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In a season where they got almost everything right in the first half, the Yankees are finding out how the other half lives.
The Yankees rallied at the end of Friday night’s ninth to force their third straight extra-inning game, but then failed to hit the winning run with bases loaded in both the ninth and tenth innings before they lost to the Red Sox 5–4, in 11 innings in the Bronx.
They have lost five games out of six, including their last three games against Boston.
“A little bad luck never hurt anyone,” said Jose Trevino. “We’ll be fine.”
Xander Bogaerts, the automatic runner, got the go-ahead on a wild pitch with two outs in the top of 11th place.
Michael King pulled back the first two batters he faced in the 11th, and Bogaerts advanced to third with a fly-out from Alex Verdugo. However, King then rebounded into Christian Vazquez and the ball rebounded too far from Trevino as an alert Bogaerts raced home to score.
“I could have kept it closer,” Trevino said of the play. “He read it great.”
Then the Yankees were powerless against Ryan Brasier at the end of the 11th inning.
While the wild pitch cost the Yankees, so did the fact that they went 2-on-15 with runners in goal position.
The Yankees scored a run at the bottom of ninth place thanks to a sloppy field game by the Red Sox after manager Aaron Boone was thrown for blaming Matt Carpenter for a hip strike.
They had the bases loaded and nobody was out after that, but they couldn’t come up with the game-winning run as Trevino got caught in a double and DJ LeMahieu made a comeback.
The Yankees loaded bases again with an out in the 10th, but Gleyber Torres landed in a double play to miss another opportunity.
“We should have won that game,” Boone said. “We had our chances and couldn’t prevail. It’s frustrating. … We’re going to try to complete this halfway as we are able to.”
Boone was ejected in the ninth inning by home plate umpire DJ Reyburn, frustrated by what he believed were missed calls to several of his hitters, including Carpenter and Aaron Judge.
“It’s part of the game,” Judge said of the questionable ball strike calls. “In big situations, it gets frustrating to sway the count a little bit.”
At most other points this season, the Yankees would have shrugged off the calls and either Trevino or LeMahieu would have finished it in the ninth or Torres would have gotten through an inning later.
Despite last week’s blip, the Yankees have a 12-game lead over the second-place Rays and just over two weeks until the Aug. 2 close to address any needs they think they have.
“It’s not that we’re playing badly,” said starter Jordan Montgomery.
Montgomery isn’t wrong: Four of the Yankees’ five losses during their 1-5 stretch were caused by a run.
Faced with Nathan Eovaldi — making his first start in more than a month after suffering a lower back infection — and a Red Sox team that had just been swept by the Rays, the Yankees got a big push from Giancarlo Stanton and little else .
Montgomery gave up three runs in six innings, surviving a grueling first inning in which he gave up two runs, started two and needed 31 pitches to get through.
The Yankees played from behind early on as Rafael Devers continued to torment them, hitting a two-barrel homer in front of Montgomery in the first.
In the third, LeMahieu grabbed an out and after the judge flew to the center, Anthony Rizzo made a walk after falling 2-0 behind. Stanton followed by hammering a three-run homer into right field seats to make it 3-2.
Montgomery, who resigned 10 times in a row, returned the lead by allowing Vazquez a solo shot in the fourth but made it through six innings, with the game tied at 3-3.
That changed in the seventh when Aroldis replaced Chapman for Montgomery and handed a leading homer to Bobby Dalbec.
