Yankees are a long way away from the club that was 17 games over .500 in mid-June

ARLINGTON, Texas — After completing a three-game sweep of the Royals with a 1-0 victory in Kansas City on June 12, the Yankees stood at 42-25.

That was good enough for the second-best record in the American League, just behind Detroit’s 45-25 mark. But they were playing better than just about anyone in the sport at the time, having won 23 of their last 32 games.

The Yankees were doing everything well, from run scoring to run prevention to quality outing after quality outing from the rotation to almost nightly lights-out work by the bullpen.

Those were the days, huh?

A three-game sweep at the hands of the Red Sox followed on June 13-15, a roundhouse right from which the Yankees — with the small exception of a brief spurt of good play here and there — still haven’t recovered.

Going into Monday night’s series opener against the Rangers, the Yankees had lost 27 of their last 45 games since June 12, doing almost none of the things consistently well that led to them to once being 17 games over .500.

After one of those brief spurts of positivity, winning four of their last five games during a seven-game homestand late last week, the Yankees were swept by the Marlins over the weekend for the first time ever. That included the hands-down worst loss of the season in the first game of the series, a 13-12 defeat to Miami on Friday night in which the Yankees blew leads of 6-0, 9-4 and 12-10.

Three of the headline trade deadline acquisitions made by general manager Brian Cashman — relievers Jake Bird, David Bednar and Camilo Doval — combined to allow nine runs and nine hits in 2 1/3 innings in the loss.

“It’s frustrating,” Cody Bellinger said on Sunday in Miami of how “head-scratching” it was that the team hasn’t been able to right itself. “Had a great last series at home and come in here and Miami just swept us. We’ve got to look ourselves in the mirror, go to Texas and play baseball the way I know we can.”

With the Rangers throwing lefthander Patrick Corbin on Monday night, the Yankees stacked their lineup with righties, which included three of the seven new players the club added before the trade deadline.

Amed Rosario started in right and batted second; Austin Slater started in left and batted fifth and Jose Caballero started at third and batted ninth.

In their careers against Corbin, Caballero entered Monday 2-for-4 with a homer, Slater was 8-for-21 (.381) with two homers and Rosario was 3-for-35 (.086) with two homers.

Caballero getting the start at third raised at least a few eyebrows because new left-handed hitting third baseman Ryan McMahon came into Monday 7-for-19 (.368) in his career against Corbin.

Manager Aaron Boone said that the altered lineup had nothing to do with trying to spark his floundering team.

“We brought in Rosario and Slater because of their prowess against lefthanded pitching, not only this year but really the last couple of years they’ve been phenomenal in that area,” Boone said before the game. “It’s an area we wanted to address in and around the deadline to give us a little more balance.”

One area that Cashman failed to upgrade was an already super shaky and super thin, rotation.

To add to that depth, the Yankees took a flyer on Japanese righthander Kenta Maeda, 37, whom they signed to a minor-league contract on Monday and assigned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Maeda, 68-56 with a 4.20 ERA in his nine years in the majors, was released by the Cubs on Saturday. The veteran hasn’t been good at any level this season, posting a 7.88 ERA in seven games with the Tigers before getting released by Detroit on May 7. Picked up by the Cubs nine days later, Maeda went 3-4 with a 5.97 ERA in 12 starts for Triple-A Iowa.

Extra bases

Aaron Judge (right flexor strain), who hit against Yankees minor leaguers for a second straight day on Monday at the club’s minor-league complex in Tampa, was scheduled to fly to Dallas later in the afternoon. The expectation is that Judge will be activated before Tuesday night’s game. He will be the Yankees designated hitter for the time being… Mark Leiter Jr., on the IL since July 8 with left fibular head stress fracture, had a locker in the visitor’s clubhouse on Monday and is also likely to be activated Tuesday.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

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.