Not a great few days for the Yankees as their offense disappeared and it cost them the series against the A’s, a team they have no business losing a series to. Not even the continued excellent pitching could bail out a lineup that is littered with automatic outs right now. Lets get to it.

Well, if you’re looking for me to say anything uplifting about that shitty three-game series against the A’s, I guess it would be that despite losing the final two games thanks to an offense that was abhorrently pathetic, the Yankees are still off to a decent start at 8-4, good enough to lead the Orioles by two games in the AL East, and the Blue Jays and this weekend’s opponent, the Rays, by three.

That’s all I’ve got for you because that was such a miserable, unenjoyable three games, it’s hard to even be happy that they avoided the sweep, even though that’s what they deserved.

Yeah, the Yankees should have lost all three to the A’s. They had one good inning in the entire series when they erupted for four runs in the eighth on Tuesday to turn a 3-1 deficit into a 5-3 victory, the big blow being a three-run homer by Amed Rosario, of all guys. And for that we had former Yankees batting practice pitcher Mark Leiter Jr. to thank as he reminded us how awful it was to have him in the Yankees bullpen for the season and a half he was in the Bronx.

Outside of that outburst, the Yankees had a grand total of three runs on nine hits in the other 25 innings in which they batted including a gruesome stretch from the fourth inning Tuesday to the seventh inning Wednesday when they were shut out on no hits for 11.2 innings. Against the A’s for Christ’s sake.

I can’t even fathom how it was possible for them to be so horrid against a team that came into the series ranking 28th with a 5.51 full staff ERA and an MLB-worst 1.790 WHIP.

It’s obviously a small sample size and way too early to be panicking, but right now this offense sucks. The Yankees are hitting .204 as a team which ranks 28th in MLB, ahead of only the Angels and Mariners. They’re 21st in OPS at .655, and 15th in on-base, and what’s crazy about that is they’ve drawn the fourth-most walks with 60, yet their 78 hits are tied for dead last with Seattle.

Analytics people want to convince you that batting average doesn’t matter, but it does. Yes, on-base, slugging and OPS are more indicative of how a player is performing, but average still tells you plenty and what it tells me about the Yankees is that this team has automatic outs up and down the lineup, and that includes the three-time AL MVP, Aaron Judge, who is off to a lousy start.

Judge is hitting .222 with a .314 on-base, a .758 OPS, and a 28.8% strikeout rate, but the really alarming number is his batted ball hard hit percentage is 46.7%. For comparison, he has been at 58% hard hit or better every year since 2022. Judge has to be a human wrecking ball. If he’s not it’s trouble because there are very few other guys in this lineup that scare anyone.

Trent Grisham has been a disaster in the leadoff spot as he’s hitting .162 with no home runs, and didn’t we all figure that was likely to happen after he had the season of his life in 2025, a complete outlier to the rest of his career? I still say giving him that $22 million qualifying offer was one of the dumbest things Brian Cashman has done in recent years.

We’re now into Austin Wells’ fourth MLB season and nothing has changed - he’s a shitty hitter, off to a .167 start with no homers and no RBI. Jazz Chisholm is hitting .186 with no homers; Jose Caballero has completely botched his chance to claim the shortstop job with Anthony Volpe sidelined, hitting .135 with no homers and playing shaky defense thanks to a scattershot arm; and Cody Bellinger is ho-humming with a .238 average including .200 with runners in scoring position.

As for Ryan McMahon, he is in a category of suckage all to himself. He’s sitting at .069, 2-for-29 with no homers and a strikeout rate of 39.4%. His at bats make you want to cry, just a clueless dude in the batters’ box who doesn’t seem to have any ability to snap out of it.

The only regulars doing anything are Giancarlo Stanton and Ben Rice. Stanton has a team-high 14 hits and is batting .326, but even that’s underwhelming because 11 of those hits have been singles and he has just one home run.

Rice, who like everyone else in this series was terrible, came out of it still slashing .324/.479/.676 for an OPS of 1.155, ranking top six in MLB in each category which only shows you how scorching hot he was before the A’s came to town.

“We got shut down today,” Aaron Boone said Thursday after watching his team get one-hit. “The previous games where we struggled scoring I felt like we were getting the traffic and were having quality at bats and today was a day we just got beat. We didn't generate much, we didn’t hit a lot of balls on the screws at all, and didn’t create much traffic. We’ll get this thing going, obviously we’ve got a few guys struggling to get on track a little bit and hopefully we can get things going down (in Tampa).”

➤ Ryan McMahon has been beyond useless all season, so it was telling that Aaron Boone sat him in favor of Amed Rosario, even though righty Aaron Civale was starting for the A’s. We bitch about Boone all the time, but he pushed the right button here as Rosario single-handedly won the game with a solo homer in the second and a game-winning three-run bomb in the eighth to cap a four-ran rally.

➤ Isn’t it nice that Mark Leiter Jr. is someone else’s problem now? The Yankees were a smoldering campfire all night and then Leiter Fluid came in to pitch and a three-alarm blaze erupted. Three straight singles by Cody Bellinger, Ben Rice and Giancarlo Stanton cut the Yankees deficit to 3-2, and after Jazz Chisholm flied out, Rosario crushed an 0-1 Leiter meatball. Ballgame. And basically, that was the last time anyone had a reason to smile in this shitty series.

➤ Cam Schlittler wasn’t great, but the bitter cold sure didn’t help and it affected his velocity which was down a tick. After going 17.2 scoreless innings to start the season, he gave up three in the third. Former Met Jeff McNeil - a royal pain in the ass if ever there was one - is a Yankee killer and he had a single in the middle of the rally, but the big hit was a two-run double by Nick Kurtz. I thought Boone could have intentionally walked the A’s lefty slugger to go after Shea Langeliers with the bases loaded, but he let Schlittler face Kurtz and it backfired. Tyler Soderstrom then hit an RBI double with two outs on a 1-2 pitch to make it 3-1.

➤ Schlittler went five innings, 84 pitches, and allowed five hits but had no walks (he still has not issued a free pass this season) and seven strikeouts. After a rough couple days against Miami, the bullpen got the job done with four scoreless innings from Jake Bird, Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz and David Bednar. Cruz and Headrick both walked two so it wasn’t perfect, but guess who was perfect? Bednar who put up a rare for him 1-2-3 save and it took just 14 pitches.

➤ As bad as the Yankees were in Thursday’s series finale, this was the worse loss of the two. They had A’s starter Luis Severino on the ropes in the first inning with three straight singles before he recorded an out, the last by Bellinger to drive in a run, and they eventually scored a second run on a bases-loaded walk by JC Escarra. Then Game 1 hero Rosario put up a terrible at bat, swinging out of his shoes and whiffed to leave the bases juiced. The Yankees offense then took the rest of the series off. Severino needed 32 pitches to get through that, and it should have been a short night for him. Instead, he put up four scoreless innings.

➤ Will Warren was cruising along with two quick outs in the fourth, and then as happens too much with him, he hits a bad patch and things spin out of control. He was one strike away from a 1-2-3 inning and would have been at 53 pitches through four. Instead, three straight singles, a walk and a wild pitch and just like that the game was tied, and his pitch count was 75.

➤ Ultimately, Warren could not finish five innings, but Tim Hill, Camilo Doval and Headrick kept it tied through eight, not that it mattered because after Rosario’s single in the fourth, the Yankees did not manage another hit against an A’s bullpen filled with a bunch of bums, two of whom had ERA’s over 7.00 entering the night.

➤ Unfortunately, Bednar did not repeat his Tuesday performance and he lost the game as Kurtz led off with a single, Langeliers doubled, and Brent Rooker hit a game-winning sac fly. I am really worried about Bednar as a closer because he simply puts too many baserunners on and this time it burned him.

➤ Ben Rice had a night to forget - four strikeouts and two misplays at first base. And McMahon had another miserable performance. Credit to him for starting at short for the first time in his MLB career and he handled it well, but he whiffed to end the game and right now, he’s the worst hitter in all of MLB. Why he was even hitting in the ninth is a mystery. Boone could have gone to Wells (though he surely would have failed), or he could have called on Paul Goldschmidt or Randal Grichuk. Who cares that the A’s had righty Joel Kuhnel pitching. Is McMahon really a better option, even with his platoon advantage? The answer is absolutely no way.

➤ What a miserable afternoon. One hit. One hit against the god damn A’s with a pitcher, Jeffrey Springs, who can barely break 90 mph. He had a no-hitter until Rice ripped a clean single with one out in the seventh, and even after he left after seven innings, the Yankees could not touch Justin Sterner or Hogan Harris, finishing one of the most anemic and pathetic offensive performances you could possibly imagine. This was so bad, they had only nine balls in play with an exit velo better than 90 mph.

➤ In that seventh, Stanton drew a walk before Rice’s single, but then Grichuk - who of course tortured the Yankees for years, but now that he’s on the team has been a complete stiff in limited at bats - whiffed. Now it was left to Wells and to the surprise of no one, he flied out to kill the only chance the Yankees had of scoring.

➤ And thus, what a terrible waste of a great outing by Ryan Weathers. After two rough outings to start his Yankee career, he was great as he pitched eight innings allowing just the one run on seven hits with no walks and seven strikeouts, 101 pitches, 73 for strikes. Sadly, he made one mistake and Max Muncy ripped it for a leadoff triple in the seventh, and then Soderstrom singled him home for the only run of the game. In his three starts, the Yankees have yet to score a single run while he was on the mound, meaning he has never pitched with a lead. Lovely.

➤ Outside of Weathers, the only positive to be gleaned from this turd of game was that the entire Yankees bullpen got the day off, with the exception of mop-up man Paul Blackburn who pitched the ninth.

➤ This was the first time the Yankees have lost a series at home to the A’s since April of 2016. This was also the first time the A’s have beaten the Yankees in the Bronx in a 1-0 game since July 14, 1972, so before George Steinbrenner bought the team. I’m sure he was swearing from the heavens watching this one.

The Yankees head down to Tampa for three this weekend against the always annoying Rays who are back playing in their mausoleum of a ballpark, the now repaired Tropicana Field, after spending last year at the Yankees’ spring training base. The Rays just dropped two straight at home to the Cubs and have scuffled out to a 5-7 start, but we know that means nothing because this team, for whatever reason, always seems to give the Yankees fits, especially down there. And given the state of the Yankees offense, there’s no reason to believe anything will change, even though Tampa Bay’s staff ERA of 4.96 ranks 27th in MLB.

➤ 3B Junior Caminero: He’s off to a sluggish start hitting .217 with two homers, but he’s as dangerous a hitter as they come.

➤ OF Chandler Simpson: One of the fastest players in MLB, he leads the AL with 18 hits and a .391 average and has five stolen bases.

➤ DH Yandy Diaz: It feels like this guy has been hammering the Yankees for 20 years. He’s off to a blazing start with a .455 on-base, a 1.008 OPS and 10 RBI.

➤ 1B Jonathan Aranda: He leads the Rays with three homers and 11 RBI.

➤ RP Kevin Kelly: He has two saves but he also has a 12.27 ERA, part of a bullpen that has been terrible thus far with a combined 6.70 ERA.