The Yankees have won two straight games against the Orioles after having an atrocious road trip in Oakland St. Louis.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Tuesday was the one-month anniversary of the first game the Yankees played without Aaron Judge after he injured his his toe at Dodger Stadium. In the 26 games without Judge (since June 4), the Yankees are 13-13. They have lost series home series to the well-below-.500 White Sox and last-place Red Sox (winning just one of six against the Red Sox overall), split with the Mets, scored eight runs in a three-game series at Fenway Park, scored one run in a loss in Oakland to the last-place A’s, lost a series to the last-place Cardinals, got no-hit through through 5 2/3 innings by ex-Yankee Jordan Montgomery and then took the first two games of their current four-game series against the Orioles. In the 24 games against the non-A’s, the Yankees scored 81 runs, or 3.38 per game. Even if you add in the A’s series in which the Yankees scored 22 runs over the three games, they still only scored 103 runs in 26 games, or 3.96.

Shohei Ohtani is the “best” player in the sport, and likely the best player of all time. He isn’t the most valuable. Judge is the most valuable player. Not just in the American League, but the entire majors as the Yankees are 17-19 (.472) when he doesn’t play this season and 31-19 (.620) when he does.

2. The last two days the Yankees won extremely important games against the Orioles, who have a plus-13 run differential and have won six more games than their record suggests. (The Yankees have a plus-39 run differential and have won one more game than their record suggests.)

The Orioles are a good team, built on a top-heavy offense (much like the Yankees), limited starting pitching (much like the Yankees with their injuries) and a great bullpen (much like the Yankees). If injuries didn’t exist, the Yankees would be a much better team than the Orioles, but unfortunately they do, and the Yankees are still three games behind them in the loss column. The good news is the Rays have lost three straight, so the Yankees now only trail them by seven games in the loss column.

3. After another forgettable series in St. Louis, Giancarlo Stanton has finally looked like a major-league hitter at the plate against the Orioles (3-for-7 with a walk). Josh Donaldson? Not so much.

Since Aaron Boone reiterated that Donaldson would be an everyday player, he hasn’t been.

Donaldson sat two of the three games against the Rangers, played all three in Oakland, sat two of three in St. Louis and didn’t play again on Tuesday. He’s 0-for-7 with a walk in his last two games, and if you take away the Oakland series (since a team that allows this Yankees offense to score 22 runs against them in three games and allows Domingo German to pitch a perfect game against them isn’t a real team), Donaldson’s last hit was on June 16. Three weeks ago.

Sadly, that Oakland series is what is keeping Donaldson on the roster. The Yankees will use his numbers against the worst team in baseball history as a reason to justify rostering him, acting like his salary isn’t the reason. So Donaldson will continue to get booed because he will continue to make outs because he will continue to be washed up.

4. Michael Kay isn’t sure why Aaron Hicks is still getting booed in his return to Yankee Stadium. Does he not remember 2016 through a few weeks ago? Paul O’Neill doesn’t.

“He spent eight seasons here,” O’Neill said on Monday night. “I didn’t realize it was that long.”

I did, Paul. We all did.

I have no problem with Hicks. He didn’t ask for the Yankees to trade for him. He didn’t ask them to offer him $70 million to play baseball for them. He didn’t ask them to evaluate him as the next Bernie Williams. All he did was what anyone would do: accept a lot of money to be a major leaguer. Hicks being bad or a sunk cost is on the Yankees, not him. Of course Hicks hit a home run on Tuesday as the Law of Ex-Yankees struck again.

5. The Yankees are likely to give Harrison Bader a lot of money this offseason to make up for the Hicks blunder because they on’t have an everyday center fielder ready to play the position right now and because Bader is the star of the upcoming free-agent class not named Shohei Ohtani (yes, the class is that bad). When Bader plays, he’s really good. “When” is the key word though, and for a guy who will turn 30 next season who has been hurt for nearly all of his 20s … well, I’m writing exactly what I wrote about Hicks four years ago. It would be good if the Yankees could win the World Series this year with Bader then walk away from him in the offseason before they make a commitment that leads to fans booing him until his release four years from now.

6. In order to do that, the roster will have to change realistically between now and the August 1. Unless Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon are going to Randy Johnson-Curt Schilling the Yankees to a championship, the team needs to upgrade about two-thirds of the lineup. I don’t even know how that would be possible. With the streakiness of Stanton (who hasn’t been on a hot streak in a long time) and Torres, the automatic out Donaldson, the loss of power for Rizzo (he last homered seven weeks ago) and DJ LeMahieu looking like he never played baseball before, I don’t know how the Yankees expect to score runs consistently, even if/when Judge returns. I don’t think relying on a combination of Judge, Bader and Anthony Volpe is the way to go since those three won’t be enough to outhit their own manager in October.

7. After the series finale against the Cardinals, Boone talked about how good Montgomery was, but couldn’t hold back from talking about how poorly the umpires handled the Cardinals’ pitching change stall tactics. He also talked about how his own ejection was handled.

“I had a real problem with that,” Boone said. “The sensitivity on that, and the quick throwout was brutal. It was ridiculous. You’ve gotta have thicker skin than that.”

Boone is one to talk about having thick skin. It’s embarrassing when Boone argues balls and strikes. It’s cringeworthy. Umpires are good and bad both ways, and no umpire is holding the Yankees’ offense back. The offense just flat-out sucks. On top of that, Boone says he is against an automated strike zone. So he wants umpires to continue to have the responsibility of calling balls and strikes, he just doesn’t like how they call them. Got it.

8. The Yankees not having actual outfielders playing the outfield nearly cost the team both games against the Orioles on Monday and Tuesday. Every day the Yankees have at least one infielder playing the outfield and most days they have two. Once Judge comes back, it will be down to one at home since Stanton isn’t allowed to play left field at Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees desperately need a left fielder at the deadline, five-plus months after they failed to sign one all offseason.

9. Torres is an All-Star. That’s all you need to know about the state of second base in the American League.

10. Five more games until the All-Star break. Two against the Orioles and three against the Cubs. I think winning one of two against the Orioles is necessary and certainly winning a home series against the crappy Cubs should be a given. Normally, and by normally I mean if Judge were playing, I would expect four wins in the remaining five “first-half” games, but even with Judge out I’m expecting it. You can’t go 3-3 against the A’s and Cardinals and not make up for it somehow.

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The Yankees started a six-game road trip with a humiliating loss to the A’s. The Yankees scored one run against the worst team in baseball this year, and a team threatening to be the worst team in baseball history.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I knew I was making a bad decision and I did it anyway. Like staying out until last call when you know you have to be up in a few hours, I decided to stay up to watch the Yankees play the A’s with a 9:40 p.m. start time on Tuesday night. To say it was a regrettable decision is as big an understatement as saying Josh Donaldson is washed up.

Donaldson did hit a solo home run in his first game back in the lineup after a three-game benching when it seemed like a DFA was imminent for the oft-injured, underachieving, aging third baseman. That solo home run was all of the Yankees offense in their 2-1 loss. Yes, the Yankees scored one run, one single run against an A’s team that entered the game allowing a league-high average of 6.3 runs per game. ONE RUN!

2. This is the same A’s team that is playing out the plot of the movie Major League in real life (minus the “Let’s win the whole fucking thing” part). The same A’s team the Yankees managed to sweep last month at Yankee Stadium. The problem is this isn’t that Yankees team. Not close. That Yankees team scored 22 runs against the A’s in that three-game series. This Yankees team hasn’t even scored 22 runs in their last nine games.

The Yankees managed to go 4-2 on their six-game homestand last week despite being outscored 20-17 and scoring more than four runs in a game only once because of their pitching and only because of their pitching. Averaging 2.8 runs per game of offense is bad. Averaging 3.3 runs per game against is outstanding. The pitching was once again outstanding on Tuesday, allowing two earned runs in the loss. The offense was once again the worst in baseball since the start of June.

Since the start of June, the Braves lead the majors with 156 runs scored. The Yankees rank last with 67 runs scored. They have scored six fewer runs than the next-worst White Sox, eight fewer than the Royals and 15 fewer than the A’s. These Yankees are disgrace.

3. Without Aaron Judge (.291/.404/.674), Billy McKinney (.281/.305/.579) has become a solid “C” version of Judge. If the Yankees go as Judge goes, well, the same now goes for McKinney. McKinney went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts on Tuesday night, and the Yankees lost.

I’m not blaming McKinney for the loss. He doesn’t even deserve 0.01% of the blame for what transpired on Tuesday night. If he never gets another hit as a Yankee, he has done more than enough and more than anyone could have dreamed as a journeyman outfielder who is with his sixth team in six years. He was added as an outfield depth piece for the organization and was never supposed to get a single plate appearance for the 2023 Yankees. He was behind Oswaldo Cabrera on the depth chart, and Aaron Hicks, and Franchy Cordero, and Willie Calhoun, and Jake Bauers, and Greg Allen, and Isiah Kiner-Faleafa, whose an infielder, and even Estevan Florial, who the Yankees would rather give another $70 million to Hicks before ever giving Florial an extended look. It took Judge suffering some bizarre toe injury, Stanton not being allowed to play the outfield, Harrison Bader landing on the injured list for a second time, Cabrera being one of the worst hitters in the entire majors, Hicks being released, Cordero being the same-old bat he’s always been, Calhoun getting hurt, Allen getting hurt, Kiner-Falefa continually proving to not be an everyday major leaguer (and to me, not even a major leaguer) and the Yankees despising Florial for McKinney to get a call. The Yankees don’t deserve any credit for what McKinney is doing for them. He entered the season as the 10th outfield option, and became the 11th once the Yankees started using Kiner-Falefa in the outfield. He was supposed to be a depth piece living in Scranton all season. Instead, he and Bauers have become the Yankees offense because the veteran bats are among the worst in sport.

4. The Not So Fab Five of Stanton, Donaldson, Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres continue to suck, and saying they suck is putting it mildly.

I’m not kidding when I say if the opportunity to give Donaldson’s contract to Stanton and Stanton’s contract to Donaldson presented itself, I would seriously consider it. That’s how bad Stanton has been since he came off the injured list. I don’t know how someone who makes $197,530.86 per game can hit .113/.203/.226 for a month, but it’s happening. Stanton has struck out in 34 of his 114 at-bats in June. He’s hitting .205/.286/.443 in his last 575 plate appearances.

5. The moment Donaldson connected with that ball on Tuesday night that led to the Yankees’ only run, I was furious. Yes, I’m actively rooting against a member of the team I root for to win. It’s illogical, but so was trading for Donaldson and taking on the $51 million owed to him. Donaldson has seven home runs this season and they have all come in Yankees losses. Unfortunately, that meaningless home run will buy him another month of everyday at-bats on a so-called contender.

6. Do you remember the Yankees game on May 20? It was a Saturday afternoon game in Cincinnati. If you remember that game then you remember the last time Rizzo hit a home run. Nine days before Memorial Day and 39 days ago today, Rizzo hit a ball out. He was the only one of this collection of overpaid clowns to produce on last week’s homestand and is the only one who looks like he’s truly coming out of his career-worst slump. But it would be nice if the Yankees’ 3- or 4-hitter (depending on the day) could hit a home run once in a while.

7. LeMahieu doubled in back-to-back games played over the weekend against the Rangers and I was waiting for the game to be stopped so he could take off his helmet and salute the crowd and have the entire team come out of the dugout to give him hugs as if he achieved a historic milestone. The 2019 AL batting title runner-up and 2020 AL batting champion is hitting .227 with an OPS 101 points below his career OPS.

8. Torres had a nice day at Fenway Park for the doubleheader 10 days ago, making some think he was coming out of a slump. If you thought Torres would suddenly go on some sort of tear, you must be new around here. Since that day (June 18), he’s hitting .174/.240/.217 with one extra-base hit.

9. The White Sox have lost 11 of 17 since taking two of three from the Yankees in the Bronx. The Red Sox lost 19 of 30 before playing the Yankees, took five of six from the Yankees and have lost seven of 11 since their first meeting against the Yankees. The Mets have lost seven of 11 since Aaron Boone rested his bullpen and let the Mets split with the Yankees. The A’s have 21 wins this season and had lost 10 of 11 before Tuesday night.

10. “I’m a little confused, this year, being the third week of June, why they’re so upset,” Hal Steinbrenner said of Yankees fans to Michael Kay last week.

I highly doubt Hal Steinbrenner stayed up to watch “his” team lose to an A’s team on pace to lose 120 games. I doubt he even knows “his” team was playing last night. I don’t doubt that he’s still confused as to why Yankees fans are upset with the team’s roster and performance half way through the season. (After Thursday’s game, the Yankees’ season will be half over.)

“I’m a little confused, this year, being the third week of June, why they’re so upset,” Hal Steinbrenner said of Yankees fans to Michael Kay last week.

Can an A’s fan going to the game on Wednesday or Thursday and planning to make a giant sign telling A’s ownership to sell the team also make one for Hal Steinbrenner while they’re at it? Seeing that would at least make staying up late for Wednesday night’s game worth it.

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The Yankees went to Boston for three games and were swept. They have lost eight of 11 and four straight.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I didn’t think things could get worse for the Yankees over the weekend after they were humiliated in a 15-5 drubbing by the Red Sox on Friday night. But not only did things get worse (a lot worse), the 10-run loss in the three-game series opener was actually the best the Yankees looked at Fenway Park.

The Yankees began the series by scoring a run in the very first inning. That run was quickly erased when Domingo German allowed a pair of doubles, a walk and hit a batter for two earned runs in the bottom of the first inning. German, clearly choosing to pitch without sticky stuff, proceeded to allow another three baserunners and two runs in the second. Trailing by three with this Yankees offense meant a comeback would be nearly impossible, and German made sure it was impossible when he, Matt Krook in his major-league debut and the Yankees’ defense combined for six runs and a 10-1 Red Sox lead through three innings. By the end of the fourth, the Red Sox led 13-1. The game was long over when the Yankees scored four meaningless, garbage-time runs.

2. In the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, the Yankees once again got out to an early lead with a pair of runs in the first inning. Considering the Red Sox were willing to punt the game by starting barely-in-the-majors reliever Kaleb Ort as an opener with the plan to use 27th man Chris Murphy making his second career appearance as the bulk reliever, the game favored the Yankees.

Instead of ending the game in the first or taking advantage of Ort or Murphy at any point, the Yankees were shut out for the final 8 2/3 innings. After Gleyber Torres’ one-out home run in the first, they recorded just one hit (a sixth-inning leadoff double by Jake Bauers, in which he was obviously stranded) until there were two outs in the ninth.

Clarke Schmidt eventually imploded because Aaron Boone let him implode despite having an extremely well-rested Michael King ready in the bullpen, as Boone didn’t go to King with the lead, but rather once the game was tied. King couldn’t hold the game at 2-2, and the Yankees lost 6-2.

3. After that game, Boone started to get a little testy with the media, as he does when things aren’t going well for his team, which they haven’t been for a large part of his tenure.

“They’re gonna hit,” Boone said about his offense.

“‘Big G’ is gonna hit,” Boone said about Giancarlo Stanton, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in the day game.

“They’re gonna get it rolling,” Boone said about his offense, much like he said in 2021 and 2022.

Boone even took it one step further, using a prop for his postgame presentation.

“That team we’re rolling out there (he held up the lineup card from the 6-2 loss),” Boone said, “They’re capable of doing damage defensively.”

It was unbelievable comedy from the manager as a desperate man in desperate times. There’s no way Boone could actually believe a lineup featuring a majority of hitters with sub-.300 on-base percentages were capable of doing any damage other than to the Yankees’ postseason odds.

4. I grew up hating the Braves with the Yankees having played them in the 1996 and 1999 World Series (thankfully, winning both). But now I find myself jealous of the Braves and envious of their fans. The Braves have played 72 games and their four core position players (Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies, Matt Olson and Austin Riley) have all played every game this season. It’s no surprise the Braves are 22 games over .500 and have the best record in the National League, and it was no surprise when they trailed 5-0 early on Sunday only to win 14-6. A week ago, in a doubleheader the Braves played all their regulars in both games. Unsurprisingly, they swept the doubleheader. What a concept.

You know Boone is feeling it when he plays Stanton in both games of a doubleheader and claims he was going to play Stanton in the outfield in Boston (though he didn’t like a classmate saying they were going to say an answer to a question only after the answer is announced). Boone tried to play his best available players in both games on Sunday, but it didn’t matter because nearly all of the best available players on the Yankees belong in Triple-A. Unfortunately, Oswaldo Cabrera was the only one of them to be sent to Triple-A after Sunday night.

5. Like the first two games of the series, the Yankees started the series finale with a first-inning run. And then the offense did its daily disappearing act for a second time in the day. The Yankees never scored another run and lost 4-1. Kyle Higashioka committed catcher’s interference with the bases loaded to force in the go-ahead run in the fourth inning, hours after Nick Ramirez forced in a run with a balk in the first game. And hours after Boone said, “’Big G’ is gonna hit,’” Stanton went 0-for-3 with a walk and three strikeouts.

Brayan Bello shut down the Yankees with seven innings of one-run ball, and after scoring two runs on four hits in the day game of the doubleheader, the offense Boone said was “capable of doing damage offensively” scored one run on five hits in the night game. The Yankees produced three runs on nine hits in 18 innings on Sunday at Fenway Park.

6. At various times during Sunday’s doubleheader, Fenway Park broke out in expected ‘Yankees suck’ chants and I too wanted to join in on the fun. The Yankees do suck. Within the last week, Boone and the seemingly alternate captain (with Judge out) Anthony Rizzo both used the word to describe the team’s play.

“Losing sucks,” Boone said last weekend when the Red Sox beat up on the Yankees in the Bronx.

“It sucks,” Rizzo said after being swept over the weekend, “It’s definitely a low in the season.”

7. The Yankees have the lowest batting average and OPS in the majors since June 4, which was the first game Judge missed with his current toe injury that no one seems to know when it will be healed. They have the third lowest team OBP in the majors this season. They have lost four straight, are now 1-5 against the Red Sox (who are 32-34 against everyone else) and just went 3-8 against the Red Sox, White Sox and Mets. Add it all up and you have a team that sucks, though that’s not how Boone sees it.

“For the most part, we have been playing pretty well,” Boone said after Sunday night’s loss. “We just haven’t been scoring.”

Playing well and scoring go hand in hand in a game in which the object is to score more runs than your opponent. It takes a delusional person to see the brand of baseball the Yankees have played since they left Dodger Stadium two weeks ago and consider things to be going “pretty well.”

8. The Yankees are so poorly constructed that even when Judge returns the ceiling for this season remains exceptionally low. There’s nothing to suggest Stanton and Josh Donaldson will become their former selves since both are coming off the worst seasons of their careers and look worse this season than they did last season. The hope that DJ LeMahieu is actually healthy is fading, and once Rizzo’s mid-summer back issues flare up, a resurgence from him will be unlikely.

9. As I wrote last week, Bauers is the hitter I trust most right now on a team that has the second-highest payroll in the sport, and that’s disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is that this horrifically designed roster isn’t just a problem for this season, but is going to be a problem next season as well, as the star of the upcoming free-agent class is Harrison Bader. Bader declined the chance to come off the injured list to play in Boston this weekend, citing not feeling comfortable defensively yet. It was determined he would play two more rehab games and be activated on Tuesday, missing three actual games against a division opponent. I hope he was able to find himself defensively in the two meaningless Double-A games.

10. The Yankees have yet another day off on Monday before beginning a six-game homestand against the Mariners and Rangers. Bader should be back on Tuesday (until his next injury), so the Yankees will get a little healthier, though the only player return that matters is Judge’s.

Maybe on Tuesday Yankees fans will be given a positive update on Judge with an actual timeline for a return. Maybe Carlos Rodon will still be on the right path to eventually pitch for the Yankees as he continues to make about $700,000 each time his spot in the rotation comes up. Maybe at least one of Stanton, Rizzo, Donaldson or LeMahieu will start to hit on the homestand. I doubt it. All of it. It would take a true moron to think one or more of those things is going to happen. Then again, you have to be a moron to still be watching this team.

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