Bullpen roughed up by Phillies in Yankees' rocky homecoming

NEW YORK – It hasn’t been easy for the Yankees since the All-Star break. They split the first six games, and they left Toronto on Wednesday with a bad taste in their mouths because they didn’t gain any ground on the first-place Blue Jays in the American League East race.

Maybe returning home to Yankee Stadium would bring some much-needed victories for New York. That wasn’t the case on Friday night, as the Phillies won 12-5. The Yankees are now 5 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays, who defeated the Tigers, 6-2, at Comerica Park on Friday.

It was a game that saw the Yankees’ bullpen allow 10 runs in 3 1/3 innings. It’s not a secret that the team is looking to acquire bullpen help before Thursday’s Trade Deadline.

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“All lines are in the water right now. … There is a lot of talk right now. You never know what’s going to happen,” manager Aaron Boone said.

The Yankees had a 3-2 lead going into the top of the seventh inning. When the game is that close, setup man Luke Weaver is in, and he had a tough time on the mound.

The Phillies had runners on second and third and one out when Nick Castellanos came to the plate and hit a soft ground ball to first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, who attempted to throw out Trea Turner at the plate. The ball went past catcher Austin Wells for an error, and that allowed Turner to score the tying run and Castellanos to advance to second.

In retrospect, Goldschmidt said, he should have gone in another direction.

“I knew it was going to be a bang-bang play at home. I tried to get [Turner] at home. Looking back, I should have gone to first base,” Goldschmidt said. “I think if I made a perfect throw home, Trea would have probably beaten that out. Then it got away.

“It’s not what I wanted. It was too aggressive of a play by me to try to make a play where they were going to be safe anyway.”

J.T. Realmuto followed and hit a three-run homer to give Philadelphia a 6-3 lead. During July, Weaver has allowed nine runs and four homers in 8 2/3 innings.

The Yankees tried to make a comeback against reliever Jordan Romano in the bottom of the inning. They made it 6-5 by the time the frame ended. Anthony Volpe hit a solo homer, while Ben Rice scored on a sacrifice fly by Aaron Judge.

However, Philadelphia put it out of reach against right-hander Ian Hamilton. Kyle Schwarber highlighted the scoring with his second homer of the night, a two-run shot that increased the lead to 8-5.

The Phillies then got to right-hander Scott Effross in the ninth as they scored four runs. Bryson Stott highlighted the scoring with a two-run double.

“I think the beautiful thing about our lineup is, the way that our guys are having at-bats right now, one through nine, everything's very consistent, and we're keeping the pressure on,” Schwarber said. “I hope [this game is] a great sign of things to follow – if we keep having those at-bats, if we can make it even harder on them, keep that constant pressure coming.”

The Yankees are 14-22 since June 13. Goldschmidt knows what they have to do to catch the Blue Jays.

“The easy thing is to play better. The mistakes we made, we have to gut those down,” Goldschmidt said. “Those are conversations that we are having. We made a few too many mistakes for the last how many games. … Just solid baseball the rest of the way.

“When we’ve played really well, it’s definitely a team effort – pitching, hitting, defense and baserunning. That’s what it’s going to take. There are really good teams in our division and across the AL. We still have a lot of confidence in ourselves. Hopefully, we’ll start tomorrow and play well.”