The New York Yankees fell to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday afternoon by an 8-1 final (box score), extending their losing streak to seven in a row and dropping them to 60-63 on the year. This is the latest in a season the Yankees have had a losing record since 1995. Additionally, the Yankees are on pace to finish in last place for the first time since 1990. They now trail the fourth-place Red Sox by five games with 39 contests remaining on the schedule.
Yankees ace Gerrit Cole had an uncharacteristically iffy outing. He surrendered six runs on seven hits and a walk over the course of four innings. Four of those runs came on Luis Urías' second-inning grand slam, his second in as many plate appearances. The Yankees did not put up much of a fight from there.
Rather, Red Sox right-hander Kutter Crawford held the Yankees hitless through the first 5 ⅓ innings on Saturday. Crawford's no-hit bid was dashed by Yankees star Aaron Judge, who launched his 24th home run of the year.
Judge entered Saturday having hit .250/.438/.467 with four home runs and more walks than strikeouts since returning from the injured list in late July. Yet the Yankees are now 6-15 over that span -- good for a 28.6% win percentage that would equal 46 wins over a regulation-length season.
The rest of the Yankees lineup, by the way, combined for a single hit.
The Yankees' latest flat showing came just hours after manager Aaron Boone held a team meeting on Friday night with the goal of letting his players know that the season isn't over.
"We have 40 games left and there's not just occasional, there's a lot of examples -- a lot of recent examples even -- of teams turning it around," Boone told his players, according to his account to ESPN. "Now, I also recognize we haven't put ourselves in any kind of position or certainly given anyone a thought like why we would get back into it. But neither had those teams when they made their runs or when they got going."
The Yankees' playoff odds coming into Saturday's game were estimated by SportsLine to sit at 2.1%. They'll wrap up their weekend series with the Red Sox on Sunday. The rest of their August will entail series against the Tampa Bay Rays and Detroit Tigers. They'll then open September with sets versus the Houston Astros, those Tigers again, and then the Milwaukee Brewers.
