Chad Green allows four runs in eighth as Yankees lose to Red Sox

The Yankees rewarded their biggest crowd of the season with another night to forget in what has become a virtual parade of them.

This time the underperforming batting order was not solely to blame. The starting pitching faltered and what has been a highly effective bullpen looked awful. When it all was done accumulating, the Yankees walked off the field with a 7-3 loss to the Red Sox on Saturday night before 20,019 at the Stadium.

Chad Green turned in his worst outing of the season, entering a tie game in the eighth and giving up four runs while recording only two outs. The Yankees got the tying run into the on-deck circle in the ninth before Kyle Higashioka struck out against Matt Barnes to end it.

The Boston runs off Green came on a run-scoring double by Enrique Hernandez, a run-scoring single by Christian Vazquez and a 453-foot two-run homer by Bobby Dalbec that went over the back wall of the visitors’ bullpen in left-centerfield. All of the runs scored with two outs.

Green was especially upset with the Hernandez double on a 2-and-2 pitch. He said, "When you have a chance to get off the field, you have to make a pitch — and I didn’t execute it."

The loss was the Yankees’ ninth in their last 12 contests. In that span, they have scored 29 runs, an average of 2.4 per game.

"It’s going to take everyone," Aaron Boone said of getting out of the rut. "It’s going to take consistent at-bats in the lineup. It’s obviously going to take the rotation and the defense and the bullpen . . . Over the course of a long season, you know adversity is coming for us, and we’ve had our share in these first 60 or so games. We’ve had a couple of stretches where we’ve really taken it on the chin. And if we’re going to be the club we expect to be, we’ve got to rally from that."

The Yankees are 14-21 against their foes in the AL East. "It’s not good," Boone said of the division play. "If we’re going to be the club where we expect to be, we need to improve that and turn that around."

The Yankees blew an early 2-0 lead to fall behind and evened the score at 3-3 in the sixth before Green’s implosion.

You want a Yankees highlight? Gleyber Torres drove in all three runs.

Torres’ laser two-run homer to leftfield off Boston lefthander Eduardo Rodriguez came in the fourth. He came to bat right after Gio Urshela’s one-out single to center and uncoiled on a 1-and-1 four-seam fastball.

That gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead, and starter Jameson Taillon seemed to be cruising. But he was pulled in the sixth with the score 2-2, a man on first and one out. Jonathan Loaisaga gave up a pair of hits that allowed the inherited runner to score, but the Yankees tied it on Torres’ sacrifice fly in the bottom of the inning.

Taillon appeared to be on his way to perhaps his best start of the season before finding trouble in the sixth. At the end of five innings, he’d allowed just three hits and a walk and needed only 60 pitches to get there. He didn’t need more than 12 pitches in innings two through five to retire the Red Sox.

Alex Verdugo started Boston’s rally to the lead with a one-out single to left. Xander Bogaerts hit a ball off the leftfield wall that might have been catchable by a more experienced outfielder, but Miguel Andujar had trouble with it and it went for a double. Rafael Devers tied the score with a two-run single to right.

That ended Taillon’s night, but not the rally. Loaisaga allowed Hunter Renfroe’s infield hit and then a run-scoring double down the rightfield line by Marwin Gonzalez to put Boston ahead.

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.