It was another deflating loss for the Yankees on Saturday afternoon.
Having already dropped the first two games of their crucial four-game set, Garrett Crochet kept the Yankees offense at bay and New York couldn't keep the Red Sox bats quiet in their 12-1 loss.
The loss clinched another series win for the Red Sox, who are now 7-1 against the Yankees this season. The win also pushed their lead in the wild card standings to 1.5 games.
"It sucks. It feels real crappy," manager Aaron Boone said after the loss. "We gotta get past it. We can sit here and dwell on it, [but] we gotta play better. We gotta 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 and going and salvaging one and being in control of what we have in the pen and getting to write the story the rest of the way, but we gotta go do it."
Crochet dominated the Yankees again, allowing just one run on five hits and striking out 11 batters across seven innings. But the Yankees skipper doesn't put it on just the pitching they've faced in this series. For him, it's his own offense and pitching that is the story of the three losses.
"We haven’t generated much here in this series. They shut us down…we have to find a way to scratch out some runs," he said. "The story is getting shut down. Not generating much offensively and struggling to keep them down."
Young right-hander Will Warren is the latest Yankees pitcher to struggle in this series. He allowed five runs across four innings before recently-acquired pitcher Paul Blackburn gave up seven runs in the ninth inning to make Saturday's loss a laugher.
"We've got to beat them," Warren said after the game. "We're capable of beating them, we're just not playing like we should."
"It's not ideal," Giancarlo Stanton said of the loss. "Unacceptable. We all know that. We just got to get tomorrow."
"It’s baseball, but it comes down to we got to play better," Aaron Judge said of his team's play against the Red Sox this season. "Doesn’t matter who we’re facing, whether it’s the Rays, Red Sox, Tigers, whoever. We gotta go out there with our best and we didn’t do that today or the last couple of days."
Judge went 1-for-4 with a double, only the second extra-base hit the Yankees got on Saturday — the other being Stanton's solo shot off of Crochet. But in the three-game series, he's only 2-for-11 with a walk and four strikeouts.
It was brought to Judge's attention that he's said this team has "got to play better" a lot recently, and the reigning AL MVP said he feels like he's been saying it since Opening Day because he always feels the team can be better and that it's on the players to make it happen.
"Coaches can’t fix that, fans can’t fix that, media can’t fix that. It’s the players in this room," he said. "We have to step up. That’s what it comes down to."
He later added, "It’s baseball, it’s a tough game, we just have to keep stepping up. We have to get dirty, do the little things to put ourselves in the best position. Can’t give teams extra outs, if teams are going to give us a chance to score, we got to capitalize. We didn’t do that, especially these last three games. That’s what it comes down to. We have to show up tomorrow and start doing our thing."
In the three losses, the Red Sox have scored 19 runs while the Yankees have pushed across just four. That's less than the five errors they've committed in the first three games of this series.
After Sunday's series finale, the Yankees have three more games against the Red Sox, but this time in Boston. But that's too forward-thinking, as Judge said; they need to figure out how to get a win on Sunday.
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