BOSTON — Brian Cashman believes adding Martin Prado and Stephen Drew on Thursday made the Yankees a better team than they were Wednesday.
“But time will tell,’’ the general manager said Friday before the Yankees opened a three-game series against the cellar-dwelling and re-tooled Red Sox at Fenway Park.
Time always tells, but time is a commodity of which the Yankees don’t have a lot remaining in their quest to avoid a second consecutive dark October, since there are two months left to the season.
Drew, who started at second base, and Prado who entered as a pinch-hitter and then played right field, couldn’t help the Yankees avoid losing, 4-3, in front of 37,782 visitors to New England’s living room.
It was the Yankees’ fifth loss in six games and dropped the visitors to six lengths back of the AL East-leading Orioles. It’s the biggest gap since they were 6 ½ out on June 9.
Drew, a shortstop, started at second and went 0-for-4. Prado was hitless in two at-bats.
“I believe the offense is capable of doing a lot more,’’ Joe Girardi said of a lineup that had six hits and went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position. “We are capable of doing more.’’
If that’s true the Yankees had better hurry because time is not only telling, it’s running out and the four-month track record isn’t good.
“We hit some balls hard right at people,’’ said Brett Gardner, whose sizzling liner at second baseman Dustin Pedroia turned into a double play in the fifth. “It wasn’t our day. It came down to that.’’
Off the bat, Jacoby Ellsbury believed his eighth-inning drive toward the triangle in center had a chance to be an inside-the-park homer that would have tied the score, 4-4.
“The worst case it was a triple. The best case was an inside-the-parker if it hits off his glove or kicks off the wall,’’ said Ellsbury, who watched Mookie Betts make a back-to-the-infield lunging catch. “They were playing me deep, no doubles.’’
In his second Yankees start, Chris Capuano allowed four runs and eight hits in 6 ¹/₃ innings and is 0-1 in pinstripes.
Anthony Ranaudo, a Freehold, N.J., native who went to St. Rose High School in Belmar, N.J., impressed in his major league debut and was the winner.
Pitching in the departed John Lackey’s spot, the 6-foot-7, 230-pound right-hander limited the Yankees to two runs and four hits in six frames. The Red Sox’s first-round pick (39th overall) in 2010 left in position to win, turning a 3-2 lead over to lefty Tommy Layne.
Carlos Beltran drove in both runs off Ranaudo. He homered in the fourth and singled in Ellsbury from second in the sixth.
Derek Jeter’s leadoff homer in the eighth off Junichi Tazawa cut the deficit to 4-3 before Betts’ sensational play on Ellsbury.
Coupled with Beltran’s homer, it was the seventh straight game in which the Yankees had homered twice. Jeter went 1-for-4, and with 3,423 hits is seven shy of Honus Wagner, who is sixth on the all-time hit list.
Capuano gave up two runs in the third and another in the fourth to put the Yankees in an early hole, but he said the leadoff single to Betts in the seventh was the difference.
“Betts is a good young player and he put a good at-bat on me, that’s the difference in the game,’’ Capuano said. “Have to keep him off base.’’
Brock Holt bunted Betts to second and Shawn Kelley gave up an RBI single to Pedroia that was the difference.
Cashman says time will tell. Girardi believes the hitters will eventually hit. That might be true, but time is running out.