1. Thankfully, the Yankees won’t visit the West Coast again until the end of August. Not because the teams the Yankees have played on the West Coast this season are any good (the Yankees are 7-2 in the Pacific Time Zone this year), but because 9:40 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. start times aren’t as fun as they were before I had kids.
If you stayed up for the game on Friday night, you got to watch a rather easy 8-2 win. I wrote this about Friday’s game before it:
There will be an opportunity for the Yankees to break the game open on Friday against Severino, and when it does come, they better break it open to negate the unpredictable Rodon.
That opportunity came in the first inning and the Yankees capitalized with a four-run outburst. Carlos Rodon did give one run right back in the bottom of the first, but the Yankees added a run in the second, another in the third, another in the fourth and one in the seventh, and Rodon settled down to allow only that one run over six innings.
2. If you stayed up for the game on Saturday night, you got to watch a frustrating 6-4 loss that ended with the bases loaded and the tying runs in scoring position and the go-ahead run on first as Jazz Chisholm took two 88-mph fastballs down the middle and then was forced to swing at a fastball inside, resulting in a game-ending groundout.
3. Trailing 6-1 in the ninth, the Yankees loaded the bases with two outs and managed to walk three runs in before Chisholm ended the game. If the Athletics’ strategy had been crazy enough to walk Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger with the bases loaded and allow three runs to make Chisholm beat them, it was the right call. No Yankees fan believed Chisholm would come through there. Put runners in scoring position and Chisholm turns into Austin Wells. Chisholm is hitting .183/.242/.300 with runners in scoring position. Wells is hitting .178/.296/.274 on the season. I can’t stand Chisholm’s cockiness in the box when he takes strikes and shakes his head as if he’s Juan Soto. Soto can do that because he’s Soto, a generational talent. Chisholm has no business taking two middle-middle fastballs, both at 88 mph as if he’s going to win the plate appearance anyway.
4. If you watched Sunday’s game, well, you saw one of the weirdest games of all time in a 13-8 win. The Yankees fell behind 3-0 in the first inning because of Trent Grisham’s disgraceful defense, dropping what should have been an inning-ending fly ball. But Grisham’s gaffe didn’t come back to haunt the Yankees because the offense scored 13 runs in the third inning, including 10 before making an out.
The inning went: single, walk, walk, single, double, single, single, walk, single, single, double, walk, strikeout (Paul Goldschmidt should have challenged the third-strike pitch), triple, strikeout, single, single, flyout. Thirteen runs without hitting a home run is absurd.
5. The Yankees took two of three from the A’s to finish the season series 3-3 against them. Not great, not awful. Mediocre, which is what a .500 record is. The Yankees finished their six-game road trip with a 5-1 record (and it was nearly 6-0). They head home the same way they arrived in Sacramento: three games back of the Rays in the AL East loss column. They also head home with two ongoing issues that need to be resolved, one now and one at some point.
6. The one now is the continued use of Grisham as the leadoff hitter. Grisham is hitting .174/.309/.292 when he bats first in the lineup. He’s hitting .125/.300/.188 in the first inning. He’s hitting .172/.351/.241 when he leads off any inning. The Yankees are willingly starting every game with one out and no one on for Ben Rice or Aaron Judge and they are also taking away the guarantee of Cody Bellinger getting a first-inning plate appearance. This isn’t hard. Bat Rice leadoff. Let the guy with the .397 on-base percentage bat first. Or bat Judge leadoff, as he’s at .375. I don’t care which one bats first, but it can’t be Grisham, whether there’s a righty or lefty starting since his OPS has a .001 difference between the two. Stop waiting around for the guy who hit 34 home runs last season and accept it was an outlier season in his career.
7. The one at some point is what to do at catcher, though that doesn’t seem like it will be resolved for two more months. Having a lefty-only-hitting catcher tandem was always a bad idea. Having those two be the worst two hitting catchers still rostered in baseball is amazing. No catcher in the majors has as many plate appearances as J.C. Escarra and as bad an OPS. Only one catcher has as many plate appearances as Wells and a worse OPS and that’s last year’s MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh who got off to a dreadful start before going on the injured list.
8. Wells has one double. ONE! It’s June 1! He has seven RBIs. Anthony Volpe has eight RBIs and has been up for like 15 minutes. Escarra has yet to hit a home run, but has as many home runs as Wells in less than half the plate appearances. Sure, defense is the most important aspect of catching, but at some point there’s a level of offense that’s unplayable and we have passed that. With every pathetic Wells strikeout or weak ground ball, all I can think about is Aaron Boone telling everyone “there’s more” to Wells that they need to get out of him. And with every Escarra weak pop-up, all I can think about is the Yankees telling everyone how he would be a starter on other teams.
9. Next up is a three-game series with the AL Central-leading Guardians. The Yankees will have Cam Schlittler going in the series opener, so good luck to the Guardians with that. The Guardians have never faced Schlittler and we have seen how dominant he is when a team has yet to see him. He dominates teams that have seen him, but it seems to be on another level for teams that haven’t. Joey Cantillo goes for the Guardians, and the Yankees have limited history against him.
10. This should be the lineup on Tuesday night:
Ben Rice, 1B
Aaron Judge, RF
Cody Bellinger, LF
Paul Goldschmidt, DH
Trent Grisham, CF
Jazz Chisholm, 2B
Jose Caballero, SS
Ryan McMahon, 3B
Who Cares, C
It won’t be, but it should be. Grisham will be leading off and Volpe will be in there. Though it doesn’t matter what the lineup is since Schlittler is starting.
Last modified: Jun 1, 2026
