After the Yankees won 16 out of 17 games between Apr. 21 and May 9 to go from a 7 1/2-game deficit in the AL East to a one-game lead, I thought they would spend the rest of the season running away in the division. That hasn’t happened, and despite going 26-16 in their next 42 games, the Yankees trailed the Red Sox by a 1/2-game in the division (though the Yankees have played four fewer games) entering this past weekend.

The Yankees have been unable to put the Red Sox away and remove themselves from the possibility of playing another dreaded one-game playoff as a wild-card team. This weekend was a chance for the Yankees to create more separation in the division en route to what should be the team’s first division title in six years.

FRIDAY
After’s the 8-1 win in the series opener, CC Sabathia’s ERA improved to 3.02 on the season, for by far the second-best on the team behind Luis Severino. Sabathia could keep pitching to 3.02 this season and the next season and the season after that and for another decade and I would still be nervous every time he starts against a contending team.

It’s not that I don’t trust Sabathia, it’s that he has one way to pitch and that’s with perfect command. His repertoire now induces a lot of weak contact, which is why he has been successful in his reinvention, but his repertoire also leaves him vulnerable to right-handed batters if he isn’t perfect with his location. Thankfully, he’s had his command a lot this season. Sabathia gave up one earned run over seven innings, and thanks to the offense, that was more than enough.

Miguel Andujar continued to try to stay with Gleyber Torres in the two-horse AL Rookie of the Year race with an RBI single in the second and a two-run home run in the fourth. Greg Bird added a pair of home runs on the day Brandon Drury was recalled from Triple-A to give himself some breathing room for the starting first base job, and the Yankees cruised to an easy 8-1 win. It’s always refreshing to be able to relax and get a blowout win. It’s even better when it’s against the Red Sox.

SATURDAY
I was at my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s birthday, and as Sonny Gray took the mound in the first, my dad joked how Sonny Gray’s always referred to as “Sonny Gray” and not just his last name like every other player. The FOX broadcast drove home my dad’s point by calling Gray by his complete name all night.

Before first pitch, my dad, this time not joking, let it be known how much he despises Gray. Gray quickly got the first two outs of the inning and my dad went to the kitchen. When he returned, it was 4-0 Red Sox and he wasn’t surprised at how quickly the game got out of hand with Gray pitching.

Gray got the first two outs on 10 pitches and then it went single, walk, single, grand slam. Gray ended up needing 36 pitches to get out of the inning.

The game was over after the top of the first with Chris Sale pitching for the Red Sox. I figured the Yankees could at best get three runs off Sale, so now trailing by four, the rest of the game was a formality. I felt bad for the Yankees fans in attendance who had paid and wasted their Saturday night sitting in 92-degree heat, which felt way worse with New York City humidity, to essentially watch a 1/2-inning game. Gray gave up two more runs in the second and another pair of singles in the third before he was finally removed from the game.

I thought Aaron Boone should have kept Gray in the game. The game was already out of reach in the first and now it was 6-0 in the third with two on and one out. Why remove Gray from the game and asked the bullpen to get 20 outs on a humid night? Why ruin the bullpen for the next few days because of Gray’s incompetence? Let Gray throw 110 pitches and see how far that could get you and then take him out of the game. He clearly needs to work on things, and the only way to do that is by pitching. The game was already lost, it’s not like the Yankees were going to come back.

Gray threw only 68 pitches in yet another loss. His line: 2.1 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR. It was a good thing after the game he finally held himself accountable for his latest egg instead of deferring to his “I had good stuff” line he had in past starts. Here is Gray’s combined line in two starts against Boston this season: 5.1 IP, 14 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 1 HR, 20.38 ERA, 3.377 WHIP. If the two teams meet in the postseason, there’s no way Gray can start a game. Then again, there’s no way he can even be on the postseason roster at this point.

SUNDAY
Luis Severino started the series finale and that meant a Yankees win. You didn’t have to stay up to hear the awkward Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team. With Severino going, you could go to bed knowing the Yankees would win. And they did.

Severino shut out the Red Sox for 6 2/3 innings, lowering his ERA to 1.98 and improving to 13-2 in what is shaping up to be a Cy Young-winning season. Now that Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole have come down from their unsustainable early-season success, Severino has emerged as the best pitcher in the American League. Actually, he’s the best pitcher in baseball.

Severino didn’t need to be as good as he was thanks to a four-run first, a two-run second and a three-run fourth, but it was good to see the 24-year-old ace making $604,975 this season outpitch David Price, who makes nearly double that per start.

Price got rocked by the Yankees in Boston in April and then backed out of his start in May in New York against them, citing a sore arm from playing video games. The Yankees didn’t even have Gary Sanchez for this game, who hits Price better than anyone anywhere, and they still touched him up for eight runs and five home runs. Three of those five home runs came off the bat of Aaron Hicks in what was the most improbable feat of the season. I have no idea what to make of Hicks as a player and whether or not he’s a first-round bust or serviceable everyday player or a potential All-Star. Maybe I’ll never know. Sunday did nothing other than confuse me more.

The weekend consisted of three blowouts, and we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know about the best two teams in baseball. We already knew CC Sabathia could shut down the Red Sox and Eduardo Rodriguez is inconsistent. We already knew Sonny Gray sucks and Chris Sale is dominant. We already knew Luis Severino is the best pitcher in baseball and David Price has no chance of every beating these Yankees. We already knew both offenses are powerful and both lineups deep. We already knew the Yankees are slightly better than the Red Sox, and winning two of three, proved it.

See how many catchphrases the Yankees play-by-play man will say during a broadcast. (As seen on The Michael Kay Show on YES Network and heard on ESPN Radio New York.)

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That was bad. It wasn’t as bad as losing 9-1 at home to the Marlins to fall to 8-8 on the season, but it was still bad. So much for the 2018 Yankees haven’t loss three straight games. The Yankees were swept at the Trop by the under-.500 Rays, and their four-game loss column lead in the AL East is now two.

But it wasn’t just that the Yankees were swept by a team, whose starting lineup features not a single player that would start on the Yankees. It was how they were swept in the three games. Here is a breakdown of the embarrassment that was the weekend in Tampa Bay.

FRIDAY
The Rays went with a bullpen game against the Yankees and it worked as the six pitchers they used combined to allow one run in the Yankees’ 2-1 loss. It wasn’t that the Yankees didn’t have baserunners in the game, as they had five hits and six(!) walks and were able to plate a single run. The Yankees left two on in the first, two in the second, one in the third, one in the fourth, one in the fifth, two in the seventh and one in the ninth. They went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. In the ninth, it looked like they might produce some late-game magic when Miguel Andujar singled to lead off the inning, but Gleyber Torres flew out and Brett Gardner grounded into a game-ending double play.

CC Sabathia was in bend-but-don’t-break mode all night, as he put 11 runners on in 5 1/3 innings. He gave up the two runs though only one was earned thanks to an error by himself. It was another game in which Sabathia pitched well enough to win and didn’t as he now has four wins this season despite pitching to a 3.18 ERA.

It was a frustrating one-run loss with the Yankees leaving runners on base in nearly every inning, but it was one of those games that happens over the course of a 162-game season. Even against the Rays.

SATURDAY
Prior to this season, Wilmer Font pitched to an 11.57 ERA over seven-career innings in the majors between 2012-2017. Earlier this season, he put 19 runners on base and allowed 13 earned runs in 10 1/3 innings for the Dodgers and was traded to the A’s. Then for the A’s, he put 17 runners on base and allowed 11 earned runs in 6 2/3 innings and was traded to the Rays. Last week against the Yankees, he “started” and allowed one earned runs over 4 1/3 innings. On Saturday, he “started” against the Yankees again and shut them out over 5 2/3 innings. So Wilmer Font, the 28-year-old journeyman, has pitched to the following line in his last two appearances, both against the Yankees: 10.1 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K, 1 HR, 0.87 ERA, 0.874 WHIP. There’s nothing to say.

I think I have made it clear how it’s hard to like Sonny Gray when someone so inconsistent needs to be babied as if he were an actual ace. Whether it’s whining his way to a personal catcher or talking about how “good” his stuff was on a night in which he got rocked, Gray is hard to root for. Except I have to root for him because he’s part of the Yankees rotation, and when he sucks, the Yankees lose.

Gray sucked again on Saturday. Sure, it didn’t matter if he gave up one run or four like he actually did since the offense had no answer for Font for the second time in six days, but it was frustrating to watch the guy the Yankees traded for to slot behind either Luis Severino or Masahiro Tanaka pitch poorly yet again.

Gray put the team behind right away in the first after giving up a leadoff single and one-out double. Then in the third, he gave up two more. He settled down to retire 15 straight to get Yankees fans thinking that this start might not have been so bad, but then he gave up a solo home run on an 0-2 pitch for good measure before being removed.

Here’s how wildly inconsistent Gray has been this season:

4 IP, 1 ER
6 IP, 3 ER
3 IP, 6 ER
3.1 IP, 5 ER
4.2 IP, 3 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
6 IP, 2 ER
5 IP, 5 ER
8 IP, 1 ER
3.2 IP, 5 ER
6 IP, 1 ER
8 IP, 0 ER
5 IP, 4 ER
5 IP, 2 ER
6.2 IP, 4 ER

Every time you think he might have turned the corner, there’s another bad start around that corner. Yes, he’s better on the road (3.28 ERA) than at home (7.22 ERA) though he wasn’t very good on the road on Saturday and he wasn’t good once again with his personal catcher. But I guess it didn’t matter since you can’t win if you don’t score, and the Yankees were shut out for the second time this season, and had scored one run in the first 18 innings of the series against the following pitchers: Ryne Stanek, Ryan Yarbrough, Diego Castillo, Chaz Roe, Jose Alvarado, Sergio Romo, Wilmer Font and Jonny Venters.

SUNDAY
One run and two losses in two games against the Rays. I knew the Yankees were going to win on Sunday, avoid getting swept and avoid losing three straight for the first time this season, so I wagered on the Yankees.

Domingo German immediately made me regret my decision when he allowed two runs and three extra-base hits in the first inning. But Miguel Andujar answered with a three-run home run in the second and I figured I was right with my expectations for the game. German quickly destroyed the idea of a shutdown inning with a leadoff home run to tie the game in the bottom of the second, and in the third, he gave up three more runs to put the Yankees behind 6-3.

In the fourth, the Yankees had first and second and no one out, but Aaron Hicks struck out and Andujar grounded out with the runners moving to second and third on the ground out. That brought up Neil Walker, who was inexplicably batting above Torres in the order. Walker saw five pitches in the at-bat, didn’t swing at any of them and struck out looking to end the inning.

Because Walker has the best first name in baseball, I avoided getting on him earlier in the season when he deserved any and all criticism. (He was hitting .164/.219/.194 with two doubles and four RBIs on the season on April 27.) Then he went off over the next four weeks, batting .281/.379/.456 with two home runs and 10 RBIs as the catalyst in every Yankees rally, and it looked like the guy who the Yankees paid $4 million to for the season had been a product of a late spring training arrival.

But since May 27 and the return of Greg Bird, which has kept Walker on the bench, Walker is batting .094/.171/.094 with no extra-base hits and no RBIs. No one can blame Walker for being a regular his entire career and then struggling in his new role of utility infielder, but that’s all he will be on the Yankees at this point, barring a series of injuries. He isn’t going to play over Torres or Andujar, and if Bird continues to be an automatic out, it’s more likely that Brandon Drury will get a regular shot at first base over Walker. Walker either needs to adapt to his infrequent playing time, or unfortunately, I will lose having a Neil on the Yankees.

A Brett Gardner walk and back-to-back doubles from Didi Gregorius and Giancarlo Stanton in the fourth cut the Yankees’ deficit to 6-5, and Stanton hit a leadoff home run the eighth to tie the game. And it would stayed tied until the 12th inning.

I thought things would be different with Aaron Boone as Yankees manager. I thought he would throw out the idiotic strategy of using relievers in set innings and only using your closer in a save situation. But Boone has been identical to Joe Girardi with his in-game managing, creating set innings for his relievers and using the most expensive reliever in the league to pitch to a statistic.

After using his entire bullpen aside from Aroldis Chapman and Chasen Shreve, Boone went with Shreve for the bottom of the 12th because the Yankees didn’t have a lead of three runs or less. It didn’t matter to Boone that he would need to get through the 12th for the Yankees to have a chance to ever getting the lead in the game, so he went with Shreve. The Yankees bullpen had pitched eight scoreless innings in relief of German, and all it took was one pitch from Shreve to stop that streak and end the game.

I don’t think Shreve will be a Yankee as of Monday night in Philadelphia. He now has a 5.19 ERA and 1.654 WHIP and in his last eight innings, he’s allowed 18 baserunners and nine earned runs, including four home runs. I get that someone has to be the 25th man on the roster, but there has to a better option.

I will always be thankful to Shreve for (along with Dellin Betances) keeping the 2015 season afloat while Andrew Miller was hurt. After Shreve got knocked around at the end of 2015, I never thought he would still be a Yankee nearly three years later. He had a good run, but it’s time to move on from him.

Aside from the three actual losses, the worst part of the weekend was that the Yankees will now be without Gary Sanchez for their upcoming series against the Phillies, Red Sox and Braves and likely beyond that. All the idiots who wanted Austin Romine to start over the best catcher in the world now have their wish, and they will all be regretting it by the end of the week.

The weekend in Tampa Bay wasn’t the lowest point of the season, but it was still an embarrassment.

There was just over an hour left at the 2015 trade deadline and the Yankees had to do something. Yes, the Yankees held a six-game lead in the AL East on July 31, 2015 in a season in which they weren’t expected to be competitive, but they needed to make a move to hold that lead over the final two months. Up until that point, the only player the Yankees had acquired was Dustin Ackley (and what an acquisition that turned out to be) while the Blue Jays went out and traded for seemingly everyone and anyone who was available.

I was on the Metro North from Manhattan to Connecticut to visit my parents for the weekend when the news broke that the Yankees had called up when Luis Severino. After eight starts in Double-A, he went 7-0 with a 1.91 ERA in 11 Triple-A starts to earn the call. The Yankees were finally ready to show off their future as an answer to both their need for starting pitching and the Blue Jays’ deadline trade for David Price.

In a move the Yankees never would have allowed in the previous 15 seasons, the 21-year-old Severino made his Major League debut on Aug. 5 against the Red Sox. He pitched well, going five innings and allowing one earned run on two hits and no walks with seven strikeouts, and finished the season with a 2.89 ERA over 11 starts. He was my pick to start the wild-card game against the Astros, or at least be part of the formula in the game. The only four people I wanted to touch the ball in that game after it was decided Masahiro Tanaka would start were Severino, Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter as the offense couldn’t do anything against Dallas Keuchel.

Severino was given a rotation spot for 2016 and pitched himself off the team after his May 13 disaster against the White Sox (2.2 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 4 BB, 2 K, 1 HR). That performance dropped him to 0-6 with a 7.46 ERA in seven starts and he went to Triple-A until the end of July. When he returned, he allowed one earned run in 8 1/3 innings out of the bullpen and was given a chance to start again, but after allowing 12 earned runs and 16 baserunners in eight innings, it was back to Triple-A. When he returned as a September call-up, it was as a reliever. And once again, as a reliever, he was dominant, allowing one earned run in 15 innings.

Severino’s weird 2016 season gave way for all of the idiot Yankees fans to start to call for him to be a reliever, completely disregarding what he did in 11 starts in 2015 and only focusing on nine starts in 2016. It’s the same way those same fans are calling for Austin Romine to start over Gary Sanchez, as if 2016 and 2017 Gary Sanchez never existed, and also as if 2011-2017 Austin Romine never existed.

Thankfully, the Yankees front office is more intelligent than most fans and stuck with Severino as a starter. And thankfully, Severino reached out to his idol Pedro Martinez, so that 2016 would never happen again.

Since the start of 2017, Severino is 24-8 with a 2.68 ERA and 348 strikeouts in 292 1/3 innings. Last season, Severino gave up two earned runs or less in 20 of his 31 starts. This season he’s done the same in 12 of his 15 starts.

On Saturday, Severino nonchalantly shut out the Rays for eight innings, allowing three hits and two walks with nine strikeouts in a 4-1 win. The win improved Severino’s record to 10-2 on the season and the eight scoreless innings lowered his ERA to 2.09.

There was nothing about his start on Saturday that was surprising. I knew he was going to shut down the Rays and either shut them out or come close to it. I knew he was going to give the pitching staff length and give the bullpen a day off. Most importantly, I knew the Yankees were going to win.

Severino is a pleasure to watch. Every five days, I know the Yankees are going to win, and I know I’m going to enjoy watching the game. I’m not going to see any nibbling, 30-pitch innings or four-inning starts. For a rotation that has to worry about Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow and inconsistency (and now hamstrings too), CC Sabathia’s knee and command, Sonny Gray’s personal catcher needs and astronomical WHIP and two rookies in Domingo German and Jonathan Loaisiga, no one ever has to worry about Severino. He’s a true No. 1 starter and one of the few aces in the game in an era where five innings is considered enough.

From 2009-2012, CC Sabathia was as close to a sure-thing every five days the Yankees ever had and before his elbow injury in 2014, Masahiro Tanaka was the same. Now Severino is that sure-thing with the Yankees going 33-13 in his starts since the beginning of last season.

I’m happy the Yankees didn’t trade Luis Severino at the 2015 deadline for David Price or at any other time for any other player, and I’m happy Pedro Martinez decided to help the team he could never beat.