BOSTON — Add injury to insult. Not only did the Yankees lose to the Red Sox, 5-3, Friday night, they may have also lost one of the key pieces they were counting on heading down the stretch. Zack Britton, making just his fifth appearance of the season, left the game after throwing only 11 pitches, with an apparent leg injury.
The Yankees (40-35) came into Fenway Park admitting this was a crucial series to make up ground in the division after their poor start to the season. Now, they have lost four straight to their division rival and dropped to 5.5 games behind the American League East-leading Rays and 4.5 behind Boston (45-31).
“Anytime you’re playing a division rival, especially a division rival that’s a good team and ahead of you in the standings, those are important games,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before the game. “So it is a big weekend up here. We’re looking forward to it. We are coming in playing obviously better baseball and feel good about the direction we’re moving in.
“But we got to continue it and now we have an obviously tough opponent to get the thing done with.”
And it got harder with the loss of Britton, who just returned to the active roster after missing the first 63 games because of March surgery to remove a bone fragment from his left elbow. Luis Cessa walked Hunter Renfroe, who Britton was pitching to when he was injured, and then let him score.
Britton was supposed to be a key cog in a bullpen that’s supposed to help a struggling rotation. Domingo German contributed to that Friday night. He went just four innings allowing four runs on five hits. He walked one, struck out three and committed a costly fielding error.
It’s part of a worrisome trend.
In his last three starts, German has allowed 15 earned runs over 12 1/3 innings pitched for a 10.95 ERA. In the nine starts before that, German had allowed 14 earned runs over 53 1/3 innings pitched. That included 5 2/3 strong innings allowing just one earned run against the Red Sox on June 6. While German’s downward trend began around the same time as MLB started cracking down on the pitchers’ illegal substances on balls, German’s spin rates have not meaningfully changed.
German put the Yankees behind early, giving up back-to-back singles to start, then a two-run double to Xander Bogaerts and a one-run double to Hunter Renfroe.
The Yankees gave him a clean start by scoring three in the top of the second to tie the game on a bases-loaded walk and a two-run single by DJ LeMahieu.
German gave the lead back to the Red Sox after walking the leadoff hitter and then twice bobbling a bunt to put the third run on third base. It scored easily on Renfroe’s sacrifice fly.
The Yankees sent German down to the then Alternate Training Site in April after he got off to a bad start in his first two games. He returned and was dominant for nine games. Now, the Yankees have no real options to do that with a full schedule and limited starting pitching depth. Deivi Garcia, who stepped into the rotation last year because of injuries, is struggling at Triple-A. Clarke Schmidt, the other top pitching prospect in the organization, has still not faced batters after being shut down with an elbow strain in spring training.
The Yankees offense is supposed to help carry the pitching, but Friday night they couldn’t pick German up a third time. Gleyber Torres went 0 for 4 Friday night, extending his current slump to 2-for-his-last-39 without an RBI in his last 12 games. Aaron Judge went 0 for 4 and Gary Sanchez went 0 for 3.
The Yankees had a chance to tie it in the fourth when Gio Urshela led off with a double. Miguel Andujar chipped a sharp ground ball into right field and third base coach Phil Nevin aggressively sent Urshela, who missed the last two games with a sore shin, home with no outs. Renfroe, who has a tremendous arm however, nailed him at the plate. It was the Yankees’ 31st out on the bases and their major league leading seventh at home plate.
The Yankees also had the tying run on first in the ninth when Clint Frazier struck out and LeMahieu grounded into a game-ending double play.
