KANSAS CITY -- The pitch that kept the Yankees from celebrating a perfect road trip chopped off of Whit Merrifield's bat in the 10th inning on Sunday afternoon, pounding into the sun-drenched infield dirt twice. As Gio Urshela backed up to try to catch a better hop, the slick-fielding third baseman immediately knew he was in trouble.

Merrifield's hit ticked off of Urshela's glove and nestled into the outfield grass as Billy Hamilton raced home with the tiebreaking run, snapping the Yankees' seven-game winning streak with an 8-7 loss to the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.

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"It took a bad hop. Nothing I can do," Urshela said. "It's definitely a hard play. The instinct is to get your glove on the ball any way possible to stop it from going by, but that didn't happen today."

Having swept the Orioles in a four-game series before securing both ends of Saturday's doubleheader -- and with a Memorial Day afternoon contest scheduled against the Padres at Yankee Stadium on Monday -- manager Aaron Boone indicated that the Yankees had lost a battle to win the war.

That was part of why Nestor Cortes Jr. was trusted to hurl four scoreless innings, saving a bullpen that has been taxed during the week on the road. Domingo Germán served up four homers in his ugliest start of the year, but the Yanks still nearly came back to steal one.

New York tied the game against Ian Kennedy. Clint Frazier and Urshela stroked one-out singles and DJ LeMahieu trimmed the deficit with a run-scoring hit. After a walk, Aaron Hicks delivered the game-tying knock, a two-run single through the right side of the infield.

"You're always disappointed when you lose in the moment, but the competition is so good right now from everyone," Boone said. "Obviously we were up against it today from pitch usage. Nestor comes in and picks us up big-time, and we get that bad hop at the end, otherwise I'm sure we would have got to them. Great effort by the guys. Unfortunately, we came up short."

With German out of the game after five innings, Cortes shouldered the load by recording 12 outs. His hairiest moment came in the ninth inning, as Alex Gordon and Hunter Dozier hit two-out singles. A walk to Jorge Soler loaded the bases, pushing the potential winning run 90 feet away, and Cortes got Ryan O'Hearn to pop out and send the game to the 10th.

"Coming into the game, we were down and I knew I had to eat up innings because the bullpen was a little shot," Cortes said. "That's exactly what I did. I got myself into a spot in the ninth, but I was able to get out of it."

The ninth-inning rally off former Yankees prospect Kennedy took German off the hook after the right-hander served up four homers and endured his first clunker in more than a month, snapping a personal six-start winning streak that began on April 23 in Anaheim.

Martin Maldonado gave the Royals the lead with a three-run homer in the second inning, while O'Hearn tagged the righty with a solo shot in the fourth, and Dozier and Soler went back-to-back in the fifth as Kansas City built a 7-1 advantage.

"It's definitely a bad day for me today," German said through an interpreter. "I couldn't command my pitches today and missed the location. That's what happens when you miss location. After the Maldonado at-bat, I wasn't able to execute the pitches the way I wanted."

German, who was vying to become the Majors' first 10-game winner this season, was charged with seven runs and nine hits over five innings. He walked none and struck out six.

"The line is not good, but I thought he threw the ball all right overall," Boone said. "I thought he got hurt with some soft-hit traffic that cost him a little bit."

The Yanks managed four runs (one earned) over six innings against starter Danny Duffy. Frazier knocked a run-scoring single in the second inning and Gleyber Torres trimmed the deficit with his 13th homer, a three-run shot off Duffy in the sixth.

"It was a great trip for us," Urshela said. "We'll go home and keep fighting."