After getting swept in Miami, the Yankees came to Texas looking to flush a run of mental mistakes and poor play that saw their once seven-game lead in the AL East turn into a five-game deficit.

And on Monday, seeing a 3-0 lead slip before blowing a 5-4 lead with one out in the bottom of the ninth in an 8-5 extra-inning loss did nothing to relieve the agita plaguing The Bronx faithful as their side is now 18-28 since the middle of June.

“Gotta get over it,” manager Aaron Boone said about what his club has to do to get past their struggles. “We gotta win games. The season’s getting shorter in a hurry, so it's no time for excuses and feeling bad.

“I know everyone feels like crap, but we gotta go take it. Haven’t been able to do that on this road trip so far, but we gotta do better.”

Does the skipper believe the stretch of poor play is weighing on the clubhouse? “Yes,” Boone answered quickly.

“Doesn’t matter, though. Doesn’t matter,” he continued. “Weigh on us, stress, we gotta win. Period. We know that. Nobody cares how stressful it is. That’s all just noise, excuses, whatever. We gotta play better and we gotta win, and we know that.”

Asked about the manager’s take, closer Devin Williams admitted that “things haven’t been going well for a while and I think everyone’s well aware of that.”

“It’s simple,” Max Fried, who gutted through five innings on Monday, said. “It’s a results business, we just need to get it done, and we haven’t been getting it done. And we gotta do something to change that.”

“We gotta get wins,” Fried added later. “It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter whether we score 15 or we score one, we gotta figure out a way to come out with a win and string together some right now. But right now we just have to do a better job.”

Protecting a one-run lead, the trio of Luke Weaver, Camilo Doval, and David Bednar delivered nine straight outs to get the ball to Williams as Boone’s revamped bullpen looked to nail down the win. But while the closer, with an ERA four times higher than it was a season ago, was able to retire the first batter he faced, he served up a 2-1 changeup that floated over the middle of the plate and was stung for a 408-foot game-tying home run.

“I’m trying to throw down and away there and miss middle,” Williams said of the ill-placed changeup to a struggling Joc Pederson. “Obviously, he did what he did.”

He added: “The game’s gotta end there with me.”

Asked about his confidence in the closer after a second-straight blown save and third on the year, Boone said, “We have really good guys down there, Devin included."

"We gotta be able to close out these games,” the manager continued. “He’s been through some tough moments already this season, and we gotta bounce back from it.”

While Williams has struggled (his ERA is up to 5.10 with 26 runs (24 earned) allowed on 31 hits in 42.1 innings), he wasn't the only pitcher to struggle. Fried was tagged for four runs on eight hits and three walks.

“They came out and swung the bats and got to me. Strung together some hits, and at the end of the day, I didn’t do a good enough job of being able to limit and get out of that situation and put us behind,” Fried said about the four-run second inning. “... It’s frustrating, especially coming out and needing a win and putting us in a hole. Guys scraped it together, and I was able to fight back, but I gotta be able to do a better job."

Boone credited Fried with settling in and giving a “gritty performance” to get the 15 outs, needing 105 pitches to do so. “He set us up to win a game,” the manager said.

But in the end, the game-tying home run in the ninth led to Jake Bird surrendering a game-winning, three-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the 10th to see the Yanks drop a fourth straight contest and fall to 5.5 games out of first place in the AL East.

“There’s no time," Boone said. "Another one's coming for us tomorrow, and we gotta figure this stuff out.”

The turnaround “starts with playing clean ball,” Williams said. “Playing smart baseball, not giving up outs, not giving away free outs. That’s where it starts.”

"It's everyone, it takes all of us," Fried said. "And we have each other’s backs. We just gotta do it. There’s no more talking about it, we gotta get it done. And it starts tomorrow.”

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