Red Sox tag Gerrit Cole early as Yankees drop seventh straight game

Aaron Boone held a team meeting with the Yankees after they lost their sixth straight game on Friday night. 

Then the Yankees went out on Saturday and lost their seventh in a row, falling to the Red Sox, 8-1, before 42,599 at Yankee Stadium. 

Gerrit Cole was strafed for six runs (a grand slam by No. 9 hitter Luis Urias and a two-run homer by No. 8 hitter Connor Wong) in his four innings.  

The Yankees didn’t get a hit against Kutter Crawford until Aaron Judge homered with one out in the sixth and had two hits overall. Leadoff batter DJ LeMahieu and cleanup hitter Giancarlo Stanton struck out three times each. 

The last-place Yankees (60-63) fell to 1-7 vs. Boston. The Red Sox have outscored their historic rivals 48-19, and the Yankees have scored seven runs in their last five games in falling eight games behind Seattle for the third wild card. They are 6-15 since Judge returned from his toe injury and have lost 25 of 37 and 38 of 62.

The Yankees  maintain they have a chance to turn all of this around. But Judge may have struck an end chord when he said, “It’s baseball. You’re going to have good seasons. You’re going to have bad seasons.” 

The Yankees haven’t had a losing season since 1992. 

“I don’t recall experiencing anything like this before in my career,” Cole said. “How you handle adversity, how you get through it, is really ultimately how you’ll get judged.” 

Asked what he said during what he called “a talk with the team” on Friday night, Boone said: “Just acknowledging what we're going through and making sure that we're controlling how we come in each and every day and how we prepare and also remembering to make sure you don't lose sight of the fact why you started playing this game. That's because it was fun and you're probably pretty good at it. Don't lose sight of that, especially when it's hard, and different guys are feeling it in different ways. Come in with that edge and that little chip on your shoulder ready to prepare and work. But when it comes time to play, go out there and have fun playing the game.” 

Not much about Saturday’s game was fun for the home team. The Red Sox had a blast, though. 

Cole’s AL Cy Young Award candidacy took a hit as he fell to 10-4 with a 3.03 ERA. 

Urias, a .181 hitter and the last one in the Boston batting order, touched Cole for a second-inning grand slam into the visiting bullpen in left-centerfield to give the Red Sox a 4-0 lead. 

Urias’ grand slam was his second in as many at-bats; he hit one in his final time up on Thursday against Washington. He’s the first player to hit grand slams in consecutive plate appearances since Washington’s Josh Willingham did it in consecutive innings on July 27, 2009. 

Wong, the No. 8 hitter, blasted a two-run shot to right in the fourth to make it 6-0. Cole allowed seven hits, walked one and struck out four. 

With one out in the sixth, Judge hit his  24th home run, a 413-foot shot into the visiting bullpen. That was the only hit allowed by Crawford (6-6, 3.66 ERA) in his six innings. The Yankees had four other baserunners against the righthander — two walks, a hit batter and an error by first baseman Justin Turner on a hot shot hit by Greg Allen leading off the third that easily could have been scored a hit. Allen added a bloop single in the seventh. 

One sign of the Yankees’ offensive futility was No. 5 hitter Isiah Kiner-Falefa trying to bunt for a hit in the second inning with Stanton on first. When Kiner-Falefa popped up the bunt, Wong moved out from behind the plate to pluck it out of the air and threw to first to double off Stanton.  

Boone called it “a good play” because  third baseman Rafael Devers was back. Kiner-Falefa said he was going off the scouting report, which told the Yankees that Crawford isn't a good fielder. Anthony Volpe also tried to bunt for a hit in the next inning, but he missed the pitch before flying out to left. 

“We haven’t been able to execute,” Kiner-Falefa said. “Haven’t been able to get the big hit. Just, like, sloppy baseball all around. But hopefully we can turn this thing around quick.” 

Boston scored its seventh run in the eighth when Allen lost a ball in the sun. It bounced on the leftfield warning track and into the stands for a run-scoring double for Pablo Reyes. 

Devers hit a 440-foot moonshot onto the netting above Monument Park in center off Albert Abreu in the ninth to make it 8-1. 

Boone said he still believes the Yankees can make a run. 

Why, exactly? 

“We’ve got to try and come win a ballgame tomorrow and expect when we walk in those doors, ‘Today's the day,’ '' he said. “That's how we look at it. That's what we are. We're sick animals in a lot of ways, right?” 

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.