ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The impossible dream — back-to-back wins — will have to wait for another day.
The Yankees had a chance on Thursday to win consecutive games and a series for the first time in a month but, instead, accomplished neither.
Nestor Cortes turned in another rough start on the road and the Yankees squandered chances with runners in scoring position — especially late — as they fell to the Rays 5-4 at Tropicana Field for their 18th loss in their last 25 games.
“Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us,” Jose Trevino said. “If anything, people want to see this. We’re the Yankees. People don’t care. If we win, they’re, ‘Yeah, we should have won.’ If we lose, they like that. I think we’ll get back to where we were and play with that chip in our shoulder.”
After leaving the bases loaded in the eighth inning — which included Trevino pinch hitting and striking out looking despite two called strikes appearing to be balls — the Yankees put together another rally in the ninth with one out and runners on first and second against Rays closer Pete Fairbanks.
Aaron Judge popped out in foul territory, but Ben Rice followed with an RBI single to pull the Yankees within a run and put Juan Soto, the tying run, 90 feet away.
Gleyber Torres then hit a bloop to no-man’s land in center field, but second baseman Jose Caballero came up with a snow-cone catch to end it as the Yankees finished the night 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base.
“Just missing opportunities, that’s what it comes down to,” Judge said. “There was a lot of fight out of the guys today, all the way to the end, having some tough at-bats. Just weren’t able to come up with the win.”
Since winning their last series, against the Royals June 10-13 (which was also the last time they won back-to-back games), the Yankees (56-39) have had a rubber game in six of their last eight series and dropped all of them, making it difficult to create any kind of momentum to get out of their slide.
The Yankees’ saving grace during this stretch has been the Orioles going through their own skid leading into the teams’ showdown this weekend in Baltimore.
The Orioles were swept by the Cubs on Thursday, ensuring that their lead over the Yankees atop the AL East will only be two games entering Friday.
“Nobody likes losing, so nobody’s happy about it,” Judge said. “But we’re not feeling sorry for ourselves or sorry for anybody else because nobody else is. We just got to keep showing up, doing our thing. It’s a couple games out of first place and now we’re going to play a first-place team. We gotta take these good at-bats over to Baltimore.”
It looked like the Yankees might have a late comeback in them in the eighth inning, when they threatened against the Rays’ bullpen. With runners on first and second and one out against lefty Colin Poche, Trevino pinch hit for Austin Wells and worked a 3-0 count.
The next pitch appeared to be above the zone but was called a strike by home-plate umpire Edwin Moscoso, as was the 3-2 pitch that came in below the zone for a strikeout looking.
“I liked the ball five that Trevy ends up taking that ended up being strike three,” manager Aaron Boone said when asked what he liked about Trevino in the matchup.
After the Yankees failed to score on a second-and-third, no-out situation in the first inning, they tied the game on solo homers by Wells and Soto.
But Cortes gave the lead right back in the bottom of the third, as his home/road splits only became more stark.
Cortes got tagged for five runs across 4 ¹/₃ innings.
He has now made 10 starts at home, with a 1.81 ERA across 64 ²/₃ innings, and 10 starts on the road, with a 6.60 ERA across 50 ²/₃ innings.
“I gotta try to correct it and be better at it,” Cortes said. “Just wasn’t able to contain that offense today. Hopefully we can go into Baltimore and be better.”
