The Yankees had an opportunity to win all three games against the Rays at Tropicana Field over the weekend. Instead, they won one and their deficit in the AL East is up to 10 games.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. If you’re a Yankees fan who values your health and well-being, stop watching this 2023 team right now. Just walk away from this miserable roster, moronic management and clueless front office and enjoy life. Write down a list of things you wish to learn or achieve and take action. Always wanted to learn how to play a specific instrument? Well, 7 to 10 p.m. just opened up for the next five months on your calendar.

The 2023 Yankees are truly awful. Their wins are painful to acquire and their losses are excruciating to sit through. There’s very little to be excited about when watching the team, and when Aaron Judge isn’t playing there’s basically nothing to be excited about. (This is exactly why Hal Steinbrenner had to write Judge a blank check in free agency. He’s the only marketable everyday player on the team, and likely the only thing from keeping a faction of Yankees fans from learning guitar or piano instead of consuming Yankees baseball for the rest of 2023.)

2. This weekend was a chance for the Yankees to begin chipping away at the Rays’ seemingly insurmountable lead. A Rays sweep would end the Yankees’ division chances and a Rays series win would keep those chances on life support. But a Yankees series win would begin the chipping away process and a Yankees sweep (while improbable) could potentially turn this dismal season to date around. Aaron Boone made sure a Yankees sweep would stay improbable in the first game of the series.

3. The Yankees overcame an early 4-0 deficit on Friday night to tie the game with a four-run sixth. The game would be come a battle of the bullpens, and with the Yankees having yet to use an elite reliever, Boone decided he still wasn’t going to.

With the game tied at 4 and headed to the bottom of the sixth, Boone decided he would try to steal some outs since that always seem to work out well. Rather than recognize his offense just pulled off their biggest comeback of the season by scoring four runs in an inning when they typically score four runs total over three games, Boone let Albert Abreu face the first batter of the inning. Abreu got an out on deep fly ball, Boone figured he had played with fire long enough and removed Abreu for Ian Hamilton. Hamilton got the last two outs of the inning.

4. Then in the seventh, Boone went to Jimmy Cordero, who is this season’s inexplicable member of Boone’s inner circle of trusted relievers. Cordero isn’t bad. He doesn’t suck like Abreu, but he’s not Wandy Peralta or Ron Marinaccio or even Clay Holmes. And he’s certainly not Michael King. King was also warming up alongside Cordero, but Boone decided Cordero would be better suited to face a Rays order as it turned over. It worked about as well as you would expect.

Cordero walked 9-hitter Jose Siri on five pitches, and with one out, gave up a “double” to Wander Franco. The “double” was a catchable ball that Jake Bauers misplayed because he’s a first baseman the Yankees have playing left field. After the double, which gave the Rays the lead again, Boone then decided to go to the Yankees’ best reliever in King. King, of course, retired the next two batters on seven pitches.

I wish this were a one-time occurrence where Boone failed to use his best reliever (or even one of his best relievers) when the game was tied only to use him once the Yankees trailed. If King was available to pitch in the inning, why didn’t he start the inning? It’s the same reason Abreu was used for one batter in the previous inning: trying to steal outs. Trying to steal outs in the biggest game of the season to date. The Yankees would lose by one: the run Cordero allowed.

5. The following afternoon, the Yankees dug themselves a first-inning, two-run hole. Not scoring first in any game isn’t great for the old win probability. Not scoring first against the Rays is essentially a guaranteed loss.

Thankfully, Saturday happened to be one of the rare occasions when scoring first for the Rays didn’t work out for them. The Yankees battled back for three runs in the eighth and the bullpen held with Holmes against the heart of the order in the bottom of the eighth and Hamilton against the bottom of the order in the ninth. Why wasn’t King used? Because when Boone uses King, he only uses him for multiple innings, and then he’s not allowed to pitch the following day. So Boone’s decision to burn King with the Yankees trailing on Friday took him out of the equation on Saturday. Fortunately, Holmes and Hamilton got the job done.

Then there was Sunday.

6. The Yankees had split the first two games of the series, which was a welcome surprise. Not only that, but they had nearly beaten the Rays in a game they trailed by four runs and only lost because of the incompetence of their own manager (going to Cordero over King) and the incompetence of their own front office (constructing a roster so poorly that a first baseman is forced to play the outfield). Then the Yankees were able to beat the best team in baseball despite Domingo German starting, despite being down two runs in the first inning and despite Boone making King unavailable. With Gerrit Cole on the mound on Sunday, the Yankees would have a chance to win a series against the Rays, take off a game standings from when they arrived in Tampa on Friday, be winners of four of their last six and two straight series, and feel good about being able to beat up on an A’s team this week that is on pace to be the worst team in baseball history.

7. The Yankees led 3-0 after three, 5-0 after four and 6-0 going into the bottom of the fifth. That inning, Cole retired Christan Bethancourt with a strikeout to begin the frame before Siri took him deep. Solo home run? First home run allowed of the season? In a six-run game? Whatever. That’s what I thought and that’s likely what Cole was thinknig.

Then Yandy Diaz singled. Then Wander Franco singled and Diaz scored when Gleyber Torres threw the ball away (a ball Oswaldo Cabrera should have caught). The Yankees’ lead was trimmed to 6-2, but Cole struck out the Rays’ 3- and 4-hitters to end the inning. OK, a solo home run and a run that only scored because of an error? He did strike out the side in the inning. No worries. That’s what I thought. I should have been worried though. It’s the Boone Yankees, it’s the 2023 Yankees, it’s Cole against the Rays, it’s Cole in a big game (as big a game as a game on May 7 could be). I should have been very worried.

The Yankees left two on in the sixth and this how Cole’s sixth went: double, double, walk, home run. Six-run lead gone. Tie game.

It was shocking. Shocking because Cole had completely unraveled and shocking because Boone let it happen. This is the result of each of the final nine batters Cole faced:

Home run
Single
Single
Strikeout
Strikeout
Double
Double
Walk
Home run

8. By the time Bethancourt (the Rays’ 8-hitter) hit the game-tying, three-run home run, Cole had nothing left. He was yanking every fastball in the dirt and when he had to come in the zone, it would be middle-middle cement mixer. He should have been removed after the back-to-back doubles on four pitches to begin the inning, but the walk was the sign of all signs that he was finished.

Not for Boone, whose lack of feeling for the game in front of him is unrivaled. Boone was going to let Cole pitch until the lead was completely gone, and he did just that. “Small Game” Gerrit showed up at the worst possible time, and his manager was happy to take the steering wheel and drive the game right off a cliff.

The Rays took the lead that inning, but the Yankees offense managed to tie the game at 7 the following inning. The Yankees had now scored three days worth of runs in seven innings and yet were tied in a game Cole started. The problem was Kevin Cash had yet to utilize his big arms in the bullpen and once he did, it would only be batter of time until the Rays won. Once the game went to the 10th and the Yankees didn’t score in their half and Boone sent out Abreu with the automatic runner on second and no outs, the game was over. Sure enough, six Abreu pitches later, the game was over.

9. The weekend was a missed opportunity. A missed opportunity to cut a game off the Rays’ lead. A missed opportunity to create the idea the Yankees can hang around in the division race until they get healthy (if they get healthy). The Yankees are now 10 games back and with only 10 games remaining against the Rays, unless the Yankees get every single injured player back and playing to the best of their abilities by Thursday night, all the Rays have to do is win two of four next weekend to eliminate the Yankees from the AL East.

10. Before the Yankees play the Rays, they will host the A’s (who again are on pace to the worst team in the history of Major League Baseball). The Yankees can’t just win the series against the Rays, they need to sweep the A’s, because that’s what the Rays did in their three-game series against them earlier this season. The Rays swept the A’s and outscored them 31-5 in the three games. I don’t expect the Yankees to outscore anyone like that (even the A’s), but I do expect three wins.

If the Yankees want to pull off a miracle in the division, they need to match what the Ryas do against their opponents, and then in their remaining 10 games against the Rays, play them better than they did this past weekend. I don’t expect it to happen, that’s just what needs to happen if the Yankees believe they can still win the division.

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The Yankees finally won a series. They beat the Guardians on Tuesday and Wednesday to take two of three for their first series win in more than two weeks.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ 2023 Injury Excuse Tour has started and it’s full steam ahead.

Beginning in the first inning of Tuesday’s game, YES had graphics ready to air to display the Yankees’ injuries. Michael Kay was quick to mention “Thirteen members of the expected 26-man roster are on the injured list.” He and Paul O’Neill didn’t let up. For multiple innings the two opined on all of the team’s injuries. “I can’t explain it,” O’Neill said. Well, I can, Paul.

Aside from Oswald Peraza’s awkward slide on a steal attempt and Harrison Bader colliding with Isiah-Kiner Falefa — both of which didn’t occur until Wednesday night — the Yankees aren’t suffering from freak, unavoidable injuries. (If the Yankees don’t play an infielder in left field, Bader doesn’t get hurt.) The roster is a collection of oft-injured players and pitchers who are unsurprisingly hurt. There’s nothing rare about Giancarlo Stanton being on the IL. There’s nothing unusual about Carlos Rodon, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga not being able to pitch for a significant portion of the season. There’s nothing odd about Bader missing the first month of the season or Josh Donaldson being out for (at least) a month of his own. Up until last year, Aaron Judge was a frequent visitor to the IL, and now he’s there again. All of these names have pasts that are riddled with injuries and lengthy IL stays. That they are experiencing or have experienced injuries in 2023 isn’t uncommon, it’s the norm and it should be expected. Wait until Anthony Rizzo’s annual back flare-up comes or when DJ LeMahieu tweaks something (he has already missed a few games but avoided an IL stint this year) or Nestor Cortes has a soft tissue problem.

The idea the Yankees were good enough before half of their expected roster went on the IL is offensive to Yankees fans. The team’s ceiling if everyone stayed healthy was going to be an ALCS loss to the Astros, and their floor was going to be a chaotic mess. This is the floor in which Kiner-Falefa is somehow an everyday outfielder, Aaron Hicks is still moping around on the active roster and Jake Bauers and Franchy Cordero are middle-of-the-order bats. No one from the organization seems to be talking about how the roster was constructed, just that the roster is injured.

2. The next performance on the Injury Excuse Tour belonged to Brian Cashman.

There are a handful of times Cashman makes himself available to the media throughout the season. There’s his spring training “State of the Franchise” session. There’s his post-deadline “evaluation of all the guys he traded for who will be busts as Yankees” conference. Then there’s his early postseason exit press conference a week after the Yankees are eliminated when he praises the job his manager did and kisses ownership’s ass about the financial commitment they have made to the team as if it’s a charitable, nonprofit organization.

It takes a lot for Cashman to come down from his office where he’s tirelessly working on his next deal for a controllable starter who will fail miserably in pinstripes. The first five weeks of the season certainly qualify as “a lot” and enough for Cashman to show his face publicly. In textbook damage control fashion, with the Yankees sitting in last place, the Yankees needing Willie Calhoun to be Giancarlo Stanton and Kay and O’Neill having kicked the tour off on Tuesday, there was Cashman holding court in the dugout for 28 minutes prior to Wednesday’s game. There he was lying, cracking popsicle stick jokes the media ate up, and most importantly: making excuses.

3. “We’ve got a good group of people — player-wise, staff-wise, support staff-wise,” Cashman said. “It’s a championship-caliber operation from that perspective.”

Somewhere along the way from being handed the best team in the history in his first year on the job in 1998 to present day, Cashman lost what qualities are needed to be “championship-caliber.” This certainly isn’t it. Again, even without the injuries, this roster wasn’t “championship-caliber.” How can I be certain of that? Because it’s the same roster as last year that wasn’t “championship-caliber.”

4. In spring training, Hal Steinbrenner was asked by Meredith Marakovits about the team’s injury issues over the last four seasons, saying, “We’re doing everything right. We’re doing everything right. We believe that.”

Still believe that, Hal?

Of course he does. We’re talking about the guy who told the world in October that Aaron Boone had done a good job after the Yankees were swept in the ALCS and after the manager who had done such a good job had used the organization’s 2004 ALCS collapse as a motivation tactic. Who do you think is behind the Injury Excuse Tour? It can’t possibly be the owner who also said to Markaovits in spring training, “Do I think we’re good enough to win a championship now? Yes, but we’ve got to stay healthy.” Hal built in the injury excuse with two weeks left in spring training before Severino and Bader got hurt, Rodon’s injury snowballed, and Judge, Stanton and Donaldson all went on the IL.

It takes a special kind of person to see the injuries the Yankees have endured going on now five seasons and still think the organization is handling, diagnosing and rehabbing injuries the right way. In a results-driven business, the Yankees’ results in terms of injuries have been disastrous, and yet, the owner of the team isn’t worried by it. Maybe this is part of the “process is more important than results” bullshit Cashman was spewing at his end-of-the-season press conference in October. It’s an organization-wide belief and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.

5. “If you asked me that question in the wintertime or even March, what’s your biggest fear in the early portion of the season?,” Cashman said, “All general managers would say you don’t want to get wrecked with injuries early.”

If you asked me, I would say it’s using the highest payroll in the American League to build the roster Cashman built, injuries or no injuries. It’s comical Mr. Fiscally Responsible Hal Steinbrenner allowed his general manager to spend $300 million in such an irresponsible manner. If as a teenager, your parents had given you $300 to go to the store and buy groceries for the week for your family and you came back with two-dozen two-liter bottles of soda, 14 bags of Sour Patch Kids, six tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, eight boxes of Chips Ahoy cookies, four loaves of bread, seven bags of chips and three overpriced, about-to-expire rotisserie chickens, I don’t think you would be allowed to do the grocery shopping for your family again.

6. “The team we’re currently running out there, that’s not the team we actually anticipated,” Cashman said. “That happens on a continuous basis; typically, you lose one or two guys along the way. But we’ve lost a lot more than one or two guys along the way. We’re patching holes as best we can at this time of year.”

I feel like Maury Povich opening a manilla envelope.

Brian, on May 3, 2023, you said, ‘The team we’re currently running out there, that’s not the team we actually anticipated‘, and the lie detector test determined that was a lie!

Cashman chose to not upgrade the lineup in the offseason. Re-signing Judge and extending Rizzo didn’t change anything. The lineup was losing Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi and Cashman was replacing them with … Aaron Hicks! The season is 20 percent over and Hicks has one more RBI than I do. Then after not doing a thing to his right-handed-heavy, underachieving lineup, Cashman decided to completely disregard the bench, filling it with players who aren’t major-league-caliber. This is the team the Yankees anticipated.

7. Why didn’t Cashman address roster changes in the offseason?

“We were certainly exploring a lot of efforts; if you look at our roster, we were deep on the infield side,” Cashman said. “We were pursuing opportunities to trade from an area of strength if we got the right value. We didn’t get the right value.”

The right value for who? Gleyber Torres? OK, that’s believable. Kiner-Falefa? A baseball player at any level of organized baseball with a pulse would be the right value. Donaldson? A team willing to eat a single dollar would be the right value.

8. “Injuries happen, and ultimately we’re getting a lot of injuries right now,” Cashman said. “That’s certainly killing us. But I have nothing I can convict. If you want to convict somebody, convict me. This is my responsibility.”

Wait! What’s that? Is that accountability? No, it couldn’t be, could it? Is that Cashman taking blame for intentionally building a roster that has scored less runs than an A’s team that is purposely tanking is on pace for 131 losses?

Cashman played this all perfectly. He showed his face publicly and answered questions from the media to keep them happy to fill their word and story counts. He blamed excuses for the Yankees’ shortcomings exactly how his boss wanted him to get unintelligent fans to believe this disaster was unavoidable. Then, knowing he has a lifetime contract, took the blame for the roster since there are no consequences for losing under current ownership.

9. “Don’t give up on us,” Cashman said. “That’s all I can tell you; don’t count us out.”

Cashman has nothing to lose with this statement. If the Yankees’ season unravels to the point of no return, well, he and the organization will have the injury excuse they have gone on tour promoting to fall back on. And if the Yankees somehow miraculously turn it around, everyone will praise him for warning the world to not count out the richest team in the sport.

10. The Yankees have won two games in a row. As Lou Brown famously said, “If we win again tomorrow, it’s called a ‘winning streak.’ It has happened before.” For it to happen they’re going to need to beat the 25-6 Rays who have an 8 1/2-game lead over the Yankees.

If the Yankees have a bad weekend in Tampa, you can disregard Cashman’s warning and officially “count them out” in the division. Then the next five months will be about playing for a wild-card berth and making more stops on the Injury Excuse Tour of 2023. The next performance will be by Hal Steinbrenner.

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The Yankees have lost three straight series, seven of their last 10 and find themselves tied for last place in the AL East. The season is unraveling.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I celebrated the New Year and start of 2023 by writing ‘New Year, Same Yankees Lineup’ on January 1.

Here are some snippets from that blog:

I never believed Hal Steinbrenner when he told Aaron Judge he had the payroll flexibility to re-sign him and add more to the roster to essentially close the four-win postseason gap between the Yankees and Astros. And because I don’t believe a word this Steinbrenner says — unless he’s talking about how to implement harsher luxury-tax penalties, which in turn are bad for his franchise’s chances of winning and then every word he says is the truth — I’m not surprised that the Yankees’ lineup is the same it was two-plus months ago when they were laughed out of the postseason for the third time in six years by the Astros. Actually, it’s not the same, it’s worse.

That lineup at least had the potential to have a healthy Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi. The 2023 lineup will have neither, and the only addition made to it this offseason has been to re-sign Judge, a move for which Steinbrenner has been praised. Yes, the owner of the highest-valued franchise in the league that makes more money than all the other teams has been celebrated for retaining the team’s star player, in what should be a given. Steinbrenner has been referred as some kind of folk hero or legend for getting on the phone during his Italy vacation to speak with Judge and eventually agree to give him $360 million of the money he inherited from his father.

If you think there’s still a lot of time left in the offseason, there’s not. The Yankees’ roster you see today is most likely the one on Opening Day. The lineup you’re used to seeing underachieve and disappoint is getting yet another chance to “get over the hump” the team’s manager claims the team has been “close” to getting over in his five season as manager, only to come up shorter each time.

It’s not like anything I wrote was far-fetched, and it’s not like I made any wild, long-shot predictions. It was all obvious because everything about this team has been obvious for several consecutive seasons now. The Yankees internally keep thinking everything will change and work in their favor despite statistic, data, logic, reasoning and common sense suggesting otherwise. Only Yankees employees and the biggest of Yankees homers looked at this time on Opening Day and thought it was good enough to win a championship. After a month, only a fucking idiot could still look at this team and think that.

2. The Yankees have scored 116 runs in 29 games. They have scored the least amount of runs in the AL East, and unsurprisingly, they are tied for last place in the AL East with the Red Sox.

The only teams that have trail the Yankees in runs scored in the AL are Oakland (on pace for 129 losses), Cleveland (on pace for 75 wins), Kansas City (on pace for 123 losses) and Detroit (on pace for 103 losses). Even the White Sox (who are 8-21) have scored more runs than the Yankees. Going back to June 30 of last season, the Yankees are 61-63. A 124-game sample size.

3. Over the weekend, the Yankees lost three of four to the Rangers (including three straight) to finish their seven-game road trip at 2-5. In those three losses, the Yankees seemed to be on their way to getting no-hit by Jacob deGrom before he left the game injured, allowed Nathan Eovaldi to throw a complete-game shutout against them and then let the left-handed Martin Perez shut down their nearly-all-right-handed lineup. The Yankees were outscored 24-8 in the four games and scored four runs in the last three games of the series. Four runs in three games. In Texas!

4. In the second game of the series, this was the Yankees’ lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Anthony Rizzo
Gleyber Torres
Willie Calhoun
Oswald Peraza
Franchy Cordero
Oswaldo Cabrera
Aaron Hicks
Kyle Higashioka

Here was the Yankees’ lineup from Apr. 28, 2013, 10 years to the day earlier:

Brett Gardner
Ben Francisco
Robinson Cano
Vernon Wells
Francisco Cervelli
Ichiro Suzuki
Eduardo Nunez
Lyle Overbay
Jayson Nix

After 2013, I never thought I would see the Yankees create lineups as poorly constructed as that season, but here we are. And after the postseason expanded to six teams in each league, I never thought there would be a season in which the Yankees didn’t reach the postseason but here we are. There’s a very real chance the Yankees could not be in the top 40 percent of the AL despite having the highest payroll in the AL.

5. Aside from Aaron Judge (who I’m sure will be held out of the lineup for a few days while the Yankees play shorthanded only to later be placed on the injured lis) there’s no help coming. The Yankees are going to have to rely on the likes of Willie Calhoun, Franchy Cordero and Jake Bauers because there’s no one else. The team chose to not upgrade the everyday lineup through free agency or trades in the offseason and completely disregarded building a major-league-caliber bench on top of that. They purposely assembled a recipe for disaster and did so to perfection. This roster with the second-highest payroll in the sport was built this way intentionally.

6. Unfortunately, there’s no change to be made. This is all on Brian Cashman, but for the guy who has a lifetime contract from the Steinbrenner family, a disastrous 2023 season won’t result in any changes. Ownership and the front office will blame the season on injuries. It’s not like the Yankees’ injuries are surprising. Before last season, Judge would spend have at least one stint on the injured list per season. Josh Donaldson has played one “full season” in seven years. DJ LeMahieu came into this season having had his last two seasons end early due to injury. Anthony Rizzo missed 20 percent of last year with back issues that also flared up this spring. Harrison Bader has missed 30 percent of his games since becoming a major leaguer. Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks have nearly been hurt more than they have been available as Yankees. Carlos Rodon made 31 starts last year and in his other seven major-league seasons made more than 24 once. Luis Severino has started 22 regular-season games for the Yankees since 2019. Jonathan Loaisiga has been the pitcher version of Hicks when it comes to injuries. The Yankees’ injuries aren’t freak, unexpected occurrences. They are the result of oft-injured players getting injured again and again.

7. Injuries aren’t an excuse, but there’s no doubt in my mind the Yankees will cite that as the reason for this season if it doesn’t turn around. This team wasn’t going to be good enough if it stayed healthy. The best-case scenario would have been reaching the ALCS and losing to the Astros for a fourth time in seven years. The worst-case scenario would have been this.

8. The Yankees have buried themselves in the division. The Rays need to go 67-66 to win 90 games. Play one game over .500 for the rest of the season and they win 100 games. The Yankees would need to go 75-58 just to tie them in that scenario. Not only would the Yankees need to play .564 baseball for five months if the Rays play just .504 baseball, but the Yankees would need to separate themselves from the Red Sox and jump the Blue Jays and Orioles before overtaking the Rays. So yeah, the division is over before a game in May has been played.

Seven of the Yankees’ next 13 games are against the Rays, so by the end of play on May 14, we will know if the Yankees officially have a prayer to win the division. We could know well before them if the next few days against the Guardians don’t go well prior to the weekend series at the Trop.

9. I would sign up for a wild-card berth right now. I would take the 6-seed right now and I know what that would mean. It would mean going on the road for all games of a best-of-3, burning two or three of the Yankees’ best starters, and if able to survive, going on the road to Tampa without those two or three best starters. A 6-seed would mean an abbreviated postseason yet again.

In an ideal world, not reaching the postseason would be better than being the 6-seed because not reaching the postseason could lead to front office and managerial changes. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and the Yankees don’t operate in an ideal world where wins and losses matter and payroll is commensurate to team revenue. They operate in a world where “the process is more important than the results” (their words not mine) and everyone’s job is safe and winning is far from the priority. Every Yankees fan knows nothing will change even if this season ends with zero postseason games. Cashman has a job for life and Aaron Boone is his guy. This dynamic duo will be here for a long, long time and seemingly no level of losing, coming up short or incompetence will change that.

10. If the Yankees miss the postseason, nothing will change. If they reach the postseason and lose in the silly best-of-3, the organization will say they were “right there” even though everyone knows they weren’t, aren’t and haven’t been. So I might as well say I would take the lottery ticket 6-seed, which right now feels unattainable with this team.

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