The New York Yankees’ defense is perfectly fine. It is! Every defensive metric in baseball ranked them as, at worst, average this year. They were 13th in defensive runs saved, 17th in outs above average and seventh in defensive efficiency. They’re fine! Not great. Not terrible. Just fine.

But you may be wondering at this point whether they’ve started wearing their gloves on the wrong hand.

That old bugaboo, playoff defense — one that, as many have pointed out, seems to pop up pretty consistently under manager Aaron Boone’s leadership — got the Yankees again on Monday night with the team committing three errors in the first inning and one more in a four-run Rays fifth inning that turned the game upside down. They ended up losing 5-2 and are now, just four days after looking like they might be world beaters with or without Aaron Judge, one loss away from elimination. The Yankees do not have much margin for error with Judge still on the injured list. They certainly can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing.

The mistakes came fast and furious on........

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