The Yankees have lost three straight series, seven of their last 10 and find themselves tied for last place in the AL East. The season is unraveling.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I celebrated the New Year and start of 2023 by writing ‘New Year, Same Yankees Lineup’ on January 1.

Here are some snippets from that blog:

I never believed Hal Steinbrenner when he told Aaron Judge he had the payroll flexibility to re-sign him and add more to the roster to essentially close the four-win postseason gap between the Yankees and Astros. And because I don’t believe a word this Steinbrenner says — unless he’s talking about how to implement harsher luxury-tax penalties, which in turn are bad for his franchise’s chances of winning and then every word he says is the truth — I’m not surprised that the Yankees’ lineup is the same it was two-plus months ago when they were laughed out of the postseason for the third time in six years by the Astros. Actually, it’s not the same, it’s worse.

That lineup at least had the potential to have a healthy Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi. The 2023 lineup will have neither, and the only addition made to it this offseason has been to re-sign Judge, a move for which Steinbrenner has been praised. Yes, the owner of the highest-valued franchise in the league that makes more money than all the other teams has been celebrated for retaining the team’s star player, in what should be a given. Steinbrenner has been referred as some kind of folk hero or legend for getting on the phone during his Italy vacation to speak with Judge and eventually agree to give him $360 million of the money he inherited from his father.

If you think there’s still a lot of time left in the offseason, there’s not. The Yankees’ roster you see today is most likely the one on Opening Day. The lineup you’re used to seeing underachieve and disappoint is getting yet another chance to “get over the hump” the team’s manager claims the team has been “close” to getting over in his five season as manager, only to come up shorter each time.

It’s not like anything I wrote was far-fetched, and it’s not like I made any wild, long-shot predictions. It was all obvious because everything about this team has been obvious for several consecutive seasons now. The Yankees internally keep thinking everything will change and work in their favor despite statistic, data, logic, reasoning and common sense suggesting otherwise. Only Yankees employees and the biggest of Yankees homers looked at this time on Opening Day and thought it was good enough to win a championship. After a month, only a fucking idiot could still look at this team and think that.

2. The Yankees have scored 116 runs in 29 games. They have scored the least amount of runs in the AL East, and unsurprisingly, they are tied for last place in the AL East with the Red Sox.

The only teams that have trail the Yankees in runs scored in the AL are Oakland (on pace for 129 losses), Cleveland (on pace for 75 wins), Kansas City (on pace for 123 losses) and Detroit (on pace for 103 losses). Even the White Sox (who are 8-21) have scored more runs than the Yankees. Going back to June 30 of last season, the Yankees are 61-63. A 124-game sample size.

3. Over the weekend, the Yankees lost three of four to the Rangers (including three straight) to finish their seven-game road trip at 2-5. In those three losses, the Yankees seemed to be on their way to getting no-hit by Jacob deGrom before he left the game injured, allowed Nathan Eovaldi to throw a complete-game shutout against them and then let the left-handed Martin Perez shut down their nearly-all-right-handed lineup. The Yankees were outscored 24-8 in the four games and scored four runs in the last three games of the series. Four runs in three games. In Texas!

4. In the second game of the series, this was the Yankees’ lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Anthony Rizzo
Gleyber Torres
Willie Calhoun
Oswald Peraza
Franchy Cordero
Oswaldo Cabrera
Aaron Hicks
Kyle Higashioka

Here was the Yankees’ lineup from Apr. 28, 2013, 10 years to the day earlier:

Brett Gardner
Ben Francisco
Robinson Cano
Vernon Wells
Francisco Cervelli
Ichiro Suzuki
Eduardo Nunez
Lyle Overbay
Jayson Nix

After 2013, I never thought I would see the Yankees create lineups as poorly constructed as that season, but here we are. And after the postseason expanded to six teams in each league, I never thought there would be a season in which the Yankees didn’t reach the postseason but here we are. There’s a very real chance the Yankees could not be in the top 40 percent of the AL despite having the highest payroll in the AL.

5. Aside from Aaron Judge (who I’m sure will be held out of the lineup for a few days while the Yankees play shorthanded only to later be placed on the injured lis) there’s no help coming. The Yankees are going to have to rely on the likes of Willie Calhoun, Franchy Cordero and Jake Bauers because there’s no one else. The team chose to not upgrade the everyday lineup through free agency or trades in the offseason and completely disregarded building a major-league-caliber bench on top of that. They purposely assembled a recipe for disaster and did so to perfection. This roster with the second-highest payroll in the sport was built this way intentionally.

6. Unfortunately, there’s no change to be made. This is all on Brian Cashman, but for the guy who has a lifetime contract from the Steinbrenner family, a disastrous 2023 season won’t result in any changes. Ownership and the front office will blame the season on injuries. It’s not like the Yankees’ injuries are surprising. Before last season, Judge would spend have at least one stint on the injured list per season. Josh Donaldson has played one “full season” in seven years. DJ LeMahieu came into this season having had his last two seasons end early due to injury. Anthony Rizzo missed 20 percent of last year with back issues that also flared up this spring. Harrison Bader has missed 30 percent of his games since becoming a major leaguer. Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks have nearly been hurt more than they have been available as Yankees. Carlos Rodon made 31 starts last year and in his other seven major-league seasons made more than 24 once. Luis Severino has started 22 regular-season games for the Yankees since 2019. Jonathan Loaisiga has been the pitcher version of Hicks when it comes to injuries. The Yankees’ injuries aren’t freak, unexpected occurrences. They are the result of oft-injured players getting injured again and again.

7. Injuries aren’t an excuse, but there’s no doubt in my mind the Yankees will cite that as the reason for this season if it doesn’t turn around. This team wasn’t going to be good enough if it stayed healthy. The best-case scenario would have been reaching the ALCS and losing to the Astros for a fourth time in seven years. The worst-case scenario would have been this.

8. The Yankees have buried themselves in the division. The Rays need to go 67-66 to win 90 games. Play one game over .500 for the rest of the season and they win 100 games. The Yankees would need to go 75-58 just to tie them in that scenario. Not only would the Yankees need to play .564 baseball for five months if the Rays play just .504 baseball, but the Yankees would need to separate themselves from the Red Sox and jump the Blue Jays and Orioles before overtaking the Rays. So yeah, the division is over before a game in May has been played.

Seven of the Yankees’ next 13 games are against the Rays, so by the end of play on May 14, we will know if the Yankees officially have a prayer to win the division. We could know well before them if the next few days against the Guardians don’t go well prior to the weekend series at the Trop.

9. I would sign up for a wild-card berth right now. I would take the 6-seed right now and I know what that would mean. It would mean going on the road for all games of a best-of-3, burning two or three of the Yankees’ best starters, and if able to survive, going on the road to Tampa without those two or three best starters. A 6-seed would mean an abbreviated postseason yet again.

In an ideal world, not reaching the postseason would be better than being the 6-seed because not reaching the postseason could lead to front office and managerial changes. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and the Yankees don’t operate in an ideal world where wins and losses matter and payroll is commensurate to team revenue. They operate in a world where “the process is more important than the results” (their words not mine) and everyone’s job is safe and winning is far from the priority. Every Yankees fan knows nothing will change even if this season ends with zero postseason games. Cashman has a job for life and Aaron Boone is his guy. This dynamic duo will be here for a long, long time and seemingly no level of losing, coming up short or incompetence will change that.

10. If the Yankees miss the postseason, nothing will change. If they reach the postseason and lose in the silly best-of-3, the organization will say they were “right there” even though everyone knows they weren’t, aren’t and haven’t been. So I might as well say I would take the lottery ticket 6-seed, which right now feels unattainable with this team.

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The Yankees scored 12 runs on Wednesday. It was four more runs than they had scored in their previous five games combined. One game doesn’t change how bad the offense is and it doesn’t change the fact they have now lost two series in a row.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Things are bad, real bad, and the Yankees’ 12-6 win over the Twins on Wednesday doesn’t change that. All that win did was salvage the final game of the series and momentarily pause the Yankees’ dismal play.

The Yankees opened the series by scoring one run in a 6-1 loss, a ninth-inning run that ended the Twins’ shutout bid. The Yankees were thoroughly dominated by old friend Sonny Gray, who threw seven shutout innings. The former Yankee has a 0.62 ERA in five starts this season. He had a 3.08 ERA in 24 starts last season. He had a 3.49 ERA in three seasons with the Reds and a 3.42 ERA in four-and-a-half years with the A’s. But for whatever reason, he had a 4.51 ERA in 195 2/3 innings as a Yankee, a full run higher than his 3.50 career ERA.

When Brian Cashman gave up on Sonny Gray after 2019, he said, “I don’t feel like we can go through the same exercise and expect different results,” and yet, the Yankees are going through the same exercise in 2023 as they did in 2022 and 2021 and 2020 with the offense, and most of the offense was here in 2019 and 2018 as well. So far, the results haven’t been different.

Part of Cashman’s all-or-nothing offenses was Joey Gallo (who the Yankees traded four prospects for) and then traded him away almost exactly a year later. Sure enough, there was Gallo hitting a moonshot against the Yankees on Monday (and again on Wednesday). Like Gray and like every other ex-Yankee, the Law of Ex-Yankees says every former Bronx Bomber has to perform well against them. Whether it’s Gray or Gallo or Thairo Estrada or Gio Urshela earlier this season or pitchers and players like Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Nunez and Steve Pearce in the past, it’s just the way it goes.

2. Monday was the second game in a row and third time in four games the Yankees scored a single run. Tuesday wasn’t much better, but it was technically better as the Yankees scored twice, losing 6-2.

“This was better than yesterday,” Aaron Boone said after Tuesday’s loss.

By Boone’s logic, if the Yankees could add a run each day to their previous day’s total then by the weekend they may have enough runs to win a game.

Thankfully, the Yankees didn’t have to wait until the weekend to score enough runs to win.

3. Wednesday’s 12-run outburst was refreshing. It was the most runs the Yankees have scored in a game this season and just the second time they have scored double digits (11 against the Guardians on April 11). Since that 11-2 win over the Guardians, here are the Yankees’ runs per game: 4, 2, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 9, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 12. That’s a lot of low numbers. That’s 51 runs in 14 games (3.64 runs per game) with 21 of the runs coming in two games. That means in the other 12 games, the Yankees scored 30 runs for 2.50 runs per game.

This isn’t anything new. The Yankees haven’t had a good offense for a long time. Since June 30 of last season they are 60-60. That’s not a small sample size. During that time, they nearly blew a 15 1/2-game lead, squeaked by the Guardians in the ALDS (the Guardians had the tying run at the plate in the bottom of ninth of a winner-take-all Game 5), were humiliated by the Astros in the ALCS, and now are scoring a reasonable amount of runs to win a game once per week.

4. Right now, the Yankees hold the third and final wild-card berth in the American League, so crazy Yankees homers have reminded me “If the season ended today, the Yankees would be in the playoffs.” Well, by that logic, if the season ended today, Willie Calhoun would be a middle-of-the-order bat for the Yankees, they would need to use Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes in the best-of-3 wild-card series, and if they were to survive it, they would then draw the Rays and have a combination of Clarke Schmidt, Jhony Brito and Domingo German starting the first two games of a best-of-5. I’m not sure how saying, “If the season ended today …” can be viewed as a good thing for the Yankees. This is a team that had the second-best World Series odds entering the season and is expected to compete for a championship. Yankees fans are now content with being the last team in a six-team postseason field?

5. As I wrote earlier in the week, this isn’t a slump, this is the Yankees offense. This is who they are, and there is limited help on the way. Harrison Bader and Josh Donaldson are upgrades over some of the current everyday options, but neither are going to carry the offense. They just won’t be the automatic outs their replacements have been. (That may be me underestimating just how bad Donaldson is and can be.)

Things are so bad offensively, that Calhoun and his -2.1 career WAR and career .697 OPS have been batting fifth. Fifth! For the New York Yankees in real games! By WAR, Calhoun is the worst player to have played in the majors since 2020. The entire majors. I thought it was bad 10 years ago when Ben Francisco, Brennan Boesch, Lyle Overbay and David Adams batted fifth for the Yankees, but the lineups the Yankees are playing in the first month of this season are nearly as bad.

“There’s no doubt in my mind Willie Calhoun can bang and is going to hit,” Boone said on Tuesday.

Boone isn’t talking about an early-20s top prospect playing his first games in the majors. He’s talking about the statistical worst player in Major League Baseball since 2020. There’s being positive and sticking up for your guys and then there’s just being an outright liar. Boone is the latter. He’s an outright liar. He lies about everything. He lies about injuries, performance, ability, you name it. I wouldn’t trust him to give me the time or tell me what day of the week it is.

If you’re looking for reinforcements in the minors, Jake Bauers has nine home runs and 20 RBIs with a 1.364 OPS in 19 games at Triple-A. If you forget who Bauers is, he’s a 27-year-old who has played parts of three seasons in the majors for Tampa Bay, Cleveland and Seattle. In the majors, he has hit .213/.307/.348 and has produced a negative WAR, just like Calhoun.

“(Bauers) has definitely caught our eye,” Boone said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Of course Boone and the Yankees have their eye on Bauers! As I wrote earlier in the week, the Yankees went into another season with an oft-injured everyday lineup and despite that, completely disregarded building a reliable bench. That’s how you end up with players like Calhoun and Franchy Cordero batting fifth and sixth for a supposed contender and that’s how you get Bauers on the doorstep of being called up and also batting in the middle of the Yankees lineup.

6. The first four batters in the Yankees lineup is the Yankees lineup. Anthony Volpe, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu. Gleyber Torres is a major-league bat, but he can’t be counted on. Torres’ double and home run on Wednesday were his first extra-base hit in more than wo weeks and his first home run in more than three weeks.

The offense scored five runs in the second inning on Wednesday and it was made possible by a five-run second inning. The rally was started by an error, an infield single and a bunt. It wasn’t until Volpe’s RBI line-drive single and Judge’s three-run, bases-clearing double when the Yankees had something resembling true offense.

7. After Judge’s double, leading by five runs with one out in the inning, he decided it would be a good time to steal third base, so he took off, tried a headfirst slide and ended up faceplanting several feet short of the bag like an infant taking their first steps. Judge got up and ran off the field and down the tunnel with the trainers holding his arm uncomfortably. Thankfully, he was OK, but if he would have been seriously hurt trying to unnecessarily steal third, it would have summed up this shit sandwich season perfectly. Judge is the single-most important Yankee and if he ever gets hurt, just pack up the bats and balls and we’ll see you in 2024. I certainly won’t be sticking around to watch this team without it’s most important player. Think about how bad things are with Judge. Without him? I don’t want to think about it.

8. Since hitting his first carer home run on April 14, Volpe entered Wednesday’s game hitting .263/.404/.421 in his last 11 games and 47 plate appearances. Then on Wednesday he went 2-for-3 with a double and two walks. The scouting report on Volpe at every level has been that he struggles initially and then doesn’t just figure it out but dominates, and that seems to be happening here. The quality of his at-bats are much stronger than they were in the first two weeks of the season (as expected), and he looks like he belongs and looks like he belongs at the top of a major-league lineup. Here’s to hoping he continues to adjust to this level and here’s to hoping he is the Yankees’ solution for a leadoff hitter for a long, long time.

9. It took Boone some time (like most logical things do, if he ever figures them out), but he finally realized that this former leadoff hitter LeMahieu shouldn’t be hitting behind Torres. If LeMahieu isn’t going to lead off, he can’t be hitting behind Torres. Ever. Torres is better than the slop the Yankees have batting 6 through 9, but he’s not better than LeMahieu under any circumstance. LeMahieu isn’t your prototypical cleanup hitter, but neither is Torres. Far from it. The Yankees need to stack as many quality bats together as they can for the time being and that means a 1 through 4 of Volpe, Judge, Rizzo and LeMahieu every day.

10. The road trip continues to Texas where the Yankees begin a four-game series with the first-place Rangers on Thursday. The Yankees will see Andrew Heaney and Eovaldi, who you can expect big starts from based on the Law of Ex-Yankees, Jacob deGrom, who you have to expect a loss against (especially with the state of the lineup) and Martin Perez, who somehow is getting outs in the majors with an extremely hittable repertoire.

The Yankees are not set up well at all to go to Texas right now, considering they’re not set up well to go to Oakland right now. These next four days are likely not going to be good for my health, but I’m prepared for this season to not be good for it. I have Brian Cashman to thank for that.

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