1. The Yankees won a game and won it against a division opponent, beating the Rays 7-5 to improve to 12-19 in the AL East.

The Yankees won a game they had to have: a game started by Max Fried. The Yankees had been 2-4 in Fried’s last six starts and when the rest of your rotation is the untrustworthy Carlos Rodon, the inconsistent Will Warren, the inexperienced Cam Schlittler and the inept Marcus Stroman, you have to win the games Fried starts.

2. It didn’t necessarily look like the Yankees were going to win the Fried start on Tuesday. With a runner on first and no outs in the first inning, Anthony Volpe fielded a ground ball up the middle and shoveled a throw out of the reach of Jazz Chisholm at second. The Yankees may have been able to turn two on the play and erase the runner on base, but at worst they were going to get the first out of the inning. Instead, they got nothing and the Rays ended up scoring twice with two outs in the inning when the inning should have been over. Unfortunately, the errant throw wouldn’t be Volpe’s only of the game.

3. The Rays added a third run in the third inning to take a 3-0 lead and the Yankees’ odds of coming back felt insurmountable with an offense that had scored in just two of 20 innings since Aaron Judge went on the injured list. (And in one of those two innings, both runs scored on bases-loaded walks.) But Cody Bellinger (inexplicably batting fourth despite being the best active hitter in the lineup) tied the game with a three-run home run in the bottom of the third.

The Yankees scored three more runs in the fourth to take a 6-3 lead. They gave one back in the seventh, but added a seventh run in the eighth and then eked out a win in the ninth as Devin Williams was shaky and his defense was even shakier as Volpe threw away the would-be final out of the game to extend the inning and give the Rays another crack at tying or taking the lead in the ninth.

4. Volpe moved back on the ball in the ninth inning — as he now always does — and let the ball play him. Once he fielded it, he took two hops to gather himself and then put his left leg (his plant leg) exceptionally far from his body before delivering a throw in the the dirt to first. I have no idea how the player who failed to make that play and the player who now has that poor of footwork and fielding technique was able to win the Gold Glove two years ago.

“I’ve never really experienced something like this,” said Volpe. “I know what I’m capable of.”

5. Volpe did provide an RBI bloop single, managed to steal third on an errant throw and hit the longest home run of his career for one of his best offensive games of the season, but he’s still 11 percent worse than league average for the season. The battle for the worst defensive shortstop in the league continues to be between Volpe and Elly De La Cruz. The difference is you can live with the errors Cruz has made at the position because he’s hitting .282/.362/.484 with an .846 OPS, a 128 OPS+ and 29 steals.

6. There’s no current resolution for Volpe, nor do the Yankees want to have one. They want Volpe to work out and be the player they promised because they passed on the deepest shortstop free-agent class in history to cater to him. They have played him every single day since the start of 2023 and have defended him to the media in a way no player has ever been defended by the organization before. The idea Volpe is going to lose playing time to Amed Rosario is not worth thinking about because it’s never going to happen. The only way out of this mess is for George Lombard Jr. to develop into the player the Yankees thought they had in Volpe.

7. Trent Grisham went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. Ben Rice went 0-for-2 with two walks. Paul Goldschmidt went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts. Bellinger had the big, game-tying blast. Jazz Chisholm went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. Jasson Dominguez went 2-for-4 with a stolen base. Ryan McMahon went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Volpe went 2-for-4 with a home run and Austin Wells went 0-for-3 with a walk. Jonathan Loaisiga threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings following Fried and Williams closed out the ninth around a triple, walk and the Volpe error.

8. The Blue Jays lost for the fourth straight game, so the Yankees — despite going 2-2 in their last four — have now picked up two games on them in the division. The Red Sox also won, but the Mariners and Rangers lost to go along with the Rays loss.

WC1: Yankees (5 games back of Blue Jays because of tie-breaker)
WC2: Red Sox (1 game back of Yankees)
WC2: Mariners (1.5 games back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (3.5 games back of Yankees because of tie-breaker)
Second team out: Rays (4.5 games back of Yankees)

9. It’s going to be extremely hard to win Thursday afternoon’s series finale against the Rays with Stroman starting, so the Yankees need to win Wednesday night’s game with Warren starting. Unfortunately, Warren has faced the Rays twice this season and pitched poorly in both outings. On April 17, he was pulled in the second inning in Tampa after allowing four hits and two walks and needing 53 pitches to get five outs. On may 4, he allowed seven hits and three walks over 4 2/3 innings, needing 102 pitches to get 14 outs.

10. Which version of Warren will show up on Wednesday? Will it be the one who couldn’t beat the Rays in either start this season? The one who ruins the game in the first inning? The one who has trouble getting through five innings? Or the one who can shut out a team and rack up double-digit strikeouts? I have no idea and neither do the Yankees.

1. The Yankees played a team that doesn’t completely suck on Monday, so if you didn’t watch, you know how it went: they lost 4-2. The Yankees scored two first-inning runs on two bases-loaded walks against the Rays and then didn’t score again in the game. They had six hits, all singles. Following Ryan McMahon’s bases-loaded walk to tie the game in the first, the Yankees went 3-for-28 with eight strikeouts. They had one hit from the last out of the first inning until one out in the eighth inning.

“We just weren’t able to mount enough and couldn’t hold them down just enough,” Aaron Boone said, essentially defining the meaning of the word “loss”.

2. On a day the Rays traded their starting catcher (All-Animosity Team member Danny Jansen) to show they aren’t sold on their current roster, they still managed to beat the Yankees in the Bronx. The Red Sox and Rangers also lost, but the Mariners won to go along with the Rays’ win, so the updated wild-card picture looks like this:

WC1: Yankees
WC2: Mariners (0.5 games back of Yankees)
WC3: Red Sox (1 game back of Yankees)
First team out: Rangers (1.5 games back of Yankees)
Second team out: Rays (3.5 games back of Yankees)

The Blue Jays also lost for the second straight game, which seemed like an impossible feat of late. But really who cares about the Blue Jays right now, since the Yankees are just 2 1/2 games up on a playoff spot (because of they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers) and they are 6 1/2 games out in the division (because the Blue Jays hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over them).

3. There isn’t much to feel good about right now with the Yankees. They have fewer wins than both the Rockies and White Sox over the last nearly six weeks, Aaron Judge is out with a flexor strain, the bullpen sucks, the rotation provides no length, the lineup is a collection of inconsistent performers and the manager is somehow in his eighth season making the same kind of in-game decisions he made in his first weekend in his first season. And oh yeah, they’re 11-19 against the division.

It’s depressing watching the 2025 Yankees die a slow, painful death. Because if you think it’s OK they are currently holding the first wild-card spot, you’re a fool. This is a team that had an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays in the last week of May. A team that led the Red Sox by 12 games in the loss column. They didn’t fight to get to where they are like the Red Sox and Rangers. Actually, I guess they did since they didn’t fight and that’s why they are where they are.

4. Cam Schlittler wasn’t good on Monday (11 baserunners in 4 1/3 innings), but I have nothing bad to say about him because nothing bad can be said about him. He has three major-league starts to his name after having just six Triple-A starts and 14 Double-A starts to his name. He has had to start against the Mariners, Blue Jays and Rays, or in other words, the best team in the American League, a team currently holding a playoff spot and a team battling for a playoff spot. He wasn’t exactly given a soft landing spot to get his feet wets in the bigs, and he’s being asked to win important games with no limited run support and a bad defense.

5. After playing a mistake-free defensive game on Sunday in the win over the Phillies, the Yankees made up for it on Monday with a couple of miscues. Jazz Chisholm couldn’t get a ball out of his glove on a play that was inexplicably ruled a base hit and Anthony Volpe couldn’t make a play on a ball to his left that was also inexplicably ruled a hit. I don’t think we’ll hear Boone talk about the official scorer in the Bronx after he did both of his middle infielders a favor on two plays that were clearly errors.

6. The boos came out for Volpe after his misplay. Sure, it was a tough play, but it was also a play a major-league shortstop should make, especially one who has been deemed “fucking elite” by his manager. I don’t know that Volpe is equipped to handle boos from the Yankee Stadium crowd. The Golden Boy has only ever been told how great he is by everyone in the organization. He was a first-round pick who moved quickly through the minor leagues and was given the everyday shortstop job after just 22 games of a .718 OPS at Triple-A because of a good spring training. Since then, the threat of being sent down has never been an option as he has never even been benched. Not for a series, not for a game, not for an inning. He just continues to play every single day in every single game despite being one of worst everyday offensive players in the majors over the last three years, all while his defense and baserunning have regressed to poor levels. If the boos continue for Volpe (and every indication is that they will if he continues to put up 0-for-4s and misplay ground balls) that may be what leads to him losing playing time because his manager and general manager can shield him from the media, but they can’t shield him from the fans, and the fans have put up with below-league-average play from him for long enough and they have the power to make a performance reversal impossible

7. I think it’s time Paul Goldschmidt stopped playing against right-handed pitching, don’t you? The Yankees’ defense is a mess whether Goldschmidt plays or not, so they need to focus on creating offense and Goldschmidt just doesn’t do that. Goldschmidt has one home run since June 6 and a .589 OPS since the beginning of June. He has a .615 OPS against righties this year. Ben Rice needs to be playing against righties every game. He needs to be pinch-hitting for Goldschmidt against righties in games.

8. Give me this lineup against a right-handed starter:

Trent Grisham, CF
Cody Bellinger, RF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Ben Rice, 1B
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Austin Wells, C
Anthony Volpe/Amed Rosario SS

And this lineup against a left-handed starter:

Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Cody Bellinger, CF
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Amed Rosario, RF
Jasson Dominguez, LF
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Austin Wells, C

(I would play Dominguez in center field with Grisham out of the lineup, but we all know that’s not going to happen.)

9. Again, the defense is going to be a problem no matter who is playing, so it’s time to worry about offense, especially with Judge out. I wish the Yankees had one regular, everyday lineup, but they don’t seem to believe in that and also lack the personnel to have that. Their righties don’t hit righties and their lefties don’t hit lefties for the most part. The roster construction remains a mess in that they have players who don’t deserve to play every day and others who can’t play every day because they don’t have positions.

10. The summer slog continues on Tuesday in the second game of four against the Rays. I went into this series wanting the Yankees to split the series. Take four games off the calendar and keep the Rays at bay, while trying to stay afloat until the trade deadline and injured list bring back some names and Judge returns. But after Monday’s loss, the Yankees need to win two of three to accomplish that and (as of now) Marcus Stroman is starting one of those three games. Max Fried needs to go out on Tuesday and make sure the bullpen usage is kept to a minimum. He needs to go out and give the Yankees the kind of start he gave them every five days through the end of June. The kind of start he hasn’t given them in more than a month.

1. The Yankees played a good team over the weekend, so if you didn’t watch, you know how it went: they lost two of three and dropped another series. The Phillies blasted the Yankees’ bullpen for a 12-5 win on Friday and rocked Marcus Stroman for a 9-4 win on Saturday before the Yankees managed to salvage the third game by somehow getting to Zack Wheeler for four runs. The Yankees played one error-free game in the series, and guess which one was it was? The one they won. What a coincidence.

2. Going back to May 30, the Yankees have played 10 series against teams with a winning record. Here is how those series went:

Lost two of three to the Dodgers
Lost two of three to the Red Sox
Swept by the Red Sox
Lost two of three to the Reds
Lost two of three to the Blue Jays
Lost two of three to the Mets
Swept the Mariners
Lost two of three to the Cubs
Lost two of three to the Blue Jays
Lost two of three to the Phillies

The Yankees went 1-9 in the 10 series with an 11-17 record. Over that time, they have watched their eight-game lead over the Blue Jays turn into a 5 1/2-game deficit (and it’s really 6 1/2 when you account for the head-to-head tiebreaker).

3. The Yankees have been a bad team for a long time. They were 42-25 after sweeping the Royals on June 12. Since then, they have gone 15-23 and blew a massive division lead. They are now clinging to a 1 1/2-game lead for a playoff berth (though it’s really 2 1/2 games since they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers).

4. Things have been going poorly for the Yankees for nearly two months and now they will be without Aaron Judge for at least 10 days (and possibly more) and when he does return he will only be allowed to be the designated hitter at first. That means for Giancarlo Stanton to play, he will have to play the outfield. That means the Yankees’ defense (which is already a well-known embarrassment) will get even worse.

5. The Judge injury annoys me because not only does it hurt the Yankees’ chances of winning, it creates a built-in excuse for Aaron Boone’s job security if the season ends poorly (and all signs point to the season ending poorly), the same way Judge’s long absence in 2023 served as an excuse for the Yankees’ 82-80 disappointment. No single player in baseball should have as a great of an impact on a team as Judge does, and his absence shouldn’t serve as an excuse for anyone keeping their job if the season spirals out of control (which it has been doing since the end of May). The Yankees were in a bad place while Judge was healthy and playing. They are in a much worse place now.

6. The Yankees finally addressed third base after neglecting to do so in the winter or for 2024 or 2023 or 2022. The last time the Yankees had a solid everyday third baseman was when they had Gio Urshela there from 2019-2021, and he wasn’t supposed to be there, Miguel Andujar was. After trying Josh Donaldson, Oswaldo Cabrera, DJ LeMahieu, Jazz Chisholm, Oswald Peraza and Jorbit Vivas there over the last three-and-a-half years, the Yankees now have Ryan McMahon for this season and the next two.

7. When I wrote about McMahon recently, I wrote that he wasn’t worth trading for because I never thought Hal Steinbrenner would agree to take on his whole salary in order to lessen the prospect cost. I figured the Yankees would have to give the Rockies a real prospect in order to get the Rockies to eat some of McMahon’s money, like the Yankees did to get Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo four years ago. Instead, Steinbrenner agreed to take on McMahon’s contract, which is essentially double at the moment because of the Yankees’ luxury-tax penalties.

8. McMahon had a nice first weekend as a Yankee, going 3-for-6 with a double, walk and two RBIs. It’s enjoyable to see him make challenging plays with such ease at third and it’s comical to see his arm make throws from the left side of the infield to first compared to Anthony Volpe. Maybe the pinstripes will enhance McMahon’s performance the way they have for so many over the years. At least the Yankees know who their third baseman will be for the rest of 2025 and 2026 and 2027.

9. Giancarlo Stanton hit two more home runs over the weekend. Cody Bellinger went 1-for-the series. Volpe went 3-for-12, which is about as good as it gets with him. Austin Wells went 1-for-4 with a couple of walks. Jazz Chisholm went 4-for-12. Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-10 with a walk. Ben Rice went 1-for-9 with a walk. Jasson Dominguez went 2-for-7 and Trent Grisham went 2-for-12 with a walk.

Will Warren was OK, Stroman was bad and Carlos Rodon was blah. The bullpen was an unmitigated disaster and Boone was his usual nonchalant, everything-will-be-fine self. Except everything isn’t fine, hasn’t been fine in two months and is unlikely to be fine over the next two weeks.

10. The Yankees’ next two weeks are daunting. They were going to be that way with Judge, and without him, the next two weeks have the potential to sink the season.

The Yankees play four games at home against the Rays, who are sitting at .500 and three out of the last wild-card spot. (The Yankees could destroy the Rays’ season with a big week here, but we all know that won’t happen.) Then it’s three in Miami against the Marlins, who are red-hot and 20-9 over the last month. Then it’s three on the road against the Rangers, who are 27-15 over the last six weeks and trying to chase down the Astros in the West. Then it’s three at home against the Astros. Thirteen games in 14 days, many of them without Judge, and possibly all of them.

While the Yankees’ schedule from late August through the end of the season is favorable, they have to survive the end of July and rest of August to get there.

1. It’s no longer right in front of them. The Yankees no longer control their own destiny when it comes to winning the AL East this season and potentially avoiding having to play in the best-of-3, wild-card series. After Wednesday’s 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays, the Yankees now need outside help to overcome the four-game deficit in the division with 64 games left to play and only three of those games are against the Blue Jays.

2. The Yankees had their best three starting pitchers lined up for the last three days in Toronto and they still lost the series. They had every position player aside from Oswaldo Cabrera healthy and available and they still lost the series. The Yankees did what these Yankees have always done during the Aaron Boone era and that is lose in the biggest of games in the most remarkable of ways.

With a chance to win the division in 2018 still on the table in early August, the Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series. They were swept after blowing a three-run lead in the ninth in the series finale. In the postseason, they split the first two games of the ALDS on the road against the Red Sox and then suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history in Game 3 and were eliminated in Game 4.

The 2019 Yankees hit .214/.289/.383 in the ALCS and lost four of the final five games of the series. They were eliminated in Game 6 after they erased a two-run deficit in the top of the ninth inning only to get walked off on in the bottom of the inning.

The 2020 Yankees lost three of the last four games in the ALDS, and in the decisive Game 5, scored just one run and gave up the go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth.

The 2021 Yankees were the odds-on favorite to represent the AL in the World Series, and instead, they finished third in their own division and fifth in the AL and were eliminated in the one-game playoff.

The 2022 Yankees were swept in the ALCS after their manager used the darkest moment in the organization’s history as motivation to come back in the series, all while FaceTiming the man responsible for the darkest moment in the organization’s history.

The 2023 Yankees missed the playoffs entirely despite 40 percent of the league getting in.

The 2024 Yankees were embarrassed in a five-game World Series loss, which included blowing a five-run fifth-inning lead at home in Game 5. The champions spent the entire offseason publicly bashing and laughing at the Yankees’ sloppy, undisciplined brand of baseball. And the Yankees did nothing to change it.

3. The Yankees committed four official errors in their loss to the Blue Jays on Wednesday and that doesn’t even account for J.C. Escarra mishandling a ball in the dirt allowing a runner to advance to second, Escarra being unable to block a breaking ball in front of him to allow runners on first and second to move up to second and third and Cody Bellinger throwing his arms up to indicate he wasn’t going to catch a routine fly ball that led to a one-out “triple” with the game tied at 4 in the sixth inning.

4. “I think we have a very good defensive club,” Boone said with a straight face. “I think it’s here and I think it’s in this building we haven’t played well.”

This isn’t just about the Yankees’ play in Toronto, which has been unacceptable. It’s been their play everywhere. It’s been their play during Boone’s entire tenure. It continues to be their play because there is no accountability for poor play and no consequences for it either.

5. Not only was the defense a mess, yet again, but Max Fried wasn’t good, yet again. Has Fried been great as a Yankee? Yes. Has Fried been mediocre to bad for more than a month now? Also, yes.

Fried has one quality start in more than a month. He blew a lead and the Yankees lost to the last-place Orioles on June 20. On June 25, he shut out the Reds for seven innings to salvage the last game of that series. He pitched poorly in Toronto on July 1, struggled against the Mets in just five innings on July 6, left the game against the Cubs after three innings on July 12 and then pitched poorly in Toronto again on Wednesday.

My biggest fear with Fried has always been how he will perform in the postseason and in big games, since he has been atrocious in October in his career. In 20 games and 12 starts in the playoffs, he has a 5.10 ERA and 1.493 WHIP which is a far cry from his 3.02 career ERA and 1.148 career WHIP. I pray the version of Fried we have seen of late in big regular-season games isn’t the one that is going to show up in the postseason.

Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and Will Warren can’t be trusted and Cam Schlittler has two career starts to his name. The Yankees aren’t going anywhere if Fried pitches in August, September and October the way he has pitched in July. With all of their pitching issues, the Yankees are only going to go as far as Fried takes them.

6. The same goes for Aaron Judge. In the biggest series of the season, Judge went 1-for-10 with two walks and four strikeouts. That one was the game-tying, two-run home run in the sixth inning on Wednesday that momentarily made me think the Yankees may actually win the series and season finale in Toronto. Instead, it was nothing more than a short-lived moment that was immediately destroyed in the bottom of the inning.

It seems like every time Judge hits a big home run, the Yankees end up losing. There was the home run on Wednesday. There was the ninth-inning home run off Garrett Crochet at Fenway Park earlier this season. There was his first World Series home run in Game 5 last year. There was his home run off Emmanuel Clase in the ALCS last year. There was his solo home run in Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS and his two-run home run off Justin Verlander in Game 2 of the 2019 ALCS. If Judge hits a big home run in a big game, the Yankees seem to lose.

7. If Fried is going to be a run-of-the-mill starter and if Judge is going to be merely great and not otherworldly, the Yankees’ chances at the division aren’t just over, their chances at reaching the postseason at all are going to be increasingly difficult. I’ll worry about how the duo performs in October once the Yankees get there. For now, they need to make sure they get there.

8. For a team that once led the Blue Jays by eight games and had a 12-game lead in the loss column over the Red Sox, the Yankees now hold just a two-game lead on a postseason berth. If the Blue Jays play .500 baseball for the rest of the season (30-30), they will finish at 90-72. The Yankees would need to go 35-25 to tie them. So if the Blue Jays — a team that is 18 games over .500 becomes a .500 team for the rest of the season — the Yankees will have to go at least 10 games over .500 in 60 games to pass them. The Yankees are 10 games over .500 through 102 games.

9. It’s very likely the Yankees will end up as a wild-card team and end up in the vaunted best-of-3. It’s something I hoped they would avoid. It’s something that seemed impossible not to avoid at the beginning of June. But I lived through the one-game playoffs of 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021. I hoped the Yankees would never end up in that one-game playoff when it was implemented in 2012 and they ended up in it more times than any other team in baseball.

10. If the Yankees continue to play the way they have for the last six weeks, I won’t have to worry about the best-of-3, wild-card series because they won’t even be in that and will miss out on the postseason for the second time in three years despite the format allowing 40 percent of the league in. But if the Yankees are going to get in and they play like they did against the Dodgers in the World Series or like they did in Toronto the last three nights then I don’t want them in anyway. Save all Yankees fans from the humiliation. Because a postseason berth guarantees no organizational changes. A missed postseason likely means no changes as well (as we saw in 2023), but it leaves the door open for them. It’s disappointing missing the postseason is even an option again.

1. The Yankees played a good team on Monday, so you know what that means: the Yankees lost on Monday. The good feeling from the five-run comeback win on Saturday and the series-clinching win on Sunday were erased as soon as the Yankees stepped on the same field as a team headed for the postseason. The Yankees lost 4-1 to the Blue Jays and it wasn’t even as close as a one-run effort in a three-run game could be.

2. For all of the complaining about Jacob Misiorowski being an All-Star this season, no one complained about Carlos Rodon being one, but they should have. Rodon took the mound on nine days rest and was in trouble all game. He loaded the bases in the second inning and escaped. He allowed a two-out walk in the third inning and got out of it and left the bases loaded again in the fourth. In the fifth, his playing with fire caught up to him and the Blue Jays’ first three batters went walk, single, double, and while the inning should have ended with Rodon simply blowing the Yankees’ small one-run lead and facing a one-run deficit, it turned into a three-run deficit because of throwing errors on back-to-back plays by Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe.

3. Even if Peraza had made a good throw with two outs to end the fifth to keep it a 2-1 game, it still wouldn’t have been a good outing from Rodon. If that play had ended the inning, he still would have thrown 97 pitches in five innings (he ended up throwing 107 in five innings) and the Yankees still would have needed the offense to tie the game and the bullpen to get 12 outs. Rodon’s night was a far cry from the eight innings and turning the ball over to Luke Weaver (since Devin Williams pitched the last two days) I dreamed about. It wasn’t good enough. But that’s who Rodon is in big games: not good enough.

Rodon lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Blue Jays this season. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Red Sox. He lasted only five innings in both of his starts against the Mets. To be fair, he did make it through six innings against the Tigers … except he allowed five earned runs. He made four postseason starts last year and only once pitched six innings. In the other three starts, he went 3 2/3 innings, 4 2/3 innings and 3 1/3 innings. But that’s who Rodon is: a pitcher who will dominate the weak teams in the league (he has a 2.36 ERA and 0.859 WHIP against teams not currently holding a playoff spot) and will struggle against the league’s best.

4. Rodon’s crappy-but-expected performance would have been easier to stomach if the offense had showed up, but it didn’t, of course. The bigger the game, the worse the offense performs. In this Yankees era, the only bat to consistently show up in the biggest of games has been Giancarlo Stanton, and sure enough, it was Stanton who provided the Yankees’ only run with a solo home run in the fourth inning to give the Yankees a brief 1-0 lead.

Aaron Judge did what he does when the games are the most important: nothing. Judge struck out swinging in the first, was intentionally walked in the third, popped out in the fifth and struck out swinging again in the eighth. Jasson Dominguez, Austin Wells and Volpe all went hitless as well and the Yankees struck out 12 times as a team. (The Blue Jays struck out four times.)

5. The defense did what it does when … well, always. Peraza and Volpe threw the ball away on back-to-back plays in the fifth, which scored two runs for the Blue Jays. Peraza has the lowest OPS in the majors for all hitters with at least 150 at-bats. If you’re going to be the worst hitter in the league, you have to make every play in the field. Peraza was given an opportunity to become an everyday player this year and change his life and stop the Yankees from going out and wasting assets on a third baseman at the deadline, and he has done nothing but force them to do whatever they can to have someone who resembles a major leaguer playing third base by 6 p.m. on July 31.

6. As for Volpe, there is nothing left to say about him. It’s nice he had the big game on Saturday with two home runs to help the Yankees overcome a five-run deficit and win a game, but it didn’t last. He’s 1-for-7 since that game and his at-bats are as bad as they have been all season. On Monday, he flew out to right twice and grounded out to the pitcher. The expected batting average on those three balls were .020, .010 and .250. The ball with the highest expected batting average was a weak, 40.7-mph groundout back to the mound.

Then there’s the defense. Volpe’s fifth-inning error made him the league leader for position players with 12 errors. Congratulations! After the game, Boone was asked about Volpe’s defense on back-to-back questions. He started to get heated answering the first question and then got increasingly annoyed when the second one was asked. Last week, Boone told Meredith Marakovits that Volpe “is fucking elite” when she asked about his poor play. When she asked Boone about Volpe’s poor throw that led to a run on Monday and about him being the league leader in errors, this is what Boone said: “Errors get handed out in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways.” Yes, Boone blamed official scorers around the league for Volpe leading the league in errors and not Volpe.

7. It was the latest moment in Boone’s lack of accountability for himself or his players. If you wonder why the Yankees can’t play one, clean nine-inning game of baseball it’s because it doesn’t matter if they do or not as they don’t have to answer for it. If you’re wondering why the infield throws the ball all over the field or why runners take off for third with no outs in extra innings or why the Yankees had two cut-off men on a play over the weekend and no one covering second base or why they seem to have catcher’s interference called against them every other game, it’s because nothing happens to them for having a lack of fundamentals. After Jorbit Vivas was thrown out at third base by Ronald Acuna on Friday, Boone was asked why he didn’t bench Vivas and Boone said he only benches players who don’t run hard. Except the only player he ever benched for supposedly doing that was Gleyber Torres. Jazz Chisholm ran out a ground ball on Friday as if he had two broken ankles and he wasn’t benched. The Yankees gave the Dodgers three free runs in the biggest inning of last season and they gave the Blue Jays two free runs in the biggest inning of this season.

8. Boone calls Volpe “fucking elite” and considers him “one of the best shortstops in the league” even though both are categorically false and Volpe made a massive error on Monday. Boone refers to his offense “as the best offense in baseball” even though they are third in the majors in runs scored and scored one run on a solo home run and had two hits over their last 22 batters on Monday. Boone recently called his team “the best in baseball” even though they have the ninth-best record in the majors and lost a fifth straight game to the Blue Jays on Monday.

9. “It’s still the middle of July,” Volpe said. “We’ve got so many games ahead of us.”

The middle of July is from 8 a.m. on July 11 through 8 a.m. on July 21, so it’s no longer middle of the July. And there aren’t a lot of games left. Monday’s game was Game 100. There are 62 games left. If the Blue Jays were to play .500 baseball for the rest of the season, they would finish 90-72. The Yankees would have to go 36-26 to finish ahead of them. So if the Blue Jays simply win half of their remaining games, the Yankees have to play 10 games above .500 to pass them. The Yankees are only 10 games above .500 at this moment through 100 games.

10. The Yankees are now four games back in the division. They are one loss to the Blue Jays in the five remaining games against them from no longer controlling their own destiny in terms of winning the division and from not being able to say “It’s right in front of us.” That loss will come on Tuesday if Cam Schlittler isn’t great in just his second career start or if the offense performs yet another disappearing act in a big game.