The Yankees went to Cleveland four a three-game series and took two of three, winning their fifth straight series to start the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I used to love Yankees doubleheaders. That was before the unnecessary rest and load management era. Now I fear them, knowing that the best you can count on is a split, especially if the Yankees win the first game with Boone and the analytics team drooling over the idea of giving as much of the lineup a game off as possible. But things are different this season.

I would like to thank the Braves and their penchant for playing their everyday lineup every day (what a concept!) has made the Yankees rethink their strategy of playing their expected everyday lineup as little as possible. The Yankees have played 16 games this season and Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres and Alex Verdugo have played in all 16, and Anthony Volpe would have if not for an illness that kept him out of one game. The Yankees seem to have rethought their idiotic approach from the last 14-ish years and I couldn’t be happier.

2. The season is 10 percent over. So for the “It’s early!” crowd, it’s not that early. (And it’s never early. Every game holds equal value). And through that 10 percent the Yankees have been the best team in baseball at 12-4. Five series, five series wins. At no point last season was there a time as fun as the first two-and-a-half-weeks of this season has been, considering the only fun last year was the eight games Jasson Dominguez played in.

After beating up the lowly Marlins at the Stadium last week, but missing a chance at a sweep that was there for the taking, the Yankees went to Cleveland and beat up on the Guardians on Saturday, again missing a chance at a sweep that was there for the taking on Sunday. After winning the series opener on Saturday afternoon, my expectation level for Cody Poteet starting the second game was about as high as Clay Holmes throwing a first-pitch strike in an outing. After the Yankees held on to win the first game of the double header 3-2, Poteet allowed just one run over six innings and the Yankees blew out the Guardians 8-2 in the nightcap.

3. I was waiting for Boone to give us a ‘B’ or even ‘C’ lineup on Sunday with the Yankees having already clinched the three-game series, but nope, Boone went with the everyday lineup again. (If only he had done more things like this over the last six years I would respect him and possibly even like him.) Between this and the recent decision to urgently flip Volpe and Torres in the order, Boone is off to a good start in 2024. Here is what I wrote earlier this season about moving Volpe to leadoff:

If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

In the four games Since the move Volpe is hitting .400/.550/.467 (he was hitting .375/.444/.600 before) and Torres is hitting .214/.353/.214 (he was hitting .200/.281/.240 before).

Judge’s three-run home run in the third gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead, but Nestor Cortes, in what was his third mediocre start in four starts this season, quickly gave two runs back. Jose Trevino hit a stunning solo home run in the fourth to make it 4-2, but an inning later, Cortes erased the lead. Cortes (4 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 2 HR) has given the Yankees one quality start this season.

“I was in a lot of 2-2 and 3-2 counts, but I feel like my stuff was good overall,” Cortes said about his stuff. “I was just trying to be too fine with the corners and wasn’t getting enough early contact in play.”

As the game progressed and Boone decided he was going to stick with Luke Weaver in a 4-4 game for as long as possible, it was only a matter of time until the Guardians scored a run. That run came in the bottom of the eighth when Weaver threw a first-pitch, middle-middle fastball to ex-Yankee Estevan Florial (who can only hit fastballs) and Florial crushed it to give the Guardians a 5-4 lead. It was the most expected, inevitable result of all time: an ex-Yankee getting a big, timely hit against his former team. Add in that it was Florial who the Yankees passed over countless times for has-beens and bums, and there was no way Florial wasn’t hitting a home run in that spot.

With the bottom of the order due up against Emmanuel Clase in the ninth, I figured the game was lost. Verdugo did what he does best which is roll over a ground ball to the right side, but Trevino laced a first-pitch single to left to put the tying run on. Cabrera grounded out for the second out. With a 2-1 count against Clase, Volpe smoked a double to the gap in left-canter scoring Cabrera and tying the game at 5.

4. In the 10th, the Yankees scored two runs when Rizzo singled to right with the bases loaded and no outs. In one of the few acceptable times to ever bunt, Boone had Torres bunt the runners over to second and third. A third run would likely end the game and the Yankees just needed Verdugo to put the ball in the air to score the third run of the inning. Instead, Verdugo again did what he does best and hit a grounder to the right side. The Guardians went home for an out and then threw down to first to get Verdugo for an inning-ending double play. The Yankees’ extra-inning issues since the implementation of the automatic runner were rearing their ugly head again.

Rather than use Ian Hamilton to close out the game since Holmes had already pitched in the ninth, Boone went with Caleb Ferguson. Ferguson allowed a single to Jose Ramirez on the eighth pitch of the inning-opening battle, and the Guardians were immediately set up with runners on first and third with the winning run at the plate. Josh Naylor swung at the first pitch he saw, and while a run was going to score to make it 7-6, the ground ball should have erased Ramirez at second and gotten Naylor at first. Instead, Torres flipped the ball to Volpe at second and Volpe couldn’t transfer the ball to his throwing hand and the slow-footed Naylor reached. David Fry then crushed a ball off the wall in left-center and if anyone other than Naylor had been on first the game would have been tied, but Naylor was only able to reach third. Second and third with one out and the Yankees clinging to a 7-6 lead.

Will Brennan was up next and with the infield in, Ferguson got the ground ball he needed, hit directly at Torres. Torres couldn’t field the ball cleanly and then he couldn’t pick it up following his initial bobble and Naylor raced home to tie the game at 7.

“I missed it for a couple seconds,” Torres said, “and when I got the ball, it was too late.”

Four pitches later, Andres Gimenez hit a line drive to Soto in right field that was hit too deep for Soto to make a play at the plate. 8-7. Game over.

5. Volpe and Torres’ defense cost the Yankees in the 10th, but it’s not why they lost the game. It’s one of the reasons, but not the only reason. Cortes was mediocre again, and he wasn’t helped early on by Rizzo who forced Cortes to throw 13 additional pitches because of errors. Giancarlo Stanton was foolishly thrown out on the bases in the sixth, Judge left two on in the seventh, and Verdugo hit the ball the only place on the field he couldn’t hit it in the 10th. Add that all up and you get an excruciating one-run, extra-inning loss.

“We’ve got a lot of special players around that infield,” Judge said. “Days like today happen, and we’ve just got to move on. Everybody on this team knows [infield defense] is one of our strengths.”

Then again, it took all of that, all of those missed opportunities, poor pitching, sloppy defense and baserunning miscues and the Guardians still needed 10 innings to eek by the Yankees by one run. If there’s a positive to take away from Sunday’s debacle it’s that the Yankees were an all-around mess, and nearly came away with a sweep against a pretty good team in Cleveland.

“Tough one,” Boone said. “We just didn’t make a few plays we needed to make. When you grind through and get a lead there, it’s always tough [to lose].”

6. If you’re of the camp that the Yankees are 12-4 and everything is rainbows and butterflies, well you were likely of that same camp when everything went the Yankees way in the first half of 2022 before they played .500 baseball for about 250 games. I don’t view the 2024 Yankees as a 16-game sample size and sweep all the glaring issues under the rug or push them into the closet to worry about for another day. That’s something the front office does and why the team is mired in a 14-year World Series drought.

The Yankees’ offense has been Soto (.344/.468/.541), who has been as advertised, and Volpe (.382/.477/.564), who has been a completely different player than he was in his rookie season. Judge (.207/.373/.448) has been OK, Stanton (.250/.291/.538) has been better than expected and Cabrera (.289/.347/.533) has been a pleasant surprise when he has played (thankfully, we don’t have to watch Jon Berti play instead of him for the time being). But that’s it. Two guys you can count on every at-bat (Soto and Volpe), two guys who have had their moments (Judge and Stanton) and a forgotten utility player (Cabrera) who has had enormous hits in the first two-and-a-half weeks. Even with the Yankees’ offense running at about 25 percent most days and as high as about 40 percent at its best, the team is still 12-4 with the best record in baseball. There are problems though, both offensive and defensive problems.

7. Rizzo is one of those problems. For someone who tried to play through post-concussion symptoms for more than two months last year, and was allowed to play through them even after reporting them to Boone, I don’t know how Rizzo isn’t currently being re-evaluated for an ongoing concussion issue. You may think, “Well, of course the Yankees evaluated him recently and cleared him to play,” however, you probably also thought they evaluated him in May, June, July or August of last season, or after he complained about head issues, when instead, they just kept playing him.

My concern isn’t necessarily about Rizzo’s bat, which has been so-so through 16 games, it’s about his defense. If Rizzo was having depth perception issues last summer from his late-May concussion, I don’t know how anyone could watch him play in 2024 and think those issues aren’t lingering. Rizzo has been unable to pick short hops on throws from infielders, has bobbled and booted routine ground balls hit to him, has let would-be double play balls go under his glove and now is even dropping throws that reach him in the air. He looks lost in the field, when at his best, he’s one of the very best first defensive basemen in the world.

8. Rizzo isn’t the only infielder having a hard time. The up-the-middle tandem of reigning Gold Glove winner Volpe and Torres has been a mess. Short hopping routine throws to first, airmailing inning-ending balls into the camera well, kicking around ground balls hit right at them. I’m less concerned with Volpe since I do trust him and the plays in the late innings in Arizona and Cleveland are hopefully just unfortunate, ill-timed mistakes. I’m extremely concerned about Torres who isn’t just not fielding, but isn’t hitting at all and has a history of running the bases as if he has to be pegged to be thrown out.

9. Verdugo is the other issue offensively. (You can disregard the catching situation offensively since I expect the duo to come up with a hit every other week.) However, my expectations for Verdugo weren’t much given his status as a league-average hitter in his career, so he has been about as good as I thought he would be, which isn’t very good at all.

10. At some point, I would think, Judge will have his typical numbers (if he’s not already headed there) and Rizzo, if healthy, will be a trustworthy middle-of-the-order bat with a stellar glove, and you would like to think Torres will figure it out. Add in DJ LeMahieu possibly going out for a rehab assignment this coming weekend and the problems and fears of the 2024 offense just being the 2023 offense with Soto and a better Volpe may be able to dissipate. For now, given the lack of production the Yankees have received from so many important names and spots in the lineup, it’s amazing they’re 12-4. But I’ll take it.

The Yankees’ continued their winning ways at home over the weekend, taking two of three from the Blue Jays to improve to 8-2 on the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have won eight of 10 and three straight series to start the season against three teams with championship aspirations. Even with the best record in baseball, it feels like the Yankees have yet to really put it all together.

“I don’t feel like we’re totally clicking offensively yet,” Aaron Boone said over the weekend. “We’re doing what we need to do.”

Boone is right. (I can’t believe I just wrote that.) It seems like the Yankees have one inning per game where they post a crooked number and nearly all other innings are … well, nothing. It’s worked so far. As Boone said they’re “doing what they need to do” to get by, and they are more than getting by.

2. Juan Soto has “cooled off” since Houston and is still hitting .333 with a .438 on-base percentage. Aaron Judge has yet to get hot and still has a pair of home runs and a .362 OBP. Giancarlo Stanton made everyone forget he’s been striking out in half of his at-bats with his grand slam on Sunday. Anthony Rizzo has a .665 OPS, Gleyber Torres a .640, Austin Wells a .458 and Alex Verdugo a .454. The only two hitters who have remained consistent through 10 games are Oswaldo Cabrera (.333/.389/.545) and Anthony Volpe who has been unbelievable (.424/.486/.606).

3. Last week I wrote this about Volpe:

If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

Again, I realize it’s going to take an inordinate amount of time for Boone to make this kind of move, especially when it involves a veteran like Torres since Boone would rather not construct the best possible lineup than hurt feelings, which we have learned over the last six years. But every Volpe at-bat is a battle and he’s rarely swinging and missing. Torres, on the other hand, you just hope he gets a mistake to hit.

4. Kevin Gasuman made a mistake in the first inning to Judge on Saturday night and he clobbered it for his second home run of the season. With Soto on first after drawing a walk despite being down 0-2 in the count, the two-run home run was the first time the Yankees have scored in the first inning this season.

“That’s how you draw it up right there,” Boone said. “That’s our two big boys getting us rolling right out of the gate.”

The Yankees didn’t score in the first inning on Sunday, so Saturday is the only time in 10 games they have scored in the first inning. That’s both remarkable and sad that in nine innings with Soto and Judge up, the Yankees failed to score.

5. With the Yankees’ offense, it’s hard to not to think the 2024 isn’t just the 2023 lineup with Soto when they go through dry spells like they did in Arizona scoring two runs in 24 inning at one point, or how they were shut out in two of the first eight games of the season. Then they go out and hang 17 on the Blue Jays on Saturday and Sunday.

6. The Stanton grand slam on Sunday was majestic. The sound off the bat, the velocity off the bat, how quickly it left the park, how far it went, the timeliness of it in a 1-1 game. Everything about it was beautiful. 

With Stanton, there’s always going to be bad, like his 15 strikeouts in 33 plate appearance this season, and you just have to hope the good that does come cancels out some of that bad like his first-inning home run on Saturday night or the mammoth slam. Stanton isn’t going anywhere (at least not this season) and because of his name, stature and career, Boone will never not hit him in the middle of the order. As long as Stanton mixes in the timely bomb everyone once in a while, you can live with that. Yankees fans have no other choice but to live with it.

7. Yankees fans also have no choice but to live with the weakest bullpen of the Brian Cashman era. The Yankees, in their attempt to prove they can turn any hard-throwing arm with a sinker or sweeper into an elite reliever, have created this bullpen that has limited trustworthy arms and a revolving Scranton shuttle built in. With Jonathan Loaisiga lost for the year, the Yankees’ best two relievers are now Clay Holmes and Ian Hamilton followed by Caleb Ferguson and … Nick Burdi?

After being so good in Houston to open the season and strong in Arizona, the bullpen nearly blew a seven run lead on Saturday night, giving up six runs in 4 2/3 innings, and flirted with disaster on Sunday, nearly blowing a four-run lead in the middle innings.

“When you run out to a big lead and you’re handing on for dear life at the end,” Boone said, “that’s an extra exhale.”

8. The bullpen wasn’t going to be automatic to begin with and now it’s been overworked since Marcus Stroman has been the only starter to give the Yankees length (six innings in both of his starts). In 10 games, Yankees starters have thrown 50 1/3 innings and relievers have thrown 39 2/3. That’s a recipe for disaster and a good plan if your plan is for Hamilton, Ferguson and Holmes to end up like Loaisiga.

Here is my current order of trust in the bullpen:

Ian Hamilton
Clay Holmes
Caleb Ferguson
Nick Burdi
Victor Gonzalez
Jake Cousins
Dennis Santana
Luke Weaver

For Holmes to be second on this list when he’s allowed nine baserunners in five innings and has done everything imaginable to ruin every game he has come into so far shows has messy this whole thing is. The loss of Loaisiga is monumental (as are the losses of Michael King and Wandy Peralta from last year’s team). The Yankees are going to need to give some of their top minor-league arms opportunities as relievers at this rate.

9. Former Yankees reliever Chad Green owes the Yankees a few late-game home runs from his time with the team, and for a second on Friday, I thought he had coughed up the lead on a three-run home run to Verdugo. Instead it was just a long fly ball that resulted in an out, which is how nearly all of Verdugo at-bats end: with an out. Verdugo does have his extra-inning home run in Arizona to hand him hat on, but other than that he’s been the worst hitter in the Yankees lineup. I guess someone has to be the worst hitter in the lineup.

Green wasn’t the only ex-Yankee to return to the Bronx over the weekend. I was waiting for Isiah Kiner-Falefa to get a big hit against the Yankees since all ex-Yankees seem to come back to haunt the team, but that big hit will have to wait until another sire. Kiner-Falefa went 1-for-8 in the series with four strikeouts.

Of course, Don Mattingly was back in the Bronx too and it will never be weird to see Number 23 wear another team’s uniform. It was weird with the Dodgers and Marlins and it continues to be weird seeing him with the Blue Jays.

I didn’t miss seeing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit at Yankee Stadium, as he hit his 15th home run since 2020 there. Only Rafael Devers has hit more (18). It was good to see Guerrero get pitched inside and even hit on Sunday, and it would be nice to see Devers get the same treatment when he visits. After watching David Ortiz torment the short porch for 14 years without ever being moved an inch off the plate, it would be nice if Guerrero and Devers had even a hint of fear in the box against the Yankees.

10. The Yankees will now put their league-best record on the line against the majors’ worst record in the 1-9 Marlins. Don’t let the Marlins’ record fool you. They are better than their record suggests and I already have visions of Jesus Luzardo shutting down the Yankees on Monday night and Luis Arraez spraying line drives Jake Burger hitting gappers for the next three days.

Three night games followed by a scheduled day off on Thursday. No everyday Yankee other than Stanton has been given a personal day off yet (and he’s been given two), so I’m sure Boone has some unnecessary rest planned for his lineup this week.

The Yankees extended their season-opening winning streak to five with a 5-2 win over the Diamondbacks in Arizona on Monday.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have played five games this season and Anthony Volpe has played in four of them. The offensive player Volpe has been in 18 plate appearance is a version of Volpe we never saw in his rookie season.

Sure, he hit 21 home runs last year, but in between those home runs were a collection of at-bats you would expect from someone who had played just 132 games above Single-A, even someone as highly regarded as Volpe.

2. This Volpe, the Volpe of the first few days of this season, is the Volpe the Yankees likely envisioned when they allowed him to play in 159 games a year ago and accumulate 601 plate appearances despite hitting .209/.283/.383 over a full season. He was never threatened with a demotion, never lost playing time and kept having is name penciled into the starting lineup even as he was putting up numbers representing among the worst in the majors.

3. It’s not like Volpe finished 2023 in such a way that it foreshadowed his start to 2024 as he hit .163/.226/.255 in September and struck out in 29 percent of his plate appearances. Volpe essentially was worse in September than he had been the rest of the season and there was no promise at the time that his development was headed in the right direction.

Whatever Volpe did in the offseason completely changed him as an offensive player. This doesn’t seem to be a sample size issue either. The command he has had of the strike zone this season, the discipline he has shown laying off unhittable pitches and the swings he has taken on balls in the zone are all traits he lacked last season. Yes, players go on random hot streaks (look at Jose Trevino in 2022) and eventually revert to their normal, former selves, but for Volpe, his presence and plan in the batter’s box suggests this version of him is here to stay.

“Results can be fleeting, especially this time of the year,” Aaron Boone said. “But the fact that he is getting results and the quality of each at-bat, it’s been impressive.”

(Is that Boone and I agreeing on something?!)

4. If this version of Volpe is who he will be moving forward (and I think it is) then the Yankees may have solved their leadoff problem. With the ongoing injuries and ailments of DJ LeMahieu since 2021, and my lack of enthusiasm for Gleyber Torres in that role, Volpe realizing his potential and his former top prospect status like this would solve that problem. I don’t expect that change to happen in Arizona or next week or the week after. The Yankees, as an organization, typically take their time with lineup promotions for their young players, unless injuries make it necessary. (It took two months of Judge hitting .328/.428/.690 in 2017 for him to finally hit third in the lineup.) At the least, though, Volpe needs to be hitting higher in the order than Alex Verdugo. I don’t care about righty-lefty alternation.

5. Last season, Volpe’s at-bats were painful to watch with him flailing at breaking balls and swinging through high-and-away fastballs. This season, so far, it’s been the opposite because he’s been the opposite. On Monday, Volpe continued his early season onslaught, going 4-for-4 with two doubles. The Yankees had eight hits in their 5-2 win and Volpe was responsible for half of them and had a hand in three of the five runs.

6. Luis Gil started his first game in the majors in nearly two years and mostly stifled the Diamondbacks: 4.2 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K. Gil blew his triple-digit fastball by the reigning National League champions, but even after allowing just one run on one hit, with one out and no one on in the fifth, Boone came to take the ball with Gil at 84 pitches.

“I get it,” David Cone said of Boone taking the ball from Gil before he could face the Diamondbacks’ lineup for a third and qualify for the win. “I still don’t like it.”

I’m guessing Gil’s pitch count was 85 and being at 84 was enough? I didn’t have a problem with it. A “win” for a pitcher is meaningless, and the “win” for the Yankees is all that matters. Gil gave the Yankees 13 outs and trusting the bullpen to protect at least a four-run lead (even if it’s Luke Weaver you’re asking to protect that lead) is understandable.

“I understand there’s a set amount of pitches that I’m under,” Gil said. “I definitely didn’t feel bad about coming out of the game at that time.”

7. One time through the rotation and Gil gave the Yankees’ their second-best start after Marcus Stroman. I would rank the Yankees’ starters first starts this way: Stroman, Gil, Clarke Schmidt, Nestor Cortes, Carlos Rodon. Cortes gave up more runs than Rodon (four to one), but Cortes’ final four innings were strong, where Rodon had two runners on every inning and every out seemed to be a line drive.

8. It’s crazy the Yankees have won five straight against the Astros (who have been to seven straight ALCS) and the Diamondbacks (who went to the World Series five months ago) with mediocre-at-best starting pitching. Only two of their five starters has pitched into the sixth inning (Stroman and Schmidt) and only has given them six innings (Stroman). The Yankees have asked their bullpen to hold deficits and protect leads and it has to a ridiculous level. Yankees relievers have allowed one run (Weaver on Monday) in 19 1/2 innings.

9. It’s even more crazy the Yankees are 5-0 and the first five hitters in the lineup (Torres, Soto, Judge, Rizzo and Stanton) have combined for two home runs in five games (one from Soto and one from Stanton). No long balls from Torres, Judge or Rizzo. The Yankees are averaging more than five runs per game and Torres, Judge, Rizzo and Stanton have driven in a total of four runs in five games. That’s scary. In a good way.

10. In the past (especially the last two seasons), if Judge didn’t hit, the Yankees didn’t win. Judge has done very little this season (3-for-21 with two walks), which is understandable since he missed a lot of spring training at-bats, and the Yankees are still winning. It’s amazing what lineup balance can do for a team. Who would have thought having quality left-handed bats and not an all-right-handed lineup could lead to success?

The Yankees opened the season with a four-game sweep of the Astros in Houston.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The beginning of the 2024 schedule worried me. Four games in Houston against a team that has been to seven straight ALCS and that has owned the Yankees followed by three games against the defending National League champions in Arizona? I would have gladly signed up for a 4-3 start to the year, and even going 3-4 would have been acceptable. After four games in Houston, the Yankees are 4-0.

2. The odds of the Yankees sweeping the four-game series in Houston were close to zero and in the fifth inning on Opening Day I was already trying to think about how the season-opening road trip could be salvaged and not end in complete disaster. But not only did the Yankees win all four games in Houston, they won all four in memorable fashion. On Opening Day, the Yankees erased a four-run deficit. In the second game, they trailed 1-0 through six before scoring seven runs in the final three innings. In the third game, they used a three-run seventh to overcome a two-run hole and in the series finale, they got to the Astros’ superstar closer — the highest-paid reliever of all time. The Yankees are 4-0 and the Astros are 0-4. That may be my most favorite sentence I have ever written.

3. At some point in the four games, every single position player had a moment. Gleyber Torres had the single that led to his go-ahead run on Sunday. Aaron Judge had the double off Ryan Pressly on Thursday and came around to scored the game-tying run. Anthony Rizzo had four hits, two walks and an extremely important hit by pitch. Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run on Friday and added a big double on Sunday. Alex Verdugo hit the go-ahead sacrifice fly on Thursday. Jose Trevino got the three-run rally started on Opening Day. Austin Wells had a pair of hits and two impressive walks. Anthony Volpe provided tough at-bat after tough at-bat in what has been and a complete turnaround from the hitter he was last year. Jon Berti provided a go-ahead RBI single (and later saved the game with his glove on Sunday) in his first Yankees start. Oswaldo Cabrera had two home runs, seven hits and spent the weekend tying games or giving the Yankees a lead. And then there’s Juan Soto.

4. I could write 10,000 words gushing over Soto’s play every game. Here is some of what I wrote about him after Opening Day:

Soto was the Yankees’ first baserunner of the game, drove in the first run of the game, added a second walk and threw out the would-be game-tying run in the bottom of the ninth. This wasn’t a one-game blip. This is who he is. He’s the best hitter with the base eye in baseball. A 25-year-old superstar. Not a generational superstar, but an all-time superstar, who has achieved more italicized bold on his Baseball Reference page by age 25 than the rest of the roster has combined.

He followed up his Opening Day performance by going 8-for-14 with a double, home run and walk in the next three games. His home run off Bryan Abreu on Saturday gave the Yankees a late lead, and the at-bat he had against Josh Hader on Sunday did the same. Soto may be the only hitter in the world capable of doing what he did against Hader in that spot against those pitches.

5. “Tip your cap,” Hader said. “You can always say you can throw another pitch, but I executed what I wanted to do, and a good hitter is going to do that sometimes.”

Excuse me, Josh. A “good” hitter? How about the “best” hitter? And how does a 15-year, $1.5 billion contract sound? That’s what I would offer the 25-year-old Soto. Not even Aaron Boone allowing Clarke Schmidt to face the top of the Astros’ order a third time could keep the Yankees from winning with Soto. Not even Clay Holmes doing everything he could to blow multiple games this weekend could keep the Yankees from winning with Soto.

6. The Yankees looked like the 2017-2023 Astros and the Astros looked like the 2017-2023 Yankees over the weekend. Would I feel confident with the Yankees playing the Astros in a postseason series? Of course not. But for these last four days, the roles in this one-sided rivalry were finally reversed.

“You don’t really play playoff games in March,” Schmidt said. “But this was a big-time series and a big-time sweep.”

These games did feel like playoff games, or maybe that’s just because I forgot what the playoffs feel like after a postseason-less October last year. Opening Day always feels like a playoff game no matter the opponent, and that was heightened this year because of the opponent. But then Games 2, 3 and 4 also felt like playoff games because of the opponent, which isn’t normally the case.

And this was a “big-time series” and a “big-time sweep.” The four-game sweep clinched the Yankees the season series over the Astros. That could matter. That could be the difference between getting a playoff berth or not. Every game matters, and a game on March 30 matters just as much as a game on September 30. These last four games mattered a lot, and the Yankees won all of them.

7. “It’s eerily similar to how we were in 2022, when we started off good,” Schmidt said. “We just felt like we weren’t going to lose at the end of games.”

I have tried my best to erase the 2022 season from my memory, or at least everything from that season from July 9 on, when the Yankees were 61-23, only to finish 41-46, including the postseason. But I know what Schmidt means. The difference is that first-half Yankees performance was somewhat of a mirage given how bad the team was in 2021 (outside of one 13-game winning streak to save their season) and how miserable they were in 2023 (finishing two games above .500). This version of the Yankees feels different because the roster is a lot different.

8. These Yankees are likable. Not just because they’re winning, but because they have gotten rid of seemingly everyone that was unlikable, mainly Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson, Harrison Bader and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. That’s not to say I’m a fan (yet) of Alex Verdugo, but if he keeps playing defense like he did over the weekend, it will be easy to be. It’s fun to root for a team with players that you actually like. It’s fun to root for a team with a lineup that features left-handed batters.

9. The starting pitching was OK overall, and pretty much how I expected it to be. Nestor Cortes was awful through the first inning-plus, but settled in to give five innings after the bullpen was up early. Carlos Rodon limited the damage (one earned run in 4 1/3 innings), but he put eight baserunners on and needed 87 pitches to get 13 outs. Marcus Stroman had the best start of the series (6 IP, 0 ER) and was let down by his defense, giving up three unearned runs. Schmidt would have had a nice line if Boone had pulled him after five, but whenever you can steal outs with Schmidt whose numbers the third time through are as bad as can be against Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, you have to try, right? The starting pitching is certainly not trustworthy, given the recent production and injuries of everyone in the rotation, but it was good enough for four games in Houston, which is something no one expected.

10. Now it’s Luis Gil’s turn, and he will open the series against the Diamondbacks on Monday night. When the Yankees went down 4-0 with no outs in the second inning on Thursday in Houston, it seemed like they were going to need to have a big three days in Arizona to avoid returning home for the first time in 2024 with a dismal record and disappointing start to the season. After their weekend in Houston, they no longer need to have a big series in Arizona, but it certainly won’t hurt if they do.

The Yankees began the 2024 season in Houston against the hated Astros, and for the first four innings, Opening Day was playing out like nearly every Yankees-Astros game over the last seven years. It didn’t finish that way though.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The last meaningful game the Yankees played was on Sunday, Aug. 13 of last season. It was an 8-7 walk-off loss to the Marlins in Miami, a game the Yankees led by four runs going into the bottom of the ninth. That game ended the 2023 Yankees season, and the remaining 44 games were a mere formality, a two-and-a-half month slog to the finish line in which the Yankees barely finished above .500 and then retained their manager, general manager and their entire front office.

Thursday’s Opening Day game in Houston was the first meaningful game for the Yankees in seven-and-a-half months. And through the first four innings, you would have never known it was a new year and a new season. Those four innings played out like a continuation of last season. Game 1 of 2024 was looking like Game 163 of 2023.

2. Nestor Cortes was named the Opening Day starter out of necessity and through two innings pitched like the Nestor Cortes that the Yankees, Orioles and Mariners didn’t want once upon a time. During the first inning of the first game of the season to start a seven-games-in-seven-day stretch, Aaron Boone had Nick Burdi warming up in the bullpen. That’s how well Cortes was doing.

Cortes allowed three runs in the first inning and a solo home run to the 9-hitter to lead off the second. Framber Valdez and the Astros were getting big outs when they needed them and big hits when they needed them as well. Cortes and the Yankees weren’t, just like they never seem to do against the Astros.

3. Juan Soto’s first plate appearance as a Yankee poetically resulted in a walk, but he was left stranded in the first when Aaron Judge hit into an inning-ending double play. The Yankees left the bases loaded in the second when Jose Trevino banged into a 6-4-3 double play and they were left loaded again in the fourth when Alex Verdugo banged into a 4-6-3. The Yankees were getting the kind of “traffic” Boone dreams of, but they were ruining it with inning-ending double plays. (We’re coming up on the three-year anniversary of Boone saying, “Typically, the better teams are going to hit into double plays,” after the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox on June 4, 2021.) Valdez had thrown more balls than strikes and the Yankees hadn’t made him pay.

4. Everything changed in the fifth inning, thanks to the Yankees’ two worst hitters. Cortes had put up back-to-back scoreless frames in the third and fourth, and the Astros’ lead remained 4-0. Then the Yankees’ .570 OPS duo went to work.

Trevino posted a .570 OPS in 55 games last season and Oswaldo Cabrera barely beat him out with a .574 OPS in 115 games. (Yes, Cabrera was allowed to play in 115 major-league games with a .574 OPS. That’s how bad the 2023 Yankees’ offense was.) But it was those two who got the Yankees’ fifth-inning rally started with a walk and single. The catcher who is strictly a major leaguer because of his defense and the utility player who was only in the lineup because the everyday third baseman is on the injured list, and the player the Yankees traded for to avoid having to play Cabrera didn’t arrive in Houston until 2 a.m.

5. After Gleyber Torres walked, Soto ripped a line-drive single to right to plate the Yankees’ first run. Following back-to-back strikeouts from Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo was drilled by a pitch to score a run and Anthony Volpe drew a walk to score another. Through five innings, the Yankees had cut the deficit to 4-3.

Trailing by one in the sixth, Cabrera came to the plate with one out. For as bad as Cabrera looked in his first at-bat of the game against Valdez (a four-pitch strikeout in which his swings looked as if he were blindfolded), it was startling that he was able putting the ball in play in a 1-2 count against Valdez in the fifth for a single and then clobber a home run on a 1-2 pitch off Rafael Montero in the sixth to tie the game. Maybe it’s just one game, or maybe Cabrera is beginning to figure things out.

6. The same goes for Volpe. Volpe looked like a different player on Thursday than he did for all of 2023. His at-bats on Opening Day were battles. He singled in the first inning, walked on four pitches in the fourth, walked on four pitches in the fifth and drew an eight-pitch walk in the seventh. (He ended his day with a strikeout against Josh Hader, but there’s no shame in that.) It was the best Volpe has ever looked at the plate for an entire game. The Volpe we watched on Thursday was not the Volpe we watched for 159 games last year.

7. The Yankees took the lead in the seventh on a Verdugo sacrifice fly (a skill previous iterations of the Yankees lacked), and four innings of shutout relief work from Jonathan Loaisiga, Ian Hamilton and Clay Holmes gave the Yankees a 5-4 win. It wasn’t as smooth as that reads though, and why would it be with Holmes on the mound in the ninth?

There was no way the Yankees were going to trail by four runs early to the Astros in Houston, then mount an improbable comeback to get within one run, then tie the game on a home run off the bat of the 9-hitter the team desperately doesn’t want to play, then take the lead and coast to a win. It wasn’t going to be easy.

8. You pretty much know which Holmes you’re going to get from the very first pitch he throws, and Holmes’ first pitch on Thursday nearly took Mauricio Dubon’s head off. Dubon hit a line-drive single on the next pitch. I figured either Dubon was going to steal second and Jose Altuve was going to drive him in to tie the game or Altuve was just going to skip tying the game and club a two-run, walk-off home run to destroy a game that was three outs away from being a glorious win. Altuve swung at the first pitch and lined out to Torres.

When Yordan Alvarez walked up the plate all I could envision was Holmes leaving his sinker up and Alvarez hitting a ball to a place no other player had ever hit a ball in MinuteMaid Park. Holmes got the ground ball he needed to possibly end the game from Alvarez, but it was perfectly placed and instead resulted in a single. Wither runners on first and second and one out, it was like the Astros were trying to make their inevitable comeback and walk-off win as painful as possible.

9. Holmes put a second-pitch sinker right over the middle of the plate for Kyle Tucker to extend his arms on and drive to right field. Dubon rounded third and headed for home to tie the game as Soto gathered the ball to throw a laser to the plate. Dubon tried to evade Trevino to get to the plate with a headfirst slide, but Trevino tagged him and Dubon was called out.

I’m not sure Trevino did tag Dubon, and for that, I’m thankful James Hoye called Dubon out on the field. I’m even more thankful there wasn’t a sufficient angle of the play to overturn the call. The call stood, and two pitches later, Holmes got Alex Bregman to ground out to end the game. A nice, clean one-inning save for Holmes that included three hits and a runner getting thrown out at the plate.

10. I couldn’t sleep on Thursday night. Not because of the excitement of the win, the idea of Yankees baseball being back or the Yankees hitting on the money line as an underdog. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t get the idea of life without Soto out of my head, and the thought of him leaving at the end of the season, and ending up with the Mets, or anywhere other than the Yankees had me tossing and turning.

Soto was the Yankees’ first baserunner of the game, drove in the first run of the game, added a second walk and threw out the would-be game-tying run in the bottom of the ninth. This wasn’t a one-game blip. This is who he is. He’s the best hitter with the base eye in baseball. A 25-year-old superstar. Not a generational superstar, but an all-time superstar, who has achieved more italicized bold on his Baseball Reference page by age 25 than the rest of the roster has combined.

I realize there’s a better chance of Boone becoming Bruce Bochy than there is of Soto signing an extension without testing free agency (though maybe that has or will change given Scott Boras’ performance this offseason). But Soto is the guy and needs to be a Yankee for the rest of his career. I can’t just watch this guy play for the Yankees for another 161 games and then possible playoff games. I need to watch him play for the Yankees until my three-year-old and one-year-old are teenagers.

For now, I will enjoy every game he is a Yankee, and thankfully, there’s another one on Friday. And another one on Saturday, and Sunday, and so on. Yankees baseball is back.