Yankees sunk by pitching clunker in loss to Phillies as life without Cody Bellinger begins with dud

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.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

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 fir...