Aaron Boone’s family member goes deep for A’s as Yankees settle for series split

Nick Allen doesn’t share Aaron Boone’s last name, but the Athletics’ shortstop is part of the manager’s family.

Allen is married to Boone’s niece Savannah, the daughter of former All-Star Bret Boone. Allen doesn’t have the accolades of the Boone brothers, their father, Bob, or grandfather, Ray, but he’s been embraced by the baseball-centric family and has spent time at the Yankees skipper’s Greenwich, Connecticut home.

With Oakland in town this week, Boone played host to Allen once again, this time at Yankee Stadium. Allen was not a polite guest on Thursday, however, as the 25-year-old hit a solo home run in the third inning of a 3-1 A’s win that split a four-game series.

The light-hitting Allen was not the only familiar face to homer off Nestor Cortes, as Tyler Nevin added a two-run homer a few batters later. Nevin is the son of Phil, the Yankees’ former third base coach and a close friend of Boone’s.

“I thought we threw too many fastballs to Allen there,” Cortes said. And then Nevin… looked really bad his first at-bat, a groundout to first with the fastball in. And then I threw a cutter prior to that home run pitch and [he] also didn’t look very comfortable. So probably [if I] go in there, we get a different result.”

Boone gave a similar assessment of Cortes’ third inning, but the lefty still lasted seven innings. Cortes totaled five hits, three earned runs, zero walks, four strikeouts and 94 pitches. He now has a 3.50 ERA after six starts.

“Overall, I thought Nestor was very in line with what we saw last time,” Boone said. “I thought his fastball was really good tonight again. Stuff was good. He was crisp. Just that couple of minutes there where obviously that was the game.”

Meanwhile, the Yankees’ offense took a step back after scoring seven runs in a homer-happy Wednesday win.

Even though Alex Wood entered the game with a 7.89 ERA, a second-inning solo shot from Jose Trevino was the only run the Yankees could muster against the lefty, who picked Gleyber Torres off right before the homer.

Wood ended up going 5.2 innings despite giving up eight hits.

“He made some pitches and put us on the ground in some key spots,” said Boone, whose Yankees left 11 on base and went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position. “Just unable to cash ’em in other than the Trevi homer.

“You want to create that traffic, but you gotta deliver on it, and we weren’t able to do that tonight.”

The Yankees began the game with a single from Anthony Volpe, a double from Juan Soto and a walk from Aaron Judge, but the Bombers failed to score in the opening frame. The same happened at the end of the game against the fire-balling Mason Miller, who recorded a four-out save.

“It’s a pretty special fastball,” Boone said, noting that Miller also has a sharp slider. “It’s 100-plus miles per hour and it looks like that up close. So they obviously look like they’ve got a good one at the back end.”

With the loss, the Yankees fell to 17-9 on the season. They’ll now try to get their offense going on the road, as they begin a three-game series in Milwaukee on Friday before starting a four-game set in Baltimore on Monday.

Luis Gil, Carlos Rodón and Marcus Stroman are expected to start against the Brewers. Colin Rea, Joe Ross and Tobias Myers will start for Milwaukee.