The Yankees were close to winning two out of three against the Orioles and also close to being swept. They ended up losing two of three, and lost a game in the standings on one of the two teams they are currently chasing.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I miss the Cincinnati Reds. Unfortunately, the Reds don’t play in the AL East, and the Orioles do, and the past three nights were a reminder of what life is like in the toughest division in baseball, where every team is over .500, and there are no easy games. Not even games against Kyle Gibson are easy.

It was a bad few nights in the Bronx, and if not for Aaron Judge, it would have been a whole lot worse. The Orioles got burned by Judge in the series opener and decided they weren’t going to let a one-man offense beat them, so they stopped giving him pitches to hit. Judge walked five times in the series, but only had one hit: the game-tying home run on Tuesday night. The Yankees go as Judge goes, and if he isn’t being given the chance to swing the bat, the Yankees aren’t going to score runs. Certainly not with Oswaldo Cabrera (.553 OPS), Kyle Higashioka (.591 OPS), Jose Trevino (.598 OPS), Jake Bauers (.616 OPS), Isiah Kiner-Falefa (.635 OPS), Anthony Volpe (.649 OPS) and Willie Calhoun (.689 OPS) combining to make up five-ninths of the lineup every game.

2. That home run was made possible by Gerrit Cole’s inability to pitch well against a team the Yankees are chasing. After his best month as a Yankee in April, Cole’s May has been extremely bad given his status and ability: 27 IP, 31 H, 15 R, 14 ER, 12 BB, 26 K, 6 HR, 4.67 ERA, 5.68 FIP. A lot of hits, a lot of earned runs, a lot of home runs, a lot of walks and not a lot of strikeouts.

On Tuesday, he got the first two outs of the game on five pitches and it seemed like he would finally have a quick opening frame and a pitch count that wasn’t in jeopardy. He needed 22 pitches to get the final out of the first.

Cole put the Yankees in a 2-0 hole in the first inning and by the fourth inning it was a 4-0 hole. The Yankees managed to tie the game at 4 through 5, but in the sixth Cole gave up his fifth run of the game to give the Orioles a 5-4 lead. Cole was pulled without recording an out in the sixth, and it was the third time in five starts in May he has failed to record more than 15 outs, after never recording less than 17 in six starts between March and April.

3. Cole’s drop off from his unbelievable first six starts kind of coincides with the crackdown on Yankees pitchers using sticky stuff. The post-sticky stuff crackdown in baseball in 2021 led to a much different and less effective Cole, and the recent issues with Domingo German (twice) and Clarke Schmidt might have spooked the Yankees into laying low for a little with whatever substance they are using and how they are “hiding” it. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Cole has been trying to pitch “clean” in May to avoid being questioned or suspended, and the numbers suggest that may be the case.

4. I know Nestor Cortes isn’t using sticky stuff. At least he wasn’t using it in the seventh inning on Wednesday when he let the left-handed, light-hitting Adam Frazier take him off the right-field pole for a three-run home run. If I hadn’t watched the excruciating moment happen and you had asked me to guess which Oriole hit a three-run home run off Cortes, Frazier and his 49 career home runs in eight years would have been the last Oriole I would have guessed.

5. Aaron Boone will nearly always pull his starting pitcher in a close or relatively close game if they are about to face the order for a third time. He chose not to do that on Wednesday with Cortes on the mound, and Cortes gave up three runs in the span of three batters, and the Yankees’ four-run lead became a one-run lead. Jimmy Cordero didn’t have it (0.1 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 1K), blowing the lead and then some, and Albert Abreu who rarely ever has it (and was due for a clunker) brought gasoline to the fire Boone gathered the kindling for, Cortes loaded up the wood on and Cordero lit the match for by allowing his two inherited runners to score and then one of his own. When all was said and done, the Yankees left the seventh inning they entered leading by four, trailing by five, after an eight-run Orioles outburst.

Cortes can’t be trusted to go through a lineup three times unless the game is truly lopsided. A four-run game against the Orioles offense at Yankee Stadium isn’t lopsided enough. Opposing hitters have a .524 OPS the first time they see Cortes, .630 the second time and 1.548 the third time. Boone knew these numbers and still stayed with Cortes on Wednesday. (Boone is only partly to blame though as Cortes needs to be able to get out someone like Frazier there.)

I wish the eight-run inning was the worst thing to happen for the Yankees in the three games, but it wasn’t, thanks to Thursday.

6. On Thursday afternoon, Randy Levine spoke about Aaron Hicks being designated for assignment. “The priority is putting the best team on the field,”Levine said with a straight face. A few hours later, Levine’s manager posted this lineup:

Gleyber Torres
Aaron Judge
Anthony Rizzo
Harrison Bader
Willie Calhoun
Anthony Volpe
Oswaldo Cabrera
Ben Rortvedt
Greg Allen

I’m not sure how the Yankees are putting the best possible team on the field when six of the nine starters aren’t even league-average hitters for their careers. Because the Yankees fielded a mostly Triple-A lineup on Thursday, the result of getting one-hit by Gibson through six innings was unsurprising.

The Yankees didn’t pick up their second hit off Gibson until the seventh when Calhoun led off with a single. With Calhoun representing the tying run, Cabrera quickly erased any threat with a double play.

7. It’s time for Cabrera to be sent down. It’s well past time. He’s in the fifth percentile of the league in expected batting average and the third percentile in expected slugging percentage. He doesn’t barrel the ball up (17th percentile), doesn’t hit the ball hard (24th percentile) and doesn’t walk (21st percentile). He doesn’t do anything well, other than make outs.

Cabrera was a breath of fresh air last summer when the only major-league bat in the Yankees lineup at times was Judge and Yankees fans were yearning for someone, anyone to enter the lineup not named Aaron Hicks, Joey Gallo or Josh Donaldson. Cabrera can get back to being that guy, but it’s not happening at the major-league level and the Yankees can’t afford to continue to run him out there every day hoping he figures it out in real, meaningful games.

8. Unlike Cabrera, I don’t think Volpe should be sent down, but it would be good to get some semblance of consistency. Maybe that’s asking too much. Each time Volpe has a couple of good games, I think ‘OK, he’s figured out the majors and is going to go off’ only for that to not happen. In the four-game Tampa series, he hit .333/.333/.733, and in the three series since, he’s hit .118/.205/.265. He’s hitting .199/.284/.365 on the season and his Baseball Savant page is full of blue like Cabrera’s.

The plan with Volpe was to bat him ninth and ease him into his major-league career. That’s how the season started, but injuries forced him to the top of the lineup and underperformance moved him back to the bottom third. It’s unfair to ask Volpe to carry the offense or be one of the most important pieces of it, but that’s what’s happening because everyone outside of Judge, Rizzo, and at times Torres, has been a disappointment (again). I don’t expect Volpe to be a superstar at this point, but he can’t be an automatic out like he has been. Not because he will or should get sent down (since there is no other option), but because he needs to just be better.

9. In one of the rare occurrences when Boone does the right thing, he did the right thing on Tuesday, bringing in his elite relievers to hold the deficit at one run to give his offense a chance to come back in the game. It worked out. He had the same opportunity on Thursday and chose not to, and the Orioles’ one-run lead became a three-run lead, and the run the Yankees scored in the ninth was meaningless rather than the game-tying run. Boone needs to do more of what he did on Tuesday and less of what he did on Thursday, especially in one-run games and especially against division opponents.

10. The Padres are coming to town this week with old friends Matt Carpenter and Rougned Odor and old rival Xander Bogaerts. (Manny Machado is on the injured list.) After upsetting the Dodgers in the NLDS and reaching the NLCS, the Padres went out and gave Bogaerts a 50-year contract, tried to do the same for Trea Turner and made a late push to sign Judge away from the Yankees. Despite their offseasons and all of their moves in recent seasons, this season has been a disaster to date for them. They are four games under .500 at 23-27, are in fourth place in the NL West and 7 1/2 games behind the first-place Dodgers. They desperately need to turn their season around, and maybe Odor’s go-ahead, three-run home run in the ninth inning on Thursday in Washington D.C. was that.

I hope that home run isn’t going to send the Padres on a run where they play to their potential for the next three days in the Bronx and beat up on Randy Vasquez making his major-league debut in the series opener and then stifle the Yankees’ embarrassing excuse of an offense. The law of Yankees suggests Odor and Carpenter will go off this weekend against their former team and I’m extremely worried about it.

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The Yankees went 6-1 on their seven-game road trip, finishing with a sweep of the Reds. More importantly, they made a roster move that was long overdue by designating Aaron Hicks for assignment.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees won three of four in Toronto and Aaron Boone started off the three-game series in Cincinnati with a lineup resembling the Yankees having just clinched the division. Jake Bauers leading off (why is this still a thing), Willie Calhoun batting fifth and an 8-9 of Kyle Higashioka and Aaron Hicks. After losing a home series to the 100-loss Reds last year, I was prepared for a letdown series from the Yankees with the end of the road trip in sight and a day off on Monday, and Boone wasn’t doing anything to calm my fears with the lineup.

The Yankees took an early lead on another Aaron Judge home run and tacked on two more runs in the sixth for a 3-0 lead. Clarke Schmidt had given the Yankees five scoreless innings in his best start of the season, but that wasn’t good enough for Boone. With a rested bullpen after Boone elected to play roulette with Albert Abreu and Ryan Weber in the series finale in Toronto, Boone decided to double down on his ridiculous bullpen management in the first game in Cincinnati.

2. Boone let Schmidt start the sixth and face the top of the lineup for a third time. After a leadoff single, Boone stayed with Schmidt and Schmidt then gave up a double. Second and third, no outs. The Reds now had the tying run at the plate with their 3-4-5 hitters due up. That was enough for Boone. He wasn’t going to let Schmidt completely ruin the game, just set it up for the next guy to come in and potentially ruin with a tiny margin of error and without a clean inning to work with. Jimmy Cordero came in, allowed a two-run double to the first batter he faced and followed it up with a walk. Cordero settled down to retire the next three batters, but the Yankees’ lead was now only 3-2.

With nine outs to go and clinging to a one-run lead, Boone would have his choice of Michael King, Wandy Peralta or Clay Holmes for the seventh, who were all rested. His choice for the seventh inning? Abreu. Truly unbelievable.

After pitching a a 1-2-3 inning on Thursday in Toronto, Abreu had apparently erased all the disastrous appearances he has recorded this season and in his Yankees career. He was pitching in a high-leverage situation on Friday despite the entire bullpen being available. Boone lucked out as Abreu was able to pitch around a two-out walk.

Finally, in the eighth, Boone went to Peralta, who pitched a perfect inning, and then in the ninth the Yankees scored three runs (and Kyle Higashioka earned three weeks of negative criticism immunity for his ninth-inning double), so Boone was able to use Nick Ramirez to close out the game.

3. I was surprised when I saw the news of Aaron Hicks being designated for assignment on Saturday. Confused and surprised. Hicks had finally started hitting (.353/.450/.647 in his last 20 plate appearances) and now the Yankees were going to get rid of him? The timing was odd and actually quite infuriating.

Infuriating, not because I wanted Hicks to remain a Yankee. No, I haven’t wanted him to be a Yankee for a long, long time. (I didn’t want him extended, so of course I didn’t want him still be here). But infuriating because the Yankees chose to not upgrade their outfield in the offseason, believing Hicks would magically revitalize his career after three injury-plagued seasons with below-average production.

“I suspect he will be the guy that emerges [in left field],” Brian Cashman said in late January. “Because he is still really talented and everything is there.”

It took 76 plate appearances (of which the last 26 percent of those plate appearances were finally major-league caliber) for Cashman to go from believing Hicks was “still really talented” and a player with “everything there” to giving up on him.

The Yankees never truly thought Hicks would be an everyday player in 2023. Because while Cashman and Boone spent the offseason and spring training hyping him up to the media, it was Oswaldo Cabrera starting in left field on Opening Day.

Hal Steinbrenner gave Judge a franchise record $360 million and to cover that amount without hurting his balance sheet, Hal was going to pull from other places. Those places would be left field and the bench. So Hicks spent nearly two months barely playing, sitting on the bench so infielders could play the outfield over him, moping around and complaining about his playing time to the media and being a zero at the plate when he did play.

The plug should have been pulled on Hicks last season when he went month-long stretches without extra-base hits and played the outfield like he was blindfolded. Boone benched him several times throughout the season and even removed him midgame against the Rays for his miscues. In a season in which Hicks said, “If I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is,” it was irresponsible to continue to roster him for all of 2022, keep him on the roster in the offseason and then play him (even if sparingly) in 2023.

“Hopefully we can get the Aaron Hicks we know is in there back as a consistent player for us,” Cashman also said in January.

The player Cashman spoke about as “getting back” never really existed. It was a mirage. That player would be the 2018-19 version of Hicks who hit a 162-game pace of home runs of 32 and had an .813 OPS when the baseball was juiced to the point that Gleyber Torres hit 62 home runs, Brett Gardner hit 40, Ketel Marte hit 46 and Christian Yelich was Barry Bonds. Those seasons were in no way true indicators of what a player’s ability was or is.

Hicks’ inability to stay heathy and produce cost the Yankees a lot more than the $70 million they extended him for in February 2019. (Immediately after signing the extension, he hurt his back on a 35-minute bus ride in spring training.) It cost them the chance to sign Bryce Harper, who Cashman said “wasn’t a fit” during the two-time NL MVP’s free agency because Cashman was planning on an outfield combination of Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Hicks, Clint Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury. Whoops! (Reminder: Cashman’s contract was extended this past offseason.) It cost them Ezequiel Duran, Glenn Otto and Josh H. Smith when they had to trade for Joey Gallo to make up for Hicks. It cost them three more prospects when they had to trade for Andrew Benintendi because Gallo didn’t work out. It cost them Jordan Montgomery when they had to trade for Harrison Bader. Sometime this season it will cost them an extension for Bader or in the offseason an overpay in free agency to re-sign Bader.

Cashman always thought he had found Bernie Williams 2.0 in Hicks, but what he had was a major disappointment disguised as a former first-round pick. Thankfully, Hicks is now gone and a piece of this group of Yankees that represents disappointment and coming up short is no longer part of the team. There will be much less booing for players on the home team at Yankee Stadium now. That is, until Josh Donaldson returns.

4. The Yankees have a good thing going right now. Anthony Rizzo at first Torres at second, Anthony Volpe at short and DJ LeMahieu at third. So when Donaldson does come back, he’s going to screw it all up. Eventually, he too, will likely be designated for assignment once the Yankees feel as though they have gotten their money’s worth of the $51.5 million they agreed to pay him. Continuing to roster Donaldson, like Hicks, is another move that doesn’t make sense.

5. It didn’t make sense that Jhony Brito started Saturday’s game without an opener. I guess the strategy worked out too well in his last outing for the Yankees to try it again. Brito was his usual bad self. He allowed a first-inning run after a walk, balk and double. After Judge tied the game with an RBI single in the top of the third, Brito gave the run back in the bottom of the third. Then in the fourth he allowed a two-run home run to 9-hitter Luke Maile to put the Yankees behind 4-1. I think the Yankees will go back to using an opener for Brito the next time he gets the ball. Then again, I thought they would sign an actual major-league left fielder in the winter.

In the top of the fifth, trailing by three runs, Isiah Kiner-falefa (who is going to put Bader on the injured list st some point with his lack of awareness playing the outfield) hit his second home run of the road trip. (I have a feeling there was a performance-enhancing drug test waiting for Kiner-Falefa at his locker after the game.) Ben Rortvedt in his Yankees debut followed with a single, as did Torres. The Yankees trailed by two with the tying run on base and Judge at the plate. Judge hit a booming double off the left-field wall, scoring Rortvedt and moving Torres to third. The Reds went to lefty Alex Young to face Anthony Rizzo and Rizzo singled to left to score Torres. On the Rizzo base hit, Judge was sent home and the throw was at the plate waiting for him before he entered the picture on TV. It was an inexcusable send. If Judge is held at third, it’s first and third with one out for DJ LeMahieu against a lefty. Instead, it became a runner on first with two outs. Sure enough., LeMahieu singled on the first pitch he saw, but the Yankees didn’t score again in the inning. 4-4.

Boone decided his elites relievers had had enough says off so he employed them on Saturday. Ron Marinaccio, King and Holmes all pitched, combining for five innings of one-hit ball. After the Yankees scored three runs in the top of the 10th to take a 7-4 lead, I figured Holmes would go back out for a second inning of work to close out the game. Nope. Boone went with Weber, who is the last pitcher in the majors you want to see pitching in extras, only leading by three with the automatic runner on. Thankfully, the Reds suck, and Weber was able to close out the win. (The longer the Yankees roster Abreu and Weber, the better the likelihood of the duo costing the Yankees immensely increases.)

6. The Yankees had clinched the three-game series and with the series finale on Sunday presenting getaway day into a day off on Monday and the end of a 17-games-in-17-days stretch, I knew to expect a wild Boone lineup on Sunday. Like clockwork, Boone sat Judge, batted Calhoun fourth and Bauers sixth (why not leadoff all of a sudden?!).

Major-league pitching hasn’t been able to slow down Judge (.378/.491/.911 since coming off the IL), so Boone decided he would do whatever he could to cool off his best player. Between Judge’s day off on Sunday and no game on Monday, we all know who to blame if Judge struggles against the Orioles the next three days.

7. A day after DFA’ing Hicks, Luis Severino made his season debut. Severino walked the first batter of the game and allowed a bizarre first-inning run because the Yankees continue to play first baseman Bauers in the outfield, but otherwise was as good as possible for five innings. He obnoxiously was pulled at 75 pitches after 4 2/3 innings because the Yankees think they have some magic pitch count formula to protecting their pitchers’ arms, which is why Severino has pitches so much since the end of 2018.

After being shut down by the hard-throwing Hunter Greene for four innings, the Yankees finally solved him in the fifth and sixth innings and carried a 4-1 lead into the ninth.

8. Last year, Clay Holmes blew a ninth-inning, 3-0 lead, allowing four runs without recording an out against the Reds. I thought something similar may happen on Sunday.

It took eight pitches for Holmes to retire Matt McClain on a flyout. Then he allowed back-to-back singles to Jake Fraley and Spencer Steer. After striking out Nick Senzel, he walked Stuart Fairchild to load the bases. A double would likely tie the game and a home run would win it. Fortunately, Holmes got Will Benson to ground out to end the game.

It’s incredibly hard to trust Holmes and has been for a while now. You really have no idea which version of him you’re going to get each time he pitches. A week ago I gave my current Order of Trust Reliever Rankings as follows:

Michael King
Wandy Peralta
Ron Marinaccio
Ian Hamilton
Jimmy Cordero
Clay Holmes

They are still the same, just with Hamilton removed as he’s on the IL. (Again, no, those aren’t all the Yankees reliever, those are just the ones I trust even a little bit.)

9. Gary Sanchez returned the majors on Sunday as a Met. While I hate the Mets, I still like Sanchez and am happy to see him back in the bigs, even if it’s with the Mets. (I will continue to root against the Mets, but root for Sanchez.)

Sanchez went 1-for-3 with an RBI in his 2023 and Mets debut, and the Mets won the game 5-4. Sanchez caught Max Scherzer, who had his best start of the season with six shutout innings with Sanchez behind the plate, which I found odd since the Yankees made Sanchez out to be incapable of catching star pitchers. I guess that’s only a Gerrit Cole problem.

10. Cole will start the series opener against the Orioles on Tuesday, which is a big series since every game and every series is big, especially in the AL East where being above .500 puts you in last place, like the Blue Jays are at 25-23. The Yankees will see Ryan Bradish, Tyler Wells and Kyle Gibson over the next three nights as they try to make up ground on an Orioles team that is three games ahead of them (four in the loss column) in the standings. While the Yankees are playing the Orioles, the Rays will be playing the Blue Jays, so each Yankees win will mean picking up a game on at least two AL East team and each Yankees loss will mean losing aa game on at least two AL East teams.

Maybe the Yankees will use the best possible lineup in each of the the next three games and utilize their best relievers when the situation calls for it? Ah, who am I kidding?

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available as an ebook!