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.

The Yankees’ offense came alive for the first time in four games in a 10-4 win over the Royals on the day Jasson Dominguez was called up.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Four days ago, Brian Cashman said Alex Verdugo gave the Yankees the “best chance to win” as the team’s everyday left fielder instead of their top-ranked, untouchable-in-trades prospect Jasson Dominguez. Three days after making that wildly idiotic assertion, Dominguez had a locker in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse to begin a three-game series with the Royals.

“Jasson’s going to play a lot,” Aaron Boone said before Monday’s game.

In 72 hours, Dominguez went from not having “a lane” to everyday playing time on the Yankees to batting sixth in their lineup — three places higher in the batting order than the player who was said to give the Yankees a better chance to win with than Dominguez.

2. “Like I said on September 1, when we didn’t initially recall Jasson, he’s [been] in the conversation every single day,” Boone said. “As much as anything, it’s just continuing to build the momentum he’s built here over the last few weeks.”

Nothing changed for Dominguez since September 1. He was destroying Triple-A pitching then and was as recently as his last Triple-A game. He didn’t magically go from not being ready for the majors to being ready to hit in the middle of the lineup in eight days.

“We feel like [he’s been] stringing together some of his best baseball here over the last couple of weeks,” Boone said, “and has earned this opportunity.”

And nothing changed for Verdugo over that time either. He had a .654 OPS on September 1 and a .651 OPS at the end of play on September 8. He has sucked all season and he has sucked just as bad since rosters expanded.

3. In order for a roster spot to open to play Dominguez, the Yankees had to designate someone for assignment or put someone on the injured list. They went with the injured list and that someone was DJ LeMahieu.

Rather than move on from LeMahieu and pay him more than $30 million to not play baseball for them through 2026, they decided to put him on the IL with a made-up injury. LeMahieu has no more of a hip impingement than you or I do. Boone said LeMahieu has been dealing with “it” for a “few weeks.” So either the Yankees are putting LeMahieu on the IL with a made-up injury or they have been playing an injured 36-year-old with a .527 OPS for a few weeks. I pray it’s the former, but knowing the Yankees, it’s very possible it’s the latter.

4. LeMahieu’s 2021 season ended early due to injury and he missed the one-game playoff. His 2022 season ended early due to injury and he missed the postseason. Last season, he made it to the end of the year, but there was no postseason for the Yankees. This season, he’ll miss the postseason again.

“I don’t know,” Boone said about LeMahieu returning this year. “We’ll see.”

That’s the same kind of “We’ll see” I tell my kids (ages 2 and 4) when they ask if they can stay up all night. LeMahieu isn’t coming back this year. He will be back in spring training with a chance to redeem himself and avoid being paid by the Yankees to not play for the Yankees.

5. In his first game at Yankee Stadium this season and with the Yankees trailing 2-0 in the fourth inning, Dominguez singled, stole third and scored on an error when the throw from Salvador Perez to get him went into the outfield. It was more production than Verdugo had provided in more than two months with the team. That same inning, with a runner on, Verdugo hit a go-ahead, two-run home run to right field. It’s almost as if tying playing time to production and consequences motivates players to perform better. I’m sure the Verdugo home run put a smile on the faces of Cashman and Boone. You know those two want Verdugo to outplay Dominguez over the final 18 games of the season.

6. “He’s gonna play, Verdugo said of Dominguez. “Whatever that means, that means, right? If I lose a little bit of playing time, I lose a little bit of playing time. At the end of the day, I want to win. The only thing that matters is getting to the playoffs and winning there.”

I was surprised with those comments from Verdugo. He said exactly what someone in his position should say. He didn’t respond like Gleyber Torres, who said “I play second” after the team traded for Jazz Chisholm. He didn’t respond like Nestor Cortes did on Saturday.:

7. “Obviously, I was upset,” Cortes said of being removed from the rotation. “I feel like amongst all the starters, I’ve been the workhorse here,” Cortes said. “Once [Gerrit] Cole went down, they picked me to be the Opening Day starter, not necessarily the No. 1, but the Opening Day starter. I had to switch my routine there, and now they do this.”

Of course, Cortes is delusional to think he has had a better season than he has. After each one of his crappy starts, his manager talks about how well he pitched and how “good” his stuff was, and Cortes, himself, says the same. However, to Cortes’ credit, he shouldn’t be the one out of the rotation, Marcus Stroman should be.

8. While Dominguez’s arrival was the story before the game and through the the top of the seventh with the Yankees then trailing 4-3 and the Orioles on their way to a loss, Austin Wells stole the spotlight with a mammoth, go-ahead three-run home run.

“He’s been a middle-of-the-order hitter for two to three months now,” Boone said. “We’ve all seen that, witnessed that.”

It’s been more than two or three months. It’s been more than four months. Wells has an .837 OPS since April 24. He has become the best all-around catcher in the majors and should be the favorite to win American League Rookie of the Year, considering he leads AL catchers in wRC+ at 121 and is statistically the second-best defensive catcher in the AL as well.

9. Carlos Rodon pitched good enough to win (6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 2 HR), but left the game on the hook for the loss thanks to some more sloppy defense with Chisholm bouncing a throw to first, Anthony Rizzo being unable to pick that throw and Torres dropping a popup. As of now, the four postseason starters seem to be Rodon, Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt in some order. (My order would be Cole, Gil, Schmidt, Rodon, but we all know owed money outranks performance.)

10. Stroman, thankfully, won’t be part of the rotation. I don’t even know how you would put him on the postseason roster since he can’t be trusted out of the bullpen with his stuff. Unfortunately, Stroman goes for the Yankees on Tuesday against the tough Seth Lugo. Even though Lugo is a second straight hard-throwing, sinker-focused righty, 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.

Another game, another loss for the Yankees. Another series, another series loss for the Yankees.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. After losing a series to the 25th-ranked Nationals, the Yankees helped the Cardinals get above .500 by losing a series at home to them. And then over the last three nights in Texas, the Yankees dropped their third straight series to a Rangers team that hasn’t seen the .500 mark since May 19. Three straight series losses and a 3-6 record against three teams that won’t be playing in October.

2. Since August 1, the Yankees are 15-15. In those 30 games, three came against a team that started their series with the Yankees above .500. They were gifted an incredible five-week stretch to play mediocre-to-historically-bad teams and they squandered it. They completely wasted it.

3. Wednesday was much of the same from the Yankees. Bad starting pitching, horrific relief pitching and an offense that didn’t show up until garbage time. After getting shut down by ex-Yankee Andrew Heaney on Tuesday, ex-Yankee Nathan Eovaldi did the honor on Wednesday. It wasn’t until the game was out of hand and the Yankees trailed by eight runs in the ninth inning that they added to their anemic run total in the 10-6 loss.

Their four runs in the ninth came from a Trent Grisham grand slam. In one swing, Grisham matched Alex Verdugo’s home run total since July 6. In that one swing, he equaled Verdugo’s RBI output from the last three weeks. If Jasson Dominguez is going to waste away in Triple-A, maybe Grisham can be given a turn playing every day instead of Verdugo? Grisham has the better on-base percentage and the better slugging percentage, and better power and walk numbers relative to plate appearances. At worst, he provides actual Gold Glove defense — having won the award twice — and not the kind of fake, made-up strong defense Verdugo is perceived to have by some (including the front office).

4. Verdugo went 1-for-3 in the game, hitting three ground balls in all of his plate appearances. One of three reached the outfield for a single, and on the other two, they were easily turned into outs as Verdugo power walked down the first-base line, forcing Michael Kay to ask on the broadcast, “Is there something wrong with his legs?”

“He’s beat up,” Aaron Boone said of Verdugo not running to first. “He’s playing his ass off … I don’t have any issue with how hard he’s playing the game.”

One loser talking about another loser. If Verdugo is “beat up” then why is he playing? That’s even more reason to sit him.

5. Verdugo dogs it in a way that makes Gleyber Torres seem like Charlie Hustle, but nothing ever happens to Verdugo. Just more playing time, more at-bats and no threat of consequence for dogging it. (Or is it “dawging it” for Verdugo?) Why would there be? When there’s no consequence for being the worst everyday hitter in the majors, there can’t be any consequence for jogging (and jogging is putting generously).

As long as Verdugo is a Yankee and continues to play everyday, the idea that he is part of the backup “plan” is Juan Soto leaves via free agency grows in probability.

6. “We’ve been in this tight AL race all year long,” Verdugo said after the loss. “It’s just a couple of series, we’re right there.”

Oh it’s been “just a couple of series?” The Yankees are 3-6 in their last nine. They’re 15-15 since August 1. They’re 31-39 since June 13. That’s not a couple of series.

7. “A couple of games not going our way,” Aaron Judge said. “Stuff like that is going to happen.”

Delusion runs deep in the Yankees clubhouse. The captain thinks it’s been just a couple of games not going their way, even though they have been under .500 for three months. But like his manager likes to say, “That’s baseball!”

Judge had another no-show game, which has been the case for the last 10 days. It’s easy to excuse him when he’s having a Barry Bonds-type season, but it’s hard not to think about how Judge has played in his postseason career and not think he’s getting a headstart on his all-too-familiar October disappearing acts.

He was part of the problem on Wednesday as the Yankees’ 3 through 8 hitters went 1-for-21 with the one being a Jazz Chisholm single. The offense didn’t show up until the fifth when Juan Soto hit a two-run home run, and by then, Marcus Stroman had already put them in a 5-0 hole.

8. “Just don’t think I executed when I needed to,” Stroman said. “Got in some long counts and they were able to put the barrel on balls.”

Oh you don’t think you executed when you needed to? No shit. It’s concerning that Stroman is staying in the rotation over Nestor Cortes because Stroman had a few good starts in a row against the Rangers, Tigers, Rockies and Cardinals. Stroman’s entire game is based around living on the edge and getting ground balls. He can’t win in the strike zone because he can’t throw quality strikes or getting swings and misses in the zone. If Stroman isn’t painting the black with every pitch or if the home plate umpire isn’t being favorable to him, he has no chance.

9. The Yankees are a mess. For outsiders who only view the standings, they see a team with an 80-60 record that is a 1/2 game out of the division. For Yankees fans who watch them play every day, they see a team that is eight games under .500 over their last 69 games. They haven’t been the team that once had a 49-21 record in nearly three months.

10. John Sterling announced he will come out of retirement to call all of the Yankees playoff games this October before going back into retirement. It’s welcome news and hopefully Sterling’s return will last more than a couple of nights in a best-of-3, wild-card series. Right now, it’s hard to believe it will.

The Yankees had a 4-1 lead in the eighth inning against a team counting down the games, innings, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season ends. They lost 7-4.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I think I need to change the way I watch and consume the Yankees. I desperately wish I could be the type of fan who watches the team play if I happen to come across them playing while channel surfing, and if the game isn’t on a commercial break. The type of fan who can only name Aaron Judge as a player on the roster, doesn’t know what place they are in the standings or what time their game is that day, or if there even is a game. The type of fan who goes to one or two games a year because a friend had an extra ticket. I want to be that fan. Unfortunately, I’m not.

2. Unfortunately, for me, my daily or nightly mood is attached to the final score of their games. My blood pressure hinges on that day’s lineup and my mental health is connected to late-inning bullpen decisions. It made me physically sick when Jasson Dominguez wasn’t called up three days ago, and each day that passes with Alex Verdugo being the team’s everyday fielder will eventually catch up to me health-wise.

3. I wish I didn’t care so much about the Yankees winning because the Yankees — the actual organization — don’t care about the Yankees winning. The organization’s level of interest in the team is a lot like the casual fan I desire to be: If the Yankees win, great. If they don’t, so be it.

If the Yankees truly cared about winning, they would field the best possible 26-man roster from Opening Day through August 31 and then the best possible 28-man roster from September 1 through Game 162. Roster decisions, the rotation of the order, places in the batting order and bullpen titles and usage wouldn’t be tied to name, reputation, friendships, relationships, service time manipulation or money owed. They would all strictly be based on production, performance, talent and ability.

4. The 7-4 walk-off loss to the Rangers on Tuesday night was all too familiar. The offense left an extraordinary amount of runners on and the bullpen was a disaster, yet again. Yankees fans (and I am one of them) can keep telling themselves that this team can win it all because the field is as wide open as it’s been in years, but the Yankees will enter the postseason with the worst bullpen of any of the 12 teams. Aaron Boone isn’t smart enough, isn’t creative enough, isn’t capable of using his starting pitchers as relievers to compensate for his weak bullpen, and because of that, the team’s demise will likely come because of its relievers. (Either that or because Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have a bad week at the same time, which then would make the bullpen issues a moot point.)

There isn’t a single reliever who can be trusted on the Yankees. They traded for Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez before the year and then got rid of both. They traded for Enyel De Los Santos and he’s gone. They brought in Nick Burti and he has done what he’s always done best: be hurt. Tommy Kahnle seems to think only throwing 86-mph changeups that change up from nothing is a sound strategy. Luke Weaver is immensely prone to home runs. Jake Cousins is OK. Mark Leiter Jr. sucks. Tim Hill can’t get a swing-and-miss. Tim Mayza? Scott Effross? No.

5. That leaves Clay Holmes, who blew his league-leading 11th save on Tuesday. He has three more blown saves than anyone in the league, which is remarkable. He’s as far ahead of the pack in blowing saves as Judge is in terms of home runs and RBIs. He’s that good at blowing saves.

This wasn’t a soft-contact blown save. This wasn’t a five-ground-balls-found-holes blown save. This was line-drive single, stolen base, walk, walk, grand slam. It would be the equivalent to you showing up to your job at lunch time, then taking a two-hour lunch with cocktails, returning to watch two hours of YouTube before leaving an hour early.

6. Boone loves to say “That’s baseball” when the Yankees lose a game or are shut down by a mediocre-to-bad starting pitcher, like Andrew Heaney or Kyle Gibson or Patrick Corbin, a trio that has shut them down over the last week. It’s hard to say “That’s baseball” when it happens every other day, or in the Yankees’ case, more frequently than that. Since the Yankees are 31-38 since June 13, it’s happened more frequently than every other day.

Every poor outcome for the Yankees is chalked up to being bad luck, misfortune or a tough break. It’s never because the players sucked or that they were put in a position to fail. It’s always just a game of luck when the Yankees lose. And when they lose in the postseason, it’s because the postseason is a crapshoot. Oddly enough, the postseason wasn’t a crapshoot in the late-‘90s or 2000s.

7. That’s why I want to be that casual fan. I don’t want to be awake at midnight because Holmes is still the Yankees closer despite being worse at that role than any other pitcher in the majors. I don’t want to be aggravated that Boone keeps preaching how well Verdugo has hit of late, when his last two hits were a ground ball to third that he beat out because the third baseman was playing near shortstop and a 61-mph bloop that only fell in for a hit because the infield was drawn in with a runner on third. I don’t want to be told Nestor Cortes will make his next start (which Boone said on Sunday) only for Boone to say on Tuesday that Cortes will not make his next start, and have no one in the media ask him why he said differently 48 hours prior.

8. I want to be the fan that just accepts what the team is and goes on with their life. If Hal Steinbrenner tells me Boone is a “great manager” and deserving of an eighth season without having won a championship, awesome. If Brian Cashman tells me there’s no lane for the team’s top prospect who is untouchable in every trade request to play every day because the worst-hitting left fielder in the league needs to play, great. If Boone tells me Holmes is “the guy” for the closer role despite being the worst closer in the majors, fantastic. My life as a Yankees fan would be so much easier, so much more enjoyable if I could react that way. Or the Yankees could just operate in a way that made sense, and my life as a Yankees fan would also be much easier, much more enjoyable.

9. Life as a Yankees fan shouldn’t be so stressful, so aggravating, so disappointing. It’s unbelievably easy to create the best 26-man roster possible and then play the nine best available position players from that roster nearly every day, bat them in an order that makes sense using simple logic, pull starting pitchers when they are fatigued, give relievers clean innings to come into, occasionally call for a bunt, steal or hit-and-run, never use the contact play with a runner on third and less than two outs, be honest about player performances and injuries and hold players accountable for their performances. And yet, the Yankees make it so unbelievably difficult.

10. The Yankees are once again out of first place. They trail the Orioles by a 1/2 game and because the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, it’s as if they trail them by 1 1/2 games.

The Orioles will play the White Sox again on Wednesday. The Yankees will play the Rangers. If the Yankees don’t win, they will fall another game behind in the division with 22 games left. If they lose, it will be because of bad luck or soft contact or a ball that didn’t fall in or some other bullshit to hide the fact the best 28 players in the organization weren’t available or on the roster for the game. I guess nothing can be done about that. That’s baseball.

The Yankees lost another game and another series and didn’t call up Jasson Dominguez with rosters expanding. A banner day in the Bronx.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. On July 10, Brian Cashman showed up for the Yankees series in Tampa because he saw his team spiraling out of control for a third straight season.

“Thankfully, we got out of the gates really strong,” Cashman said that day. “Hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this. Hopefully sooner than later because it’s gone on long enough.”

At the time, I wrote: Whenever you’re using the word “hopefully” to discuss your baseball season, you’re screwed, and Cashman used the word twice in 11 words. You would think more than $300 million in salaries could buy you more than hope, but that’s all it has gotten Cashman. It’s all he has gotten after incorrectly spending more than $3 billion in salaries since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance.

2. Well, the Yankees are still clinging on to hope to lead them to a division title. Following Sunday’s embarrassing 14-7 loss to the Cardinals to drop yet another series, Aaron Boone followed his boss’ lead from mid-July.

“We have to play our best, and we have to put our best foot forward to win these games,” Boone said on Sunday. “And we hope we start that tomorrow night.”

With 25 games left in the season, the Yankees are still hoping, still praying, still waiting to turn around their season that that began to fall apart in mid-June and still hasn’t recovered. The Yankees are 30-37 since June 13.

3. “As bad as people think we are playing … we are still in first place,” Nestor Cortes said after his latest stinker on Sunday. “It’s there for us to take.”

If Boone sounds like his boss in Cashman, then Cortes (along with many other Yankees) sounds like his boss in Boone. “It’s there for us to take” is no different than “It’s right in front of us.” And the only reason it (being the division title) is still there is because the Orioles’ rotation and lineup is decimated by injuries.

4. It’s both good and bad for the Yankees that the Orioles have been equally as bad for as long as the Yankees have. It’s good because the Yankees still lead the division by a 1/2 game with 25 games to go. It’s bad because it has the Yankees thinking they are a true first-place team when they have played like a last-place team for half of the season.

5. “We know how important these games are,” Boone said after the Cardinals’ posted a season-high in hits and runs against his team, two weeks after the White Sox — the worst team in the history of baseball — scored a season-high in runs against his team. If the Yankees know “how important these games are” then why was Jasson Dominguez batting second for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders on the day MLB rosters expanded?

“When he comes up here, you’re going to want to play him every day,” Boone said about the team’s decision to not call up Dominguez. “It doesn’t mean that won’t change in a couple of days, a week, two weeks, whatever it is.”

Recently, Cashman said there was “no lane” for Dominguez to play every day for these Yankees. On Sunday, Boone implied Dominguez wouldn’t be an everyday player for these Yankees, which is why he wasn’t called up. And yet, Boone said that could change in as early as a couple of days.

What could possibly change in a couple of days? It’s uncertain the decision is tied to the at-bat limit which is tied to rookie status which is tied to winning the 2025 Rookie of the Year and netting the Yankees a draft pick at the end of the first round due to Dominguez’s service time accumulated on the injured list for Tommy John. If the thing that could change is Alex Verdugo continuing to be among the worst everyday players in the majors then that’s absurd. Verdugo has been given 137 games to prove he’s anything other than the best in the world at hitting ground balls to the right side and he hasn’t. Even if Verdugo went from worst hitter in the league to just a truly awful hitter, would anyone feel good about him facing elite pitching every day in the postseason? Here is Verdugo’s OPS this season against the other five American League teams currently holding a playoff spot.

Astros: .580
Guardians: .503
Orioles: .337
Royals: .513
Twins: .583

Despite hitting .235/.292/.378 in the first half, Boone said this about Verdugo in mid-July:

“I feel like he’s getting really close … A lot of confidence he’s going on a heater in this second half.”

The second-half heater: .232/.298/.317 with one home run in 162 plate appearances. Somehow, Verdugo has been worse in the second half than he was in the first half.

6. When Dominguez was called up for a single game two weeks ago, the Yankees believed him to be good enough to bat fifth against the favorite to win the AL Cy Young. On Sunday, facing a right-handed starter with a 5.23 ERA, Verdugo batted ninth, not good enough to bat ahead of Anthony Rizzo playing in his first game in nearly three months (and who sucked when he last played) or Anthony Volpe, who is 14 percent below league average in 1,203 career plate appearances. Verdugo has been either OK or abysmal depending on which defensive metric you want to cite, and on Sunday he misplayed a fly ball into a two-run double.

7. With Aaron Judge having either the best or second-best season of his career and the Yankees down to 25 guaranteed games left with Juan Soto on the team, you would think they would be doing everything in their power every day to field the best possible team. And yet, their top prospect, the one who proved capable of hitting major-league pitching a year ago, who batted fifth against the AL Cy Young frontrunner two weeks ago and who continues to destroy Triple-A pitching daily remains in the minor leagues, so the Yankees can roster and play the worst everyday hitter in the league, a player they owe nothing to financially at the end of this month.

8. The only reason the Yankees are continuing to treat Verdugo like an all-time great who helped the team to multiple championships is because they don’t want to ruin their relationship with him. And the only reason they wouldn’t want to ruin their relationship with a player who isn’t part of their future after 2024 is if that player may actually be part of their future after 2024.

If Soto leaves this winter, the Yankees don’t have a back-up plan, the same way they didn’t 14 years ago when Cliff Lee chose the Phillies over the Yankees in free agency, which led to 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation being Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. There’s a reason Verdugo and Gleyber Torres survived the trade deadline when it made sense for one or both of them to go, and that’s because the Yankees’ back-up “plan” if Soto leaves will be to re-sign both Verdugo and Torres. If Soto leaves, this is likely the Yankees’ planned 2025 Opening Day lineup:

Gleyber Torres, 2B
Jasson Dominguez, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Alex Verdugo, LF
DJ LeMahieu, 1B

9. If the Yankees were to lose Soto and then re-sign Torres and Verdugo, they would be saving money. Even if you want to be overly generous in your calculations and say the duo will each make $20 million a year moving forward (Torres is at $14.2 million this season and Verdugo is at $8.7 million), the Yankees would be saving money. This is Hal Steinbrenner’s preferred free-agency outcome. Either way, if Soto returns or doesn’t, Dominguez will be starting in center field or left field for the Yankees on Opening Day 2025. He may not be good enough to be a Yankee in September, but with no further experience, he will be good enough to be one in March. Similar to Volpe attending the postseason as a fan in October 2022 and then magically being good enough to be the Opening Day shortstop in March 2023 over Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza, who all started playoff games at shortstop in 2022.

10. While Dominguez was busy playing meaningless baseball in Scranton-Wilkes/Barre on Sunday, the Yankees were busy losing another meaningful series to a mediocre team. Since August 1, the Yankees have played 27 games, with three of them coming against a postseason team (Cleveland), and they are 14-13. The soft, cupcake schedule that was going to allow the Yankees to stack wins, create separation from the Orioles and allow them to coast to a division title in September is over and the Yankees irresponsibly and inexplicably wasted it.

“Another opportunity to win a series that we aren’t able to finish,” Boone said on Sunday. “That sucks, but it’s onward.”

Onward to another series against a reeling team counting down the games, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season is over. Onward to another series the Yankees can’t be trusted to win. Indeed, that sucks.

The Yankees lost another series to one of the worst teams in the league.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees were supposed to stack wins in August. While the Orioles were playing the Guardians, Red Sox, Mets, Astros and Dodgers, the Yankees were going playing the Angels, White Sox, Rockies and Nationals. It would be the Yankees’ chance to beat up on the worst teams in the league, take first place in the AL East and never give it back by finally creating separation in the standings going into September. While the Orioles’ tough opponents did their job, handing the Orioles an 8-9 record, the Yankees couldn’t do their job, going 6-6 against against the 25th-, 27th-, 28th- and 30th-ranked teams.

The Yankees may be in first place as of Friday morning, two games up on the Orioles in the loss column and 1 1/2 games up overall, but it could be and should be much more.

2. It has been hard to truly care about the Yankees over the last few weeks with their sloppy, frustrating, inconsistent and lackadaisical play. It’s been hard to truly care with a front office that is keeping better everyday options in the minors because of the idea of potential, non-guaranteed draft picks that may or may never help the Yankees at the major-league level, and if they do, likely wouldn’t help until 2030 or 2031 at best. It’s been hard to truly care with a manager that continues to make befuddling in-game decision seven years into his job. It’s been hard to truly care with a lineup that is reliant on two of nine hitters and a lineup that no longer features the team’s third-best hitter every day. It’s been hard to truly care with a pitching staff that is mediocre at best, and many days much less than that.

3. The Yankees could win a championship with this team, given the wide-open field this year with no clear-cut favorite in the league and no team in the majors on pace to win 100 games, but it’s unlikely. At best, the Yankees are a slightly-above-average team in a crowded field of slightly-above-average teams. And they haven’t played like the slightly-above-average version of themselves in a long, long time. Through the first 67 games of the season, they were 46-21. Through the last 67 games, they are 32-35. Their .478 winning percentage over the last 67 games makes them the Reds, who have a .478 winning percentage for the season. Since June 10, the Yankees have been the New York Reds.

4. For this team to win a championship, they will have to hit a massive parlay in October, starting with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto being at the best of their abilities for the entire month. The duo won’t be able to have a bad game, let alone a bad series. They will need Gerrit Cole to be better than he has been this season and better than he has been in his three postseasons as a Yankee. They will need Carlos Rodon to not be the high-priced bust he has been since being given $162 million. They will need a bullpen that can’t be trusted to tell you what day of the week it is to be trusted to get season-defining outs in the highest of leverage situations against hitters like Jose Altuve or Yordan Alvarez or Gunnar Henderson or Bobby Witt Jr. They will need a manager who manages like he was introduced to the game of baseball minutes before the game he’s actively managing began to make the right decision nearly every time for an entire month. They will need nearly every single thing to go to their at every moment for an entire month.

5. It could happen. Worse teams than them have reached and won the World Series. But for too long the Yankees have operated under the idea “It could happen” as if they’re a McDonald’s commercial tag line from the ’90s. Rather than operate like the Yankees and construct the best possible roster and have it run by the best possible manager to give themselves the best chance to win on the field, they are being run like a team where the manager’s son gets to play shortstop and play every inning of every game, the best player on the team decides who should be on the team and a bunch of players who should no longer be on the team or possibly in the league continue to play over more deserving players because of past accomplishments, reputations, friendships and relationships.

6. The Yankees like to sell everyone on this prestigious brand of winning and excellence, but they haven’t won a championship in going on 15 years, haven’t even won a pennant in that same amount of time and haven’t been excellent in anything other than disappointment for nearly that same amount of time as well. George Steinbrenner is known for having said, “Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next.” We’ll find out just how much his son prioritizes winning on Sunday when rosters expand. We know winning doesn’t come after breathing for Hal. For Hal, it’s likely breathing then creating revenue for his shareholders then paying back the banks he references publicly then whining about payroll and the luxury tax any chance he gets then trying to implement a salary cap in the sport even though it would hurt his team’s odds of winning a championship then eating and drinking water then actual hobbies he loves and then somewhere a few dozen more places down the list is caring about the baseball team he inherited winning.

8. If winning were the priority for the Yankees, I wouldn’t be watching Gleyber Torres batting leadoff every day. (I love the faction of fans thinking Torres is now playing well because he hit a couple home runs against the Rockies and Nationals.) I wouldn’t be forced to watch Alex Verdugo put every ball in play on the ground to the right side of the infield. There would be some consequence and accountability to Anthony Volpe being a .231/.293/.385 hitter in 1,192 career plate appearances, other than the manager of the team yelling at fans about how good Volpe while ironically citing him as a “below league-average hitter” and saying others can bench Volpe when they manage the team. I wouldn’t have to watch Jose Trevino steal playing time from Austin Wells, the best-hitting catcher in the majors, and the team’s only consistent offensive threat after Judge and Soto. I wouldn’t have to hear about how unlucky Clay Holmes is each time he blows a save and continues to stay in the closer role. I wouldn’t have to be told how gutsy Rodon is every five days after he gives up five runs in two innings, but stays in to pitch five innings in an eventual loss. I wouldn’t have to watch DJ LeMahieu continue to play every day when he’s clearly either injured or washed up. I wouldn’t have to watch daily highlights on social media of Dominguez extra-base hits while Verdugo continues to be the worst everyday hitter in the majors.

9. Life as a Yankees fan shouldn’t be so stressful, so aggravating, so disappointing. It’s unbelievably easy to create the best 26-man roster possible and then play the nine best available position players from that roster nearly every day, bat them in an order that makes sense using simple logic, pull starting pitchers when they are fatigued, give relievers clean innings to come into, occasionally call for a bunt, steal or hit-and-run, never use the contact play with a runner on third and less than two outs, be honest about player performances and injuries and hold players accountable for their performances. And yet, the Yankees make it so unbelievably difficult.

10. The stress, the aggravation and the disappointment is about to be taken to another level with rosters expanding and Dominguez potentially not being called up, 28 games left and a division title on the line with a bye to the ALDS to play for, and then the actual postseason. Summer is over. Vacation is over. The stretch run is here, and so is the best, but most trying part of the year.

The Yankees were walked off against by the Tigers on Sunday in a 3-2, 10-inning loss. With the loss, the Yankees ended their six-game road trip against the White Sox and Tigers at 3-3.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I didn’t feel good seeing Clay Holmes warming up on the Williamsport mound on Sunday night with the Yankees only holding a one-run lead. I don’t think any Yankees fan did. Because for all the times John Sterling told us “You can’t predict baseball” over 30-plus years, sometimes you can.

Holmes let a sub-.700 OPS hitter (Colt Keith) smoke a one-out double to left field, and when one out away from maintaining a one-game division lead on the Orioles, he let Jace Jung and his 11 career plate appearance single in Keith for his first career RBI.

2. The blown save was Holmes’ league-leading 10th of the year. Emmanuel Clase (3), Ryan Hensley (3), Kenley Jansen (3) and Josh Hader (1) have 10 combined. If Holmes just sucked as a closer and had say seven blown saves, the Yankees would have a three-game division lead. Instead, he has been impossibly bad with 10.

Since June 13, Holmes has as many saves as blown saves with seven. The Yankees are 11-10 in the 21 games he has appeared in in that time. The Yankees are now 4-7 in extra innings this season because they have a great manager and a great bullpen.

3. “I thought the sinker was good tonight,” Aaron Boone said of Holmes. “The slider was good.”

You know who else thought the sinker and slider were good? Colt Keith and Jace Jung.

“I felt pretty good,” Holmes said, “just two pitches there got me.”

It can’t be “just two pitches” getting you when you’re the closer. The margin for error is zero or close to it when you’re getting the final three outs of a one-run game.

Boone was asked if he is committed to Holmes as his closer for the rest of the season despite him having 10 blown saves.

“Yeah, yeah,” Boone said. “He’s had some tough breaks back there that have led to that.”

Poor Holmes. He’s just had some tough breaks and is really unlucky. I can think of a lot of miraculous breaks he has been on the right end of this season that has prevented his blown save total from being 12 or 13. Holmes is the first Yankees pitcher with 10 blown saves in a season in 37 years.

If you think Holmes is going to lose his job due to poor performance, look no further than Boone himself who is in his seventh year as Yankees manager despite owning zero pennants, but rather a CVS receipt-length list of embarrassing franchise records and moments. Look no further than how Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo or Anthony Volpe have been treated this year. Being bad at your job as a Yankee doesn’t lead to losing your job. It doesn’t even lead to diminished playing time or a lesser role.

4. The Yankees’ season is likely to end in disappointment with Holmes on the mound. He has spent nearly five months foreshadowing the ending that is coming for the 2024 Yankees and no one has done or is doing anything about it.

Brian Cashman didn’t do anything about it. He knew he gave up four arms in the deal for Juan Soto and knew Wendy Peralta was leaving in free agency and didn’t replace them in the offseason. Instead he counted on the always-injured Jonathan Loaisiga to stay healthy. He watched his bullpen blow countless games in the first half of the season and added two mediocre arms at the deadline. One of those arms has put 22 baserunners on in 8 1/3 innings with a 6.48 ERA and the other was already designated for assignment and is now on the White Sox.

Boone isn’t doing anything about it, still supporting Holmes, making excuses for him and talking about bad breaks, rather than a solution or a change in the role.

For any of the other 29 teams in the league, the general manager and manager would have urgency to stop using a closer who can’t close for fear of their job. But there’s no fear for either. Cashman told the world the team “is pretty fucking good” after they went 82-80 and missed the playoffs in a format in which 40 percent of the league makes it despite having the highest payroll in the American League. He’s an adopted member of the Steinbrenner family and not even a last-place finish would end his run with the organization. Boone managed the team to its worst season in 30 years a year after he oversaw a second-half collapse and sweep in the ALCS in which he tried to motivate his team by using the darkest four-game period in the franchise’s history with 2004 ALCS “highlights.”

5. Boone would rather have Holmes standing on the mound as Jose Altuve races home as the pennant-winning or have Yordan Alvarez trotting around the bases with Holmes hanging his head than ruin his friendship or relationship with Holmes by removing him from the closer role.

Maybe Luke Weaver or Jake Cousins or anyone else would be as big of a disaster as Holmes has been as the closer. It’s unlikely, but I guess it’s possible that they also would be the worst closer in the league. But we’ll never know because the next time the Yankees need to close out a game leading by three runs or less in the ninth inning, Boone will go to his guy. If he does his job, great for Boone. If he doesn’t do his job, still great for Boone. There are no consequences for not performing.

6. If there were consequences for not performing, Torres and his .660 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against lefties and Verdugo and his .657 OPS wouldn’t be leading off against righties. Volpe and his .673 OPS over 1,156 plate appearances would have spent at least some time in the minors since Opening Day 2023. Instead, Volpe leads the majors in games played (124) and is one off the major-league lead in at-bats with 514.

7. Volpe went 2-for-12 against the Tigers. One of the two was an infield hit that needed replay review to confirm if he was safe. In the last two weeks, he’s 4-for-42 with three walks, and he’s only that because he went 2-for-10 with three walks against the White Sox. Aside from his three walks against the worst team in the history of baseball, Volpe has one walk in the month. A month! Since August 4, he’s 6-for-51 with 18 strikeouts and a .339 OPS, hitting .118/.182/.157. But every day, there he is, starting at shortstop and batting sixth or seventh. And there he is striking out or hitting the weakest ground ball you have ever seen to the shortstop.

“You can’t tell when things are going good or when he’s going through a rough stretch,” Boone said of Volpe’s demeanor.

You can’t tell because he has only been going through a rough stretch since his first major-league plate appearance.

Oswald Peraza got called up last week. The first day of his call up he didn’t play. The second day, he played and hit a home run, so naturally, the next day he didn’t play again. The next day he got face to the favorite for AL Cy Young this season. If Volpe hit a home run like Peraza did on Friday, they would already be promoting another bobblehead night for him. Unfortunately, for Peraza, he wasn’t born in New York City and didn’t grow up in New Jersey as a Yankees fan.

8. Playing infrequently when you have only ever played every day is hard. Just ask Austin Wells. You know what else is hard? Getting called up for a spot start in the outfield when the favorite for AL Cy Young is starting like Jasson Dominguez did. Boone said Dominguez would be sent down again after Sunday’s game, so even if Dominguez had hit a pair of home runs off Tarik Skubal it wouldn’t have mattered. “There’s no lane” for Dominguez and playing time on the Yankees Cashman said last week. His lane is blocked by Verdugo. Verdugo is hitting .233/.294/.363. He last hit a home run on July 6, which is his only home run since June 14. He hasn’t homered against a team not named the Red Sox since May 29. So he last homered against not the Red Sox on Memorial Day Weekend and last homered period on Fourth of July Weekend. Labor Day Weekend is only two weeks away, so I guess we know when his next home run will be.

Dominguez was good enough to bat fifth against the best pitcher in the AL, but not good enough to be on the team after the game. Boone decided he would use all right-handed hitters except Juan Soto against Skubal, no matter how weak (Torres, Volpe, Jose Trevino) most of his hitters are. The thing about great pitchers like Skubal is that they don’t care what hand the opposition swings with or what nonsensical platoon you think you are going to employ. Skubal pitched six innings and only allowed one run on a wild pitch.

“9. I thought we made him work hard,” Boone said of his offense. “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously, but I thought we made it challenging for him.”

I don’t know how you can say you “made him work hard” and then in your very next thought say “We didn’t do a lot against him, obviously,” and then in the thought after that say “We made it challenging for him.”

“We had a little bit of a down weekend offensively, which is going to happen,” Boone said. “But credit to them.”

Yes, credit to the fourth-place, under-.500 Tigers. The Yankees’ offense remains two hitters Soto and Aaron Judge and Wells when he’s allowed to play, which has been just one of three games since Trevino and his noodle arm and noodle bat have returned. The Yankees’ run total for the season is built on infrequent blowouts like the one against the White Sox or the random one against the Phillies or the 30 runs over two days against the Brewers back in April. Getting blanked by a starter with a 5.28 ERA like they did on Saturday or getting shut down by an elite pitcher like Skubal like they did on Sunday is more of who they are. Over the last 19 innings against the Tigers, the Yankees scored two runs: one on a wild pitch and one from the automatic runner.

10. The Yankees are now 8-7 in August against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox and Tigers. None of those five teams are even .500, let alone playing with postseason aspirations. Next up is a three-game series at home against the Guardians, a first-place team that’s 20 games over .500.

I don’t know how the Yankees will play against a team with a winning record given how they played over the last two weeks against some of the league’s worst. I do know Dominguez will remain in Triple-A, Peraza will remain on the bench, Volpe will play every day, Trevino will take at-bats from Wells, Torres and Verdugo will alternate hitting leadoff and in the middle of the order and Holmes will be closing.

The Yankees had a day off after taking two out of three from the historically-bad White Sox. Next up, a series against a fifth straight opponent headed home in October.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ 10-2 drubbing of the White Sox on Wednesday was a welcome sight and result, even if those who watched the game didn’t find it completely enjoyable as the White Sox led 2-1 in the seventh inning.

After going home run, home run, home run, walk on Tuesday, Juan Soto homered in his first at-bat of the game on Wednesday, and later on, Aaron Judge became the fastest player to 300 home runs in terms of at-bats in history (it was really his 301st home run as he had a home run incorrectly ruled a triple back in 2017). Everyone in the heart of the order homered as Austin Wells went back-to-back with Judge in the eighth inning.

2. Wells has been so good this season. His OPS is up to .773 and it’s .845 since April 23. He has a .938 OPS since July 13, which is the first day he became the everyday catcher with Jose Trevino going on the injured list. It turns out giving a player who has had regular, everyday at-bats his entire life those regular, everyday at-bats leads to improved performance. Who could have known?

3. Wells has solidified the cleanup spot (at least against right-handed starters, as Aaron Boone continues to use Giancarlo Stanton as the cleanup hitter against left-handed starters), but the Yankees still have a leadoff problem. It would be wise to give Wells a run as the leadoff hitter, but wise and Boone don’t exactly go together, so I’m sure we will see more of the Alex Verdugo/Gleyber Torres leadoff platoon, because why wouldn’t you want to give the most possible plate appearances to your two worst hitters?

4. The series win over the White Sox was the minimum acceptable result against a team that is on pace to be the worst in history, but I don’t think any Yankees fan feels any better about the team than they did before they went to Chicago and beat a team everyone beats (the White Sox are 2-26 in their last 28 games). The free fall was put on hold after the five straight wins over the Red Sox and Phillies and the all-out collapse seems to be over for good, but the Yankees have a lot of work to do between now and the 163rd game they will play this season, which brings us to some reader questions …

5. When does “It’s right in front of us!” change to “Where did it go?” – Floyd

I always view “It’s right in front of us” as the Yankees making the postseason since it seems that is what Boone is referring to when he says it. We know the Yankees’ organization goal has fallen from winning a championship to simply reaching the postseason, so it makes sense to think that’s what “It’s right in front of us” is tied to. Boone first used the phrase in 2022 when the team’s 14 1/2-game division lead dwindled down to a single game in the loss column. The Yankees rebounded to hold on to the division, but were thoroughly embarrassed in the ALCS that season. Last season, the phrase made a return, but it quickly went from “It’s right in front of us” to “Where did it go?” The Yankees’ season was over in mid-July after Clay Holmes had the biggest ninth-inning meltdown of his career in Miami and the team never recovered.

When the league went to the six-team format two years I figured the Yankees would never miss the postseason again. I didn’t think they would miss it in the second season of the format. The Yankees aren’t going to miss the postseason this season like they did last season. Their five-game winning streak against the Red Sox and Phillies at the end of July made sure of it. Barring a monumental collapse, we won’t have to hear “It’s right in front of us” again this season, so it will never turn into “Where did it go?” this year, in terms of making the playoffs.

6. Why does Aaron Boone try so hard to be positive about everything, when we, the fans that watch the games see otherwise? – Jim

Boone’s positivity stems from him thinking he is protecting his players, even if his ridiculous quotes and inaccurate evaluations of their performances does more harm overall than good. For instance, Boone thinks if he tells the media Nestor Cortes had “good stuff” after he got pulled in the fourth inning of a start that it’s better for the media, Yankees fans and public to think he’s a delusional clown than it is for everyone to think he’s being hard on his starting pitcher. I don’t know why Boone can’t simply tell everyone that what he saw is what they saw. It’s not like his be-positive-no-matter what persona has worked. The team hasn’t reached the World Series during his tenure, has failed to meet every expectation during that time and is coming off the franchise’s worst season in three decades. Boone hasn’t changed, evolved or improved as a manager in now his seventh season. It’s both worrisome and scary that he thinks what he’s doing is working. He has two division titles in six years, had to play in two wild-card games, lost in the ALDS twice and the ALCS twice and missed the postseason once. He is solely judged by the fanbase on how the team performs in October, which brings us to …

7. Brian Cashman will always be in the Yankees organization, what will it take for Boone to be terminated? – Dave

I had this exact conversation over text message with friend John Jastremski (formerly of WFAN and now of The Ringer) two days ago. To me, I think all Boone has to do is win the division and his option for 2025 will be picked up. You would like to think he would have to at least reach the World Series in his seventh try at it to be the Yankees manager in 2025, but obviously the bar for success is much lower than that for his boss (Brian Cashman) and his boss’ boss (Hal Steinbrenner). Boone’s contract was up after the 2021 season, a season in which the Yankees were favored to win the World Series and instead finished third in the AL East and fifth in the AL and their postseason was one game, and he was given a new contract. Since getting that new contract, Boone endured a second-half free fall in 2022 and was swept in the ALCS after using “highlights” from the 2004 ALCS as motivation from his team. The next year the team had their worst season in 30 years and missed the postseason. This season, the team has played poorly since mid-June and may not win the division and would end up in the best-of-3 wild-card series. If the Yankees don’t win the division and lose in that best-of-3 series, I don’t think his option gets picked up. But if the Yankees win the division or just reach the ALDS (even if they lose in the ALDS), I think it’s a guarantee his option gets picked up for as sad as that is.

8. Why do the Yankees play down to their competition? – Michael

Over the last two weeks, the Yankees went 7-5 against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers and White Sox. All four of those teams are counting down the days until Game 162, so their miserable seasons can end. The Yankees should have done much better than they did against those four opponents. August was supposed to be their chance to create separation from the Orioles and give themselves better than a 50/50 chance to win the division. August is now half over and the Yankees have the same record as the Orioles. They have failed to take advantage of their weak schedule.

The Yankees are poor at situational hitting, have an inconsistent and top-heavy lineup, a bad bullpen and a mediocre rotation. They make sloppy mistakes in the field and on the bases and have a manager who puts the team at a disadvantage in late-and-close games. Add all of that together and talent and payroll don’t matter when you’re playing inferior teams.

There is still time for the Yankees to pad the win column this month with the Tigers, Rockies and Nationals on the schedule, it just won’t be what it could have been. “It just won’t be what it could have been” is a good way to summarize the Boone Yankees era.

9. How do we reconcile all the flaws we KNOW this Yankee team has with the reality that it’s also in first place with one of the best records in MLB?  – Chris

There is no great team in the majors this season with no clear favorite to win it all. There’s usually one or two teams that are inarguably better than every other team, but not this season. Since June 14, the Yankees are 23-29. For one-third of the season they have played .442 baseball and are still tied for the most wins in the majors with 72. That shouldn’t be possible given how bad they have been for so long.

It’s both good and bad the Yankees are in their position. It’s good because despite their poor play for two months they have the same record as the Orioles and can win the division. It’s bad because while they have played poorly, so have the Orioles, and the entire team, coaching staff, front office and ownership have shown a lack of urgency in their play and management because their standing hasn’t changed. After every loss, Boone and at least one player of his will mention how the team is still in a great position, and it’s because the Orioles have been as a big of a mess as the Yankees. That doesn’t make it OK. The Yankees shouldn’t feel good about themselves and their record because the Orioles failed to run away with the division over the last two months. The Yankees should feel that they failed to run away with the division over the last two months.

10. The Orioles played on Thursday and beat the Red Sox 5-1. The win puts the Orioles at 72-50 on the season, just like the Yankees. But because the Orioles hold the head-to-head tiebreaker (6-4), if the season ended today, they would have a bye to the ALDS and the Yankees would play in the best-of-3 wild-card series. (It turns out the ninth-inning meltdown loss in Baltimore in the last game before the All-Star break was a big deal.)

The Yankees have a much easier schedule from here on out than the Orioles, but with the Yankees going 7-5 against the Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers and White Sox over the last two weeks, it doesn’t matter who the Yankees play, no win is easy to come by for this team, and that holds true for this weekend against the Tigers.

The Yankees bounced back from their disgraceful loss to the White Sox by beating the worst team in baseball history 4-1 on Tuesday.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. For every game that comes off the schedule, Yankees fans are one day closer to not having to watch Gleyber Torres or Alex Verdugo play for the team. But for every game that comes off the schedule, it also means Yankees fans are one day closer to Juan Soto possibly no longer being a Yankee.

It’s a thought I don’t even like to think. It’s a world I don’t want to envision: one without Soto on the Yankees. But it’s a very real possibility and given Hal Steinbrenner’s knack for crying poor in every opportunity he gets despite the Yankees generating more revenue than any other team in the game, it’s a world Yankees fans must be prepared to live in.

2. On Tuesday in Chicago, Soto single-handedly beat the White Sox, hitting three home runs and driving in all four of the Yankees runs in their 4-1 win. Without him, the Yankees would have suffered a second straight defeat to the worst team in the history of baseball, a team that has won two games in a month. It was the first three home run game of Soto’s career, but it was already his sixth multi-home run game as a Yankee, having had one two days earlier as well.

3. “I feel like in watching Juan, I’m watching one of the best seasons I’ve ever seen,” Aaron Boone said. “I try not to take it for granted. I just know that is one tough at-bat, every single day.”

Boone is watching one of the best seasons he has seen, or anyone has seen. And he’s smart to not take it for granted since as of now there are only 41 guaranteed games remaining with Soto in a Yankees uniform.

4. Aaron Judge called Soto “the greatest hitter in the game” despite Judge having a season rivaling his historic 2022 campaign. Soto, in turn, called Judge “the greatest one” on Tuesday.

Judge may be the AL MVP frontrunner, but he’s right that Soto is “the greatest hitter in the game.” Soto, at age 25, already has 193 home runs and 739 walks. When Judge was Soto’s age, he had played in 45 major-league games.

5. Soto is just four months older than “kids” Oswaldo Cabrera and Ben Rice and only nine months older than Austin Wells. He will be 26 years old on Opening Day 2025, coming off the best season of his career and having not yet entered his prime. He’s the guy you open the checkbook for and give him whatever he wants.

6. “Look, we went and got him and paid a big price to bring him here, because we know what a special player he is,” Boone said. “We’ve seen every bit of that and probably more.”

The first part of what Boone said is why I feel the Yankees will re-sign Soto in that the Yankees “paid a big price to bring him here.” I don’t think they went into this thinking it would only be a one-year thing. But once he hits free agency, it’s out of their control, unless they are the highest bidder.

7. The Yankees are set up to be able to pay Soto with Torres’ $14.2 million and Verdugo’s $8.7 million coming off the books. That’s $22.9 million right there. Add it to Soto’s current $31 million, and there’s the roughly $50 million per year it’s going to take to keep him. Factor in Wells, Cabrera, Rice, Anthony Volpe, Luis Gil and Jasson Dominguez all making nothing in terms of major-league salaries and the Yankees are set up to meet Scott Boras’ demands for Soto.

8. Re-signing Soto isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Without him and with him signing elsewhere, the countdown for the end of Torres and Verdugo may have been for nothing with the Yankees potentially re-signing one or both with the funds put aside for Soto. Losing Soto would be disastrous because the Yankees wouldn’t have him making them worse, another team would making that team better and the available free agents not named Juan Soto aren’t once-in-a-lifetime talents.

9. We know what the Yankees are without Soto, even with Judge at his best. I don’t want to relive that over and over until Judge exits his prime. At 32, who knows how long Judge has left of his prime. I don’t buy the idea Judge would be upset by being the second-highest paid player on the team behind Soto, who will undoubtedly sign for more than the $40 million salary Judge receives. With salaries rising each year, are the Yankees supposed to not sign anyone until Judge retires and is no longer the highest paid player on the team? I think Judge wants to win to erase being the face of these Yankees, a group that hasn’t won in his first seven seasons, and Soto helps his chances at winning.

10. With Soto (25), Wells (25), Volpe (23), Rice (25), Dominguez (21) and Jazz Chisholm (26), the Yankees would set up for the foreseeable future with a strong, young core to potentially have the kind of future the last core could have had, but didn’t. It all hinges on re-signing Soto. If the Yankees don’t re-sign Soto then none of it matters. If they don’t re-sign him, being a Yankees fan won’t matter.