Yankees Continue Horrible Stretch

Hey, a little bonus for you, not that you’re going to be in the mood to read it. There’s so much to write about in these four-game series that I’m breaking things up and sending out my thoughts at the midway point of this pending disaster against Toronto. And none of them are good. Lets get to it. 

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In the spirit of telling it like it is, here goes: The Yankees suck. That’s pretty much all I need to say about this team, but since I write for a living, I’ll give you much more.

Let’s see, where should I start? Well, the Yankees can’t hit. The Yankees can’t pitch. The Yankees can’t field. And the Yankees can’t run the bases. Yeah, that pretty much sums up the past month of watching yet another iteration of the overrated, overpaid, and underachieving Yankees.

Yes, they are still in first place, but now just barely as the Jays are within a game and the Rays, who have finally hit a speed bump with three straight losses, are 1.5 out. Once upon a time those teams were seven and eight games back.

Of course we should not be surprised by this nosedive because nothing ever changes with this team. We all should have seen this coming because this is the fourth straight year where they’ve gotten off to a very nice start and then gone into massive regression. Last year, they found a way to hang on to win the AL East and beat two middling AL Central teams to get to the World Series, but we know how it went when they played a legitimate Dodgers team, men against boys in five embarrassing games.

Here’s a nugget I pulled off X Tuesday:

• In 2022 the Yankees started 61-23 and finished 38-40, then went 3-6 in the postseason;

• In 2023 they started 36-25 and finished 46-55 and missed the playoffs;

• In 2024 they started 50-22 and finished 44-46, then went 8-6 in the playoffs;

• And now in 2025 they started 35-20 and have now gone 13-17. Anyone spot a trend there?

While they’ll probably make the postseason - I say probably only because the American League isn’t exactly top heavy - we all know the World Series drought will extend another year because barring a roster transformation at the trade deadline, this team is nowhere close to being championship caliber.

“We’re not playing our best baseball by any means,” said Luke Weaver. “The concern is not necessarily high in my opinion. We’ve got a great offense, great pitching and great fundamentals out there on the field. So it’s going to click together.”

Delusional. He, and Aaron Boone, and Aaron Judge and all the other Mr. Happy’s in that clubhouse are delusional. Great offense? Great pitching? Great fundamentals? Are you kidding me? Just once I’d love to hear someone on this team tell it like it is, but that will never happen.

The first two games of this series have been maddening debacles in every way, and the two losses illuminated very clearly that these bums are in disarray because like all Aaron Boone teams, they play such fundamentally challenged baseball.

“We’ve obviously got to play a little bit better,” Boone said. “We have the people capable of doing that and we’ll continue to work hard at it. We’ve got to play better overall, we understand that and know that. I have concerns of everything when we’re going great, when we’re not, and everything in between. I try to evaluate it not emotionally every day. The last two nights, with runners in scoring position, I feel like we’ve swung the bat pretty well and haven’t got results.”

Swung the bat well and haven’t gotten results? They were a combined 3-for-24. As I said, delusional.

In case you can’t tell, though I’m pretty sure you will know by the end of this newsletter, this is about as pissed as I’ve been all season.

June 30: Blue Jays 5, Yankees 4

➤ As shitty days go for a ballclub, this was about as bad as it gets. Before the game, we learned that Fernando Cruz has a high-grade oblique strain caused by his working out with a medicine ball which is just so 2025, right? Do you think Whitey Ford or Ron Guidry or Andy Pettitte needed a medicine ball? You can forget about Cruz for at least two months, and that’s a huge loss for a bullpen that was already falling apart before this happened. Also pregame it was announced that Austin Wells has a circulatory problem in his finger so he needed to be down for at least these first two games.

➤ Then the game started and Trent Grisham suffered a hamstring injury and he’ll be out a little while, and shortly after he exited, the Yankees proceeded to blow leads of 2-0 and 3-1 and lost thanks to a four-run sixth inning that was straight from hell.

➤ We celebrated the departure of Rafael Devers from our lives, but there’s still another face of evil in the AL East, his name is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and like Devers it seems that his entire existence is built around torturing the Yankees. Fatty Vladdy did it again with two hits and three RBI, the big blow a two-run single in the sixth inning that snapped a 3-3 tie.

➤ As for that sixth, what a shit show. First, Carlos Rodon - who had pitched well to that point - gave up a leadoff double so at 96 pitches, Boone yanked him. That’s two starts in a row where Rodon has come out before reaching the almighty 100-pitch mark. In Cincinnati it was the oppressive heat, but what was the problem here in the dome in Toronto? Why didn’t he have another couple batters in him?

➤ Mark Leiter came in and like several Yankees relievers, you never know what you’re gonna get from him. What you got was garbage, though Anthony Volpe certainly didn’t help him. The first man he faced, Myles Straw, hit a ball into the hole and Volpe made a nice play to glove it, but then threw wildly to third when he had no chance to get Davis Schneider. That error allowed Straw to take second, killing the possibility of a double play. Nathan Lukes then singled home a run and after a strikeout, Leiter threw a wild pitch. Next, Ernie Clement grounded into the hole, again Volpe got there, and again he made a stupid decision by trying to throw out the speedy Clement when he had no chance. Straw scored to tie the game and because Volpe made the throw, Lukes went to third. Just giving free bases away.

➤ Jonathan Loaisiga entered, and yes, another guy who you can’t trust. His first man was George Springer, and he reached base thanks to a catchers’ interference on JC Escarra which loaded the bases, setting the stage for Guerrero’s game-winning two-run single. Look at that inning and I think you’d conclude that given all that happened, it might have been one of the worst of the season.

➤ Jazz Chisholm had given the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the fourth with a two-run homer right after Judge battled Max Scherzer for 10 pitches before striking out. Scherzer retired the first nine men he faced before Grisham singled in the fourth. With Scherzer out after five innings, the Yankees made it 3-1 in the sixth on a Giancarlo Stanton RBI single. That came after Blue Jays manager John Schneider intentionally walked Judge even though first base was not open. In the eighth, after Cody Bellinger’s homer made it 5-4, Schneider sent Judge to first again with no outs and no one on base. Maybe he hadn’t been paying attention for three weeks, but Judge hasn’t exactly been doing much. Well, it worked out because Chisholm wasted an out trying to bunt for a hit, and after ex-Yankee Chad Green essentially walked Stanton intentionally with four pitches that were not close, Ben Rice and Volpe each flied out to kill the threat.

➤ This was their ninth loss when leading by at least two runs in the sixth inning or later, tied with the Diamondbacks for the most in MLB.

➤ This loss also brought June to an end, a month where they went 13-14. They were 11-12 in June 2023 and 14-13 in June 2024. No, it has not been a good month for this club.

What they said in Monday’s clubhouse

• Boone: “Not our best month, obviously. We want to do better than that. That said, it’s part of it. It’s part of the season. I think it comes down to we had a really tough week ( six-game losing streak) that lends itself to this record. We know we’ve got to be a little bit better. Feel like overall, we’ve just got to find a way to finish some of these games.”

July 1: Blue Jays 12, Yankees 5

➤ Utterly ridiculous and horrendous in every way imaginable. And now, they’ve managed to lose the two games in this series started by their two best pitchers, Rodon and Max Fried. Not that this was all Fried’s fault. He contributed with two mistake pitches that ended up in home runs, but it was Chisholm’s shitty, incredibly lazy miscue in the fourth inning that started all the trouble, and later it was the gassed bullpen which turned this into a pathetic laugher.

➤ The Yankees opened a quick 2-0 lead when Jasson Dominguez ripped a two-out, two-run single, and then Fried blew through the first three innings without incident. But in the fourth, another premier Yankee killer, George Springer, led off with a home run, and after Fried got two outs, it all came apart. Davis Schneider hit a routine grounder to Chisholm who could not have been more nonchalant and his throw pulled Goldschmidt off the bag. Schneider was given a hit but it was clearly an error in everyone eyes except the official scorer. Then Fried compounded matters by walking the lousy-hitting Straw, and then he really made an awful mistake and served up a three-run homer to Andres Gimenez, a .207 hitter. That made it 4-2.

➤ The Yankees rallied to tie it in the seventh, not that they did anything to deserve it. Bellinger singled and for the third time in two games, Judge was intentionally walked in a situation where no team would intentionally walk him. That put runners on first and second with no outs. I mean there must be a million managers looking down from heaven wondering if John Schneider has a screw loose. But what Schneider was clearly saying is that he has zero respect for the Yankees’ ability to manufacture runs and he’s certainly right in believing that. However, his strategy backfired this time when Clement and Guerrero made back-to-back errors on routine grounders that allowed two runs to score. Of course, the Yankees didn’t take the lead because once the Jays stopped fumbling the ball, both Volpe and Escarra failed to deliver the go-ahead run.

➤ OK, they were back in the game, but what did the Yankees do? Gagged it right back thanks to a pathetic display put on by Leiter and Weaver. Leiter gave up a single and a walk, so Boone turned to Weaver and he struck out the first guy he faced - but wait, Escarra committed catchers’ interference for the second night in a row. He now has three this season, more than 25 other teams. Yeah, chew on that. Thus, instead of two on and two out, it was bases loaded and one out. Springer then crushed a middle-middle Weaver meatball for a grand slam. Disgusting, but that sums up what has been going on with this team. Springer, a royal pain in the ass when he was with Astros and now with the Jays, ended up with a career-high seven RBI because he tacked on a two-run single in the eighth off some nobody named Geoff Hartlieb.

➤ The bullpen is shot, and there are no days off this week to reset. Boone keeps yanking his starters too early and forcing the relievers to get too many outs night after night, and now they’re paying the price. Leiter’s WHIP is 1.590 which ranks 150th out of the 157 AL pitchers who have thrown at least 30 innings. And now Weaver has allowed at least one run in four of his last eight outings, though they were split up by his three weeks off with the hamstring issue.

➤ Volpe now has 11 errors this season which is second-most among all shortstops, and in his last 15 games he’s batting .122 with a .241 on-base. However, because Oswald Peraza is so horrible at the plate - he’s hitting .157 for the season - the Yankees have no choice but to keep playing Volpe when in reality, he should be sent to Triple-A to figure his shit out.

➤ The Jays went 5-for-7 with runners in scoring position while the Yankees finished a deplorable 2-for-17. Over the last 18 games, they are now hitting .166 with a .254 on-base and a .482 OPS with RISP, all of which are dead last in MLB. Remember, the Rockies, White Sox, Pirates and Marlins are also in this league.

What they said in Tuesday’s clubhouse

• Fried on what happened after the Chisholm play: “I have to do my job to be able to get out of that and keep making pitches. I can’t walk the next guy and then leave a sinker that was flat up (in the zone), and a good hitter made me pay.”

• Escarra on the interference: “It’s on me. I intend to get as close as possible, but obviously not letting that happen. I was too close today. I didn’t help my team win today, or (Monday). It shouldn’t happen. But it’s something I can control. But I was too deep in there trying to steal that low strike.”

• Weaver on the Springer grand slam: “You run into a bad pitch there to a guy that’s having a nice day and the game gets away from you.”