CHICAGO — The Yankees could not control how soft their schedule became over the past week, but they did take care of business just about as well as they could have.
Almost perfectly.
Just as the competition is about to get turned up over a two-week gantlet, the Yankees missed a chance to finish off a perfect week, falling to the White Sox 3-2 on Sunday afternoon to snap a seven-game winning streak at Rate Field.
Lefty Tim Hill allowed a go-ahead home run to the right-handed hitting Lenyn Sosa in the bottom of the eighth inning, breaking a 2-2 tie on a day the Yankees could not get much going offensively.
“Just couldn’t finish them off,” said Aaron Judge, whose three-hit day included his 43rd home run of the season that tied him with Yogi Berra for fifth on the all-time Yankees homer list at 358.
With the Blue Jays winning Sunday, the Yankees (76-61) dropped to three games back of them in the AL East, while having their lead trimmed to a half-game over the Red Sox for the top AL wild-card spot.
The Yankees will have Monday off in Houston before beginning a three-game showdown on Tuesday against the Astros, which will be followed by series against fellow playoff contenders in the Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox.
After a week of beating up against the lowly Nationals and White Sox (49-88), they will get a chance to prove their recent surge is for real.
“We got to show up every single day and prove it,” Judge said. “It doesn’t matter what we did the past road trip, doesn’t matter good or bad, we got to show up every single day here and we got something to prove — more to ourselves than anybody else. We got a special team here and guys know the opportunity we got ahead of us. The boys are fired up, we’re ready to go.”
The Yankees had a prime chance to break the 2-2 tie in the top of the eighth inning, when they loaded the bases with two outs for Ben Rice.
But against lefty Cam Booser, Rice checked his swing, resulting in a groundout to end the threat.
After getting five outs from Fernando Cruz in relief of Luis Gil, Aaron Boone called on Hill in the bottom of the eighth to face the top of the White Sox order, which featured three of four left-handed hitters.
The sidearmer retired the first two lefties before throwing a 1-2 sinker to Sosa that caught too much of the plate and ended up over the center field fence.
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Hill has allowed seven home runs this season, all of them to righties, but Boone said he did not consider intentionally walking Sosa to bring up lefty Colson Montgomery (who had homered off Gil in the sixth).
“The only consideration was do we go Hill or [Luke Weaver] that inning,” Boone said. “Kind of liked them both with the lefty lane. … The one thing is, usually Timmy even with the righties, you trust him to keep the ball in the yard. Guy put a really good swing on it and was able to ride it out the front door.”
Trent Grisham led off the top of the ninth with a walk before the lineup flipped over, but the Yankees could not take advantage.
Gil was solid, if not spectacular, while allowing two runs across 5 ¹/₃ innings.
The right-hander has not completed six innings in any of his six outings since missing the first four months with a lat strain as he works on finding his command, but he again gave the Yankees a chance to win Sunday.
They may have done so if ex-Yankee Mike Tauchman had not committed robbery on his former teammate.
After Judge and Cody Bellinger hit back-to-back doubles in the third inning against lefty Martín Pérez to take a 2-1 lead, Giancarlo Stanton hit a fly ball to right field that Tauchman jumped and reached over the wall to bring back and take away a two-run shot.
“That’s the one guy you don’t want to hit it to,” Judge said. “I hated seeing it, to be honest, but that guy’s a ballplayer.”