Aaron Boone's explanation for Yankees' defensive mess vs. Red Sox rings hollow

Even though the New York Yankees entered Fenway Park for a four-game series with the Boston Red Sox with Cam Schlittler on the mound on Thursday night, they still faced a precarious situation where everything needed to go close to pitch-perfectly for them to pull out a win. Things did not go pitch-perfectly.

The Yankees' lineup has been decimated by injuries. Their bullpen? It's been largely healthy, but it was constructed in a way that left it woefully undermanned even at full strength. The Yankees have three — THREE! — trustworthy bullpen arms at this juncture in Brent Headrick, Fernando Cruz, and David Bednar. Bednar and Cruz were unavailable in Thursday's opener, having pitched back-to-back games in Detroit. That meant that a win was unlikely unless Schlittler played hero ball, the Yankees' bare-bones lineup smacked around Connelly Early, or New York played a tight and perfect game to somehow push a 3-1 lead into the clubhouse. Instead, they played as sloppily as they have all year, and Aaron Boone's pregame decision-making sentenced them to slop before the curtain even rose on this one.

With the margins so razor-thin, it would've been nice to see some attention being paid to defensive detail. Nope. With Ryan McMahon out, the Yankees played their best remaining defensive third baseman ... in left field. They played a borderline DH, Amed Rosario, at third base. But don't worry. It only came back to bite them 38 times.

Schlittler faced traffic on the bases constantly, often for silly reasons (some self-inflicted). He plunked a batter on an 0-2 count. He overthrew a pickoff play. He and Austin Wells watched a popup drop. Wells was called for catcher's interference. If you didn't know any better, you'd have assumed the Yankees were the team that Delta stranded in Colorado overnight. But after four innings of stress-filled pitching, Schlittler cathartically escaped with back-to-back strikeouts to strand two runners in scoring position and enter the fifth. That seemed like the end of it.

Until, of course, Rosario let a scorched ground ball go directly through his legs and the tying run scored on a shorter-than-we've-ever-seen-before sacrifice fly to Jose Caballero (Cody Bellinger almost certainly guns the runner down). Caleb Durbin's two-out home run in an at-bat he never should've taken was the difference.

The Red Sox opened the series in the dumps, but with four quality pitchers in four nights against a stressed-out Yankees bullpen, all they needed was a few breaks to start off on the right foot. They got a few breaks times 10. But after the game, when pressed on Boone's decision to start this game in a defensive hole as well as a bullpen hole, he doubled down on his decision, citing the unlikely event of pulled balls vs. Schlittler deciding the game.

Aaron Boone's refusal to play best options at margins doomed Yankees vs. Red Sox

Unlikely? Maybe. Exactly what happened? Yes.

The worst part? Spencer Jones, a more-than-capable center fielder, is apparently still banned from facing any left-handed pitching, even under duress. If there was ever a time to try it, it would be now. But Boone and the Yankees are adamant his defensive value will be canceled out by his punchless and punchout-fueled offense, and so he'll sit against Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett as well, and some worse defender will play in his stead.

June at Fenway Park and the Yankees are a match made in hell. The least Boone can do is put the most capable defensive version of his addled club on the field so that the Yanks don't give any games to a team that's enthusiastically enjoyed folding for the first three months of the season. On Thursday, the Yankees handed a team that never gets up off the mat a modest two-run comeback — then gave them Yerry de los Santos in a one-run game for good measure. Lesson learned, or foolishness personified? We'll find out as the series unfolds if the so-called urgency returns.

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