Yankees' Luis Gil and bullpen hit around, offense sputters and Jazz Chisholm leaves hurt in ugly loss to White Sox

CHICAGO — Embarrassing, though wholly accurate, doesn’t quite cover it.

Hideous, though appropriate, isn’t adequate, and unsightly feels incomplete.

Countless Yankees fans, no doubt, came up with far stronger, and unprintable, language watching Monday night’s horror show unfold. It was a 12-2 loss to the chasing-the-wrong-kind-of-history White Sox in front of 22,815 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

The White Sox, who more or less reported for spring training out of contention, came into the series 28-91, losers in 27 of their last 29 games, only recently snapping a 21-game losing streak that had them charging hard toward the lowest of all bars set for futility in the modern game: the 1962 Mets, who went 40-120.

The Yankees, now 70-50, are one-half game behind the Orioles in the AL East, a race that appears destined for a September photo finish.

Provided, of course, the Yankees don’t put forth too many more performances the rest of the way resembling Monday night’s.

“It’s baseball, right?” leftfielder Alex Verdugo said of the loss to a team that is 41 ½ games out of first place in the AL Central. “I mean, yeah, they’re one of the worst teams, if you want to put it that way, but these guys are still big-leaguers. They can still have days where they’re clicking.”

It still counts as just one loss. But potentially worse was Jazz Chisholm Jr., an offensive and defensive sparkplug since being acquired at the trade deadline, leaving the game with what the Yankees called a “left elbow injury,” caused during a slide home in the fifth inning.

The third baseman/outfielder is slated to undergo imaging on the elbow on Tuesday. “I’m not super concerned,” Chisholm said afterward.

Chisholm had two of the Yankees’ nine hits Monday. Aaron Judge matched him for team-high with two, though no homers, keeping the centerfielder one shy of 300 for his career. The White Sox had 18 hits.

The Yankees went 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position and stranded 16, the early innings especially futile in that respect. Through four innings, they were 1-for-11 with RISP with nine stranded. “Just not able to break through,” manager Aaron Boone said. “[But] that wasn’t the issue. We couldn’t keep them off the board.”

Luis Gil, 3-1 with a 1.93 ERA in his previous five starts, wasn’t good, allowing four runs and seven hits over four innings as he fell to 12-6 with a 3.25 ERA overall.

“When you play a game like this, some emotions are going to come out,” Gil said of throwing his glove in the dugout after a 34-pitch first inning that saw the White Sox take a 2-1 lead (Judge’s RBI double in the top half put the Yankees up three batters into the game). “What you saw right there is frustration because I’m executing what I want out there but not getting the results I want.”

White Sox lefthander Ky Bush, though he walked seven and gave up six hits, allowed just two runs in 4 2⁄3 innings.

The Yankees loaded the bases with one out in the second, but Juan Soto popped out and Judge flied to the track in right.

Anthony Volpe and DJ LeMahieu each worked walks to start the fourth inning but Verdugo chose to bunt and popped out to Bush. Soto hit a ground smash that Gavin Sheets, the first baseman, stopped with a dive toward the bag. Judge was intentionally walked for an MLB-leading 14th time — and seventh time in his last nine games — to load the bases.

But Giancarlo Stanton, who hit a three-run homer Sunday in the fifth inning after the Rangers intentionally walked Judge, struck out swinging.

Korey Lee’s homer leading off the bottom half made it 3-1 and Nicky Lopez’s two-out RBI single later in the inning made it 4-1.

The Yankees pulled within 4-2 in the fifth when Chisholm singled with two outs, stole second and scored, hurting his elbow in the process, on Volpe’s ground single deep in the hole at short.

Lefty Tim Hill, however, allowed Sheets’ RBI double in the bottom half to make it 5-2 and righthander Enyel de los Santos, one of two relievers added at the trade deadline, allowed six runs in the seventh to make it 11-2.

“Every time you lose, it’s a missed opportunity,” Boone said of falling to the White Sox. “We’re playing for a lot every freaking day, so it sucks to lose. Really good, exhilarating when you win, but either way you turn the page . . . just one of those nights.”