Yankees blanked by Red Sox to cap miserable sweep with a whimper

BOSTON — At this point, the Yankees may just have to call the Red Sox their Daddy.

The best thing they had going for them by the time they headed back to New York was that they did not have to see the Red Sox again until August.

A dud of a weekend mercifully came to a close late Sunday afternoon, but not before the Yankees offered one last whimper on Father’s Day as they were blanked by the Red Sox 2-0 and got swept out of Fenway Park.

Facing the Red Sox (37-36) on back-to-back weekends, the Yankees (42-28) dropped five of six and seemingly gave life to their rival’s season. In The Bronx, it was their pitching that failed them. At Fenway, it was their lifeless bats, plus a costly baserunning miscue in each of the past two games.

The Yankees arrived in Boston on Friday coming off a sweep of the Royals that lifted them a season-high 17 games above .500. They left having scored four runs in three games.

Brayan Bello became the latest Red Sox starter to stifle the Yankees, firing seven shutout innings with eight strikeouts while scattering just three hits.

In 21 ¹/₃ innings against Red Sox starters this weekend — Garrett Crochet, Hunter Dobbins and Bello — the Yankees mustered just one run, which was Aaron Judge’s ninth-inning home run Friday night.

That proved to be Judge’s only hit of the weekend as the red-hot slugger finally cooled off for a weekend, going 1-for-12 with nine strikeouts and grounded into a double play that killed a rally in the eighth inning Sunday.

But the Yankees could not pick up their best player.

Their best chance of scoring off Bello came in the third inning, when they had runners on first and second with two outs and Jazz Chisholm Jr. at the plate. But Ben Rice took too big of a lead off second base as he appeared to possibly be taking off on the pitch, except Bello never started his windup and instead threw to second to eventually pick off Rice to escape the jam.

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It was all too similar to Jasson Domínguez getting caught flat-footed between second and third to kill a rally on Saturday night, when the rookie outfielder forgot how many strikes there were.

The Yankees’ weekend at Fenway Park was so rough not even Max Fried — who had been the definition of a stopper when pitching after a loss — could save them from a sweep, though that had less to do with his pitching than that he could not also pick up a bat.

Fried gave up two runs across seven innings, but that was enough to take the loss — his first when pitching with the Yankees coming off a loss.

As they did all weekend, the Red Sox struck first. In the bottom of the first, after Fried had erased Anthony Volpe’s fielding error by inducing a double play, Romy Gonzalez extended the inning with a triple to right field. Trevor Story blooped a single to left to bring him in for the 1-0 lead.

Rafael Devers doubled the lead in the fifth inning, sneaking a solo home run just over the Green Monster.