BOSTON — By the end of this three-game set at Fenway Park, it was hard to believe the Yankees were the team easily in front of the AL East and the Red Sox in the cellar.
The Yankees’ poor play began with consecutive losses at home to the Mariners and continued with a road trip in which they lost seven of nine, including Sunday night’s 3-0 defeat in front of another sellout crowd in a crisp 2 hours, 15 minutes.
It was the third time the Yankees were shut out on the trip and they’ve lost nine of 11 as they return home to The Bronx to face the Rays and Blue Jays this week, up by 10 games on second-place Toronto in the division .
“It was not our best road trip,” said DJ LeMahieu, who missed the finale with a sore right big toe. “We’re all frustrated. We know how good a team we are, we just haven’t been playing like it.”
They’ve scored eight runs over their last five games — four of them losses — as they deal with injuries to LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton (Achilles) and Matt Carpenter (foot).
On Sunday, they were overmatched by Michael Wacha.
In his first game back off the injured list after right shoulder inflammation after more than a month on the injured list, the right-hander retired the first 14 batters he faced until Miguel Andujar with two outs in the fifth.
With Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate, Andujar swiped second before Kiner-Falefa walked.
Kyle Higashioka followed with a hard grounder to third, where Rafael Devers made a nice play to end the threat.
And that’s about all the Yankees could get off Wacha, who gave up just a pair of singles and has held the Yankees to one earned run in 23 innings over his last four starts against them, dating back to last season.
“He kind of mowed through us,” manager Aaron Boone said.
It didn’t give Jameson Taillon much of a chance.
The right-hander allowed three runs in seven innings, but put the Yankees in a hole in the first inning.
Taillon gave up a leadoff double to Tommy Pham, who moved to third on a groundout by Devers and scored on a grounder to shortstop by Xander Bogaerts to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead.
After the Yankees squandered a pair of baserunners in the fifth, Andrew Benintendi picked up their second hit of the night with a single to left, but Aaron Judge and Josh Donaldson struck out.
Pham led off the bottom of the sixth with a single to right and Devers then took Taillon deep to make it 3-0.
Devers has 19 career homers against the Yankees, his most against any single opponent.
Once Wacha exited, Ryan Brasier tossed a scoreless eighth before Garrett Whitlock finished it in the ninth.
“We obviously haven’t been playing the way we want, but we put ourselves in a nice position at this point of the season,” Taillon said of their sizable divisional lead. “We have the people in here to do [turn it around]. It will be nice to go home after a tough road trip.”
Those were words rarely heard during the first half of the season, when the Yankees seemed set to stroll to the best record in the American League.
“It’s baseball,” Judge said. “You’re gonna go through stretches like this. Every team does. We’re not happy with it… [but] we’re in first place. If you asked me at the start of the year if we’d like a 10-game lead in the middle of August, we’d like that. We’ve got to pick up and it starts [Monday]. We’ve still got a good ballclub here.”
Boone agreed they could get back to where they were earlier in the season.
“We’ll get guys back and we’ve got everything we need,” the manager said.
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