Aaron Judge, the hottest hitter in the world right now, shouldn’t have even stepped to the plate in the eighth inning on Sunday night.

That’s why right-hander Matt Barnes was shaking his head with disgust following a crushing 9-7 loss that swept the Red Sox right out of Yankee Stadium.

• Box score

With two outs and nobody on base in the bottom of the eighth, Barnes had a 7-6 lead that Rafael Devers staked his team to with a solo rocket to right-center in the seventh.

No. 9 hitter Mike Tauchman was up, and the job for Barnes was to put him away and give Boston’s rejuvenated offense a chance to put up some insurance in the ninth, and then hand off to Brandon Workman to close it out.

But Barnes walked Tauchman on five pitches. Bad things inevitably happened thereafter for the Red Sox. Tauchman stole second and scored on a game-tying RBI single by DJ LeMahieu.

Up stepped Judge, and, well, he did what he does, mashing a Statcast-projected 468-foot homer that might not have landed yet.

It didn’t have to happen.

“That one’s tough,” Barnes said. “We needed that win, and two outs, nobody on, and the nine-hole hitter, can’t walk him. Can’t walk the nine-hole hitter to get to the top of their order.”

Once the pesky LeMahieu came through with the equalizer, Judge -- who had already gone deep in the second inning, marking the fifth straight game he had put one into the seats -- was basically licking his chops as he stepped to the plate.

Barnes got behind 2-0, and then came in with a third straight curveball on 2-0. It was in the heart of the plate and Judge delivered the dagger.

“He’s been kind of all over everything,” Barnes said. “He’s pretty locked in right now. Trying to locate a 2-0 breaker down and away -- it seems like he’s been handling the high heater pretty well recently -- tried to locate it down there and certainly not put a hanging breaking ball middle up and in on him. Can’t do that to a guy, one, who’s locked in, and, two, who’s got the power that he’s got. Just a poor sequence of events there.”

The defeat dropped the last-place Red Sox to 3-7, and five games behind the Yankees in the American League East.

“I think it would always surprise people to be this far down already,” said Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke. “I know we had a couple of good games against the Mets, and we played a good game today. That was a tough loss.

“You have one good series and you’re right back where you need to be, so we just need to have a decent trip here in Tampa and then come home and play a good series, and we’ll be fine.”

There was some good news
Though the Red Sox didn’t get the win, they did get something else. The middle of the order at last resembled what it's supposed to be.

It started with Xander Bogaerts, who went 4-for-4, scored three times, belted two homers and drove in three.

Also emerging from his early-season slump was Devers, who hit that big homer late in the game and an RBI single to right in the third. Devers also made two tremendous plays on defense.

And J.D. Martinez, moved back to the No. 3 spot in the batting order after hitting second the previous eight games, roped a double to center.

With the offense clicking for most of the night, the Red Sox had the lead on four separate occasions.

“We fought back,” Bogaerts said. “This is one of the games we could take a lot of positives out of. There haven’t been many games like this. It sucks that we lost but it was pretty fun, honestly. Back and forth, back and forth. We ran into a Judge that’s pretty much hot. But this game was a nice fight from us.”

That type of fight had been lacking for the Red Sox. The habit has been to fall behind early and not come back. This night felt different, perhaps because offensive firepower brings energy to a team.

“Coming into today, the energy level was different before the game. Me and [Christian] Vázquez and Devers were talking about that. I don’t know why, but it was just different,” Bogaerts said.

“It was fun out there,” Devers said. “I came out there today just a bit more motivated. There was an extra fire from all of us, not just myself. We just continue to just play hard and try to get the results we wanted, but obviously we just couldn’t get it today.”