Yankees: Everything ventured, nothing gained? Not so fast.

The Yankees spent a good portion of their lives playing a lot of nearly perfect baseball in just three days. But in the end, nothing has changed. Or, has it?

The Yankees, over the span of three days and four games, played nearly perfect baseball against their arch-rivals in Boston. But the distance between the two teams didn’t change following a split in the series that ended with a David Price masterpiece last night and a 3-0 loss.

And if take out the ten minutes of baseball the Yankees played on Friday night when Ronald Torreyes made a costly error and Aroldis Chapman walked the world, the Yankees are looking more like the team they were in April and not the one we saw in June.

A well-worn axiom in baseball states that good pitching will always beat good hitting. And with the Yankees, maybe we need to add “consistent” good pitching. But this time, the team broke the pattern we have seen so often of late in which a good start is followed by a clunker, then it’s repeated and repeated still again.

But this weekend, minus Jordan Montgomery‘s so-so start on Friday, the Yankees staff turned in three successive quality starts of six innings or more and three runs or fewer allowed. The future ace of the Yankees staff, Luis Severino, took a no-decision with his effort in Friday’s marathon win.

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CC Sabathia, who continues to prove that a 92 mph fast ball located precisely and a mix of his other pitches thrown for strikes, will get major league hitters out, got the win in the opener yesterday. And Mystery Man, Masahiro Tanaka, followed suit in the nightcap.

The trouble was the Red Sox matched them with quality starts of the own, ending with Price’s effort that handed the Yankees their first shutout loss of the season. But that’s baseball, and you can only control what you do.

So, the series ended where we started, and the Yankees are still 3.5 games behind the Sox when it could have been 1.5 with a win in the nightcap.

But for anyone who watched these games, it was an easy tell that the Yankees are ready to play a different brand of baseball in the second half, and one that is closer to the Gang of 25 we saw in April.

Next: A case of the All-Star blues? You be the judge

Aaron Judge played every inning in the series, and his batting average has dipped by seventeen points to .313, which while not alarming is a cause of concern suggesting Joe Girardi needs to find a way to give him a blow this week, which includes a jet run out to Seattle following the Twins series in Minnesota.

But overall, the plane ride that took the team to Minneapolis in the wee hours of the morning should have been time to give the Yankees pause to realize that they’re still in it to win it.