The way the afternoon was going, it would have been apt for Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s liner to right field to hit a rock, ricochet back toward first base and go down as one more out.
No, that did not happen, and Chisholm’s drive touched grass and went as the first knock of the game for the Yankees, who did not get no-hit.
But virtually everything else went wrong on a Saturday that might not have been historically terrible for the Yankees but was plain terrible nonetheless.
The losses on a sunny weekend day that featured a comfortable breeze: Giancarlo Stanton, Ryan Weathers and a game, 4-3 to the Blue Jays in The Bronx in front of 46,231 who at least could take heart that they witnessed their team’s lineup avoid ignominy.
The Yankees (73-56) saw their five-game win streak snapped and fell to 3 ¹/₂ games behind the Rays before Tampa Bay’s late game, though the division race — given an added spotlight Friday, when manager Aaron Boone’s group closed to within three games for the first time in weeks — felt immaterial by the end of this comedy and tragedy of errors.
The day started with Boone revealing Stanton, a Hall of Fame-type bat when healthy and a clubhouse deity, had strained a calf for a third time this year.
The bleakness turned to darkness in the fourth inning, when Weathers — amid his first season in pinstripes and the best season of his career, having allowed one or zero runs in five straight outings entering play — threw a sweeper to Myles Straw and immediately betrayed that something had gone wrong.
He circled the mound, looked uncomfortable and soon enough exited with a trainer with what the Yankees called left forearm discomfort, which required immediate imaging.
As his career-high innings mounted, Weathers has seemed a candidate to be transitioned to relief, where his stuff might play up in a bullpen that did not upgrade at the deadline.
That October future is now in doubt.
The hits keep on coming for the Yankees, who already are notably without Aaron Judge, Max Fried, Ryan McMahon and (briefly) Cody Bellinger.
But the actual hits were harder to come by.
The Yankees did not record a hit against Dylan Cease until there were two outs in the seventh inning, when Chisholm’s single did not find a trampoline and bounce back toward the infield.
Cease then served up an RBI single to Austin Wells before he was lifted after 111 pitches and just those two hits. Luis García Jr. added a two-run home run against Tyler Rogers in the eighth, but that was as close as the Yankees would get.
Toronto used a flurry of hits — 15 in total, including three of the first four batters Weathers faced — to score single runs in the first, fourth, fifth and eighth in a game that should not have been as close as it was.
There were defensive miscues from the Yankees, including George Lombard Jr.’s second error in as many days, García allowing a pop foul to drop, Yerry De los Santos throwing a would-be pickoff into center field and Chisholm nearly allowing an unearned run to score before recovering from a booted ground ball.
And there were typical offensive issues, innings in which they were bulldozed by Cease mixed in with a few backbreakers.
Go beyond the box score with the Bombers
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Like the first two innings, when the Yankees put a runner on third with one out and came away with zero runs. In the first, it was Heliot Ramos and García who failed in the clutch.
In the second, it was Chisholm and Wells.
They threatened again in the fifth, when Lombard and Wells walked.
But with one out, José Caballero laced a Cease fastball directly at shortstop Ernie Clement, who caught the line drive and threw behind Lombard for the inning-ending double play.
In the ninth against Louis Varland, Chisholm led off with a double to put the tying run on second and later stole third.
But Wells, Caballero and Trent Grisham then were retired in order, ensuring a day that started poorly ended poorly, too.
