The Yankees lost again on Tuesday night in Anaheim. Their 5-1 loss to the Angels was their third straight loss and eighth in their last 10 games. They remain 2 1/2 games out of a playoff spot.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last summer when the Yankees nearly blew a 15 1/2-game division lead to the Rays, Aaron Boone got snippier by the day with the media, culminating in him slamming his fists on the table at a postgame press conference in one of the worst second-hand embarrassment moments I have had to endure with him as Yankees manager. Well, this summer is going a lot like last summer did, and Boone’s level of annoyance with the media he used to be a part of (and will once again be a part of if this season doesn’t turn around) is at an all-time high.

2. The Yankees played and lost again on Tuesday night in Anaheim, scoring just one run and producing only two hits. It was the latest offensive humiliation for a team that can make any starting pitcher look like a first-ballot Hall of Famer. In the last two week alone, they have been shut down by Jack Flaherty (4.95 ERA entering his start against the Yankees), Dean Kremer (5.04), Jameson Taillon (6.93), Austin Gomber (6.40), Chase Anderson (6.89), Griffin Canning (4.62) and Patrick Sandoval (4.41). When the Yankees aren’t playing the A’s they can’t score, and they are now 5-9 since the end of June against, the A’s, Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies and Angels. That’s three last-place teams, the worst team in the history of Major League Baseball, a team that’s six games under .500 and another team that wasn’t even .500 until the Yankees came to town. But like the Yankees’ recent weak opponents, they are a weak opponent for their opponents, sitting in last place in the AL East with the seventh-best record in the AL.

After Tuesday’s loss, Boone wasn’t in the mood to answer questions about why he isn’t good at his job and why his players aren’t good at theirs.

3. “We got really good players in there, Boone said. “A lot of guys are going through a tough, tough stretch.”

Who are the “really good players” the Yankees have? I can think of one position player: Aaron Judge (who hasn’t played in six weeks). Giancarlo Stanton used to be a “really good player,” but he’s a .207/.290/.454 hitter in his last 638 plate appearances. Anthony Rizzo used to be a “really good player,” but Thursday is the two-month anniversary of his last home run, and he has a .504 Ops in his last 178 plate appearances. DJ LeMahieu used to be a “really good player,” but he’s a .258/.340/.368 hitter in his last 1,544 plate appearances. Gleyber Torres has never been a “really good player” without the 2018-19 juiced baseball. Harrison Bader is a below-league-average hitter for his career. The Yankees catchers are a joke offensively, as is Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Oswaldo Cabrera is among the worst everyday players in Major League Baseball, Anthony Volpe has been a disappointment and Oswald Peraza has been in the league for a combined five minutes.

This isn’t a “tough stretch.” The Yankees have been a .500 team at 94-94 over their last 188 games. That’s the equivalent of a full season of being .500 plus another 16 percent of another season of being .500. That’s not a small sample size, and it’s certainly not a “stretch.” This is who these Yankees are: an average, .500 team.

4. “We’re going to keep competing,” Boone said, “Until we break through.”

That quote might as well have come from the 2021 season or the second half of 2022 because it was used so often by Boone then as well. Spoiler alert: Those teams never broke through and this team won’t either.

“They’ll find it,” Boone said of his offense. “They will find it.”

No, they won’t. His 2021 Yankees never found it, and neither did his 2022 Yankees. Both of those teams were massive disappointments and the 2023 Yankees are set up to be the biggest disappointment yet, and the team that will cost Boone his job.

5. I think deep down Boone recognizes he will be fired if the Yankees don’t make the playoffs. He has to. There’s no surviving missing the playoffs when you manage a team with the highest payroll in the AL and not reaching the postseason when 40 percent of the league does. It doesn’t matter that Boone isn’t the one who poorly built a $300 million team. Brian Cashman will remove anyone under and around him to save himself, and that started when Dillon Lawson was fired, as if he were the issue with the offense.

“Obviously, we have a new voice in there with Sean Casey,” Boone said. “I think he already has had an impact and is starting to get to know those guys.”

If a hitting coach is graded on the success of the offense they “coach” then Casey is the worst hitting coach of all time. The Yankees couldn’t touch Gomber or Anderson in the best-hitting ballpark in the league at Coors Field, and now they have scored four runs in 19 innings against a pitching staff that the Astros just hung 28 runs on in three games this past weekend. Lawson wasn’t the problem, and Casey wasn’t the answer. The offense just sucks. It sucked last year and zero new pieces were added to it.

6. The Yankees were a wild-card team with Judge (30-19) and without him (20-27) they are basically the White Sox.

“That’s what the story is, so we can correct it,” Boone said of being able to win without Judge. “We got the players to do it. We have the players with track record to do it.”

No, no you don’t.

“I understand that’s the story and it’s fair for this year,” Boone continued about the Yankees’ performance without Judge. “We have been through stretches in ’19 where we were down Judge and ‘G’ and kept on banging.”

Boone is citing what the Yankees did four years ago when Judge injured his oblique in April and when Stanton missed all but 18 regular-season games.

What Boone is forgetting to mention is that LeMahieu was an MVP candidate that season, Torres was a budding superstar, Luke Voit had an .842 OPS, Mike Tauchman played like Mike Trout for a month, Gary Sanchez hit 34 home runs and Brett Gardner hit 28.

What Boone also forgot to mention is that the AL East was top heavy that season with the Yankees (103 wins) and Rays (96 wins) being the only good teams. The Red Sox suffered a World Series hangover, the Blue Jays had yet to arrive (95 losses) and the Orioles were one of the worst teams of all time (108 losses). Not only did the Yankees get career years from their roster, they also rarely had to play a competitive team. 2023 isn’t 2019.

7. “Last night against Canning he kind of shut us down,” Boone said, “But we at least made him work hard to do it.”

Well, at least the Yankees made Canning work hard to strike out a career-high 12 batters! That should make all Yankees fans feel better about the team losing that game, being in last place and no longer holding a playoff spot.

8. “The care factor is so much,” Boone said. “The game is so damn hard and hitting is so hard you have to strike that balance between focus, work, preparation.”

After Monday’s loss, Boone told us how happy he is with the Yankees’ “compete” and now after Tuesday it’s about their “care factor.” Two unmeasurable, fake traits. Here I was thinking that wins and losses were what mattered in baseball and in the standings, when all along it’s been “compete” and “care factor.” The Aaron Boone Yankees: Six-Time Compete and Care Factor World Champions. Maybe they can have a ring ceremony for that because it’s the only ring ceremony any team managed by him will be getting.

9. “It’s on all of us. On me, on coaches, on staff, on players.”

Wait, what’s that? No, it couldn’t be, could it? Is that … ACCOUNTABILITY? Is that Boone placing some of the blame for this season not just on the players, but also on himself?

I have heard nearly every word Boone has ever said as Yankees manager, and he has never once took even an ounce of blame for any issue or loss with the team. Not once. This is a major breakthrough and an exciting and very important first step in Boone becoming somewhat respectable as Yankees manager. However, I highly doubt he will build off this moment and ever mention himself as part of the problem again.

10. “We got a lot of pride in there,” Boone said. “You want to win and that’s why you show up every day.”

The Yankees have lost three straight. They have lost four of five to open the “second half.” They have lost eight of their last 10 and seven of their last 18. If they are showing up every day with the goal of “wanting to win” they may want to lower expectations.

How about they show up on Wednesday with the goal of scoring more than one run against a pitcher with a 6.08 career ERA making his 17th career appearance. That would be a start.

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The Yankees had another late lead, and they blew it in what was another loss. The Yankees let Shohei Ohtani beat them in a 4-3, 10-inning loss in Anaheim.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. For the majority of the season the Yankees have done everything they possibly can on the field to tell the front office and ownership that this roster isn’t worth investing in prior to the trade deadline. Over the last two weeks they have gone on a full-blown campaign to make the message clear: THIS TEAM ISN’T GOOD. Monday night served as the latest reminder of this and the most spectacular of all.

The Yankees lost to the Angels 4-3 in 10 innings on Monday night. It was their seventh loss in their last nine games, and their major-league-leading 18th extra-inning road loss since 2020. They once again ran the bases like they needed to be pegged Wiffle ball-style to be called out, struck out a ridiculous 17 times, blew a late lead and managed as if they wagered against their own team.

2. After failing to beat up on Austin Gomber and Chase Anderson and their near-7.00 ERAs, I joked a few hours before Monday night’s series opener in Anaheim that Griffin Canning and his 4.62 ERA may as well be late-’90s Pedro Martinez. And late-‘90s Martinez he was, striking out a career-high 12 Yankees and throwing 120 pitches as if it were a postseason game for the Angels. Griffin couldn’t get threw the third inning in his previous start against the Dodgers, and in his start before that, he allowed five earned runs in six innings to the Diamondbacks.

“The one good thing was they were kind of up against with the bullpen, same as us,” Boone said of his offense against Canning. “We were able to drive his count up and make him work at least.”

In terms of Aaron Boone Moral Victories, the Yankees lead the league. If the actual standings cared about Aaron Boone Moral Victories, the Yankees would have clinched the AL East already this season and would be looking at their sixth straight World Series championship.

But all driving Canning’s pitch count up did was turn the ball over to the Angels’ bullpen, which the Yankees also couldn’t hit.

The Astros put up 28 runs this past weekend in their three-game series against the Angels, and scored 18 runs against the Angels’ bullpen. The Yankees managed to scratch across one run in 4 1/3 innings against the same bullpen.

3. The one bright spot in the offense came from Oswald Peraza. Peraza hasn’t been good enough to be a Yankee in the organization’s eyes nearly all season, but he was good enough to bat leadoff on Monday night in his first start since his recent call-up. I will never understand the Yankees, but I don’t think it’s possible to understand them since they have no idea what they are doing.

Peraza was passed over in spring training in favor of Anthony Volpe. Volpe has maintained his everyday spot all season despite his massive struggles, and yet, Volpe was hitting five spots lower in the order on Monday night in Anaheim than Peraza, who needed a Josh Donaldson calf injury to get back majors. Make it make sense.

Peraza reached base all five times in the game with a single and four walks. 

4. It kind of was a postseason game for the Angels. At 46-48 entering the game, the Angels are in an even worse position than the Yankees. Phil Nevin is managing for his job, and the team needs to win and reach the postseason to have a prayer in re-signing Shohei Ohtani in the offseason. Despite lacking any major-league-quality hitters outside of Ohtani and the injured Mike Trout, no starting pitching outside of Ohtani and a horrendous bullpen, the Angels were able to battle their way to a win over the Yankees. It was a postseason game for the Yankees too, but you wouldn’t know it from the way they played and managed.

In the fifth inning with the game knotted at 0 and runners on the corners with two outs, Boone chose to intentionally walk Shohei Ohtani. It was the right decision. After years of letting the opposition’s best hitter beat his Yankees (cough, Rafael Devers, cough), Boone decided he wasn’t going to let the Angels’ only hitter with Mike Trout injured beat him. He put Ohtani on first, Luis Severino got Mickey Moniak to line out, and the game remained tied at 0.

Eventually the Yankees broke through and in the seventh inning, they had a 3-1 lead and were nine outs away from an important win (especially with the Orioles and Rays having lost earlier in the night). Boone turned to Michael King in relief of Severino, who finally provided the Yankees with a solid start (6 IP, 1 ER with a season-high 13 swings-and-misses), and King immediately struck out Trey Cabbage.

5. King got ahead of Eduardo Escobar 0-2, but then threw four pitches out of the zone to walk the Angels’ 9-hitter. The lineup turned over to Zach Neto, and King made quick work of him, getting him to strike out on five pitches. Then with two outs, Ohtani walked to the plate, representing the tying run with Escobar on first.

Boone had already set a smart precedent earlier in the game that Ohtani wasn’t going to be the reason the Yankees lost the game. If Moniak were to beat the Yankees, so be it. But it wasn’t going to be the best baseball of all time.

Or was it.

Boone chose to have King pitch to Ohtani.

6. King fell behind Ohtani with a first-pitch ball and Ohtani fouled away second-pitch 94-mph sinker at the bottom of the zone. Ohtani foul tipped a 96-mph, middle-middle fastball for a second strike, and King was in the driver seat. Rather than expand the zone with a 1-2 count, though, King came back in the zone with a 97-mph fastball and Ohtani crushed it 403 feet over the left-center wall. Tie game.

Why didn’t Boone put Ohtani on? Well, the Yankees manager said he never even considered it as an option.

“No, no, no,” Boone said. “Maybe if he Escobar had gotten to second base and fallen behind in the count or something. Not there.”

A triple “no” from Boone to emphatically describe how serious he was about not doing anything other than pitching Ohtani there.

“No, not in that spot,” Boone reiterated. “The guy hitting behind him is hitting .330 too.”

7. The guy hitting behind him was Moniak. The same Moniak Boone chose to face instead of Ohtani earlier in the game. As is always the case with Boone, he’s like a Blackjack player that stays with a 16 and the dealer showing a 7 sometimes, and then other times hits in the same situation.

Moniak entered the game hitting .326 in 151 plate appearances. He is a career .239/.285/.444 hitter in 318 plate appearances. Boone chose to pitch to the best power hitter in the game this season for fear of Moniak representing the tying run. It would be like an opposing manager choosing to pitch to Aaron Judge and citing Billy McKinney being on deck as the reason why.

“We did a lot of good things tonight,” Boone said with a straight face.

It was yet another meltdown from King on the mound. After unraveling at Coors Field on Friday night, he did the same at Angel Stadium.

8. Meredith Marakovits asked Boone after the game about King “struggling his last seven or eight times” pitching, and Boone was quick to interrupt Marakovits.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t say the last seven or eight times,” Boone said. “I would say he struggled there for about three or four then had a couple of really good ones.”

Who to believe? Marakovits, the well-established clubhouse reporter who always does her research, or Boone, the compulsive liar who you can’t trust to tell you what day of the week it is?

Here are King’s last 12 appearances:

2 IP, 2 ER
1.1 IP, 1 ER
1 IP, 0 ER
1.1 IP, 3 ER
0.2, 1 ER
1 IP, 1 ER
1 IP, 0 ER
3.1 IP, 0 ER
2.2 IP, 1 ER
1.2 IP, 0 ER
2 IP, 2 ER
0.2 IP, 2 ER

“Tonight I thought stuff-wise he was good,” Boone said of King’s game-ruining performance. Maybe ask Ohtani how good his stuff was.

9. Once the game went to extra innings, the Yankees were doomed. Not only because they are the worst road team in the majors since the automatic runner rule was implemented three years ago, but because they let the Bullpen Budget rule their decisions. No matter the month, the score or the importance of the game, Boone isn’t about to use his top relievers when he desperately needs them.

“Wandy, Tommy, Hamilton were down,” Boone said, “And Clay I was going to use in a save situation.”

Ah, the old save your best reliever to pitch to a fake statistic in an extremely important game. Always a wise decision that never comes back to haunt any manager.

Because every elite reliever was “down,” Boone turned to Nick Ramirez. Ramirez was the one who allowed the game-tying home run in extra innings in Colorado on Sunday, and on Monday, he took the loss as the Angels walked off on the Yankees.

10. “There were a lot of good things that happened tonight,” Boone said, “Especially from a compete standpoint.”

I’m glad the Yankees had a lot of “compete” in them in Anaheim. Let me know where I can find the amount of “compete” games up they are on the Rays, Orioles, Blue Jays and Astros in the standings.

Only one thing that mattered happened on Monday and it wasn’t a good thing: the Yankees lost. In last place in the AL East and now 2 1/2 games out of a playoff spot, that’s all that matters.

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The Yankees picked up post-All-Star break right where they left off. After losing two of three to the Cubs before the break, they lost two of three to the Rockies after it. They are in last place in the AL East and are out of a playoff spot.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees got a gift. They got a gift of opening the “second half” of the season with nine games against the NL-worst Rockies, Mike Trout-less Angels and barely-better-than-the-A’s Royals. It would be the perfect opportunity for the Yankees to make up ground in the postseason race, and possibly position themselves to hold a playoff spot when Aaron Judge potentially returns, and for when Brian Cashman finally does what he was expected to do in the offseason and upgrade the offense. They have pissed away one-third of this scheduling gift.

In the last two weeks, the Yankees have had a third player in eight seasons suspended for domestic violence, went 3-3 on a road trip against the last-place A’s and last-place Cardinals, lost a home series to the Cubs, disgraced the iconic Yankees uniform with a Starr Insurance jersey sleeve advertisement, fell to last place in the AL East, fell out of a playoff spot, fired their hitting coach and hired Aaron Boone’s friend of 30 years with no coaching experience for the position and now lost two of three to the worst team in the NL.

2. “It’s baseball, Major League Baseball,” Boone said when asked how he could call his Yankees “championship-caliber” when they can’t beat the worst team in the NL. “Save it with that question.”

The Rockies are barely Major League Baseball. They are rostering the two worst starting pitchers in the majors in their rotation with the only goal of them eating innings until their miserable, lost season ends. Austin Gomber entered Friday with a 6.40 ERA and an .884 OPS against (the equivalent of every hitter being about Juan Soto against him). The Yankees scored two runs off him before they made an out in the game and then didn’t score another run off him or any Rockies pitcher for the rest of the game. On Sunday, Chase Anderson entered the game with a 6.89 ERA and a .932 OPS against (the equivalent of every hitter being about Freddie Freeman against him). He shut out the Yankees for five innings.

3. So much for Sean Casey “having an impact” like he promised he would when he was sketchily hired. I say “sketchily” because this is what A.J. Pierzynski said he heard at the Home Run Derby in Seattle about how the firing of Dillon Lawson and hiring of Casey supposedly went down.

“When were at the Home Run Derby, someone told us the story of how it happened, and this was like a week ago that Boonie called Casey and said, ‘Hey, will you be my hitting coach?'” Pierzynski said. “And Casey’s like, ‘I don’t know, brother,’ and then he called him back and said he would do it because he said it was a no-lose situation. If they do great, he’s the hero, and if they do shitty like they already are, he’s like, ‘Eh, it’s two months.'”

If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, since Pierzynski is more than well connected in the league, and because Boone is buddies with Casey, it’s a pretty disturbing way for Cashman and the Yankees to conduct business, and also proves their timeline of the events were a flat-out lie. Cashman said he asked for Hal Steinbrenner’s “blessing” to make the first in-season coaching change of his general manager tenure just before he fired Lawson. (As if Hall Steinbrenner even knew who Lawson was.) Only the best from and for the New York Yankees.

4. Casey was made out to be a hero by YES in the first inning of Friday’s game when he was shown celebrating Giancarlo Stanton’s first-inning home run off Gomber as if he were the winner of the current historic Powerball drawing. I didn’t see much of Casey for the rest of Friday’s game as the Yankees never scored again in the game, and didn’t see any of him for the rest of the weekend, as the Yankees scored two runs off Gomber and Anderson in 11 innings, and at one point, had a streak of 12 straight scoreless innings at Coors Field. Casey was never going to fix the Yankees because they are unfixable. Hitting coaches are neither good nor bad. My two-year-old and one-year-old could be the head and assistant hitting coaches of the Braves right now and it would have no impact on Ronald Acuna’s inevitable NL MVP win.

The Yankees scored two runs on Friday, managed to score six on Saturday and then only scored on Sunday because of a parade of comedic errors from the Rockies’ defense. (There’s a reason why they’re 22 games under .500). With Sunday’s loss, the Yankees maintained their place in the basement of the division and fell to two games out of the last playoff spot.

5. Seven years ago, the Yankees were slogging their way through July when Cashman decided to sell instead of buy and reset the Yankees’ roster. This July feels a lot like that July. Here is what he said about July 2016 after the 2016 season.

“It was a series of twists and turns of this year. We obviously had high hopes,” Cashman said. “It was a mixed bag. It was a very frustrating and difficult process in the first three months of the season. Ultimately, we know when the dust settled, when it’s all said and done, the season did not achieve the stated goal, which was the first get to the playoffs and try to compete for a championship in October.”

That sounds a lot like this season, doesn’t it? He also said this about the decision to sell at the 2016 deadline.

“We have a worldwide network of fans that we’re proud to have. They’re very sophisticated,” Cashman said. “This was something that we think is something that they wanted to transpire, and they wanted us to press the reset button. And you know, in many cases I was tired of seeing what was transpiring in the first few months this year. Been there, done that, it’s time to do something that wasn’t part of the DNA. I think our fanbase recognizes what we did in July, and responded in kind with a lot of excitement.”

6. Maybe the Yankees will rip off six straight wins against the Angels and Royals and a week from today they will hold a playoff spot with a week to go until the deadline. But if they don’t, and this road trip that is off to a catastrophic start continues to unravel, they should not invest in this team and further deplete their farm system to fill holes they could have filled in the offseason using just cash, the thing they make more of than any team. Unfortunately, no matter what happens between now and the trade deadline, I don’t see the Yankees selling. And no matter what happens between now and the trade deadline, Boone isn’t worried.

7. “I’m not worried about where we are,” Boone said on Friday in response to falling into last place in the division. “It’s all right there in front of us.”

Boone has never been worried a day as Yankees manager, and why would he be? As long as Cashman holds his position, Boone is bulletproof. Boone survived the 2018 ALDS Games 3 and 4 debacle. He survived his bullpen management in the 2019 ALCS. He survived his pitching decisions in he 2020 ALDS. He survived the Yankees losing home-field advantage for the 2021 wild-card game and a loss in that game. He survived his choices in Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS and using the 2004 ALCS as a motivation tactic for his team when trailing 3-0 in that series. He received a multi-year contract extension with an option after creating a comfortable-with-losing culture in a clubhouse that doesn’t know what the term “accountability” means. There’s always tomorrow in Boone’s world as he preaches what the Broadway orphan sang about. The sun will come up on Monday in Anaheim for Boone as Yankees manager, and it will come up at the end of the season when it inevitably ends in an early playoff exit or even without a playoff appearance.

8. When the postseason expanded to five teams and the one-game, wild-card playoff, I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t want to have to experience the Yankees possibly playing in a one-game playoff. (Little did I know, in 10 years with that format, they would play in four of them.) Even though I didn’t like the idea of the Yankees appearing in a one-game playoff for my health, it made it easier to stomach knowing they would never miss the playoffs with 33 percent of the league reaching the postseason inn that format. (Little did I I know, they would miss the playoffs three times in the 10 seasons with that format.)

When the postseason expanded to six teams last year, I had the same feeling as I did when they expanded to five. I didn’t want the Yankees to have to play in a best-of-3 and possibly even a best-of-3 with all three games on the road. But I knew with six playoff teams per league and 40 percent of teams reaching the postseason, the Yankees would never miss the postseason again. Not with their financial resources. Well, the possibility they won’t reach the postseason is already a thing in Year 2 of the format.

9. The Yankees need to pass the Red Sox to be the first team out of the playoffs. Then they need to pass the Astros who they are two games in back of for the last playoff spot, or the Blue Jays who they are three games in back of. The first wild-card spot is gone as a path to the postseason. If you think the Yankees can catch the Orioles, then you think they can catch the Rays since the Rays now have more losses than the Orioles and are only ahead of them in the standings because of percentage points since they have played four more games. The Yankees have two paths to the playoffs, and the Red Sox, Astros and Blue Jays stand in their way. Not exactly a great place to be.

10. “We got two-and-a-half months to put ourselves in a position to be championship-caliber,” Boone said on Sunday, walking back claims from the Yankees that they are already “championship-caliber.”

I don’t look at the rest of the season as “Hey, the Yankees have two-and-a-half months to turn the season around.” I look at it like “I can’t believe I have two watch this team for another two-and-a-half months.”

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The Yankees ended the “first half” of the season with an embarrassing home series loss to the Cubs. When the “second half” of the season begins, the Yankees won’t be holding a postseason spot.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. During the first weekend of May, the Yankees went to Tropicana Field and lost two of three to the Rays. In that series finale they blew a 6-0 lead with Gerrit Cole on the mound. The loss dropped the Yankees to 18-17 on the season and 10 games out in the AL East.

Here is what I wrote at the time:

If you’re a Yankees fan who values your health and well-being, stop watching this 2023 team right now. Just walk away from this miserable roster, moronic management and clueless front office and enjoy life. Write down a list of things you wish to learn or achieve and take action. Always wanted to learn how to play a specific instrument? Well, 7 to 10 p.m. just opened up for the next five months on your calendar.

The 2023 Yankees are truly awful. Their wins are painful to acquire and their losses are excruciating to sit through. There’s very little to be excited about when watching the team, and when Aaron Judge isn’t playing there’s basically nothing to be excited about. (This is exactly why Hal Steinbrenner had to write Judge a blank check in free agency. He’s the only marketable everyday player on the team, and likely the only thing from keeping a faction of Yankees fans from learning guitar or piano instead of consuming Yankees baseball for the rest of 2023.)

That was two months and 56 games ago. Think about the hundreds of hours you could have spent learning guitar or piano or a new language, or doing anything other than watching Hal Steinbrenner exponentially grow his inherited net worth despite selling a mediocre-at-best product.

This weekend provided a reminder that this Yankees team sucks. They are on a path to nowhere and all I will have to look back on at the end of the season is the thousands of hours I wasted consuming a bad baseball team that could have been spent doing anything else.

2. Sunday’s loss was the perfect way for the Yankees’ “first half” to end. It wasn’t as magnificent as their loss in the final game of the “first half” of 2021, when they held a 7-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth in Houston, only to allow six runs, including a three-run, walk-off home run to Jose Altuve, but it was still quite spectacular. Aaron Boone managed his team to a painstaking loss, and then after the game, his biggest supporter in Brian Cashman fired the team’s hitting coach. It was the first time in Cashman’s 26 years as general manager that he fired a coach in-season.

“I wanted to give things a chance to work its way through, but I feel honestly at this point, it’s not going to improve, at least as it sits,” Cashman said. “It doesn’t mean the offense couldn’t have gotten better organically, but I feel like we’ll be better served with a new messenger.”

3. I’m more upset that Lawson got fired than I am that the Yankees lost two of three to the Cubs and fell out of a postseason spot. Not because I like Lawson or think he’s a good coach, since I don’t think any hitting coach is good or bad or matters. But because of what his firing represents. The same way I didn’t hate Rougned Odor the person/player or Aaron Hicks the person/player as Yankees, I just hated what they represented as Yankees. The firing of Lawson represents Cashman scapegoating yet another Yankees employee in what has been nearly 14 years of his own roster mismanagement.

4. This 2023 roster Cashman built is a disgrace. The Yankees have the highest payroll in the American League, and it’s comical Mr. Fiscally Responsible Hal Steinbrenner allowed his general manager to spend $300 million in such an irresponsible manner. If as a teenager, your parents had given you $300 to go to the store and buy groceries for the week for your family and you came back with two-dozen two-liter bottles of soda, 14 bags of Sour Patch Kids, six tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, eight boxes of Chips Ahoy cookies, four loaves of bread, seven bags of chips and three overpriced, about-to-expire rotisserie chickens, I don’t think you would be allowed to do the grocery shopping for your family again. Somehow, Cashman gets to keep building the Yankees roster.

5. There is nothing the Yankees can do at the trade deadline to go from the team they are now to a team capable of winning the World Series without running into a month-long streak of incredible, unimaginable luck in October. This is who they are and who they are going to be and that is a collection of overpaid, underachieving, aging disappointments. Their third baseman has a .232 on-base percentage. Their designated hitter, whose only job is to hit, has a .276 on-base percentage. Six of their nine everyday player have sub-.300 on-base percentages. They have given 533 combined plate appearances to players with a sub-.600 OPS. In the last week, they have been thoroughly dominated by Jack Flaherty, Jordan Montgomery, Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish and Jameson Taillon. In late June, they lost games started by Paul Blackburn, and Kaleb Ort.

6. The 2014 Yankees didn’t have a single everyday player under 30. They did have 40-year-old Derek Jeter, 40-year-old Ichiro Suzuki, 38-year-old Alfonso Soriano, 37-year old Carlos Beltran, 36-year old Brian Roberts  and 34-year-old Mark Teixeira, as Cashman rebuilt the 2005 All-Star team nine years too late. Kevin Long lost his job over that lineup.

The 2015 Yankees relied on 39-year-old Alex Rodriguez, Jacoby Ellsbury, Chase Hadley and Stephen Drew. When that didn’t work out, Long’s replacement Jeff Pentland lost his job after one season.

Pentland’s replacement Alan Cockrell oversaw the 2016 on-the-fly rebuild, Aaron Judge’s historic rookie season, the best full season of Gary Sanchez’s career and a 25-home run season from Didi Gregorius. The 2017 Yankees came within one win of the World Series, and it didn’t matter. Like his manager, Cockrell was fired.

Marcus Thames worked his way up through the organization and replaced Cockrell. After four years, Thames failed to get all the right-handed bats Cashman acquired and signed to learn how to become switch hitters, so he was fired.

Then there was Lawson, who lasted one-and-a-half seasons. After firing Lawson, Cashman moved quickly to hire Sean Casey with his impressive coaching resume of zero years of experience. Much like Cashman’s hand-picked manager in Boone who was hired with zero years of experience. And what do you know, Boone and Casey are long-time friends and former teammates.

7. “I’ve had the great pleasure of knowing Sean for close to 30 years, and his passion for hitting is infectious,” Boone said. “For anyone that’s ever come in contact with him, his ability to inspire is one of his greatest gifts, and I can’t wait for him to tap into our players and help them reach their potential. There’s no doubt in my mind that he will have a tremendous impact on our team.”

There’s no doubt in Boone’s mind Casey will have a tremendous impact. Six months ago, there was no doubt in Boone’s mind Hicks would be the team’s starting left fielder. Throughout this season, there has been no doubt in Boone’s mind Josh Donaldson still can be a middle-of-the-order, major-league bat. There was no doubt in Boone’s mind Joey Gallo was going to get going soon. There was doubt in Boone’s mind Luke Voit was going to play a big role for the team once they acquired Anthony Rizzo. There has never been a doubt in Boone’s mind his offense over the last three seasons is going to turn the corner and get rolling. I was worried the Yankees may miss the postseason in a format in which 40 percent of the league reaches the postseason. But then they fired Lawson and hired Casey and now I completely trust and believe in the entire organization and their plan.

8. Casey becomes the Yankees’ sixth hitting coach in 10 years. Since the team’s last championship, Cashman has gone through two managers, four bench coaches, three pitching coaches, six hitting coaches, four first base coaches and four third base coaches. It’s always everyone’s fault, and not the fault of the guy who actually builds the rosters. He just keeps getting contract extensions as the team keeps getting worse.

“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had pretty consistently high levels of offensive production,” Cashman said Sunday. “This year has been a completely different story. Ultimately, the end results are not that Yankees DNA that we’re used to seeing.”

No one lies like the Yankees. Whether it’s Hal Steinbrenner telling the public the team has a “championship-caliber roster” or Boone telling you his starter had “good stuff” on a night when he gave up six earned runs in four innings or Cashman here trying to say the offensive issues are unique to “this year.” If this happened to be a one-year thing then why have there been six hitting coaches in 10 years?

9. The Yankees are 93-90 over their last 183 games. You are who your record says you are, and the Yankees are a mediocre team and have been for more than a full season. They are now in fourth place in the AL East and one game from being in last place. They are 1-5 against the Red Sox, lost the season series to the Twins and have lost series to the White Sox, Cardinals and Cubs. Without Judge, they may not make the playoffs. With Judge, they are good enough to make the playoffs, but not good enough to do anything when they get there.

10. Enjoy the next four days and nights without Yankees baseball. From now through Thursday, you don’t have to worry about Donaldson being rostered or batting in the middle of the lineup. You don’t have to watch Giancarlo Stanton take middle-middle fastballs and swing at sliders in the dirt. You don’t have to sit through mental mistakes from Gleyber Torres at the plate, in the field or on the bases. You don’t have to wonder if a gust of wind may force Harrison Bader to the injured list. You don’t have to try to figure out how Isiah Kiner-Falefa reached the majors. You don’t have to wonder if Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu are on their way to washed up. You don’t have to observe infielders play the outfield and position players pitching. You don’t have to see a starting pitcher get pulled after throwing just 74 pitches and allowing one hit. You don’t have to wrap your head around why elite relievers can pitch in a game with the scored tied or the Yankees losing, but couldn’t pitch in the same game when the Yankees were leading.

For the next four days and nights the Yankees can’t hurt you or your mental, physical or emotional health. Savor it. Because starting Friday, they will have at least 71 more games to do so.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers
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