Same Old Nonsense as Yankees Get Worked Over by Astros

The collapse continued as the Yankees dropped two of three to the reviled Astros. They are now 62-56 and sit 6.5 games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East, and are barely clinging to the third wildcard spot, just a half-game ahead of the Guardians. Aaron Boone still thinks they’re fine and the big rally is coming. He’s delusional. Lets get to it. 

If ever there was a more on-brand series for this shitty 2025 version of the Yankees, this was it.

Seriously, did anything that happened against the perennial pain in the ass Astros surprise you? That is outside of the fact that the Yankees managed to win one of the three games, because yeah, that surprised me.

Let’s take a look at the past three days of uninspiring baseball, the calling card of this 2025 team, shall we. Here’s a list of things that every one of us should have expected to happen, and did happen.

Devin Williams absolutely sucked, again, in a high-leverage spot Friday, costing the Yankees any chance of winning in extra innings. Honestly, you can’t be worse than what this guy has been the past month.

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Of course, he was out there because Aaron Boone made the unconscionable decision to use him in that spot, but then again, it’s Boone so no surprise. I think this made eight losses that could be laid right at Williams’ feet this season, but Boone just kept on shrugging his shoulders and telling us how he believes Williams is great, and he’s going to get past this.

Well, at least until Sunday when reality finally smacked Boone and the others who make the lineup like a Mike Tyson uppercut. The pregame plan was to pitch Williams in as low a leverage spot as there was, and that came with the Yankees hopelessly down 4-0 in the sixth. And naturally, with nothing on the line and zero pressure, Williams struck out the side on 11 pitches, prompting one fan at the stadium to bellow, “Why couldn’t you do that before?” Oh yeah, Williams was a stud in that spot.

Boone didn’t actually make that call to the bullpen because he got himself ejected in the third inning arguing balls and strikes. He had a good reason because this ump sucked all day, and Boone was already long gone when the worst and most impactful screw up by this guy, Derek Thomas, killed the Yankees in the fifth inning. It gets to the point with Boone where it’s hotter than hell and he knows the game is going to be a shit show, so he purposely gets tossed so he can get back to the air conditioning in the clubhouse. Can’t blame him for that, I guess.

Jose Altuve bitch-slapped the Yankees all three games, just like he has for a decade, going 6-for-11 with one double, two homers, three walks and four RBI. The louder Yankee Stadium boos him, the bigger his middle finger grows.

Aaron Judge continued to scuffle since he returned from his elbow injury. And while he has gone 3-for-15 with one RBI in five games, he has relegated Giancarlo Stanton to a bench player because Judge can’t throw so he has to be the DH. Stanton has actually been the Yankees best offensive player lately, but he started only one of the three games (they won) and pinch hit in the other two (they lost both).

The Yankees were no-hit through five innings Sunday by some Astros tomato can named Jason Alexander. You could have told me this was the actor of the same name who played George on Seinfeld and I would have shrugged because even buffoon George could have no-hit the Yankees through five innings. Laughable. Absolutely laughable how the Yankees turn pitchers with 5.97 career ERAs into stars for a day, but again, not surprising.

Tim Hill, whose 55 appearances are second-most in the American League, finally started to show the wear and tear as he got shredded Sunday for three runs on four hits and a walk which turned the game into a rout in the ninth.

Austin Wells continued to suck and he’s now hitting .208 and since the start of July is 15-for-79 and has zero RBIs in his last nine games.

There’s more that I could add to this list, but really, does anyone care at this point? I’ll just get right into the recaps and call it a day because this team has sucked the soul right out of my body.

Aug. 8: Astros 5, Yankees 3 (10)

➤ It has reached a point now where Boone is just fucking with us on purpose, right? In the 10th inning against a hated rival in a game that was critical, which is redundant now because every game is going to be critical, Williams was the choice to pitch. That’s a brain-dead decision in a tie game in the 10th with a runner starting the inning at second base. Gee, what could go wrong? Three Astros runs, ballgame.

➤ Cam Schlittler continues to pitch like a rookie. He has great stuff but he lacks command which is why he threw 97 pitches and lasted only five innings, yielding seven hits and one walk with only three strikeouts. The good news is he was able to negotiate plenty of traffic on the bases, but the bad news is he made a terrible pitch in the first inning to Altuve and the little gnat hit a two-run homer, the only runs Houston would score until the inevitable Williams barf-a-thon.

➤ Yerry De los Santos, Camilo Doval and Luke Weaver all did excellent work to cover four innings as they combined to allow just one hit and three walks, but it was a wasted effort because Williams failed to do his job yet again.

➤ This was a tough assignment for the offense against Astros starter Hunter Brown who is outstanding. But after having their bats muted for five one-hit shutout innings, the Yankees finally broke through in the sixth when Ryan McMahon walked, Wells (imagine that!) doubled, and then Ben Rice and Judge came through with RBI singles to tie the game and knock out Brown. However, with a chance to take the lead, Cody Bellinger whiffed on three pitches and Jazz Chisholm flied out on the first pitch. Those were two horrible at bats which lasted a grand total of four friggin’ pitches by Bennett Sousa. So maddening.

➤ In the 10th, Williams’ first pitch was wild so the free runner, Altuve, went to third, from where he scored on Carlos Correa’s single. Isn’t it just wonderful to have that guy back on the Astros? And then a couple batters later, Taylor Trammell, a .238 hitter, hit a two-run homer. Amazingly, the Yankees scored a run in the bottom half on an Anthony Volpe single, but with two on and two out, Trent Grisham flied out against Josh Hader to end it. The only positive out of that is Hader pitched two innings and threw 36 pitches, so that at least knocked him out the rest of the series.

What they said in Friday’s clubhouse

• Williams: “I’m not making pitches. It’s pretty simple. I stink right now. You give me the ball, I try to do my best. All these games, it’s come down to essentially one mistake and they’re making me pay for it. Yeah, it’s been tough. I’m not going to say it’s (confidence) as high as it’s ever been – obviously not with the way things have been going.”

• Boone on Williams: “We just try to find softer landing spots. Hard to do that right now when you have a short outing by the starter and you’re piecing it together and you have a guy down - don’t always have the opportunities. We’ll try to find good spots for him and get him back to being a big part of the ‘pen, where he should be.”

• Schlittler: “I’m still trying to figure out the ropes. Got a look to work on.”

Aug. 9: Yankees 5, Astros 4

➤ I knew it was Old Timers’ Day when I saw a fossil standing in right field. Oh wait, that was Stanton! Yes, the Yankees - realizing they have to get his bat in the lineup - had Stanton out there for the first time since Sept. 14, 2023 and incredibly, he didn’t get hurt so that was something. Judge apparently isn’t going to play the field anytime soon, so the Yankees have to keep using Stanton in the field even though there’s a risk that his fragile body will fall apart because his bat has been humming for much of his shortened season. Sure enough, he drove in two runs in this game with a bases-loaded walk and a single.

➤ The single broke a 2-2 tie in the fifth and Rice followed with a rally-killing double play but at least a run scored on that to make it 4-2, so four runs off excellent Astros starter Framber Valdez was pretty fine work. Of course, it should have been more but the Yankees went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position against Valdez.

➤ As usual, the Yankees immediately fell behind when Jeremy Pena led off against Luis Gil with a home run. But the Yankees answered when the first four men reached in the bottom half, Stanton’s walk forcing in a run, but then the inning went to hell. Rice hit a sac fly and Volpe grounded into a mind-numbing double play.

➤ Gil settled in nicely and wound up going 5.1 innings. He gave up the tying run in the fourth when Jesus Sanchez doubled and scored on a Correa single, but his final line showed six hits and a walk with seven strikeouts, much better than his season debut last week.

➤ The Yankees blew the 4-2 lead in the eighth because that’s what their bullpen does. This time it was Doval who shit the bed. He walked a guy, then ruined a possible double play by pulling Volpe off the bag with a terrible throw so no outs were recorded. Once again, Yankees follies in the field proved costly as Altuve’s single made it 4-3 and a walk loaded the bases so in came David Bednar and he walked in the tying run. However, he was great thereafter as he struck out two to keep it tied, and after Grisham’s clutch go-ahead homer in the bottom of the eighth, he mowed the Astros down on eight pitches in the ninth.

➤ Amed Rosario went on the injured list after he crashed into the wall Friday. So of the trade deadline acquisitions, Rosario and Austin Slater are already on the IL, Jake Bird is in the minors, and Doval has been wildly inconsistent. Bednar has been pretty good, and so has McMahon.

What they said in Saturday’s clubhouse

• Grisham: “I just believe I’m ready for (the moment). I believe I’m built for it. I go into it with that mindset. Being relaxed plays a key role.”

• Boone on Grisham: “He is able to lock in during those moments. He has been in such a good place all year with the at-bat quality. Even when he has hit a little speed bump, he is patient, knows what he is looking for. He has a good plan. You are seeing the power. It was a big-time at-bat right there.”

• Boone on Gil: “Even in the first inning, I felt he was searching to find it a little bit. Then I thought he came out in the second inning and had his best inning. Was in the strike zone, found some rhythm, flirted with a few three-ball counts but for the most part was able to win those. I thought he had a presence with everything.”

Aug. 10: Astros 7, Yankees 1

➤ I’d say it was utterly ridiculous that a spot starter like Jason Alexander looked like Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander as he melted the Yankees bats for five hitless innings, but the truth is it’s not ridiculous. The Yankees stink, plain and simple. Plus, this seems to happen to them all the time when they face a guy no one’s ever heard of, and he makes them look like they’re all wearing blindfolds and swinging strands of spaghetti at the plate.

➤ Meanwhile, the guy who was supposed to give the Yankees an enormous edge in pitching in this game, Max Fried, did not. Not even close. Once again he did not pitch like an ace as he lasted only five innings, gave up four runs and lost, and this is now a continuing trend and yet another reason why this season has become a dumpster fire. In his last seven starts Fried has a 6.00 ERA.

➤ He threw a meatball first pitch to Altuve with two outs in the first inning and it ended up over the fence, of course. He got the first two men in the third, but then Altuve singled and Christian Walker ripped a double to left and when Jasson Dominguez misplayed the carom off the wall Altuve was able to score. Then in the fifth, Fried created a mess by loading the bases on a single, a walk and a hit batter, but he should have escaped with no runs. Instead, after getting ahead 0-2 on rookie Cam Smith, he wasted two pitches, and then what should have been a called strike three was wrongly ruled a ball. It was close, but it should have been an inning-ending strike for the respected veteran Fried against a rookie. Naturally with a new life, Smith lashed a two-run double and that put the game way out of reach.

➤ Rice broke up Alexander’s no-hitter in the sixth, but Judge immediately grounded into a double play to cut off any potential awakening. Sousa came in to pitch the seventh and the Yankees had a rally started as Jazz Chisholm singled, Stanton had a pinch hit single and Volpe walked. Here, because he’s a better and smarter manager and has a feel for the game that Boone never will, Joe Espada yanked Sousa and went with Bryan Abreu.

➤ And here’s the thing. Sousa is a lefty, Abreu is a righty, but Espada didn’t care that lefty-swinging McMahon and Wells were due up. Abreu is better than Sousa, so he went with him and McMahon hit a sac fly and Wells flied out and the Yankees got only one run. The Yankees had one official at bat with a runner in scoring position all day, the Wells fly out. McMahon’s doesn’t count because it was a sac fly.

➤ Williams and Brett Headrick kept it 4-1 until the ninth when the Astros lit up Hill for three runs. That means the Yankees have now allowed 201 runs since July 1. The only teams that have allowed more in that span are the Rockies and Nationals. I’m not kidding, that’s real.

➤ Boone became the first Yankees manager since Ralph Houk - who had some bad teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s - to have a stretch of 19-30 or worst in three separate seasons. The Yankees never had one stretch that bad for 49 games under Joe Torre or Joe Girardi in their 22 combined seasons.

What they said in Sunday’s clubhouse

• Boone, still believing: “The game is littered with dead and buried teams. We’re in a playoff position right now, and we’ve been through a bad two months where we haven’t performed at a level we need to. But look at last year. Go back the year before, the year before. You can pick out a number of teams that are sitting in a worse position than we are right now that go on that run. We have the people to do that, no doubt in my mind, but it’s just sitting here as talk right now. We haven't been good enough for the last few months. But this is different than say even 2023 where I didn’t think we were necessarily capable of that run that we needed to really get hot. And we were out of position at that point. This is different. We’re in a position right now where we’re in control of things. We’re in a playoff spot technically right now, and I believe we have the people to get it done. We’ve gotta play consistent baseball, period.”

• Judge: “We’re just not playing good baseball. I wouldn’t say guys are ‘feeling it,’ we have a tough group in here. It does not feel good losing. We’re not doing our job, we’re not doing the little things that put ourselves in position to win baseball games. It’s going to take all of us … I wouldn't say the confidence has really changed.”

• Fried: “To be honest, I have to be better.”

You would think considering the Twins traded away nearly one-fourth of their 40-man roster at the deadline and now have a joke of a team that maybe this is a team the Yankees can handle. But here’s the thing: Since blowing up their team and seemingly quitting on the season, the 56-61 Twins have won five of their last seven games and are only 5.5 games behind the Yankees in the heroic race for the third and final wildcard spot. Don’t take anything for granted, not with the way the Yankees are playing right now.

Here are some of their top players to watch:

➤ CF Byron Buxton: Still a great defender, and he leads the Twins with 23 homers, 59 RBI, 17 stolen bases, and a .905 OPS, but he has been out about two weeks. He is expected to be activated off the IL at some point in this series.

➤ C-DH Ryan Jeffers: His .354 on-base percentage is the best among the regulars in the lineup.

➤ RF-DH Trevor Larnach: Has 15 homers, 48 RBI with an OPS of .724.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Monday, 7:05, YES: Will Warren (4.44) vs. Zebby Matthews (5.17) who will make his 18th career start and has a career 5.82 ERA and 1.517 WHIP. In other words, he’ll probably dominate the Yankees.

• Tuesday, 7:05, YES: Carlos Rodon (3.35) vs. TBD, and it’s TBD because the Twins have almost no one worthwhile left to start since the deadline purge. But the last TBD the Yankees faced was Jason Alexander Sunday, and we know how that went.

• Thursday, 7:05, Amazon Prime: Cam Schlittler (4.58) vs. Joe Ryan (2.79) who is the ace of the staff and one of the best pitchers in the AL this season.