HOUSTON — Ugly across the board.
Twice with a three-run lead in the middle innings Wednesday night, the Yankees bullpen imploded, in a four-run eighth inning in particular, leading to a wild 8-7 loss to the Astros in front of 30,693 at Daikin Park.
The defeat featured a bizarre eighth inning that saw the Astros score four runs, as well as the ejections of reliever Devin Williams — who walked three in the inning, including one with the bases loaded that forced in the go-ahead run that made it 5-4 — and manager Aaron Boone by plate umpire Brian Walsh.
“I already looked at it,” said Williams, who was ejected, for the first time in his career, walking off the mound after getting pulled. “He definitely missed four [pitches], which is what I told him and he threw me out for it.”
The Yankees made it interesting in the ninth against reliever Bryan Abreu when Cody Bellinger hit a three-run homer with two outs — the outfielder’s 27th — to cut the deficit to 8-7. But Jazz Chisholm Jr. struck out looking at a borderline full-count pitch that appeared outside, a pitch neither he nor the Yankees felt was a strike. And it left Giancarlo Stanton, who hit his 18th homer, in the second to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead, on deck.
“Jazz got the bat taken out of his hands on a pitch that was a lot further from the zone than pitches I was making,” Williams (3-6) said.
While his players still steamed about the umpiring afterward, Boone, who earned his AL-leading sixth ejection by shouting across the diamond at Walsh after removing Williams in favor of Camilo Doval, the Yankees manager didn’t make it about umpires.
“This isn’t about [them],” said Boone, who has led or been tied for the AL lead in ejections four straight years and is all but certain to make it a fifth this year. “I know we got kicked out . . . but the Astros beat us tonight. They made a couple of more plays than we did.”
The eighth further unraveled with Doval, who has not been good since the Yankees acquired him before the trade deadline. The righthander allowed an RBI single to Jeremy Pena, balked in a run because of an issue with his PitchCom device and then threw a wild pitch that made it 8-4 (as an aside, the Yankees seem to have a PitchCom issue at least once a game).
The Yankees (77-62), who led 3-0 entering the fifth and 4-1 entering the sixth, fell 3 1⁄2 games behind the AL East-leading Blue Jays and remained tied for the top wild-card spot (and for second place in the division) with the Red Sox, who also lost Wednesday.
The AL West-leading Astros (77-63), who have slumped for roughly two months and who before Wednesday’s game primarily dealt with the topic of Tuesday night’s starter Framber Valdez perhaps intentionally crossing up his young catcher, Cesar Salazar, in order to plunk him with a pitch, tied the score in the seventh off Luke Weaver on the fourth of Yordan Alvarez’s four hits on the night. It was a line shot to left that made it 4-4.
Overall, it was not a standout night for a Yankees bullpen that, entering the night, had been very good of late for a Yankees team that had won 15 of its last 20.
The Yankees, who also got a home run from Austin Wells (No. 20), led 4-1 going into the sixth with Will Warren on the mound.
But after Pena’s 15th homer, a blast leading off the inning on a first-pitch sweeper that was only Warren’s 67th pitch of the night, made it 4-2, Boone brought in righthander Fernando Cruz. Warren, a 26-year-old rookie, allowed two runs and five hits over five-plus innings in which he did not walk a batter and struck out four.
“It is what it is,” Warren said diplomatically of being taken out when he was. “They changed their game plan, started getting aggressive because we were attacking the zone and filling it up. They started jumping some stuff.”
Said Boone: “I just thought there were about eight hitters in a row there where they were pressuring him pretty good and squaring the ball up . . . I just felt like it was time.”
Alvarez (4-for-5) sent the second pitch he saw from Cruz over the head of Stanton in left. A wild pitch advanced the runner and Jose Altuve’s groundout to third made it 4-3. An inning later, the lead was gone and two innings after that the game completely devolved from the Yankees’ standpoint.
“I think we fought all game, had the lead, fought back,” Warren said. “And then there in the last inning, just feel like it was gifted to them.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday’s sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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