Yankees' unsightly blight grows deeper with embarrassing loss to Red Sox
Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe returns to the dugout after grounding out against the Red Sox during the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Yankees could explain away being dominated by Garrett Crochet, a Cy Young Award contender who greatly enhances his candidacy every time he faces them.
But the sad truth for Aaron Boone & Co. is that the Red Sox probably didn’t need to use their ace to beat them.
Sure, the Yankees got shut down by Crochet for seven innings (11 strikeouts), which always seems to happen. But he was nowhere near the mound when Saturday’s mildly competitive game collapsed into an embarrassing 12-1 rout, courtesy of a sloppy seven-run ninth inning that was yet another snapshot of the Yankees’ systemic failures this season.
Losing to the Red Sox happens, but the Yankees’ dismal tally is up to eight straight. It’s their longest in-season skid against Boston since 1912, when they dropped 14 in a row (before Babe Ruth’s career even began). What’s been going on this weekend at Fenway South —- the ballpark formerly known as Yankee Stadium — is outright humiliation by the franchise’s most hated, century-old rival.
As the Boston players were doing laps around the bases in the ninth — further tormenting recent Mets cast-off Paul Blackburn, who probably wondered what he did to deserve all this —- the Bronx echoed with emboldened chants of “Let’s go, Red Sox!”
As for the Yankees’ faction among the 45,512 fans, they spent the sunny Saturday afternoon booing their own team, then morosely bailing on them long before Anthony Volpe airmailed a throw off the photographer’s well. Volpe’s error was the Yankees’ fifth of this series, one more than the total number of runs they’ve scored.
The Red Sox could have skipped Crochet, flown him ahead to Baltimore and let Boone’s band of pinstriped misfits find a way to hand them Saturday’s game, because the Yankees are playing like a team incapable of beating anyone other than MLB’s bowling pins.
“It sucks,” Boone said. “It feels real crappy. We got to get past it. We can sit here and dwell on it. We got to play better. We got to play better against these quality opponents in our division. But we can’t go erase what’s been a really crappy weekend so far for us other than putting our best foot forward tomorrow.”
Too often, when facing teams with a pulse, the Yankees are tripping over that foot. They have a 32-35 record against winning teams.
Let’s save the talk about how they’d match up come October, because if this is the standard of baseball the Yankees subscribe to, it’s hardly a guarantee they’re making the postseason, even with the supposedly soft schedule (aside from four more with the Red Sox and three against the Blue Jays).
The Yankees slipped to 1 1⁄2 games behind Boston for the top wild-card spot, but they can’t think that far ahead. Maybe try beating the Red Sox once before this series wraps, or at Fenway next month, just to see if it’s even possible.
“Definitely angry, especially against your rivals,” Aaron Judge said of his team’s performance. “Don’t like the showing we’ve had here at home. Just gotta step up. That’s it. Everybody in this room has got to play a little better, pick it up a notch and go out there and take care of business tomorrow. Nothing we can do about the past.”
Judge, as captain, is more than just a spokesman. The two-time MVP is partly responsible for how the Yankees perform, at least at the clubhouse level, maybe keeping things in line where a manager or general manager can’t reach. Which is why seeing this team consistently make mental errors in addition to the physical ones is such a head-scratcher.
Boston won the first two games of the series despite going 4-for-30 with runners in scoring position and stranding 23. After the Yankees gifted the Sox Thursday’s series-opening win by committing four errors, Jazz Chisholm Jr. talked about how they beat themselves, expressing the need for everyone to “look in the mirror.”
Still, the Yankees are stubbornly unable to self-correct. Crochet was a difficult draw Saturday, no doubt about that. But Will Warren, who was rolling with a 2.74 ERA in his previous eight starts, got overwhelmed by a Red Sox lineup relentlessly on the attack, both at the plate and in the running game. Warren completed only four innings, his shortest outing since July 19, and left with the Yankees in a 5-1 hole.
“They’re gritty,” he said. “They put together good at-bats. I think they take what you give them and they’re just hectic on the bases.”
In other words, everything the Yankees are not in these matchups. The Red Sox scored a dozen runs and smashed only two homers, Trevor Story’s leadoff shot in the fifth that ended Warren’s afternoon and a two-run blast by Carlos Narvaez in the seven-run ninth. Of their 17 hits, 11 were singles, and they built their early lead with the help of a pair of sacrifice flies.
The Yankees, of course, stayed on brand, with their entire offense produced by Giancarlo Stanton’s home run in the fourth inning.
In the ninth, the Red Sox seemed to take their revenge on the mobility-challenged Stanton by making him chase down a handful of line drives to rightfield, including David Hamilton’s triple that kicked around in the corner. Stanton somehow survived, but the Yankees’ pride is badly wounded.
“Not ideal,” Stanton said. “Unacceptable. We all know that.”
If that’s truly the case, what’s taking the Yankees so long to fix it? Maybe it’s just not possible for them against Boston.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
