BOSTON — The Yankees arrived at Fenway Park on Thursday with a chance to catch the Red Sox atop the AL East.
At this point, the best they can hope for is to survive after blowing another lead in a 6-5 loss on Saturday.
They dropped their fourth straight game, blowing another three-run lead in the process. They also have lost six of seven since their seven-game winning streak ended.
This time, a wild pitch by Adam Warren proved to be the decisive blow — but the unraveling began long before that.
“A lot’s changed in 48 hours, really,” Brett Gardner said. “Thursday, we’re an out away from being a game back in the wild card and three games in the division. Now, we’re seven games [back] in the division and I don’t even know in the wild card. We put ourselves in a bad position.”
But it’s one the Yankees, who blew leads of 3-0 and 5-2, say they believe they can overcome — even while having to pass four teams to get to the second wild card.
“We’re still in this thing,” Gardner said. “We’ve got some time left. We’ve just got to win.”
That’s the problem. They haven’t been able to do that lately.
Luis Severino surrendered a run for the first time since moving to the bullpen after another short outing by a starter, as Bryan Mitchell didn’t make it through five innings.
Joe Girardi, whose moves have not worked this series, then pulled Severino after Bogaerts’ leadoff double in the seventh.
Jacoby Ellsbury stayed down momentarily after crashing into the fence trying for the ball, and Severino was replaced by lefty Tommy Layne.
Ellsbury left the game in the eighth and the Yankees also lost Starlin Castro to a hamstring injury.
Layne got David Ortiz to fly to center and Bogaerts moved to third. Layne then was replaced by Warren.
Mookie Betts sent a chopper over Didi Gregorius at short with the infield in and Bogaerts scored to tie the score at 5-5.
Hanley Ramirez followed with a single to left and both runners moved up on Travis Shaw’s groundout to first.
With Sandy Leon at the plate, Warren unleashed a wild pitch, allowing Betts to score the go-ahead run from third.
“I didn’t do my job right there,” said catcher Austin Romine, who went after the ball slowly, but managed to get back to the plate just in time to nail Ramirez, who also tried to score. “I’m on the team because I can catch. I pride myself on that. The ball got away too far.”
The Yankees couldn’t tie it against Craig Kimbrel and face the possibility of being swept with another loss Sunday night.
“I’d like to be able to just walk in and flip a switch on or off and it be that easy,” Gardner said. “It’s not like we’re getting shut out. We [scored] 14 runs in three games. That should’ve been good enough to win one. We lost all three. At this point, we have to do our best to forget today and yesterday and the day before find a way to win [Sunday] night.”
The Yankees had looked to be in decent shape through the first half of the game.
Gary Sanchez hit a towering two-run homer with two outs in the third for a 3-0 lead against David Price.
In his previous seven starts, Price was 7-0 with a 2.16 ERA, but the Yankees scored five runs off Price in six innings — the third time in four games against the lefty they got to him for at least that many runs.
Romine’s two-run double in the fourth gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead, but they didn’t score again.
“I don’t think anybody here thinks we’re completely out of it now,” Warren said. “We know it’s gonna be tough. We know we have to win almost every game just to get back in this.”
“Sure it’s tough,” Girardi said. “But people thought it was tough Aug. 1, didn’t they? All of a sudden, we were one game back in the wild card. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to win a lot of games. I’m not giving up.”