Yankees' defense lets down erratic Clay Holmes in brutal loss to Orioles

BALTIMORE — A weekend that Aaron Boone had said had a chance to be “special” ended with as brutal a loss as the Yankees took during their roller coaster of a first half.

After shortstop Anthony Volpe booted a grounder that should have ended the game, leftfielder Alex Verdugo made a bad read on Cedric Mullins’ fly ball.

It sailed over Verdugo’s head for a two-run double that gave the Orioles a 6-5 victory over the Yankees in front of 39,031 at Camden Yards.

“That one’s on me,” Verdugo, typically among the most verbose players in the clubhouse, said quietly.

The Yankees (58-40), who could have evened the season series with Baltimore at 5-5 and moved one game ahead of the Orioles atop the AL East, instead trail Baltimore (58-38) by a game heading into the All-Star break.

The Yankees took a 5-3 lead in the top of the ninth on Ben Rice’s three-run homer off Craig Kimbrel, who has never pitched especially well against them. Rice, a rookie first baseman who had gone 2-for-27 after homering three times against the Red Sox on July 6, hammered an 0-and-1, 95-mph fastball 405 feet to right-center, prompting his teammates to pour from the dugout in celebration.

The momentum had swung like a pendulum on PEDs, and the Yankees, 6-17 in their previous 23 games entering this series, seemed poised for a three-game sweep of a Baltimore team that had won five of the first seven meetings between the clubs.

Instead, Clay Holmes, scheduled to fly to Arlington on Sunday night on an organizational private jet along with fellow All-Stars Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, allowed a leadoff single by pinch hitter Kyle Stowers in the bottom of the ninth, and the inning devolved from there.

“That’s a killer, right?” Boone said of the loss. “Let’s acknowledge that.”

Colton Cowser replaced Stowers at first after a 4-6 forceout and Holmes walked pinch hitter Ryan O’Hearn before striking out Gunnar Henderson looking.

With the righthanded-hitting Ryan Mountcastle on deck, Holmes walked lefthanded-hitting All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman on four pitches to load the bases, but his 22nd save appeared secure when Mountcastle hit a grounder to Volpe. The shortstop, a Gold Glover at the position last season as a rookie, mishandled it and couldn’t get the force at second, with a run scoring to make it 5-4.

“To me, that’s a routine ground ball. The game’s got to be over,” Volpe said.

The lefty-swinging Mullins followed by drilling a low-and-away, 98-mph sinker the other way. Verdugo took a step in at the crack of the bat, leaving him dead in the water as far as making the catch, and he fell when he tried to reverse course as the 325-foot drive sailed over his head.

“It’s the wrong first step,” said Verdugo, who has been generally good in the field this season. “I take a lot of pride out there defensively. This one’s on me.”

Before Rice’s homer, the Yankees’ only offense came from Trent Grisham (3-for-3 with a walk), who hit an RBI single in the second inning and his sixth homer of the season to tie the score at 2-2 in the fifth.

Carlos Rodon, 0-5 with a 10.57 ERA in his previous five outings, improved on those numbers but wasn’t particularly pitch-efficient or especially sharp in his four innings. He threw 98 pitches, 58 of them strikes.

Rodon allowed two runs, four hits and three walks. Mixing his pitches better in the early going after over-relying on his favorite pitch, the fastball, during the five-game skid. He struck out seven.

Henderson hit a two-run homer off Rodon in the third and the Orioles took a 3-2 lead in the fifth on Anthony Santander’s two-out homer off Tommy Kahnle, a lead they held until the wild top and bottom of the ninth.

“It’s been a rough several weeks here for us,” Boone said. “The reality is, last couple of games in Tampa and going into there, I feel like we were competing our [butts] off and starting to turn the corner and see the signs we want to see as we turn this thing around.

“While acknowledging that, the other reality is, we’re in a great spot. Even through some rough, rough stretches, it’s all right there in front of us. We’ve got the pen, we get to write this amazing script, and that’s because we’ve put ourselves in that position.”