ARLINGTON -- Aaron Judge can’t get back soon enough for the flagging Yankees, who pushed their losing streak to four games Monday night in an 8-5 loss to the Rangers after blowing a ninth-inning lead. The Yankees’ sense of frustration with themselves was all but boiling over in the clubhouse after losing the series opener at Globe Life Field.
After the defeat, manager Aaron Boone didn’t hesitate or dither when asked if the recent stretch of disappointment for the Yankees -- who have lost 12 of the past 19 games -- was beginning to weigh on them.
"Yes,” Boone said. “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.”
There is good news on the immediate horizon -- Judge, the most productive hitter in baseball and the MLB leader in batting average (.342), on-base percentage (.449) and slugging percentage (.711) -- will be coming off the injured list on Tuesday, Boone confirmed Monday night.
But that was little solace in a somber Yankees clubhouse. Not after they allowed the tying and winning home runs in the ninth and 10th to Joc Pederson and Josh Jung, both of whom have struggled at the plate this season.
Long before Jung’s game-winner, Yankees leadoff hitter Paul Goldschmidt put the Yankees ahead with a homer on his first swing. He was already a triple shy of the cycle when he scored on Giancarlo Stanton’s gargantuan 427-foot homer to dead center in the fourth.
The Yankees rode that 5-4 lead into the ninth and then turned to closer Devin Williams, owner of a 7.50 ERA in his previous six appearances, having allowed five earned runs over six innings. Pederson, batting just .126 in 169 plate appearances this season before he pinch-hit in the ninth, golfed a hanging changeup from Williams into the right-field seats to tie the game.
"I’m trying to throw it down and away there, and missed middle -- and obviously, he did what he did,” Williams said. “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.”
After the Yankees couldn’t score in the top of the 10th, Jung broke them with a three-run homer off Jake Bird, who took over for Williams to start the bottom half.
The Yankees (60-53) saw their lead over the Rangers for the final Wild Card spot in the American League shrink to 1 1/2 games Monday. The Yankees fell to 5 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East and 2 1/2 games behind the surging Red Sox for second in the division with 49 games to go.
"The season’s getting shorter in a hurry,” Boone said. “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. And we haven't been able to do that here on this road trip so far, but we’ve got to do better.”
The Yankees lost in spite of a slump-busting performance from Goldschmidt, who led off the game with a homer, doubled in the second inning and singled in the fourth; he scored three of their five runs. He was hitting .083 (2-for-24) over the past nine games but broke through in his first time as a leadoff hitter since July 19.
"He's been working hard at it -- hopefully that's something to build on,” Boone said.
Starter Max Fried battled through five mostly rocky innings for the Yankees, walking three and scattering eight hits. He surrendered four runs in the second inning on five hits, most of them singles that found a hole, and struck out seven.
"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,” Fried said. “It put us behind, especially after getting some early runs and having a lead ... it’s definitely really frustrating.”
One last frustrating bit for the Yankees: they lost Trade Deadline pickup and left fielder Austin Slater to a left hamstring injury suffered as he left the batter’s box attempting to beat out a first-inning forceout. Slater, playing in just his third game since being acquired from the White Sox on July 30, is expected to go on the 10-day injured list Tuesday. He said after Monday’s game that he will get an MRI Tuesday and “it’s too early to say” whether the injury is serious.
"I feel pretty devastated, to be honest,” Slater said. “This was especially a night where I feel like I could have helped the team in a lot of different ways, and it’s definitely not how I wanted to start off my tenure here. But the goal now is to get healthy quick.”