Splat.
That was the sound of the good feelings the Yankees had built up with their recent surge hitting the windshield of a getaway car driven by their suddenly dormant lineup and a floundering bullpen.
Halfway through this 12-game gauntlet against playoff contenders, the Yankees were 4-2 with a pair of series wins. Then the Tigers came into town and put a halt to that, with the Yankees delivering a pair of duds so far that will have them trying to fend off a sweep on Thursday.
Yankees bats went quiet again in another close game before the bullpen, for the second straight night, went off the rails to ensure there would be no late comeback as they fell to the Tigers 11-1 on Wednesday night in The Bronx.
The clunker ended with outfielder Austin Slater on the mound to get the final two outs of the top of the ninth after Mark Leiter Jr., Camilo Doval, Tim Hill and Luke Weaver had combined to give up nine runs while recording only seven outs.
On Tuesday night, it was a 2-2 game entering the seventh inning when the Yankees bullpen collapsed and handed the Tigers a 12-2 win. On Wednesday, the Yankees trailed 2-0 heading into the seventh when again the relief corps crumbled and incited more concern about what it might do in October.
For those counting at home, that is 19 runs (18 earned) allowed by the bullpen over the past two nights.
The Yankees (80-65) avoided a shutout when Austin Wells homered in the bottom of the eighth, but by then it hardly mattered. The only saving grace of the night was that the Blue Jays and Red Sox also lost, meaning the Yankees remained three games back of Toronto for first place in the AL East and in a virtual tie with Boston for the top AL wild card.
Once again, Carlos Rodón put the Yankees in strong position to win, giving up two runs over six solid innings while lowering his ERA to 3.11.
But then Leiter, who gave up four runs without recording an out in the disastrous seventh inning Tuesday night, came on for the seventh inning again and gave up back-to-back singles. The runners advanced to second and third on a dead-ball wild pitch when a curveball got stuck in Wells’ chest protector before Leiter got the first out.
Doval entered and continued to struggle as a Yankee. He got the final two outs of the seventh (with one run coming in on a groundout by Gleyber Torres, who drove in the first three Tigers runs), before coming back out for the eighth and getting tagged for three runs, two of them on Riley Greene’s two-run shot that made it 5-0.
Hill (in the eighth) and Weaver (in the ninth) both gave up two-run jacks of their own as the Tigers (84-62) blew the game open.
Jack Flaherty, who blanked the Yankees in Detroit back in April, quieted them again Wednesday across five shutout innings in which he gave up just two hits and a walk while striking out seven.
The best chance for the Yankees to score against him came in the third inning, when Ryan McMahon roped a one-out double and Trent Grisham followed with a 10-pitch walk. But Aaron Judge extinguished the threat by grounding into a 6-4-3 double play, the first of two twin killings that he hit into to end innings.
Rodón cruised through the first four innings, allowing just two hits, before getting himself into trouble in the fifth. He gave up a one-out single before walking No. 8 batter Parker Meadows on four pitches — his only base on balls of the night — and then hitting Javier Báez to load the bases.
One out later, Torres lofted a single to center that plated a pair of runs to put the Tigers ahead 2-0.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
