I have tried to quit the 2016 Yankees, but I can’t. Believe me, I have tried. I have said I’m done through the lows of the 9-17 start and the three-game sweep at home by the A’s and the rain delay disaster against the Rangers and the 2-4 road trip against the Padres and White Sox. The problem is those lows were all immediately followed by incredible highs.

After the 9-17 start, the Yankees went 13-5 to get back to .500. After the three-game sweep at home by the A’s, the Yankees swept a four-game series in Oakland. After the rain delay disaster against the Rangers, the Yankees scored six runs in the ninth inning to walk-off on the Rangers. After the 2-4 road trip against the Padres and White Sox, the Yankees won three out of four against the Indians, the hottest team in baseball, in Cleveland. Every time the Yankees look like they are about to free fall, they fight back. And every time they look like they are about to go a run, they start what looks like that free fall. They have been a textbook .500 team and fittingly they are at .500 at the end of the “first half”. The hope is they can finally be something more.

Eighty-eight games is enough of a sample size for the front office to decide this team isn’t going anywhere and that it’s time to trade off every asset not named Dellin Betances or Andrew Miller. And if the front office did come to that decision right now, it would be hard to complain. The reason they haven’t and the reason I’m still not ready to concede my baseball summer is because the almighty question still lingers: What if there is a run in this team? It’s a question that has fooled franchises forever and with the implementation of the second wild card four years ago, the fooling has grown tenfold. What if there is a run in the Yankees?

There could be. But like a poker player chasing a straight or a flush on the river with the odds stacked against them, the last thing any Yankees fan wants is for this team to go all-in on a pipe dream past Aug. 1 and be left with Aroldis Chapman and Carlos Beltran and any other tradeable asset still in pinstripes. Fortunately (or maybe I should say hopefully since Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine might want to play this thing out no matter what), for the Yankees, they will know if it’s officially time to sell in 10 days.

The first seven games after the All-Star break are against Boston (three) and Baltimore (four) at Yankee Stadium. It’s the ideal schedule for the Yankees to know where they stand before the trade deadline and whether they will have an actual shot at being a division contender or if they will have to settle for last-team-standing wild-card or second wild-card gongshow again. If the Yankees can’t win two series at home against the Red Sox and Orioles with their season on the line then that’s it. There won’t be any reason to believe some sort of 2015 Blue Jays or 2013 Dodgers miracle run is going to happen. I have a bad feeling the Yankees will go 3-4 or worse against the Red Sox and Orioles, only to then beat up on the Giants, Astros and Rays to suck ownership back into thinking the team can contend. That’s my nightmare and that can’t happen. A line needs to be drawn and July 21 is the line.

If these seven games are my last seven games believing in the 2016 Yankees, I’m OK with that. If it means getting future pieces for Carlos Beltran and Aroldis Chapman (who I think the Yankees could trade and still contend anyway), then good. If it means there’s a chance some team is willing to take on Brett Gardner or Brian McCann’s contract, then great. If it means there’s a chance some team is willing to give the Yankees anything for Mark Teixeira or Nathan Eovaldi or Ivan Nova, even better. If it means maybe a miracle of all miracles and some team is willing to trade for Chase Headley or Jacoby Ellsbury, then I will be building a float for myself for a one-man parade through the Canyon of Heroes. (I will be accepting applications for anyone interested in driving the float.)

The Yankees are at the crossroads they have been since their embarrassing 2012 ALCS loss, the same crossroads they haven’t wanted to admit they are at for three-plus seasons now. The second wild card tricked the front office into thinking they could contend in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and they can’t let it trick them again if they can’t win in these next seven games.

I know I have used other parts of the schedule as the make-or-break point for the Yankees and it was a lot like calling any game other than an elimination game of a series a “must-win”. Well, this is finally it. This is the Yankees’ elimination week. Three games against Boston and four against Baltimore, all in the Bronx. If the Yankees are back under .500 at the end of play on July 21 then I will be done.

I will be done thinking a .500 team through 88 games is anything more than a .500 team. I will be done doing things like waking up for a 1:05 p.m. game at 7 a.m. because I’m on vacation and six hours behind the Eastern Time Zone. I will be done being tricked into thinking “today is the day the Yankees go on a run.” I will be done with the 2016 Yankees and ownership and the front office should be done with them too.

Jorge Mateo is a Yankee, but he might as well be a Yankees fan. The 21-year-old shortstop and Yankees’ best prospect was suspended for two weeks on Wednesday, which will include missing the Futures Game at the All-Star Game, for supposedly “mouthing off” to Yankees executives.

The reason for Mateo’s outburst has been reported to be the fact that he hasn’t been promoted to Double-A yet, while players with less ability and less talent have been. Mateo has hit .266/.323/.396 with five home runs, 34 RBIs and 26 stolen bases in 76 games in High-A Tampa this season after hitting .321/.374/.452 in 21 games there last year. He had 82 steals between Charleston and Tampa last season.

Brian Cashman told teams last year at the trade deadline that Jorge Mateo was untouchable (along with Luis Severino, Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez), which led to the Yankees only coming away with Dustin Ackley as they watched their eight-game division lead over the Blue Jays crumble after the Blue Jays acquired David Price.

If the New York Post’s report that Mateo called out the Yankees for not promoting him to Double-A then he was right to do so. If he truly is the Yankees’ best prospect playing a premium, then what is he still doing in Single-A? If it’s because he’s being blocked by another player in Trenton, let’s look at who that player might.

Cito Culver, the Yankees’ 2010 first-round pick, has played 33 games at shortstop and 28 games at second base for Trenton. Oddly enough, those are the two positions Mateo plays after seeing time as a second baseman this season. If you’re not familiar with Culver, when Vince Vaughn’s character (Jamie O’Hare) takes the field in the final scene in Rudy, the commentator says, “One of the players going into the game is Jamie O’Hare. O’Hare was heavily recruited throughout the country several years ago. He came to Notre Dame … and it’s safe to say that his career has been a disappointment.” That’s Cito Culver.

Culver is 23 now and reached Triple-A last season for eight games though he didn’t deserve it after hitting .199/.249/.279 in 106 games in Double-A. He’s a career .231/.306/.315 hitter in the minors and hasn’t had one good season. It’s not like his numbers are a product of inconsistency, they’re actually a product of consistent bad play.

Back when Culver was drafted, the Yankees were destroyed for the pick, but here’s what vice president and director of amateur scouting Damon Oppenheimer said:

“The main ranking that means something to me is what ranking our guys have. I had basically over 100 years of scouting experience go in to see this kid. When guys like my cross-checkers who have been doing this for a long time, former major-league hitting coaches like Gary Denbo and former scouting directors like Bill Livesey come back with a thumbs up, that means a lot more to me than the public opinion of Baseball America or some of the other publications who just aren’t able to get to these guys and don’t have scouting staffs.”

After the selection, Oppenheimer had a conference call with the Yankees beat writers and added, “We’ve been able to see him play for a long time. We’ve probably got a couple of hundred at-bats from him …We were ahead of the game because we knew so much about him.”

And when asked about waiting to pick him in the second round, Oppenheimer said, “The thought crossed my mind and I’m glad I didn’t, because after we did pick him I got a call from one of our competitors who’s very successful, saying he would not have gotten to us.”

(There’s a very good chance that call from one of the Yankees’ competitors, if there actually was a call, was made in jest.)

If it comes out that the Post’s report wasn’t accurate, well, it brought up the important question of why Mateo is still playing in Tampa as a 21-year-old top prospect, the same way Severino is still wasting bullets in Triple-A, while Ivan Nova makes start after start, the same way Judge keeps hitting meaningless home runs in Scranton while Aaron Hicks continues to play every day, the same way the Yankees gave a season of at-bats away at second base last year and then turned to Rob Refsnyder in the biggest games of the season at the end of September and the one-game playoff.

The Yankees are a mess. The front office thinks a 40-42 team can contend. The general manager built the 40-42 team. The manager continues to not put together the best possible lineup game after game. And the player development and scouting department hasn’t done anything in years. The Yankees have no idea what they are doing at any level right now and Mateo was right to call them out for it.

After Monday night‘s ninth-inning loss, I was devastated. After Tuesday night‘s blow out, I was done. The Yankees had lost three games in a row again, fallen back to two games under .500 again and finally destroyed nearly all of the remaining optimism I had that this team could still go on a run and save us from the third postseason-less October in four years.

I said “nearly all” and not “all” because I’m a sucker thanks to the second wild card and the hope it has given .500 teams in the now five years it has existed. When it was first implemented in 2012, I was heavily against it, thinking the Yankees would continue to win the AL East and that it could only screw them over. I was right to be against it, but for the wrong reasons.

In 2013, the second wild card gave the team and its fans false hope that they could sneak into the playoffs. In 2014, the same thing happened. In 2015, it forced them to play a one-game playoff against the one starting pitcher they had absolutely no chance of beating when they would have been automatically in the ALDS in the pre-2012 format. And in 2016, it once again has instilled false hope into the team and its fans and will most likely force the team to not rebuild at the trade deadline. The second wild card has been the worst thing to ever happen to the Yankees (aside from teams deciding to lock up their players to long-term deals before they hit free agency) and the cycle might never end.

But after back-to-back walk-off wins against the best team in the American League, the Yankees are once again at .500 with a 39-39 record. They were here at 30-30 and 31-31 and 34-34 and 36-36 and 37-37. Each time they failed to meet their season high of two games over .500, which they last experienced when they were 4-2.

The Yankees have given the front office and fans no reason to believe they can actually make the playoffs or contend this season. They’re a .500 team through 48 percent of the season, have scored the fourth fewest runs in the AL and are 18-26 against teams with a winning record (they are 2-4 against Boston, 2-4 against Baltimore and 2-7 against Toronto). They are eight games back in the division, and while they are only three games back in the wild card, the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers, Mariners and even the White Sox are between them and the second wild card. Right now, they have a 3.8 percent chance of winning the division and a 6.9 percent chance of getting a wild card, thanks to their abysmal negative-31 run differential.

Everything about the Yankees’ first 78 games of the season suggests the front office should be selling off pieces of this team like it’s Anacott Steel, but like the option of placing a drunken order with Domino’s at 1:49 a.m., the second wild card keeps calling the Yankees’ name, tempting them to make a decision that won’t help them this season or next season or the season after that, and they will likely be in the same place over and over again: good enough to maybe make the playoffs, but never good enough to win a championship.

Unfortunately, I’m the person placing that Domino’s order. In fact, I still remember the Domino’s phone number on Staniford Street in Boston from my freshman year of college (617-248-0100). I believe this Yankees team can make the playoffs because there isn’t a dominant team in the division and the teams they need to jump in the wild card are just as bad, if not worse, and it will be shown over the course of an entire season. I know the right thing would be for them to sell, and to stop pretending like they are going anywhere, I just need them to make a 100-percent commitment to it.

It would have been easier to accept this season is going nowhere if the Yankees just went down 1-2-3 in the ninth inning on Wednesday night like they have in every other game they have trailed in the ninth this season. It would have been easier if Robinson Chirinos had blocked Tony Barnette splitter on Thursday afternoon and Jacoby Ellsbury had poppped up for the third out of the ninth like he has in every other big spot as a Yankee and the Rangers had won in extra innings. Instead, the Yankees mounted an improbable six-run ninth inning on Wednesday and won on a passed ball on Thursday, finished June 14-12, are back to .500 and play the last-place Padres this weekend.

I know the Yankees will probably string us along through San Diego, Chicago and Cleveland before the All-Star break and then tease us through July 31 only to have the trade deadline pass and then have them endure the kind of August and September collapse they had last season, leaving them sitting on their thumb with no postseason berth and no future pieces to show for it. I would like to think Wednesday night’s ninth inning was the turning point of the season and on the 2016 World Series championship DVD they will point to June 29 as the night when the season changed the way the trip to Atlanta in 2009 is remembered. In reality, June 29 will probably be remembered as the start of another tease to trick the Yankees, the front office and the fans into thinking this team is something more than a .500 team. I wish I knew one way or the other.

That wasn’t exactly how you want to start the most important 11-game stretch in 23 seasons.  After scoring six runs in three games against the Tigers over the weekend, the Yankees scored 10 runs for just the fourth time all season and lost. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that in five innings against Jorge De La Rosa, they didn’t score once. If you’re not aware, he was De La Rosa’s line entering the game: 31.2 IP, 42 H, 32 R, 31 ER, 15 BB, 39 K, 8 HR, 8.81 ERA, 1.800 WHIP. The Yankees couldn’t score against a pitcher who gives up one run per inning.

The good news is the loss was just one game on a five-game road trip in which the Yankees have to win at least three games, but preferably four. The bad news is they have little room for error for the next four games after Nathan Eovaldi reminded us all for the third straight start why the Dodgers and Marlins didn’t mind giving up on a young, cost-controlled starting pitching who throws 100 mph. But in talking about the big picture for the season, the Yankees are in trouble if they are unable to not only beat Jorge De La Rosa, but even score against the 35-year-old lefty.

After 64 games, we know what to expect from the Yankees’ offense: not much. When they score 10 runs, they should win. Any team should win with that much offense. But for as bad as Eovaldi was and he was bad, anyone not named Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller or Aroldis Chapman who comes out of the Yankees’ bullpen is a problem. Tuesday night was just the latest in a long line of middle relief failures.

Nick Goody can have a pass for last night since he was the only Yankees pitcher to not give up a run. He actually hasn’t given up a run in last three appearances (3 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K), but before that, he had given up runs in back-to-back appearances (0.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 1 HR) and in six of his last eight appearances (7.2 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 2 HR). He hasn’t been great, but he’s been about what you expect out of a middle reliever and he has basically become Joe Girardi’s must trusted bullpen arm outside of the Big Three.

Kirby Yates has been awful in June and between his weird delivery and the fact that he wasn’t good for Tampa Bay last year, there’s not much to like about him. After an impressive May, he has become 2016’s version of David Carpenter, who dominated for a month last year before getting rocked in May and and designated for assignment in June. Yates has now allowed four earned runs in his last two appearances (1.1 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 1 K) and his numbers in six June appearances are get-sent-back-to-Scranton worthy: 4.1 IP, 8 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 4 BB, 5 K).

Richard Bleier came in for fifth career appearance, and after pitching 3 2/3 scoreless inning in his first four appearances, here’s how his night went in Colorado: single (allowed an inherited runner to score), single (allowed an inherited runner to score), groundout, single, double, triple (two runs scored), groundout, lineout (one run scored), groundout. Bleier has yet to strike out a hitter and the only reason he’s in the bullpen is for Girardi to have a left-handed option that isn’t Miller or Chapman since Girardi has to have a lefty to go to the way he had to have Clay Rapada and Billy Traber and Rich Hill (before he figured out how to pitch) and David Huff.

Those two were only the problem last night, but the problem has been season-long. Chasen Shreve started the year with 5 1/3 scoreless innings before giving up 11 earned runs and seven(!) home runs in his next 13 2/3 innings and he landed on the disabled list with a shoulder injury. Johnny Barbato looked like he might be the next big thing when he started the season with nine strikeouts in six scoreless innings, but he gave up eight runs in his next seven innings and got sent down. Phil Coke returned for a second go-around in the Bronx, pitched as badly as he had the first time seven years ago, and got designated for assignment. Branden Pinder made one appearance, it went about as well as his late-season appearances last year, and now he’s out with Tommy John surgery. Tyler Olson appeared in one game, sucked, got released and now he’s in the Royals organization. Anthony Swarzak is still on the 25-man roster, has made three appearances, and hasn’t been good, so it’s only a matter of time until he’s back in Scranton.

Outside of Shreve, all of those pitchers are right-handed and none of them are good (including Shreve half the time). The same way Preston Claiborne, Caleb Cotham, Nick Rumbelow and Danny Burawa couldn’t get the job done when they were with the Yankees, neither can anyone on the team now (aside from Goody sometimes) that isn’t Betances, Miller or Chapman.

Games in which the Yankees are hoping to hold a deficit for a chance to come back are blown open and games in which the Yankees have such a big enough lead that they can rest the Big Three suddenly result in one or more of them warming up in the bullpen. The only time the Yankees’ middle relief can be trusted is when the game is out of hand one way or the other. The Yankees can’t go through an entire season without any reliable middle relief if they want to contend for a playoff spot. But unless they find a way to beat the Rockies or Twins over the next two weeks it won’t matter anyway.