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.

The Yankees finished off a three-game sweep of the Phillies, have won five straight and head home to begin the easiest schedule in the majors over the next month.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I thought the Phillies were supposed to be good? The Yankees went into Citizens Bank Park and swept a three-games series from the team with the best record in the majors. They beat up on Cy Young candidate Zack Wheeler on Monday, got to the Phillies’ bullpen on Tuesday and then got a career-high, six-RBI game from DJ LeMahieu on Wednesday, as he drove in every Yankees run. The Yankees won in a 10-run blowout and then won back-to-back one-run games after having just one one-run win since May 29.

2. Not only did the Phillies get swept at home, but they allowed the Yankees to win a game started by Nestor Cortes for the first time since June 18. Wednesday’s 6-5 win was also the Yankees’ first road win started by Cortes since June 2.

“I was just ready to make my start today, and that’s what I worked for,” Cortes said about his name being involved in trade speculation. “Hopefully, I can put up a string of good starts going forward.”

Cortes will have a great opportunity to put together that string as the Yankees’ schedule is about to get as easy as a major-league schedule can get with three-game series against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox, Guardians, Rockies and Nationals. Outside of the series with the Guardians, August is full of wins.

3. The Yankees were finally able to win a game started by Cortes because of LeMahieu. LeMahieu hit a grand slam in the second inning for his second home run of the season to give the Yankees a 4-0 laed, and then with the Yankees clinging to a 4-3 lead in the sixth, he smoked a two-run double to the gap in right-center

“It’s been tough for me, but today felt good,” LeMahieu said. “My teammates have my back in supporting me. To come through and see how excited they are, it’s a good feeling for sure.”

Back on July 21, LeMahieu said, “It hasn’t given me much hope the last month or so. As long as I’ve played this game, whatever challenges have presented itself, I’ve always come out of it one way or another.” Since then, LeMahieu is only 4-for-19, but two of those four were home runs and another was a double. Maybe this is him coming out of it? I sure hope so, as on July 22, I wrote:

I love LeMahieu. I was all for re-signing him after 2020 for what he did in 2019 and 2020. He deserved to be re-signed. After posting a .922 OPS in his first two seasons with the Yankees, he has a .702 since. He suffered season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022, played through injuries last year and missed a large portion of this season because of injuries. It fell apart quickly for LeMahieu after 2022 and while there have been moments over the last three-plus years where he looks like himself, they are only moments, nothing consistent or frequent. On a team full of unplayable names, he is the most unplayable of them all. But because of all of those other unplayable names and because he’s owed about $41 million through 2026, he’s going to keep getting opportunities to prove his career isn’t over.

I want nothing more than for LeMahieu to return to his old self, regain the starting second base role and send Gleyber Torres to the bench. That’s the dream.

4. After re-signing LeMahieu to be their second baseman for the next six years, he was forced off the position when Torres couldn’t handle shortstop. The Yankees catered to Torres and LeMahieu started being a third baseman and first baseman regularly. Then when the Yankees traded for Jazz Chisholm Jr., they played him in center field for a game and then third base the last three games — a position he has never played before. Why? To cater to Torres.

On Wednesday, Torres batted leadoff. He went 0-for-5 with a strikeout. In his first chance at being a leadoff hitter this season (March 28-April 9), he went 10-for-50 with a 11 strikeouts, hitting .200/.281/.240. His slash line for the season is down to .231/.306/.357. For his career, he’s a .237/.282/.356 hitter in the leadoff spot. Please stop trying to make him a leadoff hitter. (Please also stop using Alex Verdugo and his .298 on-base percentage as the leadoff hitter.)

5. After Cortes was removed, Luke Weaver pitched an inning and gave up a run. Tommy Kahnle got two outs and Mark Leiter Jr. allowed his first run since June 19. The only reason Leiter allowed a run was because Torres couldn’t handle ball hit at him that every major-league second baseman should be able to handle.

6. Then it was time for Clay Holmes. A day after blowing his eighth save opportunity of the season, Holmes allowed a leadoff single to Kyle Schwarber and it looked like Here we go again. Instead, Holmes was able to get Austin Hays on a flyout (he narrowly missed hitting a walkoff home run) and got a double play off the bat of the struggling Bryce Harper. A seven-pitch save from Holmes? Add another humiliating moment to the series for the Phillies.

7. Brian Cashman spoke to the media about the trade deadline and the roster for the rest of the season.

“I liked what we had before we made the moves, and I know we’ve improved since these moves,” Cashman said.

There’s no one in the world who liked what the Yankees had before the moves. Before acquiring Chisholm, the team had lost 24 of 35 games. If Cashman liked the team so much, he wouldn’t have made any moves.

8. “I think we have a really good team already, and it’ll get better over the course of time when certain guys come back from the IL,” Cashman said. “With the imports, we’ve made it better.”

The team is really good now. (That’s also because they have won five straight games, so the feeling and perception around them has changed drastically since Trent Grisham had an 0-2 count against Kenley Jansen on Saturday night.)

The only player I’m excited about “returning” is Jasson Dominguez. Dominguez would make the lineup deeper and better and would mean the bench for Verdugo. Unfortunately, barring injury, I don’t think Dominguez will be called up until rosters expand on September 1.

9. “He’s a legitimate force when he’s healthy and all the rust is knocked off,” Cashman said of Dominguez. “It’s exciting to know that’s an opportunity that’s there, but I have no idea past that. We like what we have currently, and it’d be nice to know that’s sitting there if we need it.”

Cashman definitely has an idea, and that idea is September 1. That gives Dominguez more time at Triple-A to get healthy from his oblique and develop, and it gives more time for Verdugo to play himself out of the starting lineup. A Yankees lineup with Dominguez over Verdugo (if Dominguez stays healthy and hits at Triple-A) and LeMahieu over Torres (if LeMahieu can continue to hit the ball in the air) is a real possibility.

10. The Yankees have Thursday off before hosting a Blue Jays team that has given up and traded away pieces off of their 26-man roster within the last week. The Blue Jays are counting down the days until Game 162 with a focus on next year and are the perfect team for the new-look Yankees to beat up on over the weekend. The dog days of summer and the stretch run is here, and so is the easiest schedule in the majors over the next month.