The New York Yankees lost their fourth straight game on Monday night, falling 8-5 to the Texas Rangers after giving up late home runs in the ninth and tenth innings. The defeat at Globe Life Field added to a difficult stretch for the team, which has now dropped 12 of its last 19 games.
Manager Aaron Boone addressed the team’s current struggles following the loss. “Yes,” Boone said when asked if the recent run was weighing on them. “It doesn’t matter, though. It doesn’t matter … we’ve got to win, period. We know that. Nobody cares how stressful it is. That’s all just noise, excuses, whatever.”
Boone confirmed that outfielder Aaron Judge will return from the injured list on Tuesday. Judge leads Major League Baseball in batting average (.342), on-base percentage (.449), and slugging percentage (.711). Despite this news, players in the Yankees clubhouse expressed disappointment with how they let another game slip away late.
In Monday’s game, Joc Pederson hit a tying home run off Yankees closer Devin Williams in the ninth inning; Williams had struggled recently with a 7.50 ERA over his previous six appearances. “I’m trying to throw it down and away there, and missed middle — and obviously, he did what he did,” Williams said about Pederson’s homer. “This game and the last one, it was really one pitch that hurt me. But that’s the difference between winning and losing sometimes, and I can’t let that happen.”
Josh Jung then hit a three-run homer off reliever Jake Bird in the tenth inning to give Texas the win.
Paul Goldschmidt led off for New York with a home run and finished with three hits and three runs scored after struggling offensively over his past nine games as noted by Boone: “He’s been working hard at it — hopefully that’s something to build on.”
Yankees starter Max Fried allowed four runs over five innings but struck out seven batters during his outing against Texas hitters who collected several singles early in the game. Fried commented on his performance: “They came out and swung the bats and got to me and strung together some hits and at the end of the day, I didn’t do a good enough job of being able to limit it and get us out of that situation…it’s definitely really frustrating.”
Austin Slater left Monday’s contest with a hamstring injury suffered while running out a ground ball in just his third appearance since joining New York from Chicago before last week’s trade deadline. Slater is expected to go on the 10-day injured list pending further evaluation: “I feel pretty devastated, to be honest,” Slater said after receiving initial treatment postgame.
Following this loss, New York (60-53) saw its lead over Texas for an American League Wild Card spot reduced to 1½ games; they are also now 5½ games behind Toronto in their division race with only 49 regular season games remaining.
“The season’s getting shorter in a hurry,” Boone said regarding their playoff push. “So it’s no time for excuses and feeling bad, and I know everyone feels like crap, but we’ve got to go take it…we’ve got to do better.”
