Hour 1: Better than you think?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
Botox, Anabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:17)
Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS-Lugarix disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:54)
Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

**Michael Kay** (1:01)
This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

**Michael Kay** (1:04)
I got to get more Kay.

**Michael Kay** (1:05)
Listen live weekdays at one on the ESPN New York app and your smart speaker.

**Michael Kay** (1:11)
Good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Wednesday. It's August 12th, it's 2026, me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagement. The fastest moving two hours in sports talk radio. And you know your co-host, you know that, right? And you know the membership number is 1-800-919-3776.
And because it's a Wednesday, that means you get a chance to talk to Mike Lupica in the two o'clock hour. So many things happening in the world of sports. So as you dial in the membership number to become part of the show, we will start off with the Yankees' 4-1 victory over Seattle yesterday. The Yankees are going to have to play a little bit of a different game if they want to get their offense a little bit more jump started than it's been. They are two games over 500 since Aaron Judge went down at the end of May. There is absolutely no telling when he's going to get back. The best case scenario would be sometime at the beginning of September, so he could get himself right for the postseason. We will see, barring setbacks, Bellinger and Stanton before that. Now, their additions will be fine and they will be helpful, but there's only one Aaron Judge. And Judge's absence has been the reason why the Yankee offense has been somewhat moribund and essentially absent. Because if you look at the combined numbers, home run wise, of Judge, Stanton and of Bellinger, you've essentially taken 100 home runs out of the equation for the season. 100 home runs. And the people that you have replaced them with do not come close to approximating the loss of home runs. Now, the Yankees are a team that's built on home runs. Now, ironically enough, the team that they're playing and the team that they beat 4-1 yesterday is a team that is also built on home runs. And, their batting coach after the game yesterday made this statement. In this day and age in baseball, I'm paraphrasing, it's very difficult to get 5 singles in an inning. So, teams are built to get a bloop, a walk and a blast and boom, you've got yourself 3 runs. Well, without Aaron Judge and without Jean-Carlo Stanton and without Cody Bellinger, the home runs are not there. So, if you sit back and you wait for the home runs, the biggest home run bat in the Yankee lineup is Ben Rice, who has really been neutralized over the last month or so. He's gotten some big hits, but his average is now below 260 He has 32 home runs, that's great, but he's been stalled at 31 and 32 for a long time now. Now you look up and down the lineup, where is the other big scary home run bat?
Now Luis Garcia Jr. joined the team at the trade deadline. He could supply some power, but again, they've got to change the way they do business until those home run bats come back. They just have to, because you saw yesterday, Ryan Weathers pitched another outstanding game, made one mistake, and it wasn't really a terrible mistake. It was not a hard hit ball, and it went to the short portion right field by Randy Orozarena, and that gave Seattle a 1-0 lead, and it looked like, here we go again, another really good starting performance. The Yankees are going to waste because they can't score runs. But then something clicked in for them. After curious moves by the Seattle manager, Dan Wilson, because he's got three left-handers in the bullpen, he brought in one after Brian Wu's five innings. That's Jose A. Ferrer, who pitched very, very well, one, two, three innings. Then the next inning, the seventh, the Yankees had four of the next five batters coming up that were left-handed batters. Now, you've got Spier in the bullpen, who's a really good lefty reliever. You could have gone to him, you could have pushed Ferrer to get a couple of outs in the seventh inning. Takes him out, brings in one of their pedestrian right-handers, Rucker, and the Yankees had an inning that they're going to have to replicate in order to make it work this year. They strung together hits.