NEW YORK — The Yankees found a new way to lose Monday night, and their manager found a curious way to explain it. After watching his team boot the ball around Yankee Stadium in a 7-3 defeat to the Detroit Tigers, Aaron Boone suggested this sloppiness was the forgivable kind.
It was the fifth straight loss, the eighth in 10 games, and the latest entry in a slump that has now rewritten the franchise record book for the wrong reasons.
Detroit scored five unearned runs. The Yankees committed errors at multiple positions, lost Jazz Chisholm Jr. to a scary collision, and managed three hits for a fourth consecutive game.
Then Boone tried to draw a line between this mess and the last one.
The Yankees have hit a franchise-first low. They are the first team in their history to record three or fewer hits in four straight games, and they are doing it while the defense unravels behind a thinned-out lineup. Boone’s explanation, that Monday’s errors came from good defenders and therefore should not linger, struck a strange note for a team in free fall and now 1.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East.
A defensive meltdown at the Stadium
The damage started early and rarely stopped. Ryan Weathers turned in the shortest Yankees start of the season, lasting just 1.2 innings while charged with five runs, only two of them earned, on seven hits and a walk.
The defense gave him no cover. Anthony Volpe could not corral a Spencer Torkelson grounder that went for an RBI single in the first. Austin Wells allowed a passed ball. In the second, Jose Caballero threw wildly to first, and Paul Goldschmidt could not scoop it, turning a potential inning-ending out into a Dillon Dingler sacrifice fly. Cody Bellinger later dropped a fly ball at the wall.
Detroit pounced on every gift. Kevin McGonigle delivered a two-run single during the early onslaught, and the Tigers built a 6-0 lead before the Yankees managed much of anything. It added up to five unearned runs, pushing the Yankees to 14 unearned runs over their last five games, their most in any five-game span since July 1990.
Bellinger, who went 0-for-4 to extend his own slump, did not look for cover afterward.
“That was a bad one,” Bellinger said. “No sugarcoating that one.”
The excuse that raised eyebrows
Boone has spent the past week defending his team through one ugly loss after another. On Monday, asked about defensive lapses that mirrored the four errors in the loss at Fenway Park, he tried to separate the two nights.
The manager argued that Monday’s miscues, unlike earlier one, came from reliable fielders and were therefore not a real concern.
“It happens, you know, an on-the-run throw that I don’t think was a terrible throw. Goldie can’t quite hang on to it,” Boone said. “A couple really good defenders that, you know, didn’t complete plays today. But you know, sloppiness on Thursday night in Fenway, that’s, that’s sloppy.”
The logic landed awkwardly. The Yankees have now allowed unearned runs in bunches for a week, and drawing a distinction between acceptable errors and sloppy ones did little to reassure a fan base watching the team’s grip on first place slip away.
Boone was firmer about the offense, which has been the larger failure. He acknowledged the bats have to carry more of the load.
“We’ve got to do a better job, obviously,” Boone said. “We’ve run up against some tough pitching for sure over these last several days. But we’ve got to get some guys putting a little more pressure.”
Numbers that have no precedent
The offensive collapse is historic in the most unwanted sense. The Yankees are hitting .098 over their last four games, going 12-for-123, the worst four-game stretch in the franchise’s history. They are the first team in American League history to bat under .100 while striking out at least 35 times across four games, fanning 38 times with eight walks.
Tigers starter Casey Mize made it look easy, throwing seven scoreless innings and tying a career high with 10 strikeouts. The Yankees managed one hit against him, a third-inning double from Spencer Jones, before Amed Rosario’s three-run homer in the eighth dressed up the final score.
The slumps are everywhere in the order. Ben Rice is 0-for-18 over his last five games. Bellinger is mired at 2-for-27. Goldschmidt is 0-for-12. The Yankees are managing all of it without Aaron Judge, whose absence has reshaped the team. With Judge in the lineup this season, the Yankees were 36-23. Without him, they are 12-13.
A reeling team with reinforcements on the way
There was a real injury cost to add to the box score. In the fourth inning, Chisholm and Jasson Dominguez collided chasing a shallow fly ball, with Chisholm taking Dominguez’s elbow and exiting the game. He entered concussion protocol and, per Boone, was not diagnosed with a concussion but is being held out as a precaution. It capped a miserable few days for Chisholm, who was ejected in Sunday’s loss to Boston.
Help is close. Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon are both expected back this week, and their returns would deepen a lineup stretched thin by injuries. The Yankees, still 48-36, remain within range in a weak American League despite the skid.
The immediate task is steep. New York sends Cam Schlittler to the mound Tuesday against Detroit ace Tarik Skubal, a two-time reigning Cy Young winner who could be pitching one of his final games before the trade deadline. For a Yankees team searching for any sign of life, an ace duel offers a chance to stop the bleeding, if the bats and the gloves finally cooperate.
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