The Yankees won the three-game series against the Rangers to finish their nine-game homestand 5-4. It may have been a winning homestand, but given the opponents it was a disappointment.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. If you had told me 10 days ago I could sign up for a 5-4 homestand for the Yankees against the Blue Jays, Angels and Rangers, I wouldn’t have. Despite the Yankees posting a winning record over the nine games, finishing one game above .500 against three teams counting down the days until their miserable seasons end, it was a disappointment.

The Yankees were supposed to get fat in the win column in August. They were supposed to make up for their poor play that lasted from mid-June through the end of July. They were supposed to try to create separation from the Orioles with the Orioles playing a harder schedule during this month. It could still happen. The Yankees could rip off a long winning streak (especially with their next six games against the White Sox and Tigers), but they wasted a nine-game homestand against three teams that are currently a combined 32 games under .500.

2. It’s always hard to sweep a doubleheader, but you had to like the Yankees’ chances to do so on Saturday, especially after they walloped the Rangers 8-0 in the first game with Carlos Rodon outpitching my most hated ex-Yankee in the league Nathan Eovaldi.

For Rodon, even though he walked five in 5 2/3 innings, it was his fourth straight solid start, as the Yankees have won four of those starts with him pitching to a 2.22 ERA against the Rays, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rangers. It’s not exactly who the Yankees will be facing in October, but at least Rodon is somewhat earning his salary these days, something he didn’t do from mid-June to mid-July.

3. The second game of the doubleheader was tied at 1 when Gerrit Cole was pulled after getting the leadoff hitter out in the sixth. Cole had struck out 10 of the 23 batters he faced and was dealing, but at 90 pitches and needing his start pushed back due to fatigue, you knew he wasn’t going to be allowed to go as long as he would have liked. Aaron Boone removed Cole for Luke Weaver and Weaver did his best to keep the old adage “it’s hard to sweep a doubleheader” alive.

Against Weaver, the Rangers went single, single, single, bases-loaded walk, sacrifice fly, three-run home run. Weaver got one out, allowed four hits, a walk and five earned runs. He entered a 1-1 game and left losing 6-1. It was a disastrous performance.

“He has been so good for us,” Boone said. “It wasn’t his day. I don’t think he had the right feel for the changeup.”

Boone didn’t think Weaver had “the right feel for the changeup” as Weaver couldn’t throw it for a strike in the zone and couldn’t get anyone to bite on it out of the zone, but that didn’t stop Boone from sticking with him when he clearly didn’t have it. The worst part about the inning was the four-pitch, bases-loaded walk. It’s hard to ever have trust in a pitcher who can walk a batter on four pitches with the bases loaded, let alone walk the 9-hitter in that situation. It will be a while until I trust Weaver again.

The game was over when Weaver began his walk back to the dugout, but for anyone who had an inkling of hope the Yankees may come back against the Rangers’ bullpen, Michael Tonkin made sure that didn’t happen by allowing five hits and three earned runs of his own in 1 1/3 innings in an eventual 9-4 loss.

4. Sunday was the rubber game for the series and the homestand. Knowing the law of ex-Yankees, I didn’t feel good about Andrew Heaney getting the ball for the Rangers, envisioning eight dominant innings from him with fellow ex-Yankee David Robertson coming in to close out the game. Add in Marcus Stroman and his 6.32 ERA since the start of June, and I was worried the Yankees may lose a second straight series to a struggling AL West team.

The Yankees took a 1-0 lead in the first, added a run in the third and three more in the fifth. A 5-0 lead with 12 outs to go at home. A nice, easy, relaxing Sunday win, right? Wrong.

A friend texted me to ask me how many runs the bullpen needed for me to feel comfortable. I responded, “Six.”

With a five-run to start the sixth, Boone decided he would put my answer of six to the test by allowing Stroman to face the Rangers’ lineup for a third time. Josh Smith worked an eight-pitch walk against Stroman to lead off the inning and Corey Seager ripped an RBI double to right. Boone decided he wasn’t going to try to steal another out with Stroman against Semien and went to Jake Cousins. Cousins came in to strike out the side.

The Yankees got the run back in the bottom half of the inning, but after Adolis Garcia led off the seventh with a single, Boone pulled Cousins for Tommyy Kahnle. A couple of singles and a fielder’s choice mess between Jazz Chisholm and Anthony Volpe later, and the Yankees’ lead was down to 6-3.

Boone has admitted there would be “growing pains” with Chisholm at third and the first time we saw a growing pain was when he cut in front of Volpe to field the ball in the seventh. He’s learning a new position at the major-league level, so he gets every pass in the book.

You would think after seven years of Gleyber Torres playing second base there wouldn’t be any “growing pains” with him, but there somehow still are. I guess they aren’t growing pains at this point, but rather stupidity, as the play after Chisholm cut in front of Volpe, Torres cut in front of Volpe to field a ball on the shortstop side of the bag. Thankfully, Torres made the play and ended the inning, because had he not, it would have been the worst play/decision of Torres’ career, which seems impossible given all of the fuck-ups he has had in the field, at the plate and on the bases.

Juan Soto and Aaron Judge went back-to-back in the bottom half of the seventh and the offense got the runs back the bullpen gave up for a second straight inning. And they needed all of them.

In the eighth, Mark Leiter Jr. gave up two solo home runs and a double, forcing Boone to go to Clay Holmes for a four-out save. With the Yankees clinging to an 8-6 lead in the ninth, Holmes quickly struck out Semien and Josh Jung to begin the inning and then the wheels came off.

Holmes walked Wyatt Langford and then walked Nathaniel Lowe. Garcia followed with an RBI single to make it an 8-7 game, and the Rangers had runners on the corners with two outs. That turned into second and third when Garcia stole second without a throw. Holmes had thrown 39 pitches, still needed to get an out, and was a single away from the Yankees trailing. Fortunately, he got a ground ball from Leody Tavares. Unfortunately, Tavares hit the ball to Torres. Torres went to field it with his glove and fell over momentarily before regaining his balance and throwing to first to end the game. Holmes finished with 46 pitches which are the most he has thrown in four seasons with the Yankees and the most he had thrown in a game since 2019.

5. “It was a win,” Judge said. “It was another good one. I’m happy to win the series and get back [to] the winning ways.”

It was a too-close-for-comfort win, which happen all too often with this Yankees bullpen. Weaver had his worst game of the season on Saturday, Leiter Jr. followed with his worst on Sunday after Kahnle was his usual untrustworthy self, and Holmes did the best he could to add to his league-leading blown save total. This bullpen is a problem and it seems unfixable between now and the end of the season.

6. Here are season slash lines for three different players:

Player A: .239/.298/.372 (10 home runs, 50 RBIs)
Player B: .238/.310/.354 (10 home runs, 45 RBIs)
Player C: .255/.326/.443 (20 home runs, 61 RBIs)

Here are the slash lines for those same players since July 28:

Player A: .265/.351/.367 (0 home runs, 2 RBIs)
Player B: .250/.309/.250 (0 home runs, 6 RBIs)
Player C: .296/.345/.704 (7 home runs, 11 RBIs)

Here are where those three players have hit in the order since July 28:

Player A: 1, 1, 1, 7, 1, 1, 1, 4, 9, 1, 1, 1
Player B: 6, 7, 6, 1, 7, 5, 1, 1, 1, 5, 6, 6
Player C: 5, 6, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 7

Player A is Verdugo, Player B is Torres and Player C is Chisholm. July 28 is when Chisholm played his first game as a Yankee.

We keep hearing from Boone how well Verdugo and Torres have swung the bat of late, even though it’s untrue, but how come we never hear from him about how well Chisholm is swinging the bat?

Verdugo and Torres are free agents after this season. The Yankees owe them nothing once this season ends and neither are a part of the team’s future plan. The Yankees traded for the younger Chisholm, who they have under control for 2025 and 2026. He’s not only part of their future and expected to be a better player than both, he’s already a better player than both. And yet, he’s the one who was forced to change his position upon arrival, and he’s the one who keeps hitting in the bottom third of the order, while the other two are given unlimited opportunities to hit in the most important places in the order.

7. There is nothing Boone wants more than for his Verdugo to be his everyday leadoff hitter. Even though Verdugo’s team-worst .298 on-base percentage and sad .669 OPS suggest he should hit at the bottom of the lineup (or not even be in the lineup), Boone continues to force Verdugo into the top of the order. Verdugo played in eight of the nine games on the homestand, batted first in six of them and hit .235/.297/.294 in 37 plate appearances. Verdugo doesn’t walk (again, a .298 OBP), doesn’t hit for average (.239 batting average) and doesn’t hit for power (.372 slugging percentage). His last home run came in the Ben Rice three-home run game against the Red Sox on July 6 (37 days ago) and that’s his only home run since June 14 at Fenway Park (59 days ago). Verdugo is great when the Yankees are playing the Red Sox, and he sucks against everyone else.

Torres posted a .676 OPS on the homestand, appearing in eight games like Verdugo. Torres batted first three times and never batted lower than seventh. He had no extra-base hits in the eight games, and is hitting .241/.295/.259 over the last two weeks. But hey, keep playing him everyday!

8. Austin Wells is the man. Well, the man on a normal player level, not the Soto/Judge level that only those two play on. Wells’ slash line is up to .251/.344/.417, which may not seem like anything to someone who doesn’t watch him or the team every day, but that line was at .086/.261/.086 near the end of April. Since April 24, Wells is hitting .280/.361/.475, becoming the best-hitting catcher in the majors. If Boone isn’t going to give LeMahieu an extended look at leadoff then Wells is deserving of one. Knowing Boone, he loves having Wells there to break up Judge and Giancarlo Stanton against a right-handed starter, and won’t move him from the cleanup spot for anything.

9. Golden Boy Anthony Volpe is 0-for-23 with 10 strikeouts going back to the first game of the doubleheader against the Angels last week. After Volpe briefly got hot following the All-Star break and told Meredith Marakovits he didn’t change anything or his approach during the time off, he wasn’t kidding. His on-base percentage is back below .300 (.297) and his slugging percentage is back under .700 (.687). Luckily for Volpe, he will never be sat because Oswald Peraza is red hot at Triple-A and would deserve a look at some point if not for Volpe’s never-ending immunity.

10. The next three games are the easiest the Yankees will play as an organization for a long time. It may be the easiest three games they ever play for the rest of time. Three games against the 28-91 White Sox, a team that is on pace to win 38 games and finishes with the most losses (124) since the modern era dating back to the start of the 1900s. The White Sox have won one of their last 25 games and anything less than a sweep over the next three days won’t just be a disappointment, it will be a disgraceful failure.

The Yankees lost 9-4 to the Angels. They are now 8-16 in games started by Nestor Cortes and 60-32 in all other games.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Does any Yankees fan feel confident in the starting rotation? I don’t know how you could. Aaron Boone said after Thursday’s second straight loss to the Angels that he feels confident about the rotation, but he’s the same person who continued to play Anthony Rizzo after Rizzo told him about his fogginess and head injury last summer.

Between Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman, 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation is not worthy of being on the postseason roster. On days Carlos Rodon pitches, you pray the version of Rodon that pitched himself into a $162 million contract shows up, and on days Gerrit Cole pitches, you pray his elbow doesn’t tear and that he can be even a shell of his Cy Young self. And once every five days Luis Gil pitches, and even when he doesn’t have his best stuff (like he didn’t on Wednesday against the Angels and still pitched five scoreless innings), he’s still great. So one day every time through the rotation Yankees fans can feel confident in that day’s starting pitcher.

2. It’s been a long time since any Yankees fan could feel confident with Cortes getting the ball. After losing on Thursday, the Yankees are now 8-16 in games Cortes starts and 60-32 in all other games. Cortes has given the Yankees one quality start over the last seven weeks and has failed to get through five innings in four of his last five starts. Against the Angels, for the fourth time in his last five starts he put at least 10 baserunners on.

“To their credit they fought off a lot of good pitches that I threw tonight,” the delusional Cortes said after giving up six earned runs on nine hits and a walk in 4 2/3 innings.

Over Cortes’ last five starts, he has pitched 23 1/3 innings and put 56 runners on base with a 9.26 ERA and 1.082 OPS. So he has turned every hitter over his last five starts into somewhere between Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.

3. During the All-Star break, Cortes tweeted the following:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

I don’t know who wants to be Cortes with his 9.26 ERA over his last five starts and one quality start since mid-June. But if wearing the pinstripes is such a privilege, you would think Cortes would do more to try to ensure he keeps wearing pinstripes, rather than just talking about how good he was despite his pitching line and the scoreboard suggesting otherwise.

4. It’s not entirely Cortes’ fault that he has trouble giving an honest evaluation of his starts since his manager continues to blow smoke up the left-hander’s ass.

“I actually thought Nestor threw the ball OK,” Boone said after his starter put 10 runners on in 4 2/3 innings and allowed six earned runs. “He wasn’t giving up a ton of hard contact.”

Just hard enough for the Angels to hang six runs on him.

5. After Cortes’ July 11 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings, Boone said, “He pitched well.”

After Cortes’ July 20 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings again, Boone said, “I thought the profile of the stuff was there.”

The start after that Cortes put 12 baserunners on in a loss to the Red Sox and the start after that he gave up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings to the Phillies.

Despite all of that positivity from Boone after each failed outing, here is what Boone said after Thursday’s loss to the Angels about Cortes’ run of poor performances.

“There were a few starts there where it wasn’t great.”

What? You told everyone how well Cortes was pitching and good the profile of his stuff looked. Now it wasn’t great?

“A couple where he didn’t have that extra gear on his heater,” Boone said. “Felt like he got that last time in Philly.”

Cortes gave up three earned runs on 5 1/3 innings in Philadelphia. That’s a 5.09 ERA. That is Cortes having an extra gear on his heater?

6. “Felt like today, you look at the profile was good,” Boone said after Cortes lost to the Angels.

The Angels have the third-worst offense in the American League and scored six runs off Cortes in 4 2/3 innings and Boone thought the “profile” of his pitches was “good.” How can that be? What would a Cortes start look like if the profile of his pitches was bad?

The offense was also a problem over the last two-and-a-half games against the Angels. Over the last 23 innings of the series, the Yankees scored six runs. They didn’t score in the last five innings of the first game of the series, were held to two in the second game and scored three meaningless, garbage-time runs at the end of the third game, while the Angels blasted them for 17 runs in the second and third games.

7. Boone keeps mentioning “guys coming back from injury.” Who is coming back from injury? Clarke Schmidt is a ways away. Anthony Rizzo is swinging a bat. Jon Berti keeps getting hurt while hurt. The only potential difference-maker that could return is Schmidt because he pushes Cortes and Stroman out of the equation, but he’s not close to returning. Boone kept talking about Stanton returning before he returned and how that would seemingly fix everything and Stanton has been the bad version of himself and has fixed nothing as Judge keeps getting intentionally walked.

Boone loves to speak under the assumption that players will return from injury, but that no one will leave the roster to injury. He thinks the roster is what it is and will add pieces, forgetting that he could very well lose pieces. No team is ever at 100 percent, and the Yankees haven’t been at 100 percent late in the season or in the postseason in a long time.

8. With the loss the Yankees are now 9-18 in their last 27 home games, having won one of their last nine home series. That seems impossible for an organization that always puts up gaudy numbers at home and always has one of the best home records in the league, but it is.

The Orioles lost too so no ground was lost by the Yankees in the division. That’s both good and bad. It’s good because no ground was lost. It’s bad because the Orioles’ lack of winning continues to give the Yankees an excuse for a lack of urgency. The manager and players of the Yankees have preached about the great position they remain in since mid-June despite their wildly inconsistent play, even though the only reason they are in that position is because the Orioles have been equally as bad.

9. With the soft, cupcake schedule the Yankees have in August, I expected them to get fat in the win column and possibly even create separation from the Orioles. Through six August games, all at home, against a Blue Jays team that gave up and traded pieces off their major-league roster at the deadline and an Angels team that hasn’t been good since Opening Day, the Yankees are 3-3. It’s unacceptable for a team that has World Series aspirations.

10. An organization that has actually won the World Series within the last 14 years (and appeared in three of those 14) comes to town in the Rangers. The Rangers have been desperately trying to save their season and avoid missing out on the postseason a year after winning it all. It’s a team the Yankees should beat, It’s a series the Yankees should win. But I thought the same thing about the Angels series. This weekend would be a good time for the Yankees to begin to manage and play with urgency. If they know how to.

The Yankees split Wednesday’s doubleheader with the Angels, winning the first game 5-2 and losing the second game 8-2.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I don’t know how you bat a player with an OPS of .650 or .668 leadoff and consider your team to be a championship contender, but that’s what Aaron Boone did on Wednesday in the doubleheader against the Angels.

Alex Verdugo and his .660 OPS got the leadoff spot for the first game of the day. Facing the Angels’ Davis Daniel and his 34 1/3 career innings, Verdugo did hit a pair of doubles in the Yankees’ 5-2 win, but no matter how much Boone likely thinks it’s a sign of things to come for Verdugo, it isn’t. It was one game in the rain against a pitcher with rookie status. There won’t be a Davis Daniel in October.

Gleyber Torres and his .668 OPS got the leadoff spot for the second game of the day (with Verdugo inexplicably getting the cleanup spot). Torres went 1-for-4 with a sacrifice fly to drop his OPS to .522 over the last two weeks. As expected, Torres did enough after his benching a few weeks ago and leading up to the trade deadline to make the organization believe he was figuring things out. Since the deadline he was benched for a lack of hustle and continues his season-long trend of being a zero at the plate.

2. Neither of these players deserves to lead off for the New York Yankees. The Yankees’ best leadoff options are Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, but it seems as though Boone would rather tell you one of his starting pitchers sucked before he would move them out of their 2- and 3-spots in the order. If Boone isn’t going to use Juan Soto or Aaron Judge as the leadoff hitter then there’s only one option right now … DJ LeMahieu.

3. Ten days ago, if Hal Steinbrenner was willing to eat the roughly $40 million owed to LeMahieu and the Yankees released him, no one would have criticized the move. After four injury-plagued seasons and this miserable season, the idea the 36-year-old LeMahieu would regain his old form and become even an average hitter again seemed like a thought only Boone could believe. But a lot has changed since July 31 in Philadelphia for LeMahieu and all of it good.

Here are the exit velocities of LeMahieu’s batted balls since July 31.

103.7 mph
98.3 mph
100.1 mph
98.4 mph
95.5 mph
94.9 mph
101.5 mph
101.4 mph
96.2 mph
108.4 mph
102.7 mph
69.7 mph

4. LeMahieu is hitting the ball and hitting it hard. The problem is he is rarely playing.

July 31: 2-for-4, double, home run, 6 RBIs
August 1: No game
August 2: Didn’t play
August 3: Defensive replacement with no plate appearances
August 4: 1-for-4, two RBIs (walk-off single)
August 5: No game
August 6: No game
August 7 first game: Defensive replacement with no plate appearances
August 8 second game: 2-for-4, double, RBI

LeMahieu has only played three games (not including his two defensive replacement appearances without a plate appearance) in the last eight days. If Verdugo or Torres had those exit velocities and LeMahieu’s recent production, they would be given contract extensions.

LeMahieu isn’t playing every day because of how bad he was up until recently, which was fair, but now that he is hitting, he deserves to play. Torres certainly isn’t enough to keep LeMahieu out of the lineup.

5. The Yankees need offense. Recent winning way aside, they are struggling to score runs consistently. On Wednesday afternoon, they got out to a 5-0 lead and then sat on it, but thankfully the Angels couldn’t get the big hit late with runners on to close the gap more than they did. On Wednesday night, they scored two runs against weak Angels pitching. On Sunday, they struggled against Yariel Rodriguez and a mediocre-at-best Blue Jays bullpen. The offense is still very top heavy, and the Yankees should be looking to get as many hots bats into the lineup each day as possible (even if they still don’t believe in the theory of being “hot”). LeMahieu is that bat.

6. Maybe these last few games from LeMahieu are serving as the latest Yankees version of the aging family dog that mostly wanders around aimlessly, goes to the bathroom all over the place, lies around and sleeps nearly the entire day, but every once in a while does something they did when they were younger to make you think for a moment that maybe they are coming around. That could be what’s happening with LeMahieu. It happened at the end with Jorge Posada and CC Sabathia and many others.

The Yankees owe it to themselves to find out. Boone was willing to bat LeMahieu recently when LeMahieu was going as badly as anyone in the majors, and yet, he’s not hitting him there now when LeMahieu is finally hitting. It’s possible (and even likely) LeMahieu is no better a solution at the top of the order than Verdugo or Torres have been, but it’s time to find out. LeMahieu was once one of the best in the league in that spot, which is more than Verdugo or Torres can say, and maybe he can be that again over these next two-plus months. Right now, LeMahieu should be playing every day , and he should be leading off when he plays (until Boone comes to realization that moving Soto and Judge up one spot each is the actual play). Let him play himself out of the lineup again.

“It would be huge if we can keep him going like this,” Boone said, “because obviously that role is there, an important one for us.”

What “role” is Boone talking about? Does he mean a utility/role player role where he plays sparingly at first, second and third and is a late-game defensive replacement? Or does he mean a role where he becomes an everyday player and the team’s leadoff hitter? Unfortunately, I think he meant the former.

7. My dream is that by the postseason LeMahieu has been so good that he is either the everyday second baseman or third baseman with Jazz Chisholm being the other and Torres is on the bench. There would be nothing better than Torres ending his Yankees tenure out of the starting lineup as an impending free agent.

The second part of my dream is for Jasson Dominguez to continue mashing Triple-A pitching, getting a call-up either this month (unlikely) or next month (likely) and hitting major-league pitching the way he did for those eight magical games last summer. That would set up Dominguez to be one of the Yankees’ three starting outfielders, forcing Verdugo to the bench and creating this postseason lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Juan Soto
Aaron Judge
Austin Wells
Giancarlo Stanton
Jazz Chisholm
Anthony Volpe
Jasson Dominguez
Ben Rice

(Now that’s not the lineup I would create, but it’s the best possible lineup Boone is capable of creating with those nine names.)

8. It will take a lot for this dream to come true. LeMahieu will have to stay healthy and be outstanding. Not just good or great, he will need to be something close to his 2019-20 self for the Yankees to bench Torres permanently. Seven years of moronic mistakes, loafing it, a low Baseball IQ, and lack of hustle every day got Torres benched for not even a full game last week. The Yankees have catered to Torres his entire career (moving LeMahieu off second when Torres couldn’t play short, moving Gio Urshela off third when Torres couldn’t play short, making Chisholm play a position he never had to keep Torres at second) and that’s not going to change now with two months to go as a Yankee. He survived every trade deadline and offseason as a Yankee to this point, has been defended to no end by Brian Cashman and Boone, and was even defended and supported after last week’s half-assed benching.

The same goes for Verdugo. For more than a month he was the worst hitter in the majors and he kept on playing every day. No lack of production was enough to sit Verdugo down, and for a large part of that he hit cleanup. He’s having the worst season of his career as a Yankee and as an impending free agent and that didn’t stop him from batting first and fourth on Wednesday. Like LeMahieu, Dominguez is going to have to be otherworldly for Verdugo to not be hitting in the top half of the lineup come October.

9. I don’t expect my dream to come true. I expect Verdugo to bat leadoff against righties in the postseason and Torres to do the same against lefties. The Yankees would rather not field the best team possible than cause friction in relationships with two players they owe nothing to after this season. (Like these two Clay Holmes will be the closer in October because Boone would rather lose a game than sour his relationship with the impending free agent.)

10. I hope I’m wrong. I hope for the Yankees’ 163rd game of the season, the best nine baseball players are on the field and the best possible lineup using those nine players is what is used. But everything I know about the Yankees, how they operate and how they are currently using players leading up to that 163rd game suggests otherwise.