What was this?

After three straight dramatic victories for the New York Yankees, the run came to an end on Saturday after a 7-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox. Gerrit Cole, to no surprise, got rocked by the Yanks’ division rival.

But this one was particularly bothersome. Cole, who’s usually victimized by Rafael Devers, provided a soundbyte for Red Sox fans to eat up before the start of this series. Classic stuff. On Saturday, his outing ended after just 4 1/3 innings. The right-hander allowed seven earned runs on five hits and three walks. Terrible.

That wasn’t all, however. With the Yankees leading 1-0 in the top of the fourth, Cole decided to make the call himself to intentionally walk Devers. In any other scenario, it would’ve been acceptable. But Devers was just 1 for his last 12 and … there was NOBODY ON BASE with one out in the inning.

Cole issued the free pass with a gesture that will now be a meme for years. And that got the rally started. He surrendered three runs in the fourth after walking Tyler O’Neill and surrendering an RBI double to Masataka Yoshida as well as a two-run single to Wilyer Abreu.

Then he completely fell apart in the fifth inning, allowing four more runs to confirm the blowout. After the game, he admitted it was a mistake to walk Devers, which opened the floodgates. On the other side, Red Sox manager Alex Cora called out Cole, claiming he believed the pitcher hit Devers on purpose in the first inning. Yeah, we forgot to mention that happened … because it didn’t matter!

Gerrit Cole’s embarrassing intentional Rafael Devers walk highlights Yankees loss

Cora’s desperate at the moment. He received his contract extension when the Sox were hot, and they’ve since fallen off and remain out of the playoff picture. They need a decent amount of help to make it to October, too. But the manner in which Cora’s grasping for straws here is sad.

Anyway, Yankees fans have been begging the team to intentionally walk Devers for years and the team somehow can’t even do that correctly. They’ll pitch to him in the most unthinkable scenarios but then decide to put traffic on the bases when there was no need to? How about you make fun of the Yankees for that, Cora, instead of accusing Cole of what was clearly an errant pitch?

The Yankees can make all of this go away in the series finale on Sunday. They can shut down Cora’s faux war cry to motivate his hobbling team. That’s honestly the least they can do after the way they embarrassingly fumbled their momentum on Saturday.

But there’s a lane for the Red Sox to get the last word here. Punching back is essential because there are postseason implications for both sides here. After winning the first two games of the series, the Yankees cannot split and give the Red Sox