Chris Sale wasn’t blaming his performance on home plate umpire Mike Estabrook’s floating strike zone. The Red Sox southpaw wasn’t faulting him for the nine hits or eight runs he allowed Saturday afternoon.

But Sale was pointing to an issue he feels baseball needs to address. The Red Sox felt Estabrook missed calls all afternoon, and when Sale and manager Alex Cora argued, they were both ejected. The pitcher and manager had to face the media after the Yankees’ 9-2 whipping of the Red Sox in the opener of a day-night doubleheader. Estabrook did not.

“Nothing is going to happen to him, I’m sure. He’ll be out there [in Game 2] at third base, probably be at home plate again. I’m sure I’ll get fined. I’m sure ‘AC’ will get fined, all for things I think we were justified about,” Sale said before the free-falling Red Sox also lost the nightcap 6-4 for their seventh straight defeat and fell 13 ¹/₂ games behind the Yankees in the AL East. “I don’t want to get too caught up in the politics of this, but there’s got to be something. ‘AC’ doesn’t do his job for long enough, he’s gone. If I don’t do my job for long enough, I’m gone. Goes for every other manager in the league, it goes for every other player in this clubhouse and in the league. Got to find something. Nothing really holding it down.”

Sale, a seven-time All-Star, saw his ERA rise to an unsightly 4.61 after failing to get out of the fourth inning. Seven of those runs came across in the fourth with two outs when the game got away and Sale and Cora were both ejected for arguing balls and strikes with Estabrook. Earlier in the game, Estabrook had called J.D. Martinez out on a pitch that looked to be well out of the strike zone and there were a few other pitches that seemed to be balls called strikes as well against the Red Sox, adding to their frustration.

It came to a head in the fourth. With one on and one out, Sale seemingly had Gio Urshela struck out on an 0-2 fastball. Estabrook called it a ball and Urshela followed with a single. Later in the frame, Sale felt he had Aaron Judge struck out, but Estabrook again called it a ball. In between, Brett Gardner drove in two runs with a single and DJ LeMahieu slapped a three-run homer over the short porch in right field.

“Give these guys extra outs it’s going to hurt. I felt like he changed the landscape of the game,” Sale said. “But there’s got to be something that can be done about this. We’re held accountable as players, as coaches. … There’s nothing we can do. I’m sure there’s nothing Major League Baseball is going to do.”

Saturday began with somewhat of an AL East concession speech from Cora. His team followed with a performance that illustrated the Red Sox’s dire situation. And before Game 2 of Saturday’s doubleheader, the Sox held a player’s-only meeting. It’s fair to say Boston is in the midst of a critical point in its season.

“It’s not good right now,” Cora said. “We’re not playing good baseball.”