The Yankees entered Friday night in third place in the AL East.
Only a loss by the Blue Jays kept them out of fourth.
With an offense that was largely shut down yet again, the Yankees lost their first game of the season against the Red Sox, 5-2 at Yankee Stadium.
Michael King allowed a three-run homer to Rafael Devers in the top of the first, and the Yankees' offense didn't produce a run until the sixth, when they were trailing by five runs. . . .
The game ended with Gary Sanchez striking out for the fourth time of the night and a season-high crowd of 18,040 in The Bronx cascading the Yankees with boos. The latest loss kept the Yankees behind both the front-running Rays and the resurgent Red Sox. . . .
"You never want to be here," Aaron Judge said before the game. . . . "It's still a long season. … A lot of things can change."
So far, they haven't. The offense has been mostly dormant throughout the first third of the season and the pitching has been unable to pick up the team in the interim.
The Red Sox tattooed King in the top of the first, with Alex Verdugo and Xander Bogaerts lining singles before Devers belted a two-out, three-run shot into the second deck in right on an 0-2 four-seam fastball that wasn't elevated enough. . . .
The Yankees also matched a season-high by striking out 15 times.
[The bottom four hitters in the MFY lineup] went 0-for-15 with 10 strikeouts.
This was cut from Martin's early edition game story:
The Yankees' poor fundamentals also continued. Brett Gardner lazily went after Gonzalez's hit to center, allowing the Boston first baseman to get to second for a double in the ninth.
It was the second straight loss for the Yankees (31-27) and their seventh out of their last 10 games. . . . The Red Sox put more distance (3.5 games) between them in second place in the American League East and the third-place Yankees. . . .
[Aaron Judge:] "I think this team is going to keep getting better and better and hotter as the year goes on."
Friday night was not the night the Yankees would get hotter.
They struck out a season high tying 15 times, seven against Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi. Yankees hitters also grounded into two double plays, their major-league leading 53rd and 54th of the season. . . .
The Yankees were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position on Friday. The Yankees went into Friday night’s game with the second worst OPS (.657) and third worst average (.231) with runner in scoring position. In 376 at-bats with runners in scoring position this season, the Yankees have converted just 130 runs.
Ryan Dunleavy, Post:
Everything was in place Friday for Gary Sanchez to have a breakout game.
There had been recent signs of improvement. . . . Then came four strikeouts in four at-bats during a 5-2 loss to the Red Sox, and suddenly Sanchez's pregame optimism about two weeks of hard work with Yankees hitting coaches Marcus Thames and P.J. Pilittere sounded like more wishful thinking. . . .
The fastest way for any Yankee to wind up in the fans' doghouse is to struggle in pressure-packed games against the Red Sox. Sanchez has taken a much stranger route to that destination. (Insert joke here with an analogy to his adventurous trips on the base paths.)
That's because, against the Red Sox, Sanchez has numbers that defy logic. It's the rest of the games that usually bring out the boos he heard again after taking a "golden sombrero" out of the No. 8 hole in the lineup in the first Yankees-Red Sox game of the season. . . .
"If I don't make the adjustment, what's going to happen to me? I don't know." . . .
[A]fter striking out twice looking and twice swinging against former Yankee Nate Eovaldi, Hirokazu Sawamura and Matt Barnes, Sanchez's 2021 numbers include a .198 batting average with 46 strikeouts in 131 at-bats.
[Aaron Judge:] "I don't know what it is about the Red Sox . . . The crowd is a little louder and . . . he just steps up in those moments."
Not on this night. If not against the Red Sox, then who?
Ken Davidoff, Post:
The Yankees qualified for 13 postseasons from 2004 through 2020 . . . The Red Sox made nine playoffs in the same period . . .
The Yankees have posted a winning record every season in this span and since 1993 overall. The Red Sox own four losing records, each of them landing the franchise in the American League East basement (including last year), during the same period. . . .
Now the Red Sox find themselves on the upswing once again, reporting to Yankee Stadium on Friday for this season-series opener with a 33-23 record . . .
And if this keeps? If these Bosox, hurt by not one but two sign-stealing scandals and turning over a significant portion of their roster, manage to leapfrog over the Yankees again, that would represent quite an indictment of the stable bunch. . . .
[T]he Red Sox showed up in The Bronx boasting of a vastly superior offense (4.93 runs per game) to the Yankees' (3.74) and a pitching staff and defense that, if not as strong as the Yankees' 3.67 runs allowed per game (second in the American League), put them in the league's upper half at 4.14. . . .
From day to night and back, the Red Sox have weathered many storms since ending The Curse of the Bambino and still lead the industry in parades. The Yankees lead the majors in playoff appearances over the same stretch. It would greatly behoove the Yankees, off to such a concerning start in 2021, to convert one of those October invitations into a title before the Sawx do so again.
Also: Daily News: "The Red Sox Were Supposed To Suck Again, So What Happened?"
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