The short version: The Yankees committed four errors — three of them on the first four batters of the game — and lost 5-2 to the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 2 of the American League Division Series on Monday night at Tropicana Field. The Rays lead the best-of-five series 2-0 and need one more win to reach the AL Championship Series. The Yankees are one loss from elimination. Cam Schlittler lasted 4 1/3 innings, the shortest postseason start of his career. Ben Rice hit two solo home runs, and those are the only runs the Yankees have scored in two games this series.

If you only watched the first inning, you saw the whole story. The Yankees showed up with their ace on the mound, in a season that was supposed to end with a parade, and they forgot how to play catch. Three of the Rays' five runs were unearned. The Yankees lost by three.

The first inning that broke October

The unraveling started on the first ball put in play. Yandy Díaz tapped a grounder toward third, and the ball shot up on Ryan McMahon — one of the best defensive third basemen in baseball — and got away. The tone was set for the next three hours.

Jonathan Aranda singled. Junior Caminero hit a dribbler to shortstop George Lombard Jr., who backhanded a flip to second for the force. Jazz Chisholm Jr. rushed the double-play turn and threw wide of first baseman Luis García Jr., and Díaz came around to score. Then the Rays challenged a missed catcher's interference call on Austin Wells — Liam Hicks' bat had grazed Wells' mitt on the swing — and the challenge was upheld. Four batters, three errors, one run.

The Yankees made the Rays earn almost nothing. Chisholm, for his part, wasn't apologizing for the aggressive play. "I'd probably still throw it, honestly," he said after the game. "The play that was trying to be made (was the right one). I feel like I could've made an even better throw." Manager Aaron Boone said he didn't have a problem with Chisholm going for two. His diagnosis was blunter: "We've got to play catch," Boone said. "It's the big leagues."

It was the first time since the Athletics in Game 1 of the 1975 AL Championship Series that any team committed three errors in the opening inning of a postseason game, according to Sportsnet Stats.

The fifth inning finished them

The Yankees steadied for a while. Rice cut into the deficit with a solo homer in the fourth. But the fifth inning broke the game open, and again it was the gloves that did the breaking.

With two outs, rookie shortstop Lombard fielded a ball and threw it away, letting Junior Caminero score. Another Lombard misplay earlier in the inning was ruled a fielder's choice by the official scorer — a technicality that saved the Yankees from history, since no team has committed five errors in a single playoff game since 1976. Richie Palacios followed with a two-run single that pushed Tampa Bay's lead to 5-1, and that was the ballgame.

Rice homered again in the eighth — two solo shots, accounting for both Yankees runs on the night — but the Yankees never put together a rally. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-28. New York had one at-bat with a runner in scoring position all night. Across the first 18 innings of this series, the Yankees have two runs on five hits.

Schlittler falls on his sword

The cruelest part is who was on the mound. Schlittler, the presumptive AL Cy Young winner, spent his night pitching with runners his defense put on base. He got 13 outs over 4 1/3 innings, giving up four runs — only two of them earned — on six hits with two walks. His two strikeouts were the fewest in any of his 35 starts this season.

Five days earlier, Schlittler had carved up the Boston Red Sox with a career-high 24 whiffs and 10 strikeouts across 6 1/3 shutout innings in Game 1 of the wild-card series. Monday he generated seven whiffs. The Rays never tried to outmuscle him. Tampa Bay had the lowest strikeout rate in baseball this season at 18.8 percent, and the third-lowest swing-and-miss rate of any team in the past decade at 20.7 percent. They put the ball in play, skidded grounders across the quirky Tropicana Field turf, and let the Yankees' infield do the rest.

In the quiet Yankees clubhouse afterward, Schlittler took responsibility that belonged to his whole team. "Just didn't have my stuff today," he said. "Didn't get great results. Some timely hits there... didn't get through the fifth, just not good enough."

On the defense behind him, he wouldn't go there. "I'm not disappointed in our defense. I'm not disappointed in the offense. Really just disappointed in myself," Schlittler said. "That's baseball and those things are gonna happen. But I've got to be able to work through those. I wasn't able to do that today."

This keeps happening to them

Four errors ties for the second-most in a single postseason game in the Yankees' 448-game playoff history. It's the fifth time in franchise history they've done it, and the second time under Boone — the first was Game 4 of the 2019 ALCS against Houston.

The echoes are the loudest part. Game 5 of the 2024 World Series is the wound that won't close: the Yankees blew a 5-0 lead to the Dodgers in a game with two errors and a catcher's interference, with Wells behind the plate then too. On June 25 of this season at Fenway Park, the Yankees made four errors — with Schlittler starting, and all six Boston runs unearned. In August, Lombard made an error in six straight games, tying a franchise record last reached by Chick Fewster in 1921.

They had been clean this October, with no errors in their first three playoff games. Then Monday night happened in front of a raucous sellout crowd of 40,226 at Tropicana Field, and the New York Post's Tuesday back page answered with the season's perfect caption: "ERRORS TOUR," a play on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

Wednesday night is everything

The math is unforgiving. Only 10 teams in baseball history have won a best-of-five series after dropping the first two games. The Yankees happen to be the last one to do it — the 2017 ALDS comeback against Cleveland — which is the only thing keeping this from feeling finished.

"Obviously, tonight was just not good enough for us and certainly not good enough to beat that club," Boone said. "We've got to get over it, and playing for our lives [Wednesday] night."

The series shifts to the Bronx for Game 3 on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, with Max Fried expected to start and Carlos Rodón lined up if there's a Game 4. The Yankees' offense is missing Aaron Judge, who's off the roster with a strained calf, and right now nobody else is picking up the slack. Freddy Peralta retired the first nine Yankees he faced Monday, allowing one run in 4 2/3 innings before Cam Booser, Ian Seymour and Bryan Baker slammed the door with four hits allowed combined.

Three of the Rays' runs Monday were gifts. The Yankees have scored two runs in two games. The gloves have to hold, the bats have to wake up, and it all has to happen by Wednesday night — or the season that was supposed to end in a parade ends in St. Petersburg with four errors in the box score.