1. Things are bad. Really bad. The Yankees have lost five straight and six of seven since Easter. If not for the help of Mark Leiter Jr. and the meltdown he had last Monday, things would be even worse. I can’t think of a worse possible second week of the season to endure, especially following what went on during the first week.
But that first week was clearly a mirage, just like most of the Aaron Boone era has been. This is the ninth season of waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Yankees under his management. The big Game 2 win at Fenway Park in the 2018 ALDS was immediately met by humiliation and elimination. The 2019 ALDS sweep of the Twins and Game 1 rout of the Astros in the ALCS were followed by a team-wide inability to hit for the remainder of the series. Minutes after DJ LeMahieu’s game-tying home run in Game 6 of that ALCS, Jose Altuve walked off the season. A season-saving win in Game 4 of the 2020 ALDS came a day before the Yankees scored a single run in a Game 5 loss. The 13-game winning streak to save the 2021 season was undone when they failed to finish as the first wild card in the final weekend of the season, had to go to Fenway and lost the one-game playoff. The 61-23 start in 2022 was followed by a 38-40 finish. The comeback in the 2022 ALDS against the Guardians was met with a sweep at the hands of the Astros in the ALCS. The re-signing of Aaron Judge that offseason was followed by him missing two months of the next season as a team that was 11 games over .500 in June finished two games over .500. A 49-21 start to 2024 led to a 45-47 finish, and the first World Series appearance in 15 years led to the most embarrassing inning and demise in World Series history. A 42-25 start to 2025 was followed by a 23-31 stretch as the team blew an eight-game lead over the Blue Jays and then was eliminated by the Blue Jays in the ALDS. So when the Yankees ripped off eight wins in their first 10 games in 2026, a week like this last week should have been expected.
2. The issue isn’t that the Yankees ave lost five straight and six of seven. Losses are going to happen. It’s how they have lost these games. The team is 0-6 in one-run games this season. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you think it’s a small sample size or bad luck? Or do you think it’s because the Yankees are managed by someone who uses J.C. Escarra and Randal Grichuk in game-changing, ninth-inning at-bats and someone who still hasn’t figured out how to utilize a bullpen? Do you think instead of blaming it on luck and chance maybe the blame should be placed on a roster constructed with a complete lack of situational hitters whose only way to score runs is to hit the ball over the fence?
3. Five of the Yankees’ nine everyday players have below-league-average OPS+ for the season and two of their four bench bats do as well. Trent Grisham has been 42 percent worse than league average, Austin Wells 45 percent, Jazz Chisholm 53 percent, Ryan McMahon 86 percent and Jose Caballero 87 percent. Escarra at -74 percent and Grichuk at -100 percent are breaking the laws of mathematics with their ineptitude. If Grichuk were to now play 100 percent better than he has, he would still be 100 percent worse than league average. You reading this right now have provided more value to the Yankees at the plate this season by simply watching the games from your home than Escarra or Grichuk have.
4. The lineup is a recipe for disaster on good days when the top of it is hitting because the bottom is full of automatic outs. At best, the Yankees give away one-third of their outs every game by employing the players they do. On a bad day, when the top of the order isn’t hitting (which it hasn’t been), the lineup is an atrocity.
This isn’t a mistake. This is by design. The Yankees purposely ran it back with the same position players to create this lineup. This isn’t the product of injuries to starters and more injuries to the best backups. This isn’t the 2019 Replacement Yankees relying on Mike Tauchman to carry them for weeks. The lineup you see is the lineup the Yankees wanted this season. So when I wrote endlessly about my fear of running it back all offseason, the worst possible scenario is what I envisioned, and that’s what the Yankees are providing.
5. It would help if the Yankees had more than a couple trustworthy relievers in the bullpen to win close games, but they don’t have that either. Brian Cashman let his two best relievers from this time last year leave through free agency and replaced them with in-house options he didn’t feel were good enough to be on the major-league roster at the end of last season. But even if the Yankees had better bullpen options, it’s hard to imagine Boone properly using them given the way he let Ryan Yarbrough face Chandler Simpson on Sunday after the Yankees cut the deficit to one run. Why not Tim Hill there in the seventh? Hill had thrown one pitch (yes, one pitch) over the previous four days.
6. Unless the Yankees can outhit Boone or outpitch him with efforts like Max Fried and Cam Schlittler gave the first two times through the rotation, it’s going to be very hard for the Yankees to win close games, just like it has been in the past. When you have a manager who thinks Grichuk should bat instead of a borderline Hall of Famer in Paul Goldschmidt with the game on the line, only to admit after the game that Goldschmidt should have hit, you get the type of results the Yankees have produced in the last five games, games in which hits have been harder to come by than logical Boone decisions. After getting their asses kicked by their own division last season, the Yankees are 0-3 to start this one.
7. You would think the least the Yankees could do is play error-free, clean baseball in the field since they can’t manage, hit or pitch with any reliability. But they can’t do that either. The way they pissed away the late innings on Saturday and then let the Rays tack on two runs on Sunday was appalling. But that’s Boone baseball. Being a laughingstock defensively when the ball is put in play is how this team has always played under Boone. The difference between the Yankees and Rays aside from hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll is that Kevin Cash squeezes every last bit of talent and strategic options out of his team, puts his players in the best possible position to succeed and manages a game by utilizing the individual skillsets of his players. Boone has trouble filling out a sensible lineup card, seems to pull relievers out of a hat for the order in which they are used and sits around waiting for a three-run home run or a shutout from a starter so the Yankees can shake hands at the end of a game.
8. What went on with Chisholm to end Saturday’s game is something I would rather not think about again for the rest of my life, and yet, it’s the only thing I can think about when I see Chisholm’s name or face. His admission that he doesn’t know the rules of force outs as a professional baseball player seeking a nine-figure contract was mystifying. But for as crazy and truly unbelievable as it was to hear those words come out of Chisholm’s mouth, it was even more so to hear Boone say that Chisholm does know the rule after Chisholm told everyone he didn’t. There’s sticking up and defending your players, and then there’s whatever Boone is now doing. It’s one thing to tell everyone a starter had “good stuff” on a day he was pulled in the third inning, but to basically tell everyone you know the inner workings of Chisholm’s brain better than Chisholm does, well, we’ve officially gone off the deep end. I have also said Boone will defend his players to no end, but saying a player knows something they said they don’t know when the players provided that information on his own volition is really to “no end.”
(Chisholm went 2-for-13 in the three games in Tampa in a dome after saying he hasn’t hit yet because of the cold weather.)
9. “Good compete today as far as finishing,” Boone said after Sunday’s loss.
The Yankees didn’t finish anything. They lost another one-run game.
Boone got testy when asked about McMahon’s continued offensive struggles, telling the media they “love to bring up his name.”
Yes, people tend to love to bring up a player the team targeted with a trade, agreeing to take on the $40 million owed to him. A player who is 4-for-35 on the season with no extra base hits through mid-April. The funniest moment of Sunday’s game came when McMahon was up with two outs in the ninth and the tying and go-ahead runs on base and Joe Girardi said, “This could turn his whole season around.” McMahon then swung at the first pitch and weakly grounded out to first to end the game.
“We’re going to hit,” Boone said, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”
There should be some doubt.
Boone also called this team “a new group” as the organization-wide stance to never reference “running it back” from 2025 to 2026 seems to be still alive and well.
10. It’s back to the Bronx to host a four-game series against the Angels. The Angels are 8-8, aren’t any good and seem destined for another last-place finish in the AL West. And because of that, every Yankees fan should be worried about this matchup. When you get nearly swept by the A’s at home and then get swept by the Rays, it’s hard to have any confidence in this team. And if the top of the order doesn’t hit the ball over the fence, they’ll make the Angels look as good as they made the A’s and Rays look.
Last modified: Apr 13, 2026
