BOSTON — The Yankees have 16 games left to play — but after Thursday’s 7-5 debacle against the Red Sox, it sure felt like their season was over.
Dellin Betances, looking increasingly human lately, gave up a three-run walk-off homer to Hanley Ramirez in a crushing defeat that sent the Fenway Park crowd into a frenzy and the Yankees to their fourth defeat in five games.
It was just about the worst way imaginable for the Yankees to start their 11-game road trip.
“This one hurts,” Joe Girardi said after the first-place Red Sox stormed back to drop the Yankees five back in the AL East. “We’ve got to bounce back [Friday]. We were in a pretty good position going into the ninth inning and weren’t able to close the deal.”
One day after his throwing issues contributed to a loss in The Bronx, Betances struggled again.
“I was one out away and wasn’t able to put them away,” he said.
Girardi wanted to stay away from the heavily worked closer, but after Blake Parker hit Chris Young with a pitch with one out in the bottom of the ninth and the Yankees leading by three runs, the manager felt he had no choice.
“Everyone is tired this time of year,” Girardi said. “We’re fighting for our lives and he’s our best guy and I went with him.”
And Betances was wild from the start. He walked Dustin Pedroia before Xander Bogaerts grounded back to the mound — always a dicey proposition — but Betances underhanded a throw to Gary Sanchez and they got Young trying to get back to third.
But David Ortiz followed with an RBI single and Mookie Betts had a run-scoring single of his own to get the Red Sox to within a run and brought up Ramirez.
Ramirez appeared to swing at a 2-1 pitch, but first base umpire D.J. Reyburn ruled that he held up and it was 3-1.
“I definitely thought he swung,” Betances said. “That changed the situation. It doesn’t matter now. He hit the home run and we lost.”
Betances left his next pitch up, a 99-mph four-seamer, and Ramirez crushed it.
It was Betances’ third straight day of work and Girardi had hoped to avoid him by matching up — at least until a runner got on.
As damaging as the ninth-inning implosion was, the Yankees were also left to ponder other mistakes they made earlier in the game.
They left a dozen runners on base and Chase Headley was thrown out at the plate in the eighth.
Of course, in a season when the Yankees have been left for dead several times — only to come back — they had a similar attitude Thursday night.
“A lot of the guys are [ticked] off in here,” Headley said. “We want to come back and win [Friday]. … Something we’ve done all year is bounce back. I’m very confident we’ll come out ready to play.”
His manager agreed.
“We’ve been in this spot before,” Girardi said. “We’ll come out fighting and see what happens.”
This one will be tough to recover from.
Having lost four of five since a seven-game winning streak revived their season, the Yankees had relied on the failure of their wild-card and AL East opponents to run away with playoff spots to stay in the race.
A win against the Red Sox would have gotten them back to within three games of the division lead and getting seven innings of one-run ball from Masahiro Tanaka and a pair of RBIs from newcomer Billy Butler set them up to get it.
“It’s never easy when you go out there and don’t win the game,” Betances said. “Obviously, these are the times that make you better.”
That’s hard to see right now.