BOSTON — By the top of this three-game set at Fenway Park, it was arduous to imagine the Yankees had been the workforce simply in entrance of the AL East and the Pink Sox within the cellar.

The Yankees’ poor play started with consecutive losses at dwelling to the Mariners and continued with a highway journey through which they misplaced seven of 9, together with Sunday evening’s 3-Zero defeat in entrance of one other sellout crowd in a crisp 2 hours, 15 minutes.

It was the third time the Yankees had been shut out on the journey and so they’ve misplaced 9 of 11 as they return dwelling to The Bronx to face the Rays and Blue Jays this week, up by 10 video games on second-place Toronto within the division.

“It was not our greatest highway journey,’’ mentioned DJ LeMahieu, who missed the finale with a sore proper large toe. “We’re all annoyed. We all know how good a workforce we’re, we simply haven’t been enjoying prefer it.”

They’ve scored eight runs over their final 5 video games — 4 of them losses — as they cope with accidents to LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton (Achilles) and Matt Carpenter (foot).

On Sunday, they had been overmatched by Michael Wacha.

In his first sport again off the injured checklist after proper shoulder irritation after greater than a month on the injured checklist, the right-hander retired the primary 14 batters he confronted till Miguel Andujar with two outs within the fifth.

With Isiah Kiner-Falefa on the plate, Andujar swiped second earlier than Kiner-Falefa walked.

Kyle Higashioka adopted with a tough grounder to 3rd, the place Rafael Devers made a pleasant play to finish the risk.

And that’s about all of the Yankees may get off Wacha, who gave up only a pair of singles and has held the Yankees to at least one earned run in 23 innings over his final 4 begins towards them, relationship again to final season.

“He type of mowed by way of us,” supervisor Aaron Boone mentioned.

It didn’t give Jameson Taillon a lot of an opportunity.

The fitting-hander allowed three runs in seven innings, however put the Yankees in a gap within the first inning.

Taillon gave up a leadoff double to Tommy Pham, who moved to 3rd on a groundout by Devers and scored on a grounder to shortstop by Xander Bogaerts to provide the Pink Sox a 1-Zero lead.

After the Yankees squandered a pair of baserunners within the fifth, Andrew Benintendi picked up their second hit of the evening with a single to left, however Aaron Choose and Josh Donaldson struck out.

Pham led off the underside of the sixth with a single to proper and Devers then took Taillon deep to make it 3-0.

Devers has 19 profession homers towards the Yankees, his most towards any single opponent.

As soon as Wacha exited, Ryan Brasier tossed a scoreless eighth earlier than Garrett Whitlock completed it within the ninth.

“We clearly haven’t been enjoying the way in which we would like, however we put ourselves in a pleasant place at this level of the season,” Taillon mentioned of their sizable divisional lead. “Now we have the individuals in right here to do [turn it around]. Will probably be good to go dwelling after a tricky highway journey.”

These had been phrases seldom heard in the course of the first half of the season, when the Yankees appeared set to walk to the perfect file within the American League.

“It’s baseball,” Choose mentioned. “You’re gonna undergo stretches like this. Each workforce does. We’re not proud of it … [but] we’re in first place. If you happen to requested me initially of the 12 months if we’d like a 10-game lead in the course of August, we’d like that. We’ve obtained to choose up and it begins [Monday]. We’ve nonetheless obtained ballclub right here.”

Boone agreed they may get again to the place they had been earlier within the season.

“We’ll get guys again and we’ve obtained every little thing we’d like,” the supervisor mentioned.