The way the Yankees have played over the last few weeks, or the entire season really, you would think they were the 107-win team in the AL East waiting for Game 1 of the ALDS on Friday, Oct. 5. Instead, all the Yankees have clinched is a wild-card berth. With now four games to play (one in Tampa Bay and three in Boston), we still don’t know where the wild-card game will be played. How is that even possible?

It’s possible when the team is managed as if everything has been wrapped up for weeks or even months. It’s possible when Aaron Boone continues to let starting pitchers stay in too long or when his wildly unsuccessful batter-to-batter strategy backfires time and time again or when he elects to give players unnecessary days off when so much remains on the table. There have been countless examples of this throughout the season and Wednesday’s loss to the Rays was just the latest.

When Neil Walker hit a three-run home run in the first inning on Wednesday, I figured the game would be a laugher. Then the Yankees were held scoreless until the ninth when they produced another failed comeback. (Yankees blue balls as I like to call them.) Between Walker’s home run and the Yankees eventual 8-7 loss, Masahiro Tanaka gave the three first-inning runs right back in the bottom of the first and got knocked around for his second straight start, most likely taking himself out of the wild-card starter conversation; Giancarlo Stanton, who has had maybe four big hits all season, failed to produce any runs with the bases loaded and one out, hitting into an inning-ending double play; Miguel Andujar, Gary Sanchez, Adeiny Hechavarria and Gleyber Torres combined to go 0-for-12 with a walk (Sanchez) and six strikeouts; Boone decided to keep letting David Robertson try to get out of the eighth inning when he clearly didn’t have it, throwing 24 pitches and giving up four runs (three earned); and Boone decided to let Tyler Wade bat, the career .168/.227/.487 hitter who has had two at-bats in September and whose last hit in the majors came on July 28, as a pinch hitter with the game on the line in the ninth.

The least egregious of those things are the four hitters combining to get on base once in 13 plate appearances because that will happen. But nothing that happened on Wednesday night surprised me. That has been Yankees baseball since the end of June and that has been Boone all season.

Despite Boone saying Torres was healthy enough to play on Wednesday, the Yankees manager wanted to give him another day off because of the turf. Thursday’s game would also be played on turf. Would Boone then give Torres a second unnecessary day off because of the playing field? Boone ended up using Torres anyway, completely negating his entire plan. So Torres was able to play on Wednesday, just not start. With Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hicks banged up and unavailable, Boone took one of his few remaining trustworthy bats out of the lineup for what? To prevent a 21-year-old from playing baseball on a hard surface, even though Torres plays the middle infield, which is played on dirt.

There’s nothing Boone could say or a move he could make at this point that would surprise me. It was just Sunday when he let A.J. Cole destroy a lead against the historically-bad Orioles and it was only last Thursday when Chad Green struck out the side against the Red Sox in the sixth to hold a one-run lead and Boone decided to run Green back out there in the seventh, despite every Yankees fan knowing to not let him pitch a second inning. Green allowed a leadoff home run in the seventh to the light-hitting Jackie Bradley Jr. to tie the game and then was allowed to give up a single to the next batter, the ninth-hitting catcher. It was only then that Boone took the ball from Green, after he made sure he let him put one more runner on. That runner came around to score. After the game, Boone said the Red Sox “weren’t going to be denied”, believing his bullpen management had nothing to do with the loss that clinched the division for the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.

Friday’s loss to the Red Sox, Sunday’s loss to the Orioles and Wednesday’s loss to the Rays all happened in six days. Six days with the first wild card still not clinched following months of the same style of nonchalant managing and accountability.

It’s been 15 days since I wrote The Yankees Are in Trouble and back then I said the following:

If the A’s do pass the Yankees for the first wild card and the Yankees somehow win the game in Oakland, they will have to fly from Boston following Game 162 to Oakland for one game then fly back to Boston to begin the ALDS. They will have used the starting pitcher the organization deemed their best starting pitcher in the one-game playoff and then will face the well-rested Red Sox, who clinched a playoff berth on Tuesday, in a best-of-5 series knowing that the team’s likely best starter won’t be available until Game 3.

With the way the Yankees are playing, I would almost rather have them lose the AL Wild-Card Game than have them win it only to be embarrassed by the Red Sox in the ALDS. Like I have always said, there’s nothing to gain from the Yankees ever playing the Red Sox in the postseason. If the Yankees win, they’re the Yankees and they’re supposed to win. And if the Yankees lose, it’s the end of the world. Even in a season in which the Red Sox might win 110 games those rules still apply. I want no part of a postseason series with the Red Sox, especially given the huge travel and personnel disadvantage the Yankees will be in following the one-game playoff.

I have kept telling myself that there’s no point in getting upset with any losses for the rest of the regular season because the next game that matters is on Wednesday, Oct. 3, but that was when it seemed like the first wild-card spot was a given. Now it’s anything but a sure-thing and all I envision is Mike Fiers shutting down the Yankees for six scoreless in Oakland and the A’s bullpen putting an end to the 2018 Yankees season, a season that was supposed to end with a trip to the World Series.

The Yankees are in even bigger trouble than they were when I wrote that over two weeks ago. The magic number to clinch the first wild card sits at 2 and the Yankees have to play in Tampa Bay on Thursday and then in Boston the next three days where the Red Sox will be playing their actual lineup for at least a couple of the games before a four-day layoff leading into the ALDS. The A’s, meanwhile, have Thursday off and then play their last three regular-season games against the Angels, who haven’t had anything to play for in months, and can taste the finish line and end of the season and the four-plus month break before spring training.

There’s a good chance the A’s won’t lose any of their final three games. I don’t think they are going to lose any of three games in Anaheim, which means the Yankees will have to go 2-2 in their final four games against the Rays, who desperately want to screw up the Yankees’ season, and the Red Sox, who after clinching the division at Yankee Stadium can give the Yankees one more big EFF YOU by sending them across the country for one game. The Red Sox would certainly rather play the A’s, who are without any real postseason starting pitching option, and by sending the Yankees to the West Coast, they would be assured that whichever teams win the wild card would have to fly across the country and then play a well-rested best team in baseball about 36 hours later.

If the Yankees end up as the second wild card, I really would rather have them lose in Oakland. They will have burned a starting pitcher, likely have used their best bullpen arms, will have had to fly to California and back and will have then been on the road for 11 days before first pitch in the ALDS. It would be a miracle if they were to upset the Red Sox under those circumstances and I can’t bank on a miracle when I know what it feels like to lose to the Red Sox in the postseason. If the Yankees are playing in Oakland next Wednesday, they should end the season there as well.

The Yankees are in real trouble now. They went from World Series favorite to potentially the second wild card in the span of three months all while playing as if they have had everything locked up over that time period.

I have waited for Aaron Boone to manage with any sense of urgency this entire season. I waited while he gave games away with his bullpen management all summer and when he frequently gave players days off in an attempt to prevent injuries that arose anyway (Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Gregorius, Torres and Hicks have all missed significant time). I waited some more while he let fringe major league pitchers let one-run deficits become four-run deficits and when he would create nonsensical lineups with his best hitter at times batting ninth and batting behind the pitcher in interleague games.

Thankfully, I don’t have to wait much longer to find out if the Yankees are in fact going to completely collapse and head to Oakland for one game, in which we will already know the outcome. Unfortunately, there’s now only four games for Boone to manage and the Yankees to play with urgency and avoid having this seven-day road trip become a 10-day road trip and a 13-day road trip if they were to win the wild-card game in Oakland. The Yankees haven’t managed or played with any urgency for 158 games, I doubt they will now.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

Since the Yankees’ four-game sweep in Boston six weeks ago, I have been planning on being at the Stadium on Wednesday, Oct. 3 for the AL Wild-Card Game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that game will be played in New York.

The Yankees’ lead for the first wild-card spot is down to 2 games. Two. T-W-O. With the A’s playing the Orioles the next two days and with none of the A’s remaining 17 games against postseason teams, it’s now more than likely that it will be the A’s hosting the AL Wild-Card Game. So the only way I will be attending the one-game playoff for the third time in four seasons is if I fly across the country for it, which is a brutal trip the Yankees will have to make.

If the A’s do pass the Yankees for the first wild card and the Yankees somehow win the game in Oakland, they will have to fly from Boston following Game 162 to Oakland for one game then fly back to Boston to begin the ALDS. They will have used the starting pitcher the organization deemed their best starting pitcher in the one-game playoff and then will face the well-rested Red Sox, who clinched a playoff berth on Tuesday, in a best-of-5 series knowing that the team’s likely best starter won’t be available until Game 3.

With the way the Yankees are playing, I would almost rather have them lose the AL Wild-Card Game than have them win it only to be embarrassed by the Red Sox in the ALDS. Like I have always said, there’s nothing to gain from the Yankees ever playing the Red Sox in the postseason. If the Yankees win, they’re the Yankees and they’re supposed to win. And if the Yankees lose, it’s the end of the world. Even in a season in which the Red Sox might win 110 games those rules still apply. I want no part of a postseason series with the Red Sox, especially given the huge travel and personnel disadvantage the Yankees will be in following the one-game playoff.

I have kept telling myself that there’s no point in getting upset with any losses for the rest of the regular season because the next game that matters is on Wednesday, Oct. 3, but that was when it seemed like the first wild-card spot was a given. Now it’s anything but a sure-thing and all I envision is Mike Fiers shutting down the Yankees for six scoreless in Oakland and the A’s bullpen putting an end to the 2018 Yankees season, a season that was supposed to end with a trip to the World Series.

The Yankees are probably going to win 100 games this season (they have to finish 10-7), but in this 2018 season in which seven of the AL’s 15 teams are on pace to lose at least 88 games, it means nothing. There’s no silver lining for having the second- or third-best record in baseball, but being eliminated in the wild-card game. If the Yankees don’t reach the ALDS, the entire season was a failure. Reaching the ALDS means they reached the actual postseason, and given the uncertainty of a five-game series, reaching the ALDS is all you can really ask for.

This season feels a lot like the 2015 season. The 2015 Yankees held a seven-game division lead on July 29 and two weeks later they were trailing by a 1/2 game and by the end of the regular season they were six games back in the division. They finished the regular season losing six of seven, including three straight at home to a last-place Red Sox team and the final three games of the season to a .500 Orioles team. If not for the Diamondbacks win over the Astros in Game 162, the Yankees would have had to go on the road for the AL Wild-Card Game. Not that it mattered anyway since Dallas Keuchel and the Astros bullpen pitched a three-hit shutout in the game at Yankee Stadium.

Everyone knew the Yankees were going to lose that game with the way they limped to the finish line and with Keuchel, their kryptonite and Cliff Lee 2.0 at the time, starting that game. There’s no 2015 Dallas Keuchel on the A’s this season, but whether it’s Mike Fiers or Trevor Cahill or a bullpen game, I have that same bad feeling about these Yankees and the one-game playoff with the game three weeks from today.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The book details my life as a Yankees fan, growing up watching Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams through my childhood and early adulthood and the shift to now watching Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and others become the latest generation of Yankees baseball. It’s a journey through the 2017 postseason with flashbacks to games and moments from the Brian Cashman era.

Click here to purchase the book through Amazon as an ebook. You can read it on any Apple device by downloading the free Kindle app.

I think people forget how much Nathan Eovaldi sucked as a Yankee.

Yes, Eovaldi had an impressive 23-11 record in two seasons, 51 starts and three relief appearances for the Yankees, but that win-loss record is very deceiving. In 2015, Eovaldi received 5.75 runs of support per start, and only 10 of his 27 starts were “quality”. In 2016, it was much of the same, as he received 5.54 runs of support per start, and only eight of his 24 starts were “quality”. As a Yankee, Eovaldi pitched to a 4.45 ERA and 1.387 WHIP and only struck out 218 in 279 innings (despite throwing 100 mph), but somehow posted a .676 winning percentage. He was as average as average can be, and anything other than the “Nasty Nate” nickname the Yankees gave him on social media. With an arm like his, there’s a reason why the Dodgers and Marlins gave up on him, allowing him to become a Yankee: because he isn’t good.

If missing nearly two years and then having a few good starts against the worst teams in the majors can completely erase the rest of your career, then every mediocre starter should sit out for a couple years. The perception of Eovaldi as a starting pitcher has changed so much because of 48 1/3 post-Tommy John surgery innings that a lot of people are willing to completely disregard his other 739 career innings.

Since his return on May 30, Eovaldi no-hit the A’s for six innings, one-hit the Nationals in six innings, allowed two earned runs over six innings to the Marlins, and on Sunday, he one-hit the Mets over seven innings (and carried a perfect game into the seventh in that performance against the Mets). Supposedly, the Yankees had a scout at Eovaldi’s dominant outing at Citi Field, so naturally some Yankees fans want a reunion with Eovaldi because he has been unhittable against two of the worst two teams in baseball, an underachieving disaster and a respectable .500 team. Unfortunately, the Yankees don’t need another start can shut down teams counting down the days until the end of the season. They need a starting pitcher who can beat other playoff-bound teams. A starting pitcher who can win in the postseason. Eovaldi is far from that.

In his other four starts, Eovaldi was his usual self, needing nearly 100 pitches and sometimes more to get through five innings. In three of those starts, he faced the Yankees, Mariners and Astros, all of which will be in the postseason. His line in those games: 18.1 IP, 19 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 1 BB, 13 K, 7 HR, 5.89 ERA, 1.093 WHIP. That’s the real Eovaldi, and I’m going to pass on the guy who gave up seven home runs in three games to actual Major League hitters. I think the Yankees will too.

On Saturday, the Yankees faced J.A. Happ, another name the team has been connected to because of his expiring contract and because of his success against the Red Sox. Like Cole Hamels’ start earlier this season against the Yankees, Happ had a chance to show that he can handle a real lineup in a pressure situation. The pressure in this situation being the Yankees needing to win every game to keep pace with the Red Sox and Happ needing to pitch well in an audition to join a contender. Happ’s audition didn’t last long.

The Blue Jays’ left-hander gave up back-to-back home runs to lead off the game and then walked the next two batters. After back-to-back strikeouts, he gave up a two-run double, and the Yankees had a 4-0 lead. Happ needed 34 pitches to get through the first inning. In the second inning, he loaded the bases with two walks and a single before bouncing back to get out of the jam unscathed. But in the the third, after a leadoff walk, a lineout, a strikeout and another walk, he was removed. Jake Petricka came in and further ruined Happ’s day and ERA by giving up a two-run triple on his second pitch. Happ’s line: 2.2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 6 BB, 5 K, 2 HR.

I know Happ is better than that. I have seen him be better than that. But he’s 35 now and has a 4.44 ERA and unless he gets traded to a postseason team, he won’t pitch in a bigger game in 2018, and he was awful. Yes, one start is the smallest of sample sizes, but the postseason is all about small sample sizes, and the Yankees can’t afford to add the wrong starter for the final two months of the season and the postseason. He’s still a better option that Eovaldi.

Domingo German has been the answer to Jordan Montgomery’s rotation spot, but his inconsistency might end that, and Jonathan Loaisiga looked he might be the answer to Masahiro Tanaka’s before suffering shoulder inflammation. I don’t think Luis Cessa is the new answer to that spot, and I don’t trust him to be either. That would leave Justus Sheffield as the next starting option. I’m all for Sheffield being given a real chance to be part of the rotation, but with the way the Yankees have babied their starting prospects over the years, I know I can’t count on that idea (even if has the ability the biggest difference-maker the Yankees could potentially add).

I definitely don’t want Eovaldi to a Yankee again since I didn’t want him to be one for the first time. I also don’t want Happ or another rental pitcher like him to be one if the price is anything other than a couple prospects that are nowhere near the majors and most likely will never reach them either. A trade for Jacob deGrom isn’t happening and I don’t think I want to give up current Yankees and more Major League-ready prospects for someone who could be done every time he throws a pitch. The same goes for Madison Bumgarner. But even if I did want either, they are both most likely unavailable.

The Yankees’ best bet is either Happ or Cole Hamels, who I petitioned for earlier this season. Either will be a salary dump and the return would be players without a spot on the Yankees prospects nowhere near helping the Yankees. Either will be better than Sonny Gray (who’s the reason the Yankees need to add another starter), and will be more reliable and stable than Luis Cessa or their other in-house options.

Outside of the Gray trade last year, rarely, if ever, has someone been connected to the Yankees and they eventually trade for them. Usually, out of nowhere, the Yankees are reported to be close to acquiring a player, and five minutes later, a deal is done. Neither Happ or Hamels has been connected to the Yankees of late. One of them needs to be their guy, and they should go out and get one of them.

If I got called up to the Yankees today, I would bat eighth ahead of Gleyber Torres in the order. It wouldn’t matter that I haven’t seen live pitching in a long time and have never seen live pitching anything close to resembling what I would see at the Major League level. All that would matter is that I was a player on the team, and that’s good enough to bat ahead of the 2018 American League Rookie of the Year. I wish you needed more of a resume or any credentials at all to bat ahead of the 21-year-old batting .296/.353/.560 with 15 home runs and 42 RBIs in just 61 career games. Unfortunately, you don’t.

On Sunday, Torres batted fifth, and hit a three-run home run off of David Price in the first inning. Had he batted at the bottom of the order, as he usually does, he wouldn’t have come up in the inning. It was just the latest example of why Torres should always bat in the top half of the order. But on Monday night, the Yankees’ best hitter not named Aaron Judge was once again the Yankees’ No. 9 hitter. All he did was have his 18th multi-hit game of the season with three hits, draw a walk and pick up his 26th extra-base hit.

Torres has now batted ninth in 40 of 60 career starts, and in his other appearance, as a pinch hitter, it was also as the 9-hitter. He has batted fourth once, fifth 10 times, sixth twice, seventh twice and eighth four times. Despite having the best batting average on the team and second-best on-base and slugging percentage, Aaron Boone keeps batting him ninth.

There is this idea that moving other players in the lineup down would cause a disruption in the clubhouse or possibly hurt the feelings of Major League players making millions of dollars to play baseball. There is another idea that Torres makes the lineup longer and that he acts as a second leadoff hitter and that he’s comfortable there. I don’t know which idea is worse: the idea that seniority and not performance should create the lineup or the idea that giving more at-bats to lesser hitters is the way to go because Torres is doing well at the bottom of the order. If that’s the case then Derek Jeter should have continued to bat ninth for 19 years since he was doing so well in that spot, and Judge should still be batting eighth from last year’s Opening Day since he dominated there.

It would be one thing if Torres was batting ninth because he was a struggling rookie that the organization wanted to give everyday at-bats. But he’s proven to be a force in the lineup, capable of handling any pitcher in the game and he’s being treated like a glove-first middle infielder.

On Monday night, Torres hit ninth behind Kyle Higashioka, the near-career minor league who got his first Major League hit on Sunday. Last week, Torres hit behind Neil Walker, who should be expecting his release at any second, and many times Torres has hit behind Austin Romine, who is crashing hard from his early-season offensive success and shutting up any idiot who thought he should be the starting catcher over Gary Sanchez. None of those lineups were as bad as when Torres batted ninth three straight games at Citi Field behind Masahiro Tanaka, Domingo German and Luis Severino.

I thought Boone was supposed to be a manager who happily invited statistics into his lineup building and in-game strategy, but this isn’t even about using sabermetrics or advanced data. This is about using common sense. Boone continues to make questionable decisions in a season in which one game might decide if the Yankees win the division or play in the one-game playoff, and the decision to keep batting Torres ninth is the worst of them all.

Meanwhile, Greg Bird is being treated like the player he’s projected to be and not the player he actually is as he continues to bat in the heart of the order. Thanks to 242 good plate appearance in 2017, the Yankees have forgotten about the rest of Aaron Hicks’ career as he continues to either bat leadoff or no lower than sixth as if he’s Bernie Williams and not just a former first-round pick, who has had a couple good months over six years. Day in and day out, Didi Gregorius is the team’s No. 3 hitter even though he’s batting .210/.257/.323 with five home runs and 15 RBIs in 46 games since May 4 with absolutely no plate discipline. Torres, on the other hand, keeps mashing and keeps batting ninth.

People think complaining about the batting order is ridiculous because the Yankees are 52-30 and on pace to win 103 games. Maybe in another season it would be ridiculous, but in this season where 103 wins might mean hosting the wild-card game instead of going on to the ALDS, every win and every game and every decision and every at-bat matters. Right now Torres is getting less at-bats than he should be because he bats ninth. That could be the eventual difference between winning a championship and losing one random home game to end the season.