1. What a shitty weekend. The only positive from the weekend was that Cam Schlittler put up another scoreless start. Other than that it was the most frustrating, annoying and disappointing series of the season, a season which includes a sweep by the first-place Rays in Tampa. And with the sweep by the Brewers, the Yankees are now two games behind the Rays in the loss column in the division.
2. Max Fried was bad on Friday: 6 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 5 K. It was the second time in nine starts this season that Fried has allowed five earned runs. He allowed five or more earned runs twice in 32 starts last year. He has walked three batters in a game four times this season. He did so just five times last season. The Yankees are only 5-4 in Fried starts this year after going 22-10 when he started last year. As you can tell, Fried is nowhere near as good in 2026 as he was in 2025.
The biggest reason for this is his command. He stopped pitching from the windup a few starts ago to combat a lack of command, and while it may have looked like it helped against inferior lineups in Boston and Texas, it was a mirage. Fried stayed out of the stretch against the Orioles and couldn’t give the Yankees a quality start and stayed out of it against the Brewers and produced his worst start of the season.
Fried was bad, but he could have pitched nine innings of one-run ball and it wouldn’t have mattered because the Yankees were shut out. They had no answer for Jacob Misiorowski and they had close to no answer for the entire Brewers pitching staff all weekend, scoring six runs in three games with one of those six runs being the automatic runner in the 10th inning on Saturday. The Yankees struck out a ridiculous 36 times in the series and are now 1-8 against teams above .500.
3. If you think that stat doesn’t matter, you’re kidding yourself. It was just last year that the Yankees racked up 94 wins by feasting on the league’s worst teams from late August through the end of the regular season and then barely eked by an injury-ravaged Red Sox team and were humiliated by the Blue Jays, two teams they couldn’t beat during the regular season. Beating up on bottom feeders for six months is how the Yankees are built, but getting shut down by the league’s best is also how they are built.
The idea the Yankees were unfortunate to draw Jacob Misiorowski, Kyle Harrison and Logan Henderson in a three-game series is silly. The Yankees had Fried, Schlittler and Carlos Rodon going for fuck’s sake. It’s not like they were trotting out Luis Gil, Elmer Rodriguez and Carlos Carrasco. If anything, the Brewers with their lack of power were unfortunate to draw Fried, Schlittler and Rodon. But the Brewers — a team with limited slug that succeeds on making contact and limiting strikeouts — beat up on two of the Yankees’ starters, came back against their best middle reliever, walked off their second-best middle reliever and also walked off their closer. The only way the Yankees were winning a game in the series was if Schlittler pitched a complete-game shutout in the second game because asking the Yankees’ untrustworthy bullpen to preserve a two-run lead with nine outs to go was too much to ask.
It didn’t have to be that way. The Yankees could have won on Saturday if not for a lack off offense, a lack of Baseball IQ (Judge’s baserunning in the 10th and Hills’ decision to throw to third in the 10th), a lack of defense and a lack of a competent manager in the game. Somehow Aaron Boone is making Year 1 mistakes in Year 9. There is only one person in the world who thought Camilo Doval in the eighth inning of a one-run game against the top of the Brewers lineup was the right call on Saturday. Unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually gets to make the decisions.
4. I don’t blame Doval for coughing up the lead in the second game. Doval sucks. He didn’t ask to be traded to the Yankees. He didn’t keep himself on the roster when he couldn’t get anyone out last year. He didn’t put himself on the roster to begin this year and he hasn’t kept himself on it either. Boone had roughly 57 different ways to navigate the late innings on Saturday and chose an option that wasn’t any of those.
If you’re of the mindset “Blame the pitcher, not the manager,” you’re a fucking fool. If I were asked to get through the eighth inning on Saturday and coughed up the lead, would those same fans be saying “Blame the pitcher, not the manager” after the inevitable result? (Let’s be honest: I would have protected the lead.) The only job a manager truly has is to put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Boone fails to do that in nearly every close game the Yankees play. It’s why the Yankees suck in one-run games. It’s why they are the worst team in all of baseball on the road in extra innings. Because it takes strategy, creativity and intelligence to win in that setting. Boone lacks all of those things. He has since the day he was wrongfully given the job.
“We’re really good,” Boone said after getting swept, “like, we had a bad series.”
Oh shut the fuck up. You sound just like Brian Cashman calling his 82-80 Yankees “really fucking good” after the 2023 season. You’re a fake good team, Boone. The same kind of fake good you were last year when you were run out of the playoffs and the same kind of fake good you were in 2024 when you were given a red carpet to the pennant through two AL Central opponents before getting embarrassed in the World Series. If you ever wondered how anyone could have used using Nestor Cortes over Hill in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, well, it’s games like Saturday that remind you what Boone is capable of.
5. I should have seen Sunday’s loss coming. I’m still upset with myself for thinking the Yankees coming off back-to-back losses with just two non-automatic runner runs in the series would show up on Sunday. I should have known better with Carlos Rodon starting.
If you’re playing in a Major League Baseball game, there are no excuses for your performance. Rodon missed the first six weeks of the season rehabbing from offseason surgery and was deemed ready to start on Sunday. I don’t want to hear that it was his first start of the season. Whether his first start came in March in San Francisco after not needing rehab starts or on Sunday in Milwaukee after needing them, it doesn’t matter. The games all count and all count the same and Rodon was putrid.
Rodon blew a two-run lead, walked five (three on four pitches), hit a batter and allowed three earned runs in 4 1/3 innings. Welcome back!
6. When the Yankees failed to score in the ninth inning on Sunday the game was essentially over and I’m glad it ended it when it did in the bottom of the ninth. If Bednar didn’t give up the walk-off home run in the ninth, then only one of these two endings was going to unfold with Doval warming up as the next reliever to come in.:
- The Yankees don’t score in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.
- The Yankees score one run in the top of the 10th and Doval loses the game in the bottom.
The Brewers could have given the Yankees 25 extra innings to score on Sunday and they wouldn’t have. They had no answer for the Brewers bullpen — a staff full of triple-digit fastballs — while the Yankees only triple-digit arm in their pen is Doval, who has no idea where the ball is going once it leaves his hand. The Yankees’ best relievers are Bednar, a closer whose best pitch isn’t a fastball, Tim Hill, a left-on-left ground ball specialist, Fernando Cruz, whose best pitch is a splitter, and Brent Headrick. The Yankees don’t possess a single arm that can come in and miss bats or miss spots and still succeed because of velocity. Their relievers have to have impeccable command because they all rely on trickery and deception to get outs.
7. Fried and Rodon stunk, the bullpen wasn’t very good, Boone proved he’s still an idiot all these years later, but the worst part was the offense. Ben Rice did nothing all weekend and is 0-for-13 since returning to the lineup and Aaron Judge hit a solo home run on Sunday. When those two have a series like that, it’s always going to be hard to win.
To make matters worse, Jake Bauers hit a home run in Friday’s comeback against the Yankees, Gary Sanchez was in the middle of the Brewers’ comeback rally on Sunday and also gunned down Judge trying to steal second late in the game. Here’s what I wrote before the series started:
Ezequiel Duran had a monster series against his former team (5-for-10 with a double, home run, five RBIs, four walks and a steal) because why wouldn’t he? That’s the Law of Ex-Yankees. Oswald Peraza did it to them last month with the Angels. Carlos Narvaez hit the only home run against Cam Schlittler this season. Randal Grichuk will likely get a big hit against them when they play the White Sox. That’s how it goes. The Brewers employ both Gary Sanchez and Jake Bauers, so get ready for that duo to do something special this weekend.
8. It’s disturbing that Trent Grisham is still batting leadoff for the Yankees. Why would anyone want Grisham to theoretically receive the most plate appearances on the team? Why would anyone not want Cody Bellinger getting a guaranteed plate appearance in the first inning? Again, only one person in the world could believe in the Yankees lineup construction, and unfortunately, that one person is the person who actually fills out the lineup card.
9. This should be the lineup against right-handed starters:
Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Trent Grisham, DH
Spencer Jones, CF
Jose Caballero, SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Who cares, C
This should be the lineup against left-handed starters:
Ben Rice, DH
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Amed Rosario, 3B
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
Jazz Chisholm 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Spencer Jones, CF
Who cares, C
Yes, bat Rice leadoff against both, since he hits both. Yes, sit Grisham against lefties. Yes, DH him and play Jones in center field against righties. Yes, pit the catcher ninth, I don’t care which catcher it is, they both suck.
The Yankees have a three-hitter lineup (Rice, Judge and Bellinger) no matter who you bat or the order you bat them in the other six spots, so just put those three at the top of the lineup, get them the most plate appearances and hope you score every time their turn in the lineup comes up. It’s the only way this offense can produce. And if they aren’t hitting, well, hope for dominant starting pitching because otherwise the team has no chance of winning.
10. I’m sure the Yankees will beat the shit out of the Orioles the next three days. Lose to a good team and beat up on bad teams. It’s the Boone era summed up. It’s why he has so many regular-season wins in an era of tanking and limited quality teams. Beating up on the Orioles has been the signature of the Yankees over these last nine years and this week should be no different. Improve the record, inflate the run differential and have everyone thinking being 1-8 against the Athletics, Rays and Brewers isn’t a big deal, when in fact, it’s a huge deal.
Last modified: May 11, 2026
