PHILADELPHIA — On most nights lately, pitching has kept the Yankees in the game long enough for a struggling lineup to muster a run or two.
So of course, on a night when a lineup that looked like it came out of the Grapefruit League actually scratched across three runs against one of the toughest pitchers in the game, it was pitching that let the Yankees down.
Will Warren turned in a clunker, putting the Yankees in a big hole early that they began to climb out of before Ryan Yarbrough buried them again on the way to an 11-4 loss to the Phillies on Sunday night at Citizens Bank Park.
Unable to complete the sweep, the Yankees (59-46) flew to Chicago for a week in the Windy City against the White Sox and Cubs that leads into the trade deadline, which they hope to use to help bolster a hurting roster that is now three games back of the Rays for first place in the AL East.
The Yankees began life without Cody Bellinger on Sunday, after he joined Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the injured list with a left hamstring strain.
But the lineup — which scored three runs in six innings against Phillies ace lefty Cristopher Sánchez — was not as big of an issue as Warren, who got tagged for six runs in three-plus innings to continue a rough trend for the right-hander.
Warren had pitched to a 3.22 ERA across his first 12 starts through the end of May.
But his eight starts since then have been much rockier, pitching to a 6.57 ERA — 27 earned runs in 37 innings with 50 hits against him.
After the Yankees turned the early 6-0 deficit into a 6-3 game by the fifth inning, Yarbrough erased any chance of them finishing off the comeback by the sixth, as the Phillies (57-49) scored five runs against him to blow things open.
The Yankees did not play their crispest defense behind Warren, which did not help his cause.
That started from the very first batter in the bottom of the first, Trea Turner, who roped a ball to the gap in right-center field that Trent Grisham could not cut off before it bounced all the way to the wall, resulting in a triple.
Kyle Schwarber came up next and hit a sacrifice fly for the 1-0 lead.
In the second inning, Warren left a 94 mph fastball over the heart of the plate and Bryson Stott crushed it for a home run to put the Phillies ahead 2-0.
Things then went off the rails in the third inning, which Warren started by quickly retiring the first two batters.
But he followed by walking Schwarber, giving up a double to Bryce Harper and then intentionally walking Brandon Marsh (after falling behind 2-0) to load the bases.
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That brought up Alec Bohm, who engaged in a nine-pitch battle that ended with a sinking liner to left field that a diving Max Schuemann (starting for Bellinger) had no chance on, resulting in a bases-clearing double for the 5-0 lead.
Stott capped off the rally with a single that made it 6-0.
Sánchez entered the night having held opposing left-handed hitters to a minuscule .323 OPS this season, so Aaron Boone stacked his lineup with as many righties as he could, leaving Jazz Chisholm Jr., Ryan McMahon, Austin Wells and Spencer Jones on the bench.
The result was a lineup that looked more like one the Yankees might take to Clearwater in spring training instead of Citizens Bank Park in July.
After leaving the bases loaded in the fourth inning, the Yankees finally showed some signs of life in the fifth inning as they scored on Sánchez’s errant pickoff throw, Jasson Domínguez’s groundout and Anthony Volpe’s second double of the night — his first two extra-base hits since June 26 — to get within 6-3.
But Yarbrough let the game get out of hand in the bottom of the sixth, with Stott delivering the knockout punch on the Phillies’ fifth hit of the inning, a three-run double that made it 11-3.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
