Yankees remain allergic to late leads, waste cathartic Oswald Peraza moment vs. A's

The New York Yankees have five losses already this season when leading in the eighth inning or later. Thankfully, they worked hard on Saturday to keep that statistic exactly where it started, gagging away their advantage in the seventh instead.

This version of the Yankees' typical late-inning fumbling was particularly maddening, as New York overcame an early Carlos Rodón hole to rally and punctuate it in the top of the sixth inning out of seemingly nowhere.

Aaron Judge clubbed his second home run of the game, and an Anthony Volpe double set the Yankees up with the tying run in scoring position and nobody out. Two sacrifice flies tied the game, and if that wasn't impressive enough, Oswald Peraza - oft-forgotten in this team's long- and short-term plans - lasered a line-drive home run to left field, clearing the bar for a sudden two-run lead.

Rodón cleaned up the sixth inning and exited triumphantly.

Fernando Cruz, Yankees bullpen undo Oswald Peraza's best moment in the uniform

And yet ... the Yankees bullpen seems to find a way, even when they've utilized the right process ahead of a meltdown. With the top of the A's lineup due in the seventh, Fernando Cruz allowed a one-out single and double, then Shea Langeliers managed to float a medium-depth fly ball all the way over the fence in right-center.

What possessed the Sacramento Jet Stream to send that particular baseball out on this beautiful day? Who knows. Something in the air detests it when the Yankees have a chance to take a two-run advantage to the finish line these days.

Are you a Luke Weaver truther? Did you think he should've been ready for Rooker, Soderstrom and Langeliers in the seventh? I respect it, but I disagree. If Aaron Boone had gone to Devin Williams, sure. But he went to Cruz, his near-spotless splitter menace, and the move still bombed completely. Someone's got to pitch the ninth with a lead, and if Weaver had been used, it ... likely would've been Cruz anyway, who managed to disintegrate early.

The one Boone decision we can all disagree with was bringing in Ian Hamilton, who followed a failed Yankees rally in the eighth (cool) by walking the world and siphoning away any fleeting chance at a ninth-inning comeback by allowing four two-out runs (thanks to the introduction of Tyler Matzek into the mix).

The Yankees will attempt to regroup on Sunday afternoon, but they've already been forced to regroup from four or five too many late-inning disasters this season. Perhaps they end up escaping with a cathartic victory at the end of this particular story, but it certainly feels like they already wasted their best emotional chance to win the series.