Yankees allow three runs in 11th, take crushing loss in Colorado

DENVER — Aaron Boone has a go-to phrase for this kind of loss: Gut punch.

Sunday’s felt more like a knockout of some kind.

Three games into Sean Casey’s tenure as hitting coach, with their offense still not performing all that much differently from the outfit that got Dillon Lawson fired, the Yankees fell to the Rockies, 8-7, in 11 innings on Sunday afternoon  in front of 47,211 at Coors Field.

“We just couldn’t finish it off today,” said Boone, whose team slipped back into a tie for last place in the AL East. “And that’s part of it. You’re going to have gut-wrenching losses. We’ve got to get through it, get on that plane and get ready to go in Anaheim.”

After C.J. Cron’s two-out grand slam off Clay Holmes in the eighth gave the Rockies a 5-3 lead, the Yankees scored twice in the ninth to tie it and scratched out two runs in the 11th to take a 7-5 lead. But on his second pitch, lefthander Nick Ramirez allowed a 450-foot two-run homer to the opposite field by lefthanded-hitting Nolan Jones. Two outs later, Alan Trejo blasted a 2-and-0 pitch from Ron Marinaccio 421 feet to left to win it.

Marinaccio had not allowed a homer in his previous 16 games and Trejo had not homered in 127 previous plate appearances this season. Still, the 11th inning was mostly a sidenote to the late-inning craziness that preceded it.

Holmes, who had not allowed a home run in 37 1⁄3 innings going into Sunday and had a 0.66 ERA in his previous 27 appearances, took over a two-out, bases-loaded jam from Tommy Kahnle in the eighth and surrendered a 432-foot grand slam to centerfield by Cron on a 2-and-0 sinker. That turned a 3-1 lead into a 5-3 deficit and flushed one of Gerrit Cole’s best 2023 outings.

“I didn’t really make those first two pitches and then, obviously, the sinker just stayed up on that last one and he put a good swing on it,” Holmes said. “But it’s a spot in the ballgame where we needed a big out and unfortunately the sinker stayed up and [I] couldn’t get that out.”

The Yankees rallied to tie it with a two-run ninth as the Rockies’ Little League-caliber defense, which contributed to three runs in the sixth when third baseman Ryan McMahon threw to an unoccupied first base, reared its head again.

Daniel Bard hit pinch hitter Billy McKinney to start the ninth. Gleyber Torres hit a trickler to third and McMahon threw the ball up the first-base line for an error that brought in McKinney to make it 5-4 and put Torres on second. Harrison Bader’s sacrifice fly wound up tying it at 5-5.

“Did a good job of getting back into it,” Boone said.

The Yankees took a 7-5 lead in the 11th. Ghost runner Anthony Volpe took off for third on a 3-and-2 pitch to Oswaldo Cabrera (two hits, two walks), who grounded an RBI single to right. Two outs later, Oswald Peraza lined an RBI single.

The Yankees had been shut down by Rockies starter Chase Anderson, the latest pitcher they made look like Greg Maddux.

Anderson had gone 0-4 with an 18.23 ERA and 2.93 WHIP in his previous four starts, having allowed 30 hits in 13 1⁄3 innings in that span, but he held the Yankees to no runs, three hits and two walks in five innings. With one out in the sixth, they had managed zero runs and five hits in their past 12 innings.

Cole allowed one run, two hits and a walk in six innings and tied his season high with 11 strikeouts, including six in a row. “I was able to put it pretty much where I wanted to,” he said.

When he recorded his 10th strikeout, fanning Brenton Doyle with a slider for the second out of the fifth, it gave him 24 double-digit strikeout games as a Yankee, moving him past Ron Guidry for most in franchise history. Guidry, with whom Cole has established a relationship since joining the Yankees before the 2020 season, accomplished the feat in 368 games (323 starts). Cole did it in 95 games, all starts.

“It’s hard to comprehend, to be honest,” he said. “Any time you’re mentioned with him in a sentence or blessed enough to pass something that he set, it’s a humbling moment. I have a lot of gratitude.”

As for the club overall, the Yankees had a nearly 2 ½-hour flight to contemplate their situation — being tied for last place and, at the moment, not one of the three wild-card teams — something no one  would have thought possible in spring training.

“I just don’t think there’s time to be in disbelief,” Anthony Rizzo said. “I think you just have to keep grinding and play better baseball all around.”