Judge hits his 32nd home run, but the Yankees lose the first game of the series against the Reds

Whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, there were always days like that: players got injured, winning streaks ended, and things didn’t go in your favor. And right now, the Yankees are just grinding it out and hoping that the lead they built in the first half of this season is enough to get them through.

“The preparation, the focus and the confidence were there,” Aaron Boone said Tuesday before the Yankees’ 5-4 loss to the Reds at the stadium. “We’ve had a few injuries, but I think the attitude and focus are where they need to be and I’m confident we can get this thing going.”

And they almost – almost – succeeded.

Luis Gil delivered a poor performance for the third consecutive night, but the Yankees scored three runs in the sixth and one in the seventh inning to pull within 5-4.

But they went down in succession in the eighth and ninth innings (leaving Juan Soto in the waiting circle) and the Yankees suffered their eleventh loss in 15 games.

Gil (9-4, 3.41 ERA) allowed four earned runs, two hits, three walks and three strikeouts in four innings. He struck out two batters.

Aaron Judge, meanwhile, continued his winning streak, hitting his MLB-leading 32nd home run in the seventh inning, a solo home run that brought the Yankees within one run. The Yankees trailed 5-0 after five innings, but pulled within 5-3 in the sixth inning thanks to Gleyber Torres’ RBI single and Ben Rice’s two-run double.

Judge leads in all Triple Crown categories among qualified hitters. “What he does is – you know, I don’t know,” Aaron Boone said. “I’ll look in the thesaurus because I’ve used every other word I can think of.”

But while that’s all well and good, there’s no doubt that Gil’s recent struggles are cause for concern. There was a slight improvement on Tuesday after two rough starts against the Orioles and Mets, but he still struggled to correct his technique during the game. Before those three games, the rookie had a 9-1 record with a 2.03 ERA. In his last three starts, he has a 14.90 ERA.

“The first three innings I felt pretty good, but later in the fourth I came in and my pitch wasn’t where I wanted it to be,” Gil said through an interpreter. “Sometimes you run into obstacles when you compete at this level, but at the same time I’m confident that if I work hard, I’ll get out of there and not let this kind of thing keep happening.”

In the fourth inning, Elly De La Cruz, the fourth-fastest player in the sport according to Baseball Savant, put his speed to good use, getting around Gil’s 95.4 mph fastball and throwing it into the right corner for a leadoff triple. One pitch later, he scored — landing on Jeimer Candelario’s groundout to give the Reds a 1-0 lead.

The Reds stepped it up a lot in the fifth inning when Gil again started having trouble with his control. The right-hander struck out Stuart Fairchild to open the inning, then hit an 0-and-1 fastball that Will Benson hammered 412 feet to center for his ninth home run of the year. Gil then hit the next batter, Jonathan India, to end his night in favor of Caleb Ferguson. That didn’t turn out to be much of an improvement, however, as De La Cruz beat Ferguson’s knee-high 0-and-2 fastball 425 feet to left to make it 5-0.

Gil has never thrown more than 108 2⁄3 innings in a professional season and has now managed 89 2⁄3 innings, just past the halfway point of the season, although Boone previously said he did not believe the pitcher’s problems were related to fatigue (though the team will continue to monitor that). Most notably, there are inconsistencies in his throwing and release, Boone said.

“You have to take everything into account, but I don’t think it’s a fatigue issue,” Boone said. “I think it’s an issue that he’s a little out of shape and he’s having a harder time correcting on the fly… He’s having a hard time correcting himself when he gets a little off balance and then the mechanics seem to be a little (out of whack). I think overall the profiles were better tonight, but there’s still work to be done.”

Graham Ashcraft (5-4, 5.45) allowed three runs and four hits in five innings, with two walks and three strikeouts.

With the score at 5-3 in the seventh inning, Judge cut the deficit in half by hitting Sam Moll’s first pitch sinker into the left field bleachers for his season-leading 83rd RBI just past the halfway mark. He also has an MLB-best .321 batting average.

“I mean, of course you know the power,” Rice said of Judge, “but he’s a hitter… To do that with that power is really, really impressive. He knows what he wants to do at the plate. He always has a plan.”