Schadenfreude 188 (A Continuing Series)

George A. King III, Post:

This is what it sounds like when bats die.

Silence smothered the Yankees' clubhouse minutes after the Red Sox hung a lifeless, 8-0 loss on them in front of 37,901 at Fenway Park on Saturday night.

The Yankees didn't hit again. ... The losing streak stretched to four, the record slipped to 8-14 with visions of a miserable summer gaining steam. ...

The Yankees have scored 39 runs in their past 17 games and are 5-12 in that stretch. In those 17 games, the Yankees have gone 16-for-126 (.127) with runners in scoring position, have not homered and have driven in just 18 runs. ...

The 8-14 ledger after 22 games is the worst mark for the Yankees since they went 7-15 to open the 1991 season. The lousiest 22-game record in franchise history is the 5-17 effort in 1913. ...

"No panic here whatsoever," hitting coach Alan Cockrell said before the game — the second one this season in which his group didn't touch home plate.

No hitting, either. Or runs. Or wins.

Mark Feinsand, Daily News:

The silence in the Yankees' clubhouse said everything Saturday night.

There may not have been panic running through the team after another embarrassing loss — this one an 8-0 blanking at the hands of the rival Red Sox — but after seeing their record drop to 8-14, the Yankees seemed at a loss for words altogether. ...

This is the first time during the Girardi era that the Yankees have been six games under .500. ...

The Yankees have lost five out of six and 12 of 16, leaving them a season-high 5½ games out of first place. The Yankees are 3-14 when scoring three-or-fewer runs and 0-12 when scoring no more than two. ...

The Yankees are hitting .129 (15-for-116) with runners in scoring position over the past 16 games, losing 12 of them.

Ken Davidoff, Post:

Well, the good news is the Yankees have found a solution for their problems with runners in scoring position: Put fewer runners in scoring position.

Yes, the Yankees' offense is getting worse — in tandem with their chances of climbing out of this extended funk. Their latest face plant occurred Saturday night at Fenway Park, with their fourth straight loss, 8-0 to the Red Sox, dropping them to a new low-water mark of 8-14 for the season in about the ugliest manner possible.

With April in the books, the Yankees rank last in the major leagues with 74 runs scored. Good grief. ...

This campaign is starting to feel like a repeat of 2014, when a gaggle of veteran hitters — including Beltran and his 2016 teammates McCann and Mark Teixeira — underperformed and the Yankees missed the playoffs.

Wallace Matthews, ESPN:

Choose your adjective: Repetitive. Monotonous. Dispiriting. Same-old/same-old.

It goes something like this: New York Yankees fall behind early. Yankees don't hit. Yankees lose.

It happened again Saturday night at Fenway Park, as they fell behind 2-0 after two innings. The way this offense is hitting -- or not hitting -- it felt more like 20-0.

By the time it was 4-0 after six innings, the game was pretty much over, because the Yankees have scored more than four runs in any one game only once since April 9, a stretch of 17 games. Not surprisingly, they have lost 12 of those games.

For a team that insists it is not pressing, there were an awful lot of drawn faces, tight lips and bulging neck veins in the postgame clubhouse. And that was just the manager.

Wallace Matthews, ESPN:

The Yankees got some "tough love" from manager Joe Girardi after Friday night's 4-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox. According to a source, Girardi addressed his team in a voice loud enough to be heard outside the steel door of the Fenway Park visitors clubhouse. Girardi's agitation with his team, which has lost 3 in a row, 7 of their last 10 and sits in last place in the AL East with an 8-13 record, was confirmed by a player and a coach, neither of whom would speak on the record. Asked for specifics, one of the clubhouse sources shrugged and said, "We've been losing." Girardi refused to confirm he had spoken angrily to his team but when asked if he uses the tough love approach said, "I've given them plenty of that."

David Lennon, Newsday:

Despite the calm exterior and the daily affirmations, you know a team is creeping closer to the edge when members of the coaching staff begin holding pregame news conferences. ...

From our experience, very few coaches are able to suddenly fix what's ailing an entire lineup or pitching staff. There is no cure-all, no universal antidote. ...

Eventually, there comes the not-so-small matter of accountability, and if the Yankees, a $225-million team, continue winning games at a .364 clip, something has to give. ...

Before Saturday, the Yankees were ranked 29th in the majors with 74 runs, only two more than the Rays, and their .192 batting average with runners in scoring position was dead last.

Wallace Matthews, ESPN:

When the Red Sox added two more runs off Chasen Shreve in the sixth, the game was officially out of reach -- the Yankees have scored more than four runs only once in their last 17 games. And of course, David Ortiz, whose two-run blast off Dellin Betances won Friday's game, added a cherry to the sundae with a bomb of a solo home run leading off the seventh, his 49th career home run against the Yankees.