Yankees Blow Late Lead to Tigers

There is only one month left in the 2018 Major League Baseball season. Every game is very important at this time of the year. This is especially true for teams that are trying to make up ground on teams ahead of them in the standings. The New York Yankees would definitely fall into that category. They are trying desperately to catch the Boston Red Sox in the American League East division. However, the Red Sox keep winning almost every day. This has made it almost impossible for the Yankees to gain any ground on them. The fact that the Yankees just dropped two games in a three game series with the lowly Chicago White Sox did not help their cause.

The Yankees continued their trend of losing games to very bad teams with a heartbreaking loss to the Detroit Tigers on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium. The Tigers have been dead and buried for a very long time. Even with the win, the Tigers are still an embarrassing 54-80 so far this season. Losing to a team like this would be bad under any circumstances. However, the Yankees lost this game in the worst possible way. The Yankees had a 7-5 lead going into the ninth inning. Aroldis Chapman is still on the disabled list. Dellin Betances was brought in to close out the game. He has been brilliant all year. He was not brilliant in this game. He surrendered a home run to Victor Martinez that just made it over the fence in right field. That tied the game 7-7. Niko Goodrum then connected for a solo homer to give the Tigers an 8-7 lead that they would not relinquish.

The loss was a crushing blow for the Yankees already slim hopes of winning their division. To make matters worse for the Bronx Bombers, they looked at the scoreboard and saw that the Red Sox had rallied from a 4-0 deficit to defeat the Chicago White Sox by a score of 9-4. The Yankees need to be more concerned about the Oakland Athletics at this point. They will most likely be playing the A’s in the wild card game. The winner moves on and the loser goes home. Oakland is now only 4 1/2 games behind the Yankees. The wild card team that has the best record will have the game at their stadium. This is an advantage the Yankees must not lose.