these former Yankees bios moving forward will have to be read as if they are coming from Kay:

Old Timers’ Day 2041: “Our next Yankee signed as a free agent prior to the 2024 season. The previous year, he was put on waivers by the Braves and Twins and granted free agency by the Mets. No one wanted his career 5.17 ERA and 1.430 WHIP except for the Yankees. He made the Opening Day roster and spent more than two months on the team pitching to a career-worst 6.26 ERA. He was allowed to pitch in high-leverage situations despite recording only 6.3 strikeouts per nine innings and a 1.354 WHIP. Please welcome back, Dennis Santana!“

5. As long as bad relievers are on the team, Boone will find ways to get them into games. With Santana gone, Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez take over for Santana as being tied for the worst and least trustworthy relievers. Sure enough, despite having a rested bullpen for Sunday night’s game, Ferguson was the first guy out of Boone’s bullpen. After he got the final out of the sixth inning, he no longer needed to meet the three-batter requirement, but that didn’t stop Boone from trying to steal outs with Ferguson in the seventh. And sure enough, the first two batters reached, and Luke Weaver had to come in with two on and no outs rather than a clean inning.

6. The defense of Torres’ defense is indefensible. With a straight face, and being completely serious, Boone praised Torres’ defense over the weekend. His error on Friday was erased by a pickoff. But his error on Saturday led to a four-run Dodgers inning to effectively end that game. Torres leads all second baseman in errors. At the plate, Torres didn’t make up for his defensive miscues, going 2-for-11 with three strikeouts.

7. Since Boone won’t give an honest opinion of his players, like Torres or Anthony Rizzo, I will: The pre-concussion Rizzo isn’t coming back. Despite being 1-for-June, Boone still hit Rizzo fifth in the lineup on Saturday and Sunday before sitting him down. Rizzo has two doubles since May 12. He has two walks since May 11. He last homered on May 10. He’s hitting .224/.285/.339. Rizzo looks incapable of figuring it out, and he would have to go on a Judge-like tear to get his numbers back to respectability, which isn’t possible.

8. I thought DJ LeMahieu could come back and make up for the lack of production from Torres and Rizzo, but LeMahieu is hitting like a 35-year-old who has missed 31 percent of the team’s games since 2022.

LeMahieu had a season-ending injury in 2022 and 2023 and missed the first two months of 2024. He has seven singles in 39 plate appearances, and one of them was ruled a single despite being a ground ball that hit a runner. He is hitting everything on the ground, and because of that, he has already hit into four double plays in 10 games. LeMahieu deserves a longer leash than 10 games, especially since players like Torres and Rizzo have been given endless leashes, but the early results for LeMahieu aren’t good.

The Yankees’ lineup can’t be three guys (Soto, Judge and Anthony Volpe), even if two of the three are the two best hitters in baseball. One of Torres, Rizzo or LeMahieu has to hit like the best version of themself. Because without that, and with the streakiness of Giancarlo Stanton (who is 8-for-52 with 20 strikeouts), there is no depth to the offense.

9. The big pitching matchup of these big series always ends up being the offense game. Gil allowed three earned runs in 5 2/3 innings for the most runs he had allowed since April 26 and Tyler Glasnow gave up five earned runs, including home runs to Oswaldo Cabrera and Trent Grisham.

The “WE WANT SOTO” chants during Grisham’s three-run home run at-bat were warranted. If Soto was truly available (and why wouldn’t he be if he’s now going to be OK to play on Monday?) then that was going to be the spot to use him. Boone decided against it, Grisham got a middle-middle fastball and crushed it into the right-field seats.

“Yes, I heard them,” Grisham said of the chants. “I was just happy that I was able to stay present in the moment, worry about myself and put a good swing on one.”

“I wasn’t too happy with it,” Judge said about the Soto chants. “He got his point across with that homer.”

Settle down, Judge. The only point he made was don’t throw him a middle-middle fastball. Other than that, people want to see the best player in the league in a big spot rather than the guy with the .695 career OPS.

10. The best player is expected to be back in the lineup on Monday in Kansas City. If he’s not, there will need to be a lot of questions asked about his absence given everything the Yankees have said about him since Friday afternoon.

Seth Lugo goes for the Royals, and he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season. Carlos Rodon goes for the Yankees, and the last time he faced the Royals was his last start of last season when he allowed eight runs without getting an out. Over the last three days, I have had more 2023 flashbacks than I can handle. Rodon needs to keep his strong season going, Soto needs to return to the lineup and everything that was good about this season before Thursday’s rain delay needs to continue.