NEW YORK — His head down, his eyes fixed to the ground, Gerrit Cole dropped his glove in disgust on the dugout bench. All around him were loud boos from the fed-up Yankee Stadium crowd.
The way the Yankees are playing, the Bronx might be silent come early October.
It would have been hard to pick a worse time for Yankees ace Gerrit Cole to get clobbered and for the offense to zombify once again. Yet, that’s how it went in a 11-1 loss to the Indians on Sunday afternoon.
The Yankees have almost no margin for error as they continue to slip out of the playoff picture. Losing two of three games to the middling Indians wasn’t what manager Aaron Boone needed with his contract expiring at season’s end. The Red Sox and the Blue Jays each won Sunday, pushing the Yankees to 1 1/2 games out of the wild-card second spot in the wild-card race.
The Rangers — in last place in the AL West — show up to Yankee Stadium for a three-game set starting Monday before the Yankees finish the season with nine combined games against the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Rays.
Cole got lit up for seven earned runs, putting the Yankees into a 7-1 hole. The only production they received was via third baseman Gio Urshela’s barely-over-the-face home run in the third inning, a solo shot that had Harold Ramirez slamming into the wall and leaving with shoulder pain. Aaron Judge had runners on the corners with two outs in the eighth but struck out swinging.
It was the second straight game in which the Yankees gave up double digits. They also fell to Cleveland, 11-3, on Saturday after beating the AL Central club by eight runs on Friday.
Cleveland starting pitcher Eli Morgan, who had a 6.03 ERA entering the game, gave up just one run over six innings.
It was clear that Cole didn’t have it just four pitches into the game when he hit leadoff man Bradley Zimmer. He needed 104 pitches to get through 5 2/3 innings, giving up 10 hits while walking one and striking out seven. He coughed up two home runs. Cole fell to 15-8 and his season ERA jumped to 3.03 from 2.75.
In the first, after he hit Zimmer and walked Jose Ramirez with one out, Bobby Bradley singled through the left side to load the bases. Then Harold Ramirez chopped one down the first-base line past a diving Anthony Rizzo, bringing in two runs.
The Yankees went down, 5-0, in the third inning. Cole gave up a pair of singles before Ramirez hit a soft liner to shallow left-center. Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge converged on it, with Judge diving forward. But Gardner deflected it with his glove, and two runs scored as it fell in for a hit. After another base hit put runners on the corners, Roberto Perez hit a hard RBI grounder up the middle.
Cole would then give up home runs to Ramirez to lead off the fifth and Perez to start the sixth before coming out of the game to loud boos.
Lucas Luetge threw 1 1/3 innings without an earned run before Clarke Schmidt coughed up two runs (three earned) in two innings.
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Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com.
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