Yankees, Gerrit Cole can’t hold off Red Sox in second loss of series

BOSTON — It was a dream-like run for almost a week. The Yankees came out of the All-Star break overcoming losing six players, including Aaron Judge to the COVID-19 injury list. They were playing small ball while still hitting home runs. They were pitching strong and winning.

After two games at Fenway, they crashed back into reality.

Their offense stalled with runners in scoring position, they were dealing with yet another key injury and their ace Gerrit Cole couldn’t hold off the Red Sox. After a gut-punch, devastating loss on Thursday, the Yankees were beaten soundly, 6-2, on Friday.

“It’s not an ideal position to be in, for sure,” Cole said after the Yankees’ second straight loss.

This is a crucial stretch in the Yankees’ season, with eight out of the first 10 games after the All-Star break against the Red Sox (60-38) and then the next three against the Rays, who are battling Boston for the lead. With the second straight loss, the Yankees (50-46) dropped to nine games back in the American League East and at least five behind in the American League Wild Card race.

“I’m not not looking at the standings,” Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu said. “We know where we’re at. We know what’s at stake, and we just need to just keep going, just keep going. And, begin tomorrow, just like tonight. I thought we had a lot of good things going on out of the break, and then a couple of tough ones here.”

Even tougher than losing two was the possibility of losing Gary Sanchez, who left the game in the fifth inning. The Yankees said it was a mid-back spasm that caused the catcher to leave the game and they were hopeful he would be back in the lineup on Saturday.

He had scored the only run that the Yankees scored for Cole. Sanchez worked a walk to lead off the second and scored on Brett Gardner’s double, which gave the Yankees runners on second and third with no outs, and could not bring more than that one run across the plate.

The Yankees had runners in scoring position again in the seventh as Greg Allen hit by a pitch and DJ LeMahieu singled, but Giancarlo Stanton flew out to end the inning scoreless.

After going 1-for 8 with runners in scoring position in Thursday night’s extra-inning nightmare of a loss, the Yankees were 2-for-7 on Friday. The Yankees went into the game hitting .219 with a .651 OPS with runners in scoring position which is 29th worst in MLB,

The Yankees managed just  four hits against the Red Sox bullpen after starter Eduardo Rodriguez left the game with migraine symptoms in the second inning.

And Cole wasn’t able to carry the Yankees alone Friday night.

Cole had escaped trouble in the third, when he issued two one-out walks. He worked around a one-out double in the fourth and got lucky on the first two hits he gave up in the fifth. Enrique Hernandez hit a ball hard off the top of the Green Monster and Jarren Duran’s likely triple bounced into a grounds-rule double.

But, the luck ran out quickly.

With two outs, Rafael Devers crushed his 25th home run of the season to score Hernandez and Duran and give the Red Sox a 3-1 lead. Devers homered again in the seventh off Nestor Cortes.

The Red Sox, who had crushed Cole in his last visit here, just tried to grind him down Friday night. Cole had to work hard to get out of those jams he could. When he coaxed a fly out from J.D. Martinez in the fifth, he was at 104 pitches.

Cole has faced the Red Sox in back-to-back starts now and it doesn’t get any easier for the right-hander or the Yankees. They will face the Rays in his next start.

“It’s just kind of the gauntlet right now. I think we got a good team coming up in about five or six days. It’s the AL East, it’s a tough  division. We’re playing good clubs. .... I just felt like, tonight we had enough, we had really good stuff. We had really good location for the most part,” Cole said. “It was like a tightrope walk and a little bit of slip up and then It ended up it ended up stinging really bad.”