On a magical Saturday, Ben Rice did something no Yankees rookie had ever done in smacking three home runs, and his team did something it suddenly rarely does in winning a game.
A night later, the pixie dust was gone.
With bright history in the past, a dark reality became the present.
A struggling offense and struggling club brushed off any trace of momentum and resumed its funk.
The Yankees lost another series in discouraging fashion by getting shut out by the Red Sox, 3-0, in front of 45,250 in The Bronx on Sunday night.
The nosedive of the Yankees (55-37) — who have dropped 15 of 20 and are three games back of the Orioles in the AL East — began in Boston in mid-June, and they haven’t won a series since, going seven straight without a series victory.
After scoring 14 runs in what they hoped would be a breakout victory Saturday, the Yankees were shut out for a sixth time this season.
Rice followed up a day for the history books with a night to forget, going 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts.
For a second straight day, manager Aaron Boone left his flagging starting pitcher on the mound to face Rafael Devers, and for a second straight day the move backfired.
After the Red Sox All-Star homered off Gerrit Cole with Cole’s final pitch Saturday, Devers took a seventh-inning, down-the-middle fastball from Luis Gil and reversed it narrowly over the left-field wall to break a scoreless tie.
Gil was pulled two batters later.
Ceddanne Rafaela demolished a Luke Weaver cutter and sent it deep into the left-field seats in the eighth inning.
Devers, a certified Yankees-killer, victimized Michael Tonkin in the ninth inning for his second homer, which concluded the scoring on a night the Yankees could do nothing against Kutter Crawford and two Boston relievers.
