TORONTO — Somebody needs to take the shovel out of the Yankees’ hands.
Returning to the scene where they were swept out of first place three weeks ago, the Yankees only dug their hole a little deeper Monday night with a sloppy showing in the first game of a showdown series.
Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe made back-to-back throwing errors that scored the final two runs of a four-run fifth inning that sank the Yankees in a 4-1 loss to the Blue Jays at a sold-out Rogers Centre.
In the process, the Yankees (55-45) dropped to a season-high four games back of the Blue Jays (59-41) for first place in the AL East — a deficit larger than any they faced last season.
“I’m concerned about us playing well and getting consistent,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s been a month now where we haven’t been our best. We need to start playing better consistently and putting wins in the win column. That’s all we can really worry about. We can’t worry about, ‘We’re up this, we’re down that.’ We’ve got to play well.”
The Blue Jays have won 11 straight games at home, a streak that began with a four-game sweep of the Yankees at the start of this month.
Carlos Rodón did not help himself Monday by issuing a season-high five walks across five innings of work, but his defense failed him late to turn a 2-1 game into 4-1.
The Yankees, meanwhile, only mustered one run in seven innings against Kevin Gausman, with Giancarlo Stanton’s solo blast in the fourth inning accounting for the only damage.
Bo Bichette’s two-run double put the Blue Jays up 2-1 in the bottom of the fifth before things went awry on the left side of the Yankees infield.
Rodón had just won a 14-pitch battle with Davis Schneider for the second out when his very next pitch should have ended the inning.
But Peraza — manning third base until the Yankees presumably find a replacement by the trade deadline — fielded Myles Straw’s ground ball and yanked the throw to first, allowing Bichette to score from second for the 3-1 lead.
“I rushed through the sequence of defending that ball,” Peraza said. “Rodón is pitching a good game and it’s a play I got to make there.”
Leo Jiménez then hit a ground ball to shortstop, where Volpe fielded cleanly but threw a one-hopper to Paul Goldschmidt, who could not come up with the backhanded scoop. Volpe’s 12th error — the most of any American League shortstop — allowed Straw to race home from second to make it 4-1.
“I just rushed the throw, pulled it and gave Goldy a tough pick to handle,” Volpe said. “Anytime you get a ball hit to you, you expect it to be an out. When that doesn’t happen, it’s frustrating.”
While Volpe has fallen off offensively over the past six weeks, his defense has also taken a step back, though Boone continued to insist he is “still a top shortstop.”
“It’s a few too many [errors],” Boone said. “That said, errors get handed out a lot of different places in a lot of different ways. I’m not so worried about — it’s making plays. He’s still making a lot of plays, but he hasn’t been as consistent as he wants to be and as consistent as he normally is. So there’s a few balls he’s left on the table, one tonight included. Those are plays he expects to make and we need him to make too.”
Since he hurt his left (non-throwing) shoulder on a diving attempt in early May, Volpe has regularly had ice on that shoulder after games. But both Volpe and Boone insisted he was healthy.
Rodón, making his first start since throwing an inning in the All-Star Game last Tuesday, had walked a tightrope in the early innings, escaping bases-loaded jams in two of the first four frames. But the 40-pitch fifth inning ended his night.
“I wish I was a little more economical throughout the game,” Rodón said. “A lot of pitches wasted I felt like.”
The Yankees had a chance to mount a comeback in the eighth inning when they put runners on first and second with one out. But Stanton lined out to center before Jasson Domínguez grounded out, falling deeper into an 0-for-18 skid.
“It’s July,” Volpe said. “We still know we got so many games ahead of us. We don’t stack ourselves up against one team or another. We stack ourselves up against ourselves. So when we play our best, everything will take care of itself.”