Sloppy Yankees suffer ugly loss to Red Sox in doubleheader matinee

Asked Saturday morning about how he planned to complete 18 innings of a doubleheader with a pair of starting pitchers who were not fully built up from injuries, manager Aaron Boone raised both arms with upturned palms: a shrug.The concerns around the club then only grew as play began.The Yankees made mistake after mistake, including an error and a passed ball combining to let in a fifth-inning run and cost Carlos Rodón needed length.

An ugly ninth inning featured Cody Bellinger slipping to let in another run and the Red Sox teeing off against Ryan Yarbrough.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

There also was a questionable green light from third base coach Luis Rojas, which resulted in the best offensive chance of the club’s afternoon being neutered.But such concerns with the pitching, defense and decision-making became secondary.Sure, the Yankees did not play a perfect game, but they were most imperfect when they were on the attack.The Yankees again were quiet against a Red Sox lefty, this time Jake Bennett, in what became a 6-0 loss in front of a sellout crowd of 47,314 on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the start of a long day of significant baseball in The Bronx.

 Before the nightcap, the Yankees (76-59) had alternated wins and losses in their previous eight games and temporarily fell to two games ahead of the surging Red Sox (74-61) for the top wild-card spot and 4 ½ games behind the Rays in the division.For probably its biggest series of the season, Boston stacked its lefty pitchers — Patrick Sandoval on Friday, Bennett on Saturday afternoon, likely a lefty opener in the nightcap and Ranger Suarez on Sunday — to exploit a potential Yankees weakness that sure has looked like a real weakness so far.In the first two games, the Yankees scored one run — the difference-making home run from Paul Goldschmidt a night earlier — on seven hits and 20 str...