Sometimes, even when Jaws is circling, the swimmers escaped the water.
That’s what happened in The Bronx on Thursday night, as the Yankees appeared set up for another comeback victory in the bottom of the ninth — with Gleyber Torres representing the tying run on second base, Anthony Volpe at the plate and Juan Soto lurking in the on-deck circle.
But this time, the Astros escaped with a 4-3 win, as Josh Hader got Volpe with a 98 mph fastball up in the zone to end it.
Volpe had homered in the third inning, and Soto seems to go deep just about every other day, so it was easy to see why the Yankees remained confident until the end.
“I want to be up there,” Soto said of the game ending with him one batter away. “I know how good Hader is, but I wanted Volpe to get a knock and tie the game to see what would happen. We just couldn’t finish it.”
And with that, the Yankees saw their five-game winning streak snapped after an otherwise excellent homestand — one that started with a ninth-inning comeback win over Detroit.
“I loved the compete all the way to the end,’’ Aaron Boone said. “It was definitely a good homestand for us swinging the bats.”
Thursday was a rough one, though, for Marcus Stroman, who gave up a pair of monstrous homers by Yordan Alvarez and Jon Singleton in the top of the first that put the Yankees in an early hole.
“I can’t let up three [runs] in the first,’’ Stroman said. “Our lineup is clicking on all cylinders. We just have to keep the team in it because we can explode at any point.”
Volpe got the Yankees back in the game with his opposite-field homer to the short porch in right two innings later.
Stroman pitched out of trouble in the second and third, but allowed another run in the fifth.
The Yankees’ bullpen, again superb, tossed 3 ¹/₃ scoreless innings.
Down by a pair of runs entering the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees had Soto, Judge and Alex Verdugo coming up, with the suddenly hot-hitting Giancarlo Stanton behind them.
Judge followed Soto’s leadoff line out to right with his third homer in four games — a 473-foto solo blast — to get the Yankees to within a run, then Verdugo walked.
But Stanton struck out for the fourth time, and Anthony Rizzo popped out to end the threat.
For Stroman, it was another shaky outing, his second in his past three starts.
After issuing five walks apiece in his previous two starts, Stroman was hit harder Thursday, giving up a season-high nine hits.
Alvarez started it by pummeling a Stroman offering 116.8 mph into the second deck in right to put the Astros up, 1-0.
Two batters later, Singleton crushed a two-run shot out to deep right, measured at 442 feet, to put the Yankees in an early 3-0 hole.
The Yankees went 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position in the first two innings and 0-for-7 in the game and their No. 4 through 8 hitters went 1-for-16.
A Jeremy Pena RBI single up the middle scored Alvarez from second in the fifth to put Houston up, 4-2.
The Yankees also hit into some bad luck, a Judge hit a hard grounder to third that turned into a double play with two on and one out in the fifth.
Ryan Pressly, who got off to a terrible start to the season after getting bumped from the closer role by Hader but who has pitched better lately, came on in the eighth and gave up a laser line out to right to Soto before Judge took him deep.
That was the last time the Yankees scored, as Hader picked up the four-out save.
“It didn’t happen for us today, but it came down to the wire,’’ Judge said. “It was an impressive homestand.”
