SEATTLE — It used to be enough. Get a good start from Nestor Cortes, a home run from Aaron Judge and another dinger from the supporting cast and the Yankees could pull out a win. Not these days. In these dog days of the season, the Bombers are coming up short in different ways almost every night.
Wednesday, Carlos Santana hit a game-winning, two-run homer off reliever Albert Abreu in the seventh to beat the Yankees 4-3 in the series finale at T-Mobile Park.
It was the second straight gut-punch loss for the Yankees (71-41) and they dropped to 1-5 on this nine-game road trip. They are 2-7 in the month of August and have lost seven of their last eight games. The Bombers have fallen behind the Astros in the race for the best record in the American League, which will reward the winner with home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Mariners (61-52) took the season series 4-2 and proved they could be a troublesome matchup in the postseason.
In a quiet clubhouse, there was frustration.
“I mean, we know we’re gonna be fine in the long run, but it definitely gets more and more frustrating every day that we don’t go on and win,” Kyle Higashioka said. “We’re definitely not satisfied with that. So this is the time of the season where you are going to really have to pull together because it’s a long year and it only gets tougher as it goes on. So we’re just gonna dig a little deeper and come out ready to go [Friday].”
Higashioka hit a two-run homer, his seventh home run of the season to give the Yankees a temporary lead. Judge hit his major league leading 45th homer of the season. Cortes took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, but with a bullpen limited by a heavy workload and hit by injury, they couldn’t hold on.
After Sam Haggerty hammered a homer to break up Cortes’ no-hit bid, the lefty gave up a lead-off single to Ty France, who scored on a Mitch Haniger single. That was enough for Aaron Boone, who said he felt Cortes was struggling to put hitters away at that point.
Abreu was one of the few arms available in the weary bullpen that has been used heavily and hurt by the loss of Michael King for the season to an elbow fracture. After a 13-inning loss Tuesday, Boone was limited in his choices.
“Obviously being a little thin down there today, he was rested,” Boone said of going to Abreu. “I really had Wandy [Peralta] and [Scott] Effross to close things out if I could get there. So I wanted him to go through those hitters. I was hoping Nestor could find a way to get through there, but felt like I had to go get him at that point.
“Albert was rested, and you know he’s had a couple of tough outings here, but for the most part he’s been really sharp for us.”
Abreu wasn’t sharp Wednesday. He came in and gave up a go-ahead home run to Santana.
“It’s not the pitch selection, it’s the location of the pitch,” Abreu said of his mistake to Santana. “That’s the pitch you want to execute, that change-up. We were looking to go down and away out of his reach there. And as he saw it ended up being middle low. He was able to connect there, and unfortunately, that ended up costing us the game.”
It was the turning point, but not the only cause.
The Yankees offense without Giancarlo Stanton, and now Matt Carpenter, hasn’t been able to bail the bullpen out. Robbie Ray held the Yankees to two runs, the Higashioka homer in the seventh, on three hits. He walked five and struck out seven over 6.1 innings. Higashioka’s homer snapped a 19-inning scoring drought for the Yankees. Judge crushed his 412-foot homer to left off reliever Penn Murfee in the seventh. After scoring nine on Monday, the Yankees had 21 innings where they could not score a run in this series.
For a team built on power and leading the majors in runs scored, this has been an eye-raising two days.
“We gotta get it going offensively,” Boone admitted. “The good thing is we got another really good start from one of our starters. The last two games have been tough for us, obviously, to get much going offensively.”
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