NEW YORK -- As the drive by Alex Verdugo took flight and landed in the home bullpen in right-center at Yankee Stadium for a game-tying three-run homer with two outs in the top of the sixth inning, the Red Sox had a moment that could have been a momentum shifter on Friday night.

Instead, it was the latest tease that served as a prelude to a frustrating defeat. That script has become all too familiar when Boston plays games within the American League East.

After a 5-4 loss to the Yankees, the 72-78 Red Sox slipped to 20-44 in the division.

Making it more painful is this: Boston is 11-19 in one-run games against the AL East. In other words, 43% of its division losses have been by one run.

“I feel like with a lot of the losses, there’s definitely parts of the game where we’re like, ‘We’re in this.’ Later in the game, we have a good chance,” said Verdugo. “It’s been that way all year with us. We’re finding a way to not pull out the ‘W.’”

While a combination of factors have led to Boston’s poor performance in division play, the biggest culprit on Friday was shaky defense.

The Sox made three errors. Without question, the biggest of the defensive miscues took place in the bottom of the eighth.

Lefty Matt Strahm retired the first two batters of the inning. Then he walked Harrison Bader on four pitches. But Bader took Strahm off the hook by straying too far off first.

Strahm had him picked off. At least until the pickoff throw soared well out of the reach of first baseman Triston Casas and into right field. Bader roared all the way to third and wound up scoring the game-deciding run when Jose Trevino came through with an RBI single.

“Too many errors today,” said Verdugo. “Too many little things that just trickle down and once the result is done, you kind of see how it all weighs out. It’s just one of those things, it’s frustrating. With how bad our record is right now, we’ve had a lot of games that were very winnable that could easily be the other way around.”

In other games, bullpen meltdowns have hurt.

Also, there have been plenty of occasions like Friday, when Verdugo comes through with such a big hit and the offense goes mostly silent the rest of the night.

“Good teams find a way to win,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “We’ve had 19 one-run [losses] in the division, and a lot of them, we’ve had the lead in the sixth or seventh. I think it’s 11 of them. But you look at the games, and it's like, yeah, we won a few one-run games. But it's the same script -- we get close, we come back and then we don’t finish games.”

All 12 games the Red Sox have left are against division opponents. It’s too late to make up the difference now. Instead, those games will serve as a reminder of what could have been if execution had been better.

“If you look at it, there's been two series that we got our [butts] kicked,” said Cora. “The one against Toronto right after the break that we got hammered by them, and the one when we came here [July 15-17], we won the first game, and then Chris [Sale] got hurt and we lost the last two games.

“But if you look at the whole season, there’s a lot of close games in this division. Shame on us that we didn't finish games, because that's the margin of making it to the playoffs or going home the way we're [going to].”