On a magical Saturday, Ben Rice did something no Yankees rookie had ever done by smacking three home runs, and his team did something it suddenly rarely does by winning a game.
A night later, the pixie dust was gone.
With bright history in the past, a dark reality became the present.
A struggling offense and struggling club brushed off any trace of momentum and resumed its funk.
Rafael Devers reassumed his title of Yankees Killer.
The Yankees lost another series in discouraging fashion by getting shut out by the Red Sox, 3-0, in front of 45,250 in The Bronx on Sunday night.
The nosedive of the Yankees (55-37) — who have dropped 16 of 22 — began in Boston in mid-June, and they haven’t won a series since, going seven straight without a series victory.
“It feels terrible,” Aaron Boone said after his club moved three games back of the Orioles in the AL East. “You’d like to weather it a little bit better, which we need to do, obviously.”
After scoring 14 runs in what they hoped would be a breakout victory Saturday, the Yankees were shut out for a sixth time this season.
Rice followed up a day for the history books with a night to forget, going 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts.
Rarely has the Yankees’ offense struggled like it struggled against Kutter Crawford, who was barely touched but also barely sweat on a steamy night.
The righty went seven scoreless innings that required just 68 pitches in which he allowed four hits and zero walks.
Typically after such domination, an offense genuflects in the opposing starter’s direction.
Juan Soto did not.
“He actually made a couple of mistakes, but we just couldn’t capitalize on them,” Soto said on a night the Yankees finished with four hits. “He made a couple mistakes right down the plate.”
The Yankees’ attack had few opportunities and made none of them count.
Their best chance came in the seventh, when Soto led off with a gapped double to right-center.
“You’re feeling like: ‘OK, here’s our shot to really answer,’ ” Boone said. “It didn’t happen.”
What did happen: Aaron Judge (0-for-4 with three strikeouts) struck out against Crawford in a rare at-bat in which he looked overmatched.
Alex Verdugo grounded out, and Anthony Volpe lined out to left to strand Soto on third.
“A lot of quick outs,” DJ LeMahieu said after the club’s 1-through-6 bats combined to go 1-for-21.
The Yankees’ offense had regrets, and the club’s manager had a decision to reflect upon.
For a second straight day, Boone left his flagging starting pitcher on the mound to face Devers, and for a second straight day the move backfired.
After the Red Sox All-Star homered off Gerrit Cole with Cole’s final pitch Saturday, Devers took a seventh-inning, down-the-middle fastball from Luis Gil and reversed it narrowly over the left-field wall to break a scoreless tie.
Gil was pulled two batters later.
Boone acknowledged there was “a little bit” of thought to removing Gil in favor of Luke Weaver for the Devers at-bat, though there was no thought of intentionally walking Devers in a scoreless game with no one on base and with one out.
Maybe Weaver wouldn’t have been much better.
The righty finished the seventh before watching Ceddanne Rafaela demolish his cutter and send it deep into the left-field seats in the eighth.
Devers, who treats Yankees pitchers like piñatas, victimized Michael Tonkin in the ninth inning for his second homer, which marked his 28th career dinger against the Yankees (the most among any active player) and concluded the night’s scoring, thus wasting Gil’s effort.
The previously struggling righty, who had come out of nowhere to pitch like an ace for two and a half months, had run into major struggles for his past three outings.
Gil, pitching in his first full season since Tommy John surgery, faced many questions about his arm tiring.
He answered plenty of those in touching 99.3 mph with his fastball and averaging 97.7 mph with the pitch.
Gil was back to his dominant self in allowing just the Devers home run in 6 ²/₃ innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.
Gil looked like himself again — but so did the Yankees’ June and July offense.
“This is not the time to feel sorry for yourself,” Boone said. “It’s the time to try to get guys going.”
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