NEW YORK — The boos rained down on Yankee Stadium as the Tigers piled on four runs in the 11th inning Wednesday, the sound of a fan base watching a first-place season come apart. The Yankees had fought back to force extra innings. They lost anyway, 6-2, and the misery only deepened.
It was the Yankees’ seventh straight loss, their longest skid since 2023.
Detroit completed a three-game sweep in the Bronx, and the Yankees have now dropped nine of 11. A team that owned the best record in the American League a week ago has tumbled to five games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the loss column.
Sloppy defense, a silent offense and a late bullpen meltdown have all played their part. So has the man in the dugout.
The Yankees are in a full-blown crisis, and the seventh loss carried a new layer of second-guessing. With the winning run on third in the 10th, Aaron Boone made a decision that became the flashpoint of the defeat and drew as much scrutiny as the final score.
A rally, then a collapse
The Yankees trailed 2-0 entering the ninth before showing a pulse. Amed Rosario homered into the left-field seats, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. manufactured the tying run, singling, stealing second and third, and racing home on a wild pitch. Fernando Cruz kept Detroit off the board in the 10th.
The chance to win came and went in the bottom of the 10th. Jose Caballero opened with a sacrifice bunt, moving the automatic runner, Spencer Jones, to third with one out. A fly ball or a slow grounder would have ended it. Instead, Oswaldo Cabrera struck out, Detroit intentionally walked Ben Rice, and Ali Sanchez struck out to strand the winning run 90 feet away.
Then the 11th fell apart. Camilo Doval recorded two quick outs before the Yankees intentionally walked Riley Greene. Greene stole second, and Doval, ahead 0-2 on Hao-Yu Lee, walked him, then walked Spencer Torkelson on a full count to force in the go-ahead run.
Zach McKinstry followed with a two-run single to right. When the throw home arrived too late, Sanchez compounded it, firing the ball over Anthony Volpe’s head at second base and into center field to let another run score. Four runs crossed, and the Yankees went down in order in the bottom half.
A historically ugly stretch
The numbers behind the skid are staggering. During the seven-game losing streak, the Yankees have scored 17 runs and allowed 17 unearned runs. According to Stathead’s Katie Sharp, the only other team in the last 100 years with a seven-game span featuring seven losses, at least 17 unearned runs allowed and 17 or fewer runs scored is the 1989 Detroit Tigers.
The defense has been the through-line. The Yankees have allowed 23 unearned runs over their last 12 games, their most in any 12-game span since 1989, after allowing just 22 in their first 74 games. The offense has been just as grim, managing 23 hits over the last six games, the fewest in any six-game span in a single season in franchise history.
The bats have gone quiet for weeks. The Yankees have scored four runs or fewer in 12 straight games, losing 10 of them, matching their longest such streak since 2014. Over their past 14 games, in which they have gone 3-11, they have topped four runs only once.
Wednesday added another sloppy chapter. Caballero, playing an unfamiliar center field, threw to the wrong base in the sixth, then overthrew the cutoff man Ben Rice in the 11th. The mistakes have piled up throughout the streak, and the players know it.
The decision that drew backlash
The ending stung more because of a choice Boone made when the game hung in the balance. With the winning run on third and one out in the 10th, the manager had Paul Goldschmidt, healthy and one of his best hitters, waiting on the bench. He didn’t use him and let Cabrera hit instead.
That gamble turned the freefall from a slump into a referendum on how the Yankees are being run.
Cabrera, hitless in nine at-bats this year and likely to be optioned to Triple-A within days, struck out. Afterward, Boone was pressed on why he did not turn to Goldschmidt. His answer did little to quiet the second-guessing.
“Because I have confidence that Cabrera can touch the ball, too,” Boone said.
There was a complicating factor. A wave of food poisoning had swept the clubhouse, leaving Boone short-handed. Max Schuemann, the last man on the bench, was too sick to be available, so using Goldschmidt would have forced the first baseman to play second or third had the game continued to the 11th, a risk Boone said he would not take.
Yet the manager had other options. He could have burned the designated hitter and moved Rosario to third base, exactly what the Yankees did over the weekend in Boston. He simply chose not to, and in a seven-game tailspin, playing it safe read as a scared move rather than a calculated one.
A team searching for a reset
The 11th-inning collapse mirrored the gut-punch loss in Boston on Sunday, when the Yankees rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the ninth and led 4-2 in the 10th before losing 5-4. The bullpen was stretched thin all series, in part because closer David Bednar missed the entire set on the paternity list, forcing Cruz and Doval into high-leverage duty.
The frustration boiled over in the clubhouse. Cody Bellinger, stuck at 1-for-23 during the streak, did not hide his feelings about his own slump and the team’s.
“It f—ing sucks. It’s a s—ty feeling,” Bellinger said. “You want to contribute, and when you’re not succeeding, it’s very frustrating.”
Ryan McMahon and Trent Grisham are expected back from the injured list Friday, when the Yankees open a series against the Minnesota Twins. Then comes a four-game road trip to face the first-place Rays. The Yankees insist the talent remains.
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