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It was hard to tell which was louder Friday: The blasted thud of a double off the bat of Alejandro Kirk or the angry boos that chased Devin Williams off the mound.
If the Yankees did not have a true closer problem before, they do now after Williams coughed up another game, charged with his first blown save in the Yankees’ 4-2 series-opening loss to the Blue Jays in front of a sellout crowd of 46,081 who turned on the prized offseason addition.
The Yankees (15-11) have lost four of six.
Given a one-run lead in what had been a well-pitched game, Williams entered for the ninth inning, faced three batters and retired none. George Springer singled before Williams hit Andres Gimenez with a 2-2 fastball.
Kirk — who might have been sitting on Williams’ vaunted, airbending changeup — crushed that airbender over Trent Grisham’s head in center to drive in two and drive Williams out of the game.
Kirk then came around to score when Mark Leiter Jr. allowed a single to Addison Barger.
Williams’ ERA is an astounding 11.25 through his first 10 appearances, in which he has held on to his “closer” title but let go of the intimidating presence he presented in his shutdown seasons in Milwaukee.
Even before Kirk’s double, some of the crowd chanted for Luke Weaver, who remained in the bullpen as the lead disappeared.
Williams flushed a one-run lead that arose not from a big hit but from a big sacrifice fly off the bat of Austin Wells in the eighth.
The Yankees turned 10 hits and four walks into just two runs, leaving 11 on base and going 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
The Yankees’ pitching kept them in the game, beginning with the strongest work of Carlos Carrasco’s season.
In his sixth start of the season — which he entered with a 6.53 ERA — the 38-year-old kept the Blue Jays off balance over five strong, scoreless innings.
He did not miss many bats (two strikeouts) but also let up just three hits and two walks.
Carrasco rolled through the Blue Jays order twice but has barely seen an order a third time, typically because he has been knocked out early in games.
So after just 67 pitches from Carrasco, manager Aaron Boone removed him from a scoreless game so Tim Hill could face Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Guerrero greeted Hill with a third-pitch homer in the top of the sixth that gave the Jays the game’s first run.
The Yankees responded in the seventh when an Anthony Volpe double and Wells deep fly out brought up Oswaldo Cabrera against a shifted-in defense.
Batting from his weaker right side against lefty Brendon Little, Cabrera bounced a single past the infield to tie the game.
But that hit was a rarity on a night the Yankees continually wasted chances, particularly against Jose Berrios.
In the third, fourth and fifth, the Yankees put two on base, and all three ended with two stranded.
In the third, singles from Austin Wells and Oswaldo Cabrera put runners on the corners with one out, but Trent Grisham’s grounder to first base resulted in Wells getting thrown out at home before Judge grounded out.
In the fourth, Cody Bellinger (single) and Jazz Chisholm Jr. (walk) looked like trouble until Volpe flew out.
In the fifth, Wells and Judge singled, but the potential rally ended with a Ben Rice ground out.
The Yankees came up with two more base runners in the sixth, but it was their legs and not bats that proved unclutch: Bellinger and Chisholm were gunned down trying to steal second.