The Yankees finished their 10-game homestand with a disappointing 5-5 record. The offense looked every bit as bad as it did from July through October of last season, why wouldn’t it? It’s the same offense.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees are 14 percent through their season, and to date, it’s gone exactly as expected: when they get outstanding starting pitching, they win, and when they need their offense to win the game, they lose.

Nothing about this season has been a surprise, and why would it be? The Yankees brought back the same lineup that slogged through July, August, September and October, and for some reason, expected different results. The Yankees just scored 32 runs in a 10-game homestand and nine of the 32 runs (28 percent) came in one game. A 5-5 homestand against the Twins, Angels and Blue Jays is less than acceptable.

2. Where does anyone think help is coming from? Harrison Bader is a glove-first player with a .722 career OPS. Josh Donaldson has been a glove-only player since the beginning of last season and his entire Yankees tenure. Those two are going to play once they are healthy, but expecting them to save this offense is like expecting Albert Abreu to emerge as the next Mariano Rivera.

3. Aside from Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu, no one can be counted on. Gleyber Torres hasn’t hit a home run in three weeks and doesn’t have an extra-base hit in the last two weeks (after the Brian Cashman Fan Club wanted the Yankees to extend him following the first four games of the season). Anthony Volpe has 82 career plate appearances, Oswald Peraza plays infrequently and Oswaldo Cabrera looks overmatched. Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Willie Calhoun aren’t major-league-caliber players, and when Franchy Cordero isn’t getting middle-middle fastballs, he isn’t one either. Neither Yankees catcher can hit and Aaron Hicks has more RBI than I do after nearly a month of baseball. And who knows when Giancarlo Stanton will be back. I expect him to not play another game this season.

(Stanton saying he’s in “disbelief” that he’s on the injured list again is my favorite quote of all time. He has missed one-third of the team’s game since becoming a Yankee, and that number would be even worse if the 2020 season started on time. “Disbelief” isn’t the word I would use to describe him missing another large portion of a season.)

4. The Yankees had all offseason to address their glaring needs and their three offseason moves were to re-sign their homegrown superstar (a move that deserves zero praise when you’re the richest team in the sport), sign Carlos Rodon, who has thrown as many pitches for the 2023 Yankees as Clarke Schmidt has quality starts (zero) and sign Tommy Kahnle, who has thrown as many pitches as Rodon has.

5. Like the organization’s failure to add any new pieces to the everyday offense, they also completely disregarded their bench over the winter. When you have a 34-year-old second baseman who has been shut down prior to the postseason the last two years due to injury, a 33-year-old outfielder/designated hitter who has only played in two-thirds of the team’s games over the previous five years, an oft-injured 37-year-old third baseman who provided no offense in his age 36 season, a 33-year-old outfielder who has played in only 60 percent of the team’s games over seven years and a center field who has missed 30 percent of regular-season games in the last five years, you might want to have some position player depth and a quality bench. The Yankees decided not to. So their bench is full of owed money (Aaron Hicks), players no other team wants (Cordero), players who won’t appear in another game in the majors once released by the Yankees (Calhoun) and players they overvalue for unknown reasons (Kiner-Falefa). None of those four are capable of pinch hitting in a big spot and succeeding, and none of the four are capable of being late-game defensive replacements. The Yankees’ entire bench holds no value.

6. In the case of players like Donaldson and Hicks who are still only Yankees because of owed money, the question is why? The Diamondbacks have the league’s 21st-highest payroll and designated Madison Bumgarner for assignment, despite owing him $37 million. They got rid of their highest-paid player because he wasn’t performing, feel he’s detrimental to the team’s success and believe his roster spot would be better used on someone else. The Diamondbacks see what may be a wide-open NL West and a chance for them to return to the postseason for the first time in six years and they are going for it.

7. The Yankees, on the other hand, are supposed to be a World Series favorite, generate infinitely more revenue than the Diamondbacks and have a payroll two-and-a-half times that of Arizona and still roster Donaldson and Hicks. The extension for Hicks was idiotic and the trade for Donaldson was foolish, but seeing the Diamondbacks operate the way the Yankees should is disturbing.

8. It’s even more disturbing than Aaron Boone using Michael King in Sunday’s game with the Yankees trailing by three runs late. You may be thinking that move wasn’t a big deal because King had only pitched once in the previous eight days, but that’s the problem. When King threw 25 pitches on April 12 against the Guardians, for some reason it made him unavailable two days later to pitch against the Twins in the eighth inning, in the game Clay Holmes ruined. Boone cited King throwing those 25 pitches two days earlier as to why he was unavailable, but didn’t mention it was the only 25 pitches he had thrown in five days. Sure enough, King was only used once within a week’s span and then was used on Sunday just to get work in, and Boone had him pitch multiple innings in a game that was over. So if the Yankees need King on Monday or Tuesday, he won’t be available.

9. At this point, I think the Yankees have to play Hicks. I know Boone despises him and the chance Hicks gives the anything is close to zero, but there is at least a chance, even if that chance is nearly zero. This is the lineup I would use every day for the time being:

Anthony Volpe
Aaron Judge
Anthony Rizzo
DJ LeMahieu
Gleyber Torres
Oswaldo Cabrera
Aaron Hicks
Jose Trevino
Oswald Peraza

It’s less than ideal. It’s about as far from ideal as a New York Yankees lineup should be. But for now, it maximizes what’s available on this irresponsibly-constructed roster.

10. If you haven’t noticed, all five teams in the AL East are over .500. There are no cupcake games this year within the division. The Orioles have a better record than the Yankees, and while the Red Sox have no pitching, their offense is likely to carry them to a .500-ish record. It’s going to be a battle to win the East and avoid the best-of-3 wild-card series this season. It may be a battle just to reach the postseason with the state of the offense and rotation and if the bullpen continues down its injured and unproductive path.

The Yankees now begin a seven-game road trip against the Central’s first-place Twins and the West’s first-place Rangers. After that, the Yankees get the pesky Guardians and their first meeting with the Rays. It’s going to be a long two weeks as is, and if Judge, Rizzo and LeMahieu don’t hit, it’s going to be even longer.

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The Yankees have lost three of five at home, lost a bat they can’t afford to lose for the next six weeks and found out their big, offseason free-agent starter signing is headed for tests on his back. It’s hard to feel good about this team right now.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. When Hal Steinbrenner signed Carlos Rodon, he said his Yankees “weren’t done” with their offseason. He lied.

The Yankees were done. They brought back Aaron Judge and signed Rodon. The only other move they made was bringing back old friend Tommy Kahnle. They chose to not address left field. They chose to not move on from Aaron Hicks or Josh Donaldson or Isiah Kiner-Falefa. They chose to not add starting pitching depth to the organization to protect a fragile rotation and refill the depth they depleted to trade for broken-down arms last July. They chose to not address their bench even with a roster littered with oft-injured players.

2. Less than three weeks into the season and Rodon hasn’t thrown a pitch and neither has Kahnle, and Frankie Montas likely won’t throw another one for the Yankees. Luis Severino is on the injured list again, as are IL frequenters Harrison Bader, Josh Donaldson and Giancarlo Stanton. Bader hasn’t played a game this season, Donaldson was unplayable before he became literally unplayable and the Yankees continued their unnecessary rest plan for Stanton to keep him healthy, and once again, it worked about as well as using the 2004 ALCS as a motivational tactic for the 2022 ALCS.

3. Hicks has been even worse than imagined, as has Kiner-Falefa. The bench the Yankees chose to ignore has a career negative-2.0 WAR Willie Calhoun on it, a player who Aaron Boone pinch hit with instead of DJ LeMahieu on Friday night. The limited starting pitching depth the Yankees entered the season with is now part of the actual rotation and filling in about as well as could be expected.

4. If only the Yankees could have seen this coming. If only they could have known players with injured pasts would get injured. If only they could have predicted bad baseball players would continue to be bad baseball players. If only they could have been aware of any of this, maybe they could have prevented all of this.

5. This being playing with a lineup that has at least three automatic outs each night. This being playing with a rotation featuring one starter who has made three career starts, one who has a 6.16 ERA and 1.696 WHIP in eight career starts and another who has allowed 72 home runs in 378 2/3 innings as a starter.

6. Following a day off on Monday, the Yankees were beat rather easily by a crappy Angels team that just got beat up by an even worse Red Sox team over the weekend. The Yankees were lifeless at the plate, foolish on the basepaths and Clarke Schmidt continued to sabotage any future he may think he has a starter in the majors. It was the kind of game the Yankees gave us in July, August and September of last season.

7. Unfortunately, it’s hard not to envision a lot more of these games coming. Prior to the loss to the Angels, it was announced that Rodon will have tests done on his back. The same pitcher who initially said when going on the IL that if it were the ALDS he would be pitching. Do they let pitchers pitch in the postseason who needs to have tests done on their back following bullpen sessions?

8. Along with the Rodon news, the Yankees announced Stanton would be out for six weeks with a hamstring issue. The same hamstring issues he had in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons. The best-case scenario is a Memorial Day return, and the worst-case scenario is a repeat of 2019 when he played 18 games and took himself out of the lineup in that postseason.

9. There’s not much to feel good about with this team right now. This season feels like a continuation of last season, and that’s because it is. Saying “It’s early” or calling the team’s injuries “bad luck” is completely disregarding everything this team and organization has done (or hasn’t done) as a group over the last few years. This season, like the recent others that preceded it, was once again set up as a massive parlay, from both injury and performance standpoints. I have seen how this story ends and it’s going to take a lot of change and unexpected production for this version to not end the same way the others have.

10. The Yankees aren’t bad. They’re 10-7. But to get there, they have needed Gerrit Cole to have the best four-game stretch of his career, Franchy Cordero to save the day a few times and a favorable early-season schedule. Thinking this team can pull the same Replacement Yankees miracle the 2019 team did to weather this injury storm isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s foolish. But that’s all Yankees fans can do right now is think foolishly that this team won’t get buried by the Rays trying to runaway before the end of the first month of the season. Think that this team with this makeshift lineup and this makeshift rotation can stay afloat until the always-injured players return. If they return.

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The Yankees’ weekend in Baltimore started off with their manager doing what he’s done for five-plus seasons: manage the team to losses in winnable games. Thankfully, Jhony Brito was on the mound on Saturday, and the Yankees bounced back to win the final two games of the series.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Another series, another series win for the Yankees. That’s three series, three series wins and a 6-3 record. The Yankees have been slow starters in the Aaron Boone era in the first couple of weeks of March/April, so to be three games over .500 and playing as well as they have has been enjoyable.

The Yankees have lost three games and in all three games they were in it and had a chance to win in the ninth inning. They have yet to lose a laugher or get blown out. On the other hand, they never seem to lose laughers or get blown out. It would be nice if they would just lose like every other team and not make it so painful right down until the final pitch, keeping you hooked and making you think they will come back.

2. By now all Yankees fans should know that unless the Yankees outpitch and outhit their own manager, he’s not going to help them win. After some illogical decisions in the second game of the season (and first loss of the season) and after giving away the fourth game of the season (in what was the second loss of the season), Boone had an all-time Boone game in the seventh game of the season on Friday night.

Clarke Schmidt wasn’t very good in his second start (3.1 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K) and after putting the Yankees in a 4-0 hole, the offense fought back to take a 5-4 lead in the sixth. With one out in the sixth, Oswaldo Cabrera was at third. Franchy Cordero was due up to face the left-handed Danny Coulombe, so Boone went to the bench for a pinch hitter. That pinch hitter? Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

3. How the Yankees got to a place where Kiner-Falefa is the Yankees’ right-handed pinch-hit option off the bench is quite the embarrassment. Aaron Hicks was available, and was certainly the better option no matter how lost he may be or seem to be, but Boone would rather eat from a Manhattan restaurant with a “C” health rating than play Hicks any more than he has to. (The best part about the decision was after the game Boone said he went with Kiner-Falefa over Hicks because the Yankees needed a base hit there and not a walk. Yes, he really said that. He thinks getting more people on base and increasing the amount of runs the team may score is not a good idea.)

There was only one way Kiner-Falefa’s at-bat was going to end and it was without him getting the runner in from third with one out. I wasn’t sure if he was going to strike out, ground out weakly or pop one up in the infield, but the end result was inevitable. Kiner-Falefa went with the old infield popup, hitting it to the first baseman.

4. In the bottom of the sixth, Ron Marinaccio relieved Ian Hamilton to face the top of the order with a runner on first and one out. Jorge Mateo stole second on Marinaccio and moved over to third on a Cedric Mullins ground out. Mateo was now at third representing the tying run with Adley Rutschman at the plate.

The Yankees had first base and second base open. Walking Rutschman would have meant facing Anthony Santander with two on, but if that at-bat wasn’t going well, he also could have been put on to face the right-handed Ryan Mountcastle. It was as if Boone was looking at Google Maps and he had the fastest possible route, a route with a similar ETA and then a route with a 43-minute delay for road work and a detour involved. He chose the last option.

Boone had Marinaccio face Rutschman. Fine. Marinacco went fastball, fastball, changeup, changeup and fell behind 3-1. At this point, putting Rutschman on made the most sense. Why risk throwing a changeup that could catch too much of the plate or a fastball that could do the same? Four pitches and four fastballs later (that Rutschman had now seen six times), he singled to left to tie the game. The next batter, Santander, struck out on four pitches and swung through two Marinaccio fastballs.

5. Boone sent Marinaccio back out for the seventh with the game tied at 5. He walked Mountcastle on five pitches and then struck out Gunnar Henderson while Mountcastle stole second. The go-ahead run was now in scoring position with one out. Removing Marinaccio was the right move, if it meant bringing in Jonathan Loaisiga or Wandy Peralta or even Michael King despite King looking awful in the first week of the season. Boone chose Jimmy Cordero. (We would find out later that Loaisiga was unavailable and would end up on the injured list.)

Cordero’s first pitch was wild, allowing Mountcastle to go to third, and his second pitch was an RBI double for Ramon Urias to give the Orioles a 6-5 lead. Cordero got Adam Frazier to ground out, moving Urias to third, and then threw another wild pitch to allow Urias to score. It gets worse.

6. In the top of the eighth, the Yankees opened the inning with a double and back-to-back singles. The Orioles’ lead was now one run at 7-6 and the Yankees had first and second with no one out. They could tie the game by just making out. Well, the right kind of outs.

Jose Trevino came up and with the whole world knowing he was going to bunt, he didn’t care about showing the whole he was going to bunt and got into a bunting position before Bryan Baker even started his delivery. Baker missed badly on the first two pitches, so Trevino now had a 2-0 count. Trevino could wait and take a strike and the wild Baker might walk him to load the bases with no outs or he could continue to look for a strike to bunt. Boone had other ideas. He took off the bunt for Trevino and Trevino swung away at the 2-0 pitch, hit a grounder to Urias at third who stepped on third and threw to first four a double play, destroying the Yankees’ rally.

Kiner-Falefa followed Trevino and with a chance to redeem himself and drive in the game-tying run he swung through a couple of middle-middle fastballs in his at-bat and struck out.

7. With the Yankees trailing 7-6 in the bottom of the eighth, Boone then turned to Peralta. Yes, Boone had passed over Peralta for Cordero with the game tied at 5 in the seventh, and now wanted him to pitch with the Yankees trailing by a run in the eighth. There’s nothing Boone likes doing more than holding back his elite relievers from tie games to use them when the team is trailing. Now watching him in his sixth season continue to implement this ridiculously moronic strategy, I really, truly don’t want things like this from him to upset me anymore, but they do. Peralta pitched a scoreless eighth because he’s awesome, but the Yankees ended up losing 7-6.

8. Saturday was Johnny Brito day and I love Brito. After shutting out the Giants for five innings his in major-league debut, Brito didn’t have his best stuff with him right from the start on Saturday and faced first and third with no outs and the Orioles’ 3-4-5 hitters in the first. Brito had created a shitstorm for himself two batters into his night, and it seemed like maybe he wasn’t going to run away with a rotation spot after all.

But Brito reset after a mound visit initiated by Anthony Rizzo (and not the dugout) and got a fly ball and two ground balls to limit the damage to a run to get out of the inning. That was all he would allow all night in what was another impressive performance: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 2 K.

Brito is the heavy, heavy favorite right now to remain in the rotation when and if Carlos Rodon and Luis Severino return. I love how he attacks the zone and doesn’t nibble, believing in his stuff to be enough and not trying to make the perfect pitch every pitch. On a night when he didn’t have his best stuff, he kept his composure, battled and grinded through five innings. Put Schmidt or Domingo German in that first-inning situation and the game is likely over. I look forward to his next start.

9. It was a beautiful Easter made possible by Nestor Cortes, who did his thing and Aaron Judge, who did his thing. Not only was Cortes solid (5.1 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K) and not only did Judge hit two more home runs (3-for-4), but Franchy Cordero also had a day, banging his second of the season.

Cordero came to the Yankees as the left-handed Wily Mo Pena, who would hit a 700-foot home run every few weeks, and in between the mammoth blasts would be non-competitive strikeouts. So far as a Yankee, Cordero is 5-for-14 with a double and two home runs and seven RBIs. Cordero is tied with Judge for the team lead in RBIs.

I thought Cordero getting designated for assignment once Harrison Bader returned was inevitable, but right now it can’t be. There’s a lot of time for Cordero to regress to the player he has always been, and if he doesn’t, he has already given the Yankees more than I thought he ever would. I’m rooting for him to be this season’s out-of-nowhere fan favorite. Having the same amount of RBIs as Judge in just 39 percent of the plate appearances is certainly a way to start seeing Cordero shirseys popping up on River Ave.

10. Up next, it’s off to Cleveland where the Yankees last were in Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS. (Game 3 was a Boone special.) The Guardians are pesky and a tough group, and they will get to face Domingo German and Schmidt in two of the three games in the series. (Gerrit Cole is going to need to pitch as well as he did in his first two starts in the second game of the series on Tuesday.)

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