As the bottom of the eighth inning dawned on Sunday, the Yankees were up 4-0 and Domingo German had a no-hitter going as the Yankees looked to split a four-game set with the Red Sox.
Then Boston scored five in the eighth as Jonathan Loaisiga imploded, and the team took a heartbreaking 5-4 loss to end up losing the series three games to one – less than 24 hours after their own furious comeback gave them their only win of the weekend.
“Yeah, really tough one obviously. Domingo was terrific, but a tough one we have to get past heading into an off day and a huge series with Tampa,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Just couldn’t get it done today.”
Boone didn’t want to go much past 80 pitches with German, who threw 70 in his last start and hadn’t thrown even 75 in over a month, and still hoped for the best even after German’s 93rd and final pitch landed over the head of right fielder Greg Allen for an Alex Verdugo double that ended the no-no bid.
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"Any ball that's hit in the air my way, I want to try to catch, so that's been in my mind a lot, especially the way the rest of that inning played out," Allen said. "It was a tough one, with the no-hitter, and the ball was hit fairly well. I wasn't able to get back on it enough."
And then, the wheels fell off, and German could only watch as Loaisiga gave up a four straight hits and Zack Britton got two outs, but saw both of them bring in runs to turn a 4-0 lead into a 5-4 deficit.
“If I can explain it, it’s like you find yourself on top of the world and all of a sudden, you’re free falling and you fall fast,” German said. “It’s tough. It’s so hard to even process what happened and how it happened. It’s hard to even analyze everything that goes on so quickly. Extremely tough. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish what I really wanted there, to go all the way and have the result be different.”
And that, in a nutshell, is a microcosm of the 2021 Yankees – even when something goes almost perfectly right, it seems something else goes so spectacularly wrong. And, this time, even the manager, the man who has won 287 games over the equivalent of three full seasons, admitted it was fair to second guess some of his moves – including his own second-guessing about bringing part of the infield in on Kevin Plawecki’s groundout that tied the game, or leaving Loaisiga in for a fourth batter.
“You feel good about how we’re set up there (with the bullpen), and they just were able to get to Johnny today,” Boone said. “I knew I had Britton coming around for the top of the order where I liked him, so I liked Lo coming in to clean up the inning, but with the layoff and going back-to-back, I felt he was sound, but it’s one you have a little bit of pause for.”
So what do the Yankees do now, with a three-game series in Tampa on tap that may make or break their season heading into the trade deadline?
“Like they have all year – guys have handled and dealt with adversity, and I know we’ll do it again,” Boone said. “This definitely seems like, over the last month, month and a half, we’ve had tough ones to get past. Time and again, these guys have done it and continue to reveal their character. Look, it’s been a difficult season to this point, no question about it, but they continue to get off the mat time and time again.”
Added Allen: "We hold ourselves to a high standard, and even when we fall short of that, we understand our shortcomings, and as a team, we try to find ways to pick each other up. It's a group effort, and it's not always going to be easy."
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