Well, to me, this week was a week of Mondays. All kinds of things went wrong for me, at home, at work, and certainly on the ballfield.
The Yankees went into the belly of the beast. They walked into Mordor. Into a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I speak, of course, of Fenway Park, home of their despised and despicable rivals, the Boston Red Sox.
The Yankees began this 4-game weekend series 5 1/2 games behind the Red Sox, with 56 games to play, including 10 against the Sox. If they could take 3 out of 4 in this series, or even sweep, they would be back in business. Otherwise, it would be the Wild Card or bust.
At this point, the likeliest scenario is "bust." The Yankees had been doing so well for so long, but they reverted to the "gutless wonders" status they forged for themselves earlier in the season.
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The Yankees couldn't have gotten off to a better start. Brian Johnson -- no, not the lead singer for AC/DC -- started for the Sox, and here's the 1st 3 batters of the game: Aaron Hicks reached on an error, Giancarlo Stanton singled, and Didi Gregorius blasted a home run to right-center, the deepest part of the 106-year old Back Back ballyard. That's 3 runs in the top of the 1st inning.
Hicks added a homer in the top of the 2nd. 4-0 Yankees, which should have been a great boost to starting pitcher CC Sabathia. But he allowed a home run to Steve Pearce in the 2nd, and another run in the 3rd, and then left the game without taking the mound for the bottom of the 4th. (UPDATE: We now know that his knee was bothering him.)
Aaron Boone sent Jonathan Holder as an emergency long reliever. "Long"? This was one of the longest innings in Yankee history. Walk. Double. Run-scoring fielders choice. Another home run by Pearce, for 3 runs. Double. RBI single. RBI double. Boone mercifully lifts Holder, and sends in Chad Green. Strikeout. Lineout. Bleeding stopped? Not yet. RBI double. Single. RBI single. Boone lifts Green, and brings in Luis Cessa, who gets a groundout to finally end the inning.
It was 10-4, and there were no good buddies.
8 runs, 8 hits, no errors 2 men left on base. In just 1 inning. Not a game, not a game, not a game. We talkin' 'bout an inning. According to Baseball-Reference.com, when the inning began, there was a 69 percent chance the Yankees would win it. Right before Cessa got that last out, the chance of winning was 97 percent to the Red Sox.
When baseball historians look back on the 2018 Boston Red Sox, however far they go in the postseason, they can point to this inning, on August 2, as when they won the AL East.
And it was only the 4th inning. Didi homered again in the 5th, but the Sox got the run back in the bottom of the inning. Pearce hit his 3rd homer of the game in the 6th. Stanton hit one out in the 7th, but no one was thinking that this would be one of those famous Yankee comebacks.
Final score: Red Sox 15, Yankees 7. WP: Johnson (2-3). No save. LP: Holder (1-2).
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Luis Severino started the Friday night game, and Pearce made it 4 homers in 2 nights in the 1st inning. For all intents and purposes, this game was already over. Rick Porcello allowed just 1 baserunner. Actually, Miguel Andujar hit a home run off him in the 3rd inning, so, since he wasn't exactly running the bases, does he count as a "baserunner"?
Red Sox 4, Yankees 1. WP: Porcello (14-4). No save. LP: Severino (14-5).
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The Saturday afternoon game, and every game thereafter for the 2018 Yankees, was, essentially pointless, but they were scheduled, so they had to be played.
Nathan Eovaldi pitched very well. Unfortunately, he no longer pitches for the Yankees. The Red Sox picked him up near the trading deadline, in the kind of deal that Brian Cashman should be making.
With the Yankee rotation riddled with injury, Chance Adams was brought up from Scranton, and made his major league debut. The righhander from the Phoenix suburbs, about to turn 24 and wearing Number 43, was put into the cauldron of the Yanks-Sox rivalry, and at Fenway, no less. The pressure didn't seem to get to him -- or maybe, after the preceding 2 games, there was no more pressure. He wasn't terrible, allowing 3 runs on 3 hits and 1 walk, with 2 strikeouts, in 5 innings.
But Eovaldi was brilliant, going 8 innings, allowing 2 doubles to Stanton, another double to Gregorius, 2 walks to Hicks and another to Gleyber Torres, and that was it. Again, the final score was Red Sox 4, Yankees 1. WP: Eovaldi (5-4). No save. LP: Adams (0-1).
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ESPN was hoping for a classic game in a classic Yanks-Sox race when they scheduled Sunday Night Baseball for August 5. Well, they got half of what they wanted. The race didn't become a classic, but this game sure did.
Masahiro Tanaka and David Price traded goose eggs until the bottom of the 5th, when Tanaka's gopher spoke up and demanded to be fed, and Mookie Betts took advantage. But Tanaka settled down after that, and it was still 1-0 Boston going into the top of the 7th, and that's when the Yankees appeared to snap out of their funk. Walks, an error and a wild pitch aided the Bronx cause, and when it was over, it was 4-1 to the Good Guys.
Zach Britton pitched a scoreless 7th. Dellin Betances pitched a scoreless 8th. Things were looking up. The Yankees would come away from this horrible series with some consolation, and some hope that they could still catch the Sox for the Division if they kept winning and the Sox got cold later on.
Aroldis Chapman took the mound for the bottom of the 9th. His mission was simple: Get 3 outs, and don't allow any more than 2 runs. It shouldn't have been hard, even in Fenway, even with the Sox using whatever steroids may have been left in David Ortiz' locker.
Chapman struck Brock Holt out, to start the inning right. But... Cliche alert: Walks can kill you. Chapman walked Sandy Leon. He walked Betts. Uh-oh... He struck Andrew Benintendi out, then he walked Pearce. Jackie Bradley Jr. was sent in to pinch-run for Pearce.
Okay, there's only 1 more out to go, and (not a cliche, but it should be) it is better to give a hot hitter like Pearce four balls for one base than one ball for four bases. But the bases are loaded. And this was Fenway.
J.D. Martinez singled home Leon and Betts. 4-3. You could feel defeat coming, you just weren't sure how.
The batter was Xander Bogaerts. He hit a ground ball to Andujar, the only saving grace on Friday. But he threw it away, and Bradley scored the tying run. Chapman then struck Mitch Moreland out. He had struck out the side, but also allowed 3 runs to blow the save.
The Yankees went down weakly in the top of the 10th, 1-2-3. Boone sent Holder, the melter-downer of Thursday night, to pitch the bottom of the 10th, and if any Yankee Fan from Poughkeepsie to Atlantic City, from Scranton to Montauk, said he was optimistic at this point, he was kidding himself and all others.
Holder got the 1st 2 outs. But he gave up a single to Leon. He threw a wild pitch, sending the winning run to 2nd. Seeing that 1st base was no open, Boone ordered an intentional walk to Betts, to set up an inning-ending force play at 2nd.
It didn't matter. Benintendi hit a grounder up the middle, and Leon scored. Red Sox 5, Yankees 4. WP: Matt Barnes (4-3). The Sox swept the Yankees 4 straight, without recording a single save. LP: Holder (1-3), but the real fault is with Chapman for blowing the save in the 9th, and Boone for not figuring out that Holder shouldn't be pitching in Fenway Park.
The Yankees skulked out of Boston 9 1/2 games out, with 52 games to go.
The ghost of Yogi Berra called. He said, "It's over."
So was my Week of Mondays. And, as the Mamas & the Papas taught us, "Monday, Monday, can't trust that day. Monday, Monday, sometimes, it just turns out that way."
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