The Yankees followed up their three-game sweep of the A’s by getting embarrassed by the Rays at home. The Yankees are nine games back once again and their next seven games are against the Rays and Blue Jays.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. There are times when I say the Yankees are bad or awful or suck, but that’s relative to their expectations and history, and their roster and payroll. In the big picture of Major League Baseball, they are none of those things. But the A’s are.

The A’s are as bad as it gets. Not just in 2023, but historically. The 1962 Mets went 40-120. The 2023 A’s would sign up for 40 wins right now, as they are 8-31 and on pace for 33 wins. There’s a good chance the 2023 A’s go down as the worst team in the history of the league.

2. The arrival of the A’s in the Bronx couldn’t have come at a better time. With the Yankees sitting in last place in the AL East and coming off their worst loss of the season in which Gerrit Cole blew a six-run lead to the Rays, the Yankees needed something to possibly get their season turned around, and that something was the A’s. The Yankees picked up their first three-game winning streak of the season and first sweep of the season by scoring 28 runs in the series. (The Yankees had scored 28 runs in their previous nine games before playing the A’s.) The series got the Yankees three rather easy wins, but it didn’t turn the season around.

3. I’m not an idiot. I know how truly, historically abysmal the A’s are. I know the Yankees’ three games against them were a mirage. I know the success the Yankees experienced in the series is the same success the Rays experienced against the A’s to begin the season and the kind of success the rest of the AL East will experience when they play the A’s. So while I’m happy the Yankees have created some separation from .500, picking up three wins against the A’s was like passing GO and receiving a free $200. Now the Yankees face a board littered with opposing hotels with their next eight games against the Rays and Blue Jays.

4. Immediately after passing GO, the Yankees landed on one of the Rays’ hotel, serving as a quick reminder of the disparity between the actual best team in the AL, and a team that believes they can be the best team in the AL because they were the best team in the AL once upon a time. After a couple of offense-less nights in Baltimore, the Rays showed up in the Bronx (where the Yankees have been since the beginning of the week, able to sleep at home and not travel) and pummeled the Yankees’ pitching and put the Yankees’ offense back in its place. The Yankees were routed 8-2, and the only reason they scored is because the Rays pulled Drew Rasmussen after seven innings to not have him exert anymore energy, though he exerted as little energy as possible in shutting out the Yankees’ sad offense over seven innings. Rasmussen could still be pitching against the Yankees now (as in the following morning) and they would still be scoreless. The way the Yankees feel when they play the A’s is how the Rays feel when they play the Yankees.

5. The rhetoric that the Yankees’ injuries is the reason for their demise continues to get shoved in the face of Yankees fans. The offense sucked when Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Donaldson were a part of it, and with each coming off the worst season of their respective careers, believing they will turn the Yankees from frauds into contenders once they return (if they return) is simply irresponsible.

6. The only way out of this mess for the Yankees is for Carlos Rodon and Luis Severino to return and pitch to the best of their abilities, and for Stanton and Donaldson to return and turn the clock back several seasons. Then on top of that, the Yankees will need Anthony Volpe to hit like the team’s No. 1 prospect and not to the .640 OPS he has, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu to stay healthy and produce to their career averages, Gleyber Torres to not go into month-long slumps and someone to emerge as a major-league-caliber left fielder. Someone. Anyone. If all of those things happens, then yes, the Yankees can contend for a championship. But all of those things need to happen. Not some. All. The Yankees aren’t good enough to only have one-third or half or even two-thirds of their roster healthy and producing. They need everyone. That’s a lot of to ask for a team that puts someone new on the IL each series and for a roster that is full of underachieving, aging names.

7. The Rays were fortunate to start their season with nine games against the Tigers, Nationals and A’s, but they took care of business in those nine games, going 9-0. They also swept four games from the Red Sox, three from the Pirates and went 8-2 against the White Sox and Reds. They have beaten up on the bad and mediocre teams on their schedule, and the Yankees are becoming one of those teams.

8. The Yankees’ goal shouldn’t be to erase the division deficit by beating up on the Rays because that’s not a realistic goal. Divisions are won by beating up on the bad teams, which is what the Rays have done. The Yankees’ goal should be to match what the Rays have done against the league’s worst and then hold their own against the league’s best. So far though, the Yankees aren’t exactly doing that with a 2-5 record against the Rays and Blue Jays.

9. The easy part of the Rays’ schedule happened to be stacked at the beginning of the season, while the Yankees’ is more spread out. The Rays had the advantage of being able to fly out of the gate, stack and bank a ridiculous amount of wins and then live off that commanding lead into the summer. The Yankees just played the A’s three times. They will play three against the Reds next week. They have six total games against the White Sox and A’s in June and six total games against the Rockies and Royals right after the All-Star break. A big August with 10 total games against the White Sox, Nationals and Tigers. Another three against the Tigers in September and they finish the season with three in Kansas City. The Yankees will have their chance to match the Rays’ success against the worst teams, but they will need to hold their own in between their spread out “easy” games.

10. The Yankees began this all-important four-game series with the Rays needing to win three of four to make up ground in the AL, and at worst, split the four to not lose any ground. Now they need to win three straight against the Rays (something that would be nearly impossible even without Clarke Schmidt starting one of the three games) and need to win two of three just to maintain their eight-game deficit. The loss on Thursday was disappointing and disheartening, but completely expected and it’s dropped the Yankees nine back (again) and 1-3 on the season against the Rays. The Yankees to do better this weekend. They need to be better this weekend. They need to win two games this weekend.

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The Yankees had an opportunity to win all three games against the Rays at Tropicana Field over the weekend. Instead, they won one and their deficit in the AL East is up to 10 games.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. 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.)

2. This weekend was a chance for the Yankees to begin chipping away at the Rays’ seemingly insurmountable lead. A Rays sweep would end the Yankees’ division chances and a Rays series win would keep those chances on life support. But a Yankees series win would begin the chipping away process and a Yankees sweep (while improbable) could potentially turn this dismal season to date around. Aaron Boone made sure a Yankees sweep would stay improbable in the first game of the series.

3. The Yankees overcame an early 4-0 deficit on Friday night to tie the game with a four-run sixth. The game would be come a battle of the bullpens, and with the Yankees having yet to use an elite reliever, Boone decided he still wasn’t going to.

With the game tied at 4 and headed to the bottom of the sixth, Boone decided he would try to steal some outs since that always seem to work out well. Rather than recognize his offense just pulled off their biggest comeback of the season by scoring four runs in an inning when they typically score four runs total over three games, Boone let Albert Abreu face the first batter of the inning. Abreu got an out on deep fly ball, Boone figured he had played with fire long enough and removed Abreu for Ian Hamilton. Hamilton got the last two outs of the inning.

4. Then in the seventh, Boone went to Jimmy Cordero, who is this season’s inexplicable member of Boone’s inner circle of trusted relievers. Cordero isn’t bad. He doesn’t suck like Abreu, but he’s not Wandy Peralta or Ron Marinaccio or even Clay Holmes. And he’s certainly not Michael King. King was also warming up alongside Cordero, but Boone decided Cordero would be better suited to face a Rays order as it turned over. It worked about as well as you would expect.

Cordero walked 9-hitter Jose Siri on five pitches, and with one out, gave up a “double” to Wander Franco. The “double” was a catchable ball that Jake Bauers misplayed because he’s a first baseman the Yankees have playing left field. After the double, which gave the Rays the lead again, Boone then decided to go to the Yankees’ best reliever in King. King, of course, retired the next two batters on seven pitches.

I wish this were a one-time occurrence where Boone failed to use his best reliever (or even one of his best relievers) when the game was tied only to use him once the Yankees trailed. If King was available to pitch in the inning, why didn’t he start the inning? It’s the same reason Abreu was used for one batter in the previous inning: trying to steal outs. Trying to steal outs in the biggest game of the season to date. The Yankees would lose by one: the run Cordero allowed.

5. The following afternoon, the Yankees dug themselves a first-inning, two-run hole. Not scoring first in any game isn’t great for the old win probability. Not scoring first against the Rays is essentially a guaranteed loss.

Thankfully, Saturday happened to be one of the rare occasions when scoring first for the Rays didn’t work out for them. The Yankees battled back for three runs in the eighth and the bullpen held with Holmes against the heart of the order in the bottom of the eighth and Hamilton against the bottom of the order in the ninth. Why wasn’t King used? Because when Boone uses King, he only uses him for multiple innings, and then he’s not allowed to pitch the following day. So Boone’s decision to burn King with the Yankees trailing on Friday took him out of the equation on Saturday. Fortunately, Holmes and Hamilton got the job done.

Then there was Sunday.

6. The Yankees had split the first two games of the series, which was a welcome surprise. Not only that, but they had nearly beaten the Rays in a game they trailed by four runs and only lost because of the incompetence of their own manager (going to Cordero over King) and the incompetence of their own front office (constructing a roster so poorly that a first baseman is forced to play the outfield). Then the Yankees were able to beat the best team in baseball despite Domingo German starting, despite being down two runs in the first inning and despite Boone making King unavailable. With Gerrit Cole on the mound on Sunday, the Yankees would have a chance to win a series against the Rays, take off a game standings from when they arrived in Tampa on Friday, be winners of four of their last six and two straight series, and feel good about being able to beat up on an A’s team this week that is on pace to be the worst team in baseball history.

7. The Yankees led 3-0 after three, 5-0 after four and 6-0 going into the bottom of the fifth. That inning, Cole retired Christan Bethancourt with a strikeout to begin the frame before Siri took him deep. Solo home run? First home run allowed of the season? In a six-run game? Whatever. That’s what I thought and that’s likely what Cole was thinknig.

Then Yandy Diaz singled. Then Wander Franco singled and Diaz scored when Gleyber Torres threw the ball away (a ball Oswaldo Cabrera should have caught). The Yankees’ lead was trimmed to 6-2, but Cole struck out the Rays’ 3- and 4-hitters to end the inning. OK, a solo home run and a run that only scored because of an error? He did strike out the side in the inning. No worries. That’s what I thought. I should have been worried though. It’s the Boone Yankees, it’s the 2023 Yankees, it’s Cole against the Rays, it’s Cole in a big game (as big a game as a game on May 7 could be). I should have been very worried.

The Yankees left two on in the sixth and this how Cole’s sixth went: double, double, walk, home run. Six-run lead gone. Tie game.

It was shocking. Shocking because Cole had completely unraveled and shocking because Boone let it happen. This is the result of each of the final nine batters Cole faced:

Home run
Single
Single
Strikeout
Strikeout
Double
Double
Walk
Home run

8. By the time Bethancourt (the Rays’ 8-hitter) hit the game-tying, three-run home run, Cole had nothing left. He was yanking every fastball in the dirt and when he had to come in the zone, it would be middle-middle cement mixer. He should have been removed after the back-to-back doubles on four pitches to begin the inning, but the walk was the sign of all signs that he was finished.

Not for Boone, whose lack of feeling for the game in front of him is unrivaled. Boone was going to let Cole pitch until the lead was completely gone, and he did just that. “Small Game” Gerrit showed up at the worst possible time, and his manager was happy to take the steering wheel and drive the game right off a cliff.

The Rays took the lead that inning, but the Yankees offense managed to tie the game at 7 the following inning. The Yankees had now scored three days worth of runs in seven innings and yet were tied in a game Cole started. The problem was Kevin Cash had yet to utilize his big arms in the bullpen and once he did, it would only be batter of time until the Rays won. Once the game went to the 10th and the Yankees didn’t score in their half and Boone sent out Abreu with the automatic runner on second and no outs, the game was over. Sure enough, six Abreu pitches later, the game was over.

9. The weekend was a missed opportunity. A missed opportunity to cut a game off the Rays’ lead. A missed opportunity to create the idea the Yankees can hang around in the division race until they get healthy (if they get healthy). The Yankees are now 10 games back and with only 10 games remaining against the Rays, unless the Yankees get every single injured player back and playing to the best of their abilities by Thursday night, all the Rays have to do is win two of four next weekend to eliminate the Yankees from the AL East.

10. Before the Yankees play the Rays, they will host the A’s (who again are on pace to the worst team in the history of Major League Baseball). The Yankees can’t just win the series against the Rays, they need to sweep the A’s, because that’s what the Rays did in their three-game series against them earlier this season. The Rays swept the A’s and outscored them 31-5 in the three games. I don’t expect the Yankees to outscore anyone like that (even the A’s), but I do expect three wins.

If the Yankees want to pull off a miracle in the division, they need to match what the Ryas do against their opponents, and then in their remaining 10 games against the Rays, play them better than they did this past weekend. I don’t expect it to happen, that’s just what needs to happen if the Yankees believe they can still win the division.

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The Yankees finally won a series. They beat the Guardians on Tuesday and Wednesday to take two of three for their first series win in more than two weeks.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. The Yankees’ 2023 Injury Excuse Tour has started and it’s full steam ahead.

Beginning in the first inning of Tuesday’s game, YES had graphics ready to air to display the Yankees’ injuries. Michael Kay was quick to mention “Thirteen members of the expected 26-man roster are on the injured list.” He and Paul O’Neill didn’t let up. For multiple innings the two opined on all of the team’s injuries. “I can’t explain it,” O’Neill said. Well, I can, Paul.

Aside from Oswald Peraza’s awkward slide on a steal attempt and Harrison Bader colliding with Isiah-Kiner Falefa — both of which didn’t occur until Wednesday night — the Yankees aren’t suffering from freak, unavoidable injuries. (If the Yankees don’t play an infielder in left field, Bader doesn’t get hurt.) The roster is a collection of oft-injured players and pitchers who are unsurprisingly hurt. There’s nothing rare about Giancarlo Stanton being on the IL. There’s nothing unusual about Carlos Rodon, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga not being able to pitch for a significant portion of the season. There’s nothing odd about Bader missing the first month of the season or Josh Donaldson being out for (at least) a month of his own. Up until last year, Aaron Judge was a frequent visitor to the IL, and now he’s there again. All of these names have pasts that are riddled with injuries and lengthy IL stays. That they are experiencing or have experienced injuries in 2023 isn’t uncommon, it’s the norm and it should be expected. Wait until Anthony Rizzo’s annual back flare-up comes or when DJ LeMahieu tweaks something (he has already missed a few games but avoided an IL stint this year) or Nestor Cortes has a soft tissue problem.

The idea the Yankees were good enough before half of their expected roster went on the IL is offensive to Yankees fans. The team’s ceiling if everyone stayed healthy was going to be an ALCS loss to the Astros, and their floor was going to be a chaotic mess. This is the floor in which Kiner-Falefa is somehow an everyday outfielder, Aaron Hicks is still moping around on the active roster and Jake Bauers and Franchy Cordero are middle-of-the-order bats. No one from the organization seems to be talking about how the roster was constructed, just that the roster is injured.

2. The next performance on the Injury Excuse Tour belonged to Brian Cashman.

There are a handful of times Cashman makes himself available to the media throughout the season. There’s his spring training “State of the Franchise” session. There’s his post-deadline “evaluation of all the guys he traded for who will be busts as Yankees” conference. Then there’s his early postseason exit press conference a week after the Yankees are eliminated when he praises the job his manager did and kisses ownership’s ass about the financial commitment they have made to the team as if it’s a charitable, nonprofit organization.

It takes a lot for Cashman to come down from his office where he’s tirelessly working on his next deal for a controllable starter who will fail miserably in pinstripes. The first five weeks of the season certainly qualify as “a lot” and enough for Cashman to show his face publicly. In textbook damage control fashion, with the Yankees sitting in last place, the Yankees needing Willie Calhoun to be Giancarlo Stanton and Kay and O’Neill having kicked the tour off on Tuesday, there was Cashman holding court in the dugout for 28 minutes prior to Wednesday’s game. There he was lying, cracking popsicle stick jokes the media ate up, and most importantly: making excuses.

3. “We’ve got a good group of people — player-wise, staff-wise, support staff-wise,” Cashman said. “It’s a championship-caliber operation from that perspective.”

Somewhere along the way from being handed the best team in the history in his first year on the job in 1998 to present day, Cashman lost what qualities are needed to be “championship-caliber.” This certainly isn’t it. Again, even without the injuries, this roster wasn’t “championship-caliber.” How can I be certain of that? Because it’s the same roster as last year that wasn’t “championship-caliber.”

4. In spring training, Hal Steinbrenner was asked by Meredith Marakovits about the team’s injury issues over the last four seasons, saying, “We’re doing everything right. We’re doing everything right. We believe that.”

Still believe that, Hal?

Of course he does. We’re talking about the guy who told the world in October that Aaron Boone had done a good job after the Yankees were swept in the ALCS and after the manager who had done such a good job had used the organization’s 2004 ALCS collapse as a motivation tactic. Who do you think is behind the Injury Excuse Tour? It can’t possibly be the owner who also said to Markaovits in spring training, “Do I think we’re good enough to win a championship now? Yes, but we’ve got to stay healthy.” Hal built in the injury excuse with two weeks left in spring training before Severino and Bader got hurt, Rodon’s injury snowballed, and Judge, Stanton and Donaldson all went on the IL.

It takes a special kind of person to see the injuries the Yankees have endured going on now five seasons and still think the organization is handling, diagnosing and rehabbing injuries the right way. In a results-driven business, the Yankees’ results in terms of injuries have been disastrous, and yet, the owner of the team isn’t worried by it. Maybe this is part of the “process is more important than results” bullshit Cashman was spewing at his end-of-the-season press conference in October. It’s an organization-wide belief and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.

5. “If you asked me that question in the wintertime or even March, what’s your biggest fear in the early portion of the season?,” Cashman said, “All general managers would say you don’t want to get wrecked with injuries early.”

If you asked me, I would say it’s using the highest payroll in the American League to build the roster Cashman built, injuries or no injuries. 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.

6. “The team we’re currently running out there, that’s not the team we actually anticipated,” Cashman said. “That happens on a continuous basis; typically, you lose one or two guys along the way. But we’ve lost a lot more than one or two guys along the way. We’re patching holes as best we can at this time of year.”

I feel like Maury Povich opening a manilla envelope.

Brian, on May 3, 2023, you said, ‘The team we’re currently running out there, that’s not the team we actually anticipated‘, and the lie detector test determined that was a lie!

Cashman chose to not upgrade the lineup in the offseason. Re-signing Judge and extending Rizzo didn’t change anything. The lineup was losing Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi and Cashman was replacing them with … Aaron Hicks! The season is 20 percent over and Hicks has one more RBI than I do. Then after not doing a thing to his right-handed-heavy, underachieving lineup, Cashman decided to completely disregard the bench, filling it with players who aren’t major-league-caliber. This is the team the Yankees anticipated.

7. Why didn’t Cashman address roster changes in the offseason?

“We were certainly exploring a lot of efforts; if you look at our roster, we were deep on the infield side,” Cashman said. “We were pursuing opportunities to trade from an area of strength if we got the right value. We didn’t get the right value.”

The right value for who? Gleyber Torres? OK, that’s believable. Kiner-Falefa? A baseball player at any level of organized baseball with a pulse would be the right value. Donaldson? A team willing to eat a single dollar would be the right value.

8. “Injuries happen, and ultimately we’re getting a lot of injuries right now,” Cashman said. “That’s certainly killing us. But I have nothing I can convict. If you want to convict somebody, convict me. This is my responsibility.”

Wait! What’s that? Is that accountability? No, it couldn’t be, could it? Is that Cashman taking blame for intentionally building a roster that has scored less runs than an A’s team that is purposely tanking is on pace for 131 losses?

Cashman played this all perfectly. He showed his face publicly and answered questions from the media to keep them happy to fill their word and story counts. He blamed excuses for the Yankees’ shortcomings exactly how his boss wanted him to get unintelligent fans to believe this disaster was unavoidable. Then, knowing he has a lifetime contract, took the blame for the roster since there are no consequences for losing under current ownership.

9. “Don’t give up on us,” Cashman said. “That’s all I can tell you; don’t count us out.”

Cashman has nothing to lose with this statement. If the Yankees’ season unravels to the point of no return, well, he and the organization will have the injury excuse they have gone on tour promoting to fall back on. And if the Yankees somehow miraculously turn it around, everyone will praise him for warning the world to not count out the richest team in the sport.

10. The Yankees have won two games in a row. As Lou Brown famously said, “If we win again tomorrow, it’s called a ‘winning streak.’ It has happened before.” For it to happen they’re going to need to beat the 25-6 Rays who have an 8 1/2-game lead over the Yankees.

If the Yankees have a bad weekend in Tampa, you can disregard Cashman’s warning and officially “count them out” in the division. Then the next five months will be about playing for a wild-card berth and making more stops on the Injury Excuse Tour of 2023. The next performance will be by Hal Steinbrenner.

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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!