The Yankees routed the Mariners 11-2 in Seattle on Tuesday night and are now one win away from clinching a postseason berth.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. That’s how a late-night West Coast game should go. The Yankees scored two in the first inning, two in the second, two in the fourth, one in the fifth, three in the sixth and one in the ninth. They led 2-0 after one, 4-1 after two, 6-1 after four, 7-1 after five and 10-1 after six. Eleven runs on 12 hits, including six for extra bases. That will do.

2. Three batters into the game the Yankees had a 2-0 lead after Gleyber Torres singled and Juan Soto and Aaron Judge hit back-to-back doubles. When Soto and Judge hit, the Yankees win, and it’s no surprise the Yankees have been winning a lot lately (8-3 since September 6) because the duo has been hitting.

Soto went 2-for-2 with a double, home run, two walks, three runs and two RBIs. Judge went 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, a run and four RBIs. The home run for Soto was his 40th of the season as the two became just the third pair of Yankees teammates to both hit 40-plus home runs in a season, joining Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (1927, 1930, 1931) and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (1961).

3. Soto’s home run was his 200th career home run. Having 200 home runs at age 25 is ridiculous. (Judge hit his 200th home run during his MVP season in 2022 at age 30.) It was the last active stadium he needed to homer in to have homered in every stadium.

“What a great way to go into free agency,” Soto said, “with all 30 ballparks checked on my list.”

What a quote from Soto. It’s obvious he’s going to the highest bidder this winter whether it’s the Yankees or Mets or Giants or some crappy last-place team looking to make a splash. He’s not going to leave a dollar on the table, and the dollars he does accept better come from the Yankees.

4. The Yankees are so top heavy and reliant on Soto and Judge that the offense can’t function without both. We saw what happened last year with only Judge as the Yankees missed the playoffs and we saw what happened when he was out for an extended period of time following the Dodger Stadium injury: their season collapsed. With only Judge, the Yankees haven’t been able to reach the World Series. With Soto and Judge, their ceiling is a championship. Remove Soto from the equation and their best-case scenario falls back to being embarrassed by the Astros every October.

5. “In a lot of ways, he’s not necessarily even entered his prime,” Aaron Boone said of Soto. “Maybe he’s entering it now.”

The idea Soto is this good and hasn’t entered his prime is what makes signing him a must. This isn’t paying a 30-something-year-old star for what he already accomplished knowing you may get one or two seasons of their prime and then will be living with an albatross contract until it expires. This is paying for a soon-to-be-26-year-old generational star to get the entirety of their prime, like what the Yankees missed out on with Bryce Harper. They can’t make that mistake again.

The Yankees had a young, inexpensive core when they decided to not even meet with Harper, let alone sign him, and they have a similar setup now. Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jasson Dominguez make nothing and Jazz Chisholm is under contract at inexpensive rates for the next two years. If you add in potentially Ben Rice at first base for next season and either Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera or Caleb Durbin at second base, and operate under the idea Soto will be re-signed, the Yankees will have a player 26 or under at catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field and right field. The only outliers would be Judge in center or a corner spot and Giancarlo Stanton at designated hitter. That’s an extremely young everyday lineup. Everyone in the lineup would be making seven figures or less except for Judge, Soto and Stanton. But that lineup and plan only works if Soto is re-signed.

6. As of now, the Yankees have 11 guaranteed games with Soto remaining. Once they clinch a postseason berth, they will get at least two more games with him (if they are a wild-card team) or at least three more games (if they win the division). Every win from Game 163 on will guarantee them another game with Soto in pinstripes.

I’m not ready for Soto’s time in pinstripes to be over. Watching him this season has been like sitting in first class on an international flight with a cabin, personal bathroom and all-you-can-eat-and-drink options. I don’t want to go back to sitting in the last row of economy in a middle seat next to the bathroom. That’s where Yankees fans were while being forced to watch Jake Bauers, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero and Greg Allen as outfielders last season before the trade for Soto. I’m not going back to that. I will retire as a Yankees fan and baseball fan if I have to go back to that.

7. Soto wasn’t the only Yankee to homer on Tuesday night. Dominguez hit his first home run of the season and finished the game reaching base in two of five plate appearances. Dominguez is starting to get on track. In his last four games, he has as many strikeouts (4) as walks, a .412 OBP and .873 OPS. Verdugo has one extra-base hit in 12 September games, presents no speed on the basepaths and is playing a questionable left field. The season is 151 games old. I’m running out of ways and stats to say he sucks.

8. Oswaldo Cabrera got the start at short over Volpe and picked up two hits. For comparison, Volpe has one multi-hit game in September. Cabrera is hitting .303 with a .361 on-base percentage over the last month. The power hasn’t been there (just one extra-base in that time), but at least he’s getting on base. Volpe hasn’t homered since August 3, has one double since August 22 and one walk since August 30. Give me more Cabrera, whether it’s in place of Volpe or Anthony Rizzo, who went 0-for-5 with a strikeout on Tuesday and has a .484 OPS since returning on September 1.

9. The Yankees’ early 2-0 lead was nearly erased in the bottom of the first when the Mariners loaded the bases with two outs. Luis Gil was in trouble and behind Justin Turner with a 3-0 count. One pitch away from walking in a row or potentially allowing multiple runs, Gil was saved when Victor Robles inexplicably tried to steal home and was easily thrown out. It was possibly the dumbest thing I have seen in a game, surpassing Nick Swisher sacrifice bunting a runner from second to third with already one out in an inning. It made the Yankees’ decision to intentionally walk Rafael Devers on Saturday look brilliant. It looked like something Gleyber Torres or Alex Verdugo would do. After that Gil settled in and gave the Yankees five innings and one-run ball yet again without his best stuff. It seems like Gil is either lights out with his best stuff or gives the Yankees five innings of one-run ball without it. He’s been awesome.

10. The Yankees can clinch a postseason berth with a win on Wednesday night in Seattle.

“That’s what we came into the season to do, get into the postseason and give ourselves an opportunity to go out there and win a World Series,” Judge said. “So that will be step one, but we’ve got to get there first.”

The Yankees’ division lead is up to four games with 11 to play. The goal should be to keep it to at least four games going into the series with the Orioles next week, so even if they were to shockingly get swept, they would still be in first with three to go. Or they can keep winning all the way until that series and make the series that meaningless. That would be preferable.

The Yankees extended their division lead to three games and essentially ended the Red Sox’ season by taking three out of four from their rival.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees have a three-game lead with 12 games to play. Their magic number to clinch a postseason berth is 3, but the goal is to win the division and avoid the best-of-3, wild-card series, which likely won’t be decided until next week against the Orioles at Yankee Stadium. It may not be decided until after that series when the two teams will each have three games remaining.

The four-game series win over the Red Sox has increased the Yankees’ odds of winning the division to 88.1 percent. (They currently have the highest odds of winning the World Series at 18 percent. It’s been a long time since they were the league leader for that math.)

The four-game series win over the Red Sox also essentially ended the Red Sox’ season, dropping their odds of reaching the playoffs to 2.5 percent. That’s too bad.

2. After eking out a 2-1 win in the series opener thanks to a Juan Soto walk-off single, the Yankees won the second game on an Aaron Judge grand slam. It had been a few weeks of Judge not doing much, but he seems to be back on track. Since September 6, Judge is hitting .303/.452/.546 and has as many walks (9) as strikeouts.

Judge’s entire season will be evaluated and remembered based on what he does in October and not what his home run total finishes at after these 12 remaining games. Judge needs to have a postseason similar to his regular season. He has to have it. Two years ago, he set the single-season home run record in the American League and then went 1-for-16 with a single in the ALCS against the Astros and the Yankees were swept. I expect Juan Soto to be his usual self in October because he was that for the Nationals and Padres in postseasons past. Judge has to join him. The rest of the Yankees offense is too bad, too weak, too untrustworthy to not have both Judge and Soto hitting in the playoffs.

3. Giancarlo Stanton is quietly coming out of his latest funk, as he reached base in half of his plate appearances (12) against the Red Sox. Austin Wells had his first bad series in months (1-for-11 with four strikeouts), which I’m more than OK with. Gleyber Torres hit a couple of Yankee Stadium home runs and is extremely close to getting his OPS (.697) above .700.

Anthony Volpe went 1-for-the Red Sox series and struck out three times in the series finale and left about 92 runners on base. Volpe has looked bad offensively for the entirety of his two-year career and this current slump he’s in is the worst he has looked overall. (I guess it’s not really a “slump” since he’s just always bad?) Volpe hasn’t homered since August 3. He has one double since August 22. He has one walk since August 30. In September, he’s hitting .163/.177/.163. A .177 on-base percentage! A .163 slugging percentage! A .340 OPS! These are horrific numbers. Unplayable numbers. But because he’s the Golden Boy, he will continue to play every day for the rest of the regular season and every game in the postseason. I have come to accept there is no level of offensive production that is bad enough for the Yankees to not play him. Unfortunately, Volpe isn’t the only automatic out in the lineup.

Anthony Rizzo returned on September 1 and is hitting .191/.277/.262 since then. He’s been every bit as bad as he was from Opening Day until he got hut in mid-June. He’s as washed as washed gets, and yet, he will be playing every day through the Yankees’ final game of the season, whenever that may be.

Alex Verdugo had a hit in one of the two games he played in, but of course negated the hit by getting thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double. Jasson Dominguez had a pair of hits in the three games he played in, drew three walks, scored two runs, produced lengthy at-bats and looked comfortable in the box.

4. Here is what Aaron Boone said about Dominguez on September 1:

“When he comes up here, you’re going to want to play him every day.”

Here is how Dominguez’s call-up has gone:

September 9: Played
September 10: Played
September 11: Bench
September 12: Played
September 13: Bench
September 14: Played
September 15: Played

Seven games on the team, five starts. That’s not being an everyday player.

Dominguez has always played every day. He needs to play every day. He’s not an every-other-day player. Look at Wells. When he was getting 50 percent (at best) of the playing time at catcher he wasn’t hitting. When he became the “everyday” catcher (or as everyday as a catcher can be), he took off, becoming the best-hitting catcher in the league, outside of maybe Salvador Perez. The Yankees have taken this foolish approach with every prospect to get called up except for Volpe, who has been given two years of everyday playing time and has done nothing to prove he deserves it. Maybe if Dominguez was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey a Yankees fan, and if the team had passed over every available star free agent at Dominguez’s position he would be playing every day in actuality and not in just some fictional world Boone speaks of.

5. After winning the first two games of the series, the Yankees led the third game 1-0 in the top of the fourth with one out, no one on base and Rafael Devers coming to the plate against Gerrit Cole. Devers stepped in the box and Cole threw up four fingers on the mound, signaling an intentional walk.

It was a foolish move, a dumb decision and a cowardly choice by Cole. He’s the reigning AL Cy Young winner, a likely future Hall of Famer. He’s not Marcus Stroman. And even if he were, I wouldn’t want Stroman walking Devers in that spot either. Can you imagine Roger Clemens or David Cone or Justin Verlander or any true “ace” putting up four fingers on their own there? Cole and the Yankees got what they deserved for trying to outsmart and outthink the opposition. Devers stole second and Cole mentally was gone, allowing seven runs to score after the walk between the fourth and fifth innings. Unless he pitches lights-out in the playoffs and finally leads this team to a championship in his fifth season, the lasting image of his season will be him holding up those four fingers.

6. While the walk was ill-advised, it was the unfolding of the walk that I have a problem with, as it was yet another communication breakdown on Boone’s watch.

Cole said the decision to walk Devers in the game had been discussed with Boone and Matt Blake.

“I think that I bought into the plan going into it,” Cole said, “but afterward, it was the wrong move.”

“Once we scored the run, my preference would have been, ‘Let’s attack him,'” Boone said. “But obviously, I didn’t communicate that well enough. I think Gerrit was a little indecisive out there and rolled with it.”

Obviously.

“We were in the tunnel before the inning and had discussed that if Duran was retired, were we going to stick to it aggressively and intentionally walk him?” Cole said. “That was the plan.”

“I was not in that conversation,” Wells said. “I didn’t know that was in the plans.”

“During the inning, I looked to the dugout and stuck to the plan,” Cole said. “If i make the pitches after that and I continue to execute at a high level, then the plan works. Evidently, the plan didn’t work.”

Evidently.

The plan was idiotic and none of the Yankees’ versions of what transpired adding up goes to show how disastrous it was.

7. Boone was hired, and likely solely hired, because of his so-called great communication skills. The issue with that is Boone was hired with no coaching or managerial experience at any level anywhere, so there were no recommendations or references for the Yankees to refer to in the interview process. There was no body of work for them to base the idea of Boone being a great communicator off of. The Yankees executives in the room who hired Boone based the theory that he’s a great communicator off of whatever he said to them in the interview room and nothing else. Unfortunately, the body of work Boone has created in now nearly seven seasons as a major league manager suggest otherwise.

Not even a month into the job in his first spring training he tried to bring Dellin Betances into a game even though he hadn’t yet called on Betances to warm up yet. That year in the postseason, with the ALDS tied at 1, his starting pitcher didn’t know what time Game 3 started. He didn’t let JA Happ know about the decision to use Deivi Garcia as a secret opener in the 2020 ALDS. He never told Gary Sanchez he wasn’t going to play every day during his final two seasons with the Yankees. He said he didn’t think Domingo German needed to apologize to the team to begin 2021, but after Zack Britton voiced a different opinion to the media about German, Boone had him apologize. After the Yankees lost Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS following an odd decision to not use Clay Holmes in relief, Boone said Holmes wasn’t available. When Holmes was asked about his availability after the loss, he said he told Boone he was available and “good to go” prior to the game. When the Yankees went down 3-0 in the ALCS, Boone used video from the Yankees’ 2004 ALCS loss to motivate his team. When Rizzo suffered a concussion in May of 2023, he continued to play. When Rizzo told Boone about his symptoms in a series in Baltimore, he then went on to play that entire series and two games after it before being shut down for the season. There have been endless lies about injuries, the extent of injuries and timetables for injuries. There has been disinformation about the intended use and playing time of every prospect other than Volpe. There have been countless exaggerations of performance and production. There has been widespread delusion about washed-up players turning their seasons and careers around only for those players to be designated for assignment, released or placed on the injured list.

8. Over the last two years, rarely does a week go by without a bizarre story emerging from the Yankees clubhouse. Whether it’s injury-related nonsense (like recently saying the results of DJ LeMahieu’s supposed hip MRI were unclear), the crazy timeline of the game from 2023 when German wasn’t able to start then pitched in relief then showed up drunk to the Stadium, saying Dominguez would only be called up if he is to play every day and then calling him up and not playing him every day or the conversations that led to the intentional walk of Devers, there’s always something with the Boone Yankees.

Joe Girardi had his faults and many of them were bullpen related. But there wasn’t this level of internal chaos with any of Girardi’s teams outside of the 2011 situation between he and Jorge Posada during a Red Sox series, and from 2013-2016, Girardi had four poorly constructed rosters that should have created internal chaos and losing records and never did.

9. Boone can’t properly fill out a lineup card. He doesn’t put his players in the best possible position to succeed. He rarely makes a correct in-game decision and infrequently gives his relievers clean innings to work with. He’s never upfront about injuries or the severity of them and is never honest in evaluating his players. Each year, the teams he manage make unacceptable outs on the bases, mental mistakes in the field and go into lengthy and sometimes irreversible slides. The one thing that was supposed to separate him from others was his communication skills, and yet, I was able to write an inordinate amount of words just now of communication breakdowns of his off the top of my head from memory, likely forgetting some egregious ones from the last nearly seven years.. Boone is not a good communicator. He’s a horrible one.

10. Luckily for Boone, and for players like Volpe, Rizzo, Verdugo, Cole, Holmes, Carlos Rodon and others, the postseason is just two weeks away. Then everyone gets a clean slate. The poor production of the last six months is thrown out the window and every wrong can be righted with a championship. But for now, it’s off to the West Coast for one last time in 2024 for six games against the Mariners and A’s.

A night after walking off the Royals, the Yankees walked off the Red Sox with a 2-1 win in 10 innings.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Juan Soto ended his recent slump on Wednesday with a dramatic, much-needed, two-run home run. On Thursday, he confirmed the end of his slump with a walk-off single in the 10th inning.

“We never give up,” Soto said about the Yankees’ 2-1 win. “We keep going. We keep our heads up and try to finish the game.”

2. Soto has a .729 OPS over the last month as his once-1.052 OPS dipped below the 1.000 mark this week and sits at .996, which is still second-best in the majors. But he’s not the only Yankee that has been struggling. Aaron Judge hasn’t homered since August 25, Giancarlo Stanton is in a 2-for-29 slide, Jazz Chisholm has cooled off since his David Justice-like start to his Yankees career, Anthony Rizzo has a .517 OPS since coming off the injured list, Anthony Volpe hasn’t had an extra-base hit in three weeks and Jasson Dominguez has only been up for three games. If not for Austin Wells, and shockingly, Gleyber Torres of late, who knows where the Yankees would be in the standings.

3. I wrote this about Oswaldo Cabrera on Tuesday:

I wish we would see more of Oswaldo Cabrera, who is now the backup for both Volpe at shortstop and Rizzo at first base, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Volpe hasn’t been benched since his first day in the majors and Rizzo is being paid $17 million, so he’s going to play whether he can still hit (which he apparently can’t) or pick a ball out of the dirt (which he apparently can’t) or not.

Unfortunately, Cabrera wasn’t in the lineup on Thursday, and even with another poor showing from Volpe and Rizzo, Cabrera is no closer to taking playing time from either.

4. Volpe left eight runners on base in his first three at-bats on Thursday. It’s stunning when Rizzo hits a ball on a line. The two of them are a blackhole in the lineup, hitting back-to-back at the bottom of the order. I don’t see how Volpe is going to suddenly figure out the majors over the next 15 games after not having figured it out over his first 305 games, and I don’t know how anyone can expect Rizzo to tap into even an ounce of being the player he once was. After these next 15 games, the Yankees are only going to see front-end starters and elite relievers. I can’t imagine either of those two having success in October, and when you’re playing with two automatic outs in the lineup and also Stanton whose entire success is based around unpredictable hot streaks, the other six hitters can’t afford to be cold or off, as they need to carry those three.

5. “We haven’t had a lot offense the last few nights,” Aaron Boone said. “But we’re doing enough.”

The Yankees haven’t had offense for the last week outside of the first game of the Royals series. In their other six most recent games, they have scored 10 runs total. The last two nights have been fun, and thankfully, the starting pitching was as good as it was from Luis Gil and Nestor Cortes, and amazingly, the bullpen outside of Clay Holmes on Wednesday has been outstanding, but they can’t survive like this for the rest of the month.

6. I wish I could say I couldn’t believe Holmes was warming up in the eighth inning of a 1-1 game on Thursday night, but I wasn’t. And I wish I could say I was shocked when he entered in the ninth inning of a 1-1 game, but I wasn’t. After blowing his league-leading 12th save the night before, there was Holmes once again coming into a high-leverage situation as if nothing he had done this season had happened.

7. Boone desperately wants Holmes to be his closer. He feels like he owes it to Boone to be his closer. The same way he feels the need to play Volpe every day and kept batting Alex Verdugo cleanup for a large part of the season even though Verdugo was proving to be one of the worst hitters in the league, if not the worst hitter. It took one clean inning in Chicago for Holmes to regain Boone’s trust after his disaster in Texas, and even though he blew the save on Wednesday, he still went to him the very next game.

8. “Really, when I’m on the field,” Holmes said, “I want to do my best for those guys.”

Thanks, Holmes. Before that insightful comment, I thought you wanted to do you worst for your career and your team.

9. Over the last two games, the only blemish from the bullpen has been from the former closer. Over the last two nights, Tim Hill, Tommy Kahnle, Jake Cousins, Luke Weaver and Ian Hamilton combined for this line: 9.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 10 K. Hamilton was filthy on Thursday, getting five outs and striking out three. (I still would never trust him in a postseason spot, but I may not have a choice.)

10. Even with another lackluster offensive effort against the starter in the majors who gets less swings and misses than any other starter in the majors, it was a good night. The Yankees increased their division lead a half-game from 1 1/2 to 2 with 15 to play. The idea of the Yankees increasing their odds of winning the division, while also ruining the Red Sox’ season this weekend is off to a good start.

The Yankees beat the Royals 4-3 in 11 innings on Wednesday to win the series with Juan Soto breaking out of his slump.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After the Yankees’ offensive performance on Tuesday looked like an October foreshadowing, the first five-plus innings on Wednesday looked the same.

On Tuesday, the Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts and didn’t have a single runner reach second base. On Wednesday, through the first 5 1/3 innings, the Yankees were 2-for-17 with six strikeouts and a walk. They still hadn’t had a runner reach second base. No runner in scoring position for 14 1/3 innings.

After Gleyber Torres put the bat on his shoulder for an entire six-pitch walk (including taking back-to-back curves on 2-2 and 3-2), Juan Soto came to the plate.

Soto fouled off a 2-2 pitch into his ankle and hobbled around before needing to stay on the ground for a couple of minutes. It was a scary moment with visions of Soto missing the rest of the season playing out in my head. Thankfully, Soto was able to walk it off and get back in the box, fouling away another pitch after the scare. Two pitches after looking like he may be seriously hurt, Soto sat back on a hanging curve from the league leader in strikeouts per nine innings Cole Ragans and crushed it into the right-field bleachers to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. (Why Ragans went changeup-curve after Soto fouled a slider off into his ankle, I don’t know, but I’m grateful he did.)

2. “Sometimes when you hit yourself like that, you go away a little bit,” Soto said. “I tried to just focus, take my time and go in there and make good contact.”

On Wednesday, I wrote: I thought Soto would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar. The two-run home run was the kind of at-bat and moment I envisioned from Soto when the Yankees traded for him. When the rest of the team is slumping and not performing, I figured he would carry them. When the rest of the offense disappears in October, I know he will be there given his postseason success with the Nationals and Padres.

The runs were the first the Yankees had scored since Monday. After not homering in the entire series at Wrigley Field and being shut out on Tuesday, it was just the second of the last six games the Yankees hit a home run in.

3. The lead didn’t last long. The very next inning Aaron Boone went to Clay Holmes, knowing very well he would have to face the top of the Royals’ lineup. A single, single, lineup and sacrifice fly later, and the Royals had tied the game and Holmes had his 12th blown save of the season.

Using Holmes in the seventh inning of a one-run game against the top of the Royals’ order is the same as using him as the closer. Boone still hasn’t learned his lesson despite eight of Holmes’ 12 blown saves turning into losses for the team. One of those losses came against these same Royals back on June 13. It was that loss in Kansas City that sent the Yankees’ season into a free fall. If Holmes only half-sucked and only four of those eight had turned into losses, the Yankees would have a six-game loss-column lead on the Orioles. He has single-handedly put the Yankees in the current standings battle they are in to avoid playing in the best-of-3, wild-card series.

But like I have written and said many times, I’m never mad at the player or pitcher in a situation like this, and I’m not mad at Holmes. He didn’t let himself stay in the closer role after blowing 11 saves. He doesn’t keep deciding to bring himself into games. And he didn’t bring himself into a one-run game on Wednesday. You would think a “closer” with a 5.14 ERA over three-and-a-half months would need more than one clean inning in a loss to the Cubs after being demoted before being thrown back into high-leverage situations. Not for Boone. Holmes had five days off after his disastrous performance in Texas, threw a 1-2-3, 12-pitch inning in Chicago, and Boone decided he was ready to get back into a crucial role. The Yankees used five relievers in the game and all of them did their job except for Holmes.

4. The Yankees had a chance to take the lead back in the bottom of the seventh. With one out, Anthony Volpe singled and Anthony Rizzo walked, bringing up Jose Trevino. If you were going to have a draft for the worst hitter in the majors to be up with runners on first and second and one out and the threat of a double play looming, Trevino would be the first overall pick. He’s slow, he makes weak contact, and typically hits the ball on the ground right to the shortstop. He has hit into 11 double plays this season in just 68 games. Trevino is better at hitting double plays than anything else.

Knowing that and knowing that Trevino is a miserable hitter aside from his knack for rally-ruining double plays and knowing he’s hitting .083 with a .366 OPS since coming off the injured list in mid-August, he’s not just the last player on the Yankees you want up in that spot, he may be the last player in the entire sport.

5. Fortunately, Boone had options. With a lefty on the mound, he could take his chances with the left-handed Austin Wells, or if he wanted to stick with the righty vs. lefty matchup, he could use the switch-hitting Jasson Dominguez or the switch-hitting Oswaldo Cabrera or Jon Berti. Any of those four options would have been better a choice than Trevino. Unfortunately, Boone didn’t do anything.

Instead, Boone used Cabrera as a pinch runner at first for Rizzo and then let Trevino bat for himself. Trevino hit the ball on the ground to first, was tagged out running to first, and Volpe idiotically tried to score from second on the ground ball and was tagged out at home. An unconventional double play to end the inning.

To compound Boone’s stupidity, when Trevino’s spot in the order came up with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th inning, he used Wells as a pinch hitter … against a lefty! So he was willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the tying run on third and one out in the 10th, but he wasn’t willing to use the left-handed Wells against a lefty with the go-ahead run on second and one out in the seventh. Please make it make sense.

6. Between the decision to use Holmes in a one-run game and against the top of the Royals’ order, and the decision to let Trevino hit for himself with four better pinch-hit options available, Boone had quite the seventh inning. The atmosphere and intensity of the game was playoff-like with a division pennant and first-round bye hanging in the balance, and Boone was at his worst. The bigger the game and the closer the score, every decision Boone makes will have an enormous impact on the outcome and how this season ends, and once again, he seems incapable of making logical in-game choices.

7. So much for Dominguez playing every day. Two days after arriving, he was on the bench so Verdugo could play. Rather than let the switch-hitting Dominguez start against a lefty, Boone went with the left-handed Verdugo against the left. Verdugo hit two ground balls to the right side in the game, and with that, he tied the record for the most groundouts to the right side in a single season with 111 in the Statcast Era (since 2015). Verdugo has 16 games remaining to break the record and once he does, I think it’s a record that will last forever, like Wayne Gretzky’s points record or Cy Young’s wins record. Because no one that bad and hitting that many ground balls to the right side would be given as many plate appearances as Verdugo has been given this season.

8. Luis Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still only allowed one run (a solo home run) over five innings. There have been so many games this season Gil didn’t have his best stuff and still put together a performance like he did on Wednesday. He should be the Yankees’ Game 2 starter in the postseason, but we all know it’s going to be Carlos Rodon. Owed money always wins over actual performance.

9. I can never believe Giancarlo Stanton’s batting average when the graphic displays it with him at the plate. He’s hitting .230 this season, which may as well be .330 since I feel like he’s hitting .130. In his last seven games, Stanton is 1-for-26 with 10 strikeouts.

10. Soto came out of his slump, and maybe Judge is close to coming out of his? He had a line-drive single and two walks in the game. It would be glorious if Judge got his power stroke back in time for this four-game Red Sox series. It would go a long way to helping the Yankees win the division and a long way to keeping the Red Sox out of the postseason for the fifth time in six years.

The Yankees lost to the Royals 5-0 and no Yankee reached scoring position in the game.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I finished Tuesday’s Thoughts with this:

I can’t see Boone giving Giancarlo Stanton a second consecutive day off. If he doesn’t, someone has to sit. We’re about to see just how much Dominguez is going to play and if Verdugo isn’t.

We found out the answer to the question of will Jasson Dominguez really take away playing time from Alex Verdugo when Tuesday’s lineup was posted and Dominguez was in it batting seventh and Verdugo was on the bench.

2. “He and I spoke, yeah,” Aaron Boone said about talking with Verdugo about losing his everyday spot. “That role is a little bit fluid. Certainly, Jasson being here impacts him some.”

Dominguez being in the majors doesn’t just impact Verdugo “some” it turns him from an everyday player into a bench player. Boone said when Aaron Judge is playing the outfield, he will play center field, and when Judge is playing center field, Dominguez will play left field. That’s a very complicated way of saying Verdugo isn’t playing anymore. With Giancarlo Stanton as the designated hitter, Judge has to play the outfield. And if Boone says when Judge is in the outfield, he will play center field and Dominguez will play left field, well that’s every game that Stanton plays. And with only 17 games remaining and the division on the line, Stanton is going to be playing a lot. And in the rare instance when he doesn’t play, I’m assuming Judge will be the DH, Dominguez will play center and Verdugo will play left.

3. For Tuesday’s game, Boone put together the best possible lineup he is capable of putting together with the current roster.

Gleyber Torres, 2B
Juan Soto, RF
Aaron Judge, CF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Anthony Volpe, SS

(I say the best possible he is capable of putting together since I would move Torres from first to after Chisholm and move Soto, Judge, Wells, Stanton and Chisholm all up one spot.)

Unfortunately, the best, most optimized version of the Yankees offense couldn’t do anything against Seth Lugo for seven innings (7 IP, 10 K), Kris Bubic for an inning (1 IP, 2 K) or John Schreiber for an inning (1 IP, 2 K). The Yankees went 3-for-30 with 14 strikeouts. They didn’t draw a walk and no one reached second base. It was the first game in Yankees history in which they had the combination of no walks, no extra-base hits and struck out at least 14 times. Add another line to the impressive managerial resume of Boone as there’s yet another embarrassing historical performance he has overseen.

4. “That was probably as good a performance [as there’s been] against us this year,” Boone said. “We were silent.”

It may have been the best starting effort and total-game effort against the Yankees in 2024, but it’s not like similar performances from the offense are rare. They scored one run on Sunday at Wrigley Field and six runs total in three games against the Cubs, and didn’t hit a home run in that entire series. Last month, they struggled mightily to score against the Tigers and Nationals. In July, they had trouble scoring against everyone until the final days of that month.

The type of “effort” the Yankees bats gave on Tuesday is what worries me every Yankees season, envisioning yet another no-show in October. A lack of offense is why the Boone Yankees have always bowed out of October early. In the 2018 ALDS, they scored four runs in Games 3 and 4, lost both and went home. In the 2019 ALCS, they scored 14 runs from Games 2 through 6, went 1-4 in those games and were eliminated. In the 2020 ALDS, they were held to one run (on three hits) in the decisive Game 5 and lost. In the 2021 wild-card game, they were shut out for the first five innings, scored two runs in the game and their season ended. In the 2022 ALCS, they scored nine runs in four games (and five of those runs came in one game) and they were embarrassingly swept. Last season, of course, they missed the postseason because their offense was so bad for the entirety of the regular season.

5. Lugo is the exact type of pitcher the Yankees will face every game in October and he had his way with them by getting ahead in counts, throwing strikes and changing speeds. The Yankees were swinging through high-80s and low-90s pitches like Mason Miller was on the mound because of Lugo’s impeccable control and wide array of pitches.

“That was a pitching clinic,” Royals manager Matt Quataro said of Lugo’s outing.

At one point, Lugo retired 17 straight. It was, and it was the exact type of start that keeps me up at night. It was the exact type of game this Yankees lineup is prone to.

“The playoffs are different animal,” Torres said. “We face [Lugo] again, we for sure have to have a different plan.”

6. The troubling postseason past of Judge is well known (.211/.310/.462 in 44 games) and his most recent postseason performance in the 2022 ALCS sweep by the Astros (1-for-16 with a single) after setting the American League home run record during the regular season is still bothersome. Over the last two weeks, Judge is hitting .196/.339/.255 without a home run and with 20 strikeouts in 61 plate appearances. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees are 6-8 during that stretch.

It’s also unsurprising the Yankees have struggled over the last two weeks against the Nationals, Cardinals, Rangers, Cubs and now Royals because Juan Soto is also not hitting. The Yankees offense goes as those two go, and Soto is hitting .212/.339/.327 over the last two weeks. I thought he would be immune to the Yankees’ annual late-season offensive swoon, but it’s contagious enough that it’s impacting the 25-year-old superstar.

The Yankees are good enough to deal with one of the two being cold, but they can’t overcome both of them not hitting. The rest of the lineup relies on them to get on base and to drive the rest of the lineup in in the rare moments other members of the lineup are on base. If those two hit this way (which is not at all) for even two days in a row in October, the season will end disappointingly.

7. With the Dominguez-Verdugo situation, the emergence of Austin Wells, the demotion of Clay Holmes, Nestor Cortes voicing his opinions on the way the Yankees handled his demotion and Judge and Soto not hitting, there has been enough going on that it taken the attention away from the fact that Anthony Volpe is hitting as poorly as he ever has and that Anthony Rizzo has been a complete dud (as expected) since returning.

After homering in back-to-back games on August 2 and August 3 to get his OPS back above .700, Volpe is hitting .210/.256/.261 over the last five weeks. In September, he has a .394 OPS and 13 strikeouts in 31 plate appearances. He hasn’t homered since August 3 and has walked once in the last three weeks. But he keeps on playing, keeps on starting at shortstop every day.

Rizzo was atrocious before getting hurt in mid-June (.630 OPS) and has been atrocious since (.452 OPS). I would love for this to be Rizzo getting back to playing every day and knocking the rust off, but it’s not like he’s coming back during a season in which he was playing well and had a great season interrupted by an injury. He was bad before the injury and has been worse since coming back from the injury.

I wish we would see more of Oswaldo Cabrera, who is now the backup for both Volpe at shortstop and Rizzo at first base, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Volpe hasn’t been benched since his first day in the majors and Rizzo is being paid $17 million, so he’s going to play whether he can still hit (which he apparently can’t) or pick a ball out of the dirt (which he apparently can’t) or not.

8. Cortes openly voiced his opinion on the Yankees’ decision to remove him from the rotation over the weekend. It’s hard to feel sorry for Cortes after he got beat up by the Cardinals over Labor Day Weekend, couldn’t get through five innings against the Angels in August and let the Rays knock him around in back-to-back starts in mid-July after his wildly delusional tweet about everyone wanting to be the Yankees and how they are contenders every year, even though they missed the playoffs entirely last year. It’s easier to feel sorry for him when you realize he was removed from the rotation instead of Marcus Stroman.

Unfortunately, for Cortes, he’s only on the books for $3.95 million this season, while Stroman is making $18.5 million, is owed $18.5 million next season and has an $18 million option for 2026 that will kick in if he throws 140 innings in 2025. Stroman isn’t better than Cortes, but owed money is the initial deciding factor in roster decisions and playing time with the Yankees. With Cortes’ name swirling around trade rumors in July and with him being a free agent at the end of next season, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him traded during this offseason. But for now, the Yankees need to win games and he gives them a better chance to than Stroman.

9. Stroman was once against awful on Tuesday against the Royals. It didn’t matter that he was bad since the game could still be being played at this moment and the Yankees still wouldn’t have scored, but Stroman was painful to watch yet again: nine baserunners in 5 1/3 innings. Since July 4, Stroman has started 57 innings and only nine of them have been 1-2-3 innings, which is outrageous. Every six-plus innings Stroman will give you a clean frame. He didn’t have one on Tuesday, so he’s due for one in his next start!

If Stroman is to make his next start, it will come on Sunday against the Red Sox. Stroman has made two starts against the Red Sox this season, and in 8 1/3 innings, he has allowed 21 baserunners. I don’t know how you could possibly let him face them again, but I’m excited to see the bullshit the Yankees tell us about why they are going to let him face them.

10. Before the Yankees get to their four-game series against the Red Sox this week, they still have one more game against the Royals. Another rubber match. It will be the 10th time in the Yankees’ last 11 series they have played a rubber match. It will come against the left-handed Cole Ragans. The All-Star is a lefty, which the Yankees can’t seem to hit, and he has ridiculous strikeouts numbers with 204 in 167 1/3 innings this season as he leads the league in strikeouts per nine innings (11.1). Lugo doesn’t even average eight strikeouts per nine innings and he struck out 10 in seven innings on Tuesday. If the Yankees are to win the game, win the series and avoid possibly being tied with the Orioles in the loss column again, the offense is going to need to show up. After their night off on Tuesday, they should be well rested.