Yankees' offense sputters, Nestor Cortes struggles in blowout loss to Rays
Yankees starting pitcher Nestor Cortes sits in the dugout after being taken out of the game during the fifth inning against the Rays in an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
So who are the real Yankees? Is it the team that dominated baseball for the first two months of the season or the listless parade of outs that was on display Saturday afternoon?
It’s something general manager Brian Cashman will have to grapple with in the countdown to the July 30 trade deadline, but until then, this Yankees team can only hope it doesn’t fall further into the doldrums. Unfortunately for Aaron Boone and company, Saturday’s 9-1 loss to the Rays hardly was encouraging.
Nestor Cortes fell victim to the long ball, allowing three homers in 4 1/3 innings, and the Yankees managed only one hit against Taj Bradley (5-4, 2.63) in the first seven innings, finishing with five.
“It seems like we’re just a tick away from being great,” said Cortes, who hasn’t earned a win since June 18 and allowed six runs, eight hits and two walks. “I have no doubt in my mind that we’re going to be better . . . It’s time to flip the page. I feel like we’ve got to be better, starting with myself. I think the last two or three hasn’t been great for me.”
“We’re still having our days where we’re scoring a bunch and making it happen,” Boone said. “We’ve got to make it happen right now with what we have and try to piece it together.”
The concern, though, is that this recent swoon is more than a blip. The Yankees (59-41) are a more-than-respectable 18 games over .500, but they were 28 games over on June 14 (50-22).
To be sure, there have been some recent highlights. The Yankees won their three-game series against the Orioles to end the first half and put together a complete performance in Friday night's 6-1 win over the Rays.
Saturday’s loss, though, was an alarming regression to the 6-17 stretch that preceded the Orioles series, because it simply followed the pattern of the many losses before it: Bad starting pitching, anemic hitting and a bottom of the lineup that pretty much has gone silent. The six through nine hitters went 1-for-12 and hit into two of the team’s three double plays (the Yankees lead baseball with 93). By the time the Yankees scored in the ninth, on Juan Soto's triple and Jahmai Jones' RBI groundout, the Rays led 9-0.
“I feel like [Bradley] was locating pretty well — not just his fastball, getting it to the top of the zone, but he was able to get his off-speed where he wanted to as well,” said Ben Rice, who led off the first inning with a double, the Yankees' only hit until the eighth, and reached third with one out but was stranded as Aaron Judge and Austin Wells struck out. “It’s tough . . . I think he just kind of got into the rhythm and we were playing into his game plan and unfortunately, we weren’t able to get any runs across.”
After scoring a run off Cortes (4-9) in the third on Curtis Mead's two-out RBI double, the Rays broke through in the fourth. With two outs and a man on second, Cortes walked No. 8 hitter Taylor Walls, who entered the game with a .158/.275/.197 slash line. Alex Jackson, who entered the game with a .082/.141/.165 slash line (7-for-85), then blasted a knee-high cutter that didn’t cut 364 feet to right-center to give the Rays a 4-0 lead.
The Rays got two more in the fifth when Isaac Paredes led off with a homer to left and, one out later, Randy Arozarena tacked on a 418-foot bomb to left-center on an 0-and-1 sweeper.
Arozarena (4-for-5) added his second homer of the game — and 14th of the season — in the seventh. Michael Tonkin walked Paredes and lefty Josh Maciejewski served up a 2-and-1 changeup that Arozarena drove 412 feet to left-center for an 8-0 lead.
Going into the day, Cortes had a 2.55 career ERA in the Bronx — the lowest of any starting pitcher at the current Yankee Stadium (a minimum of 15 starts).
“Probably not his best stuff,” Boone said. “He had a hard time finishing some guys. Especially lately, even when he’s at a game where he hasn’t been perfect, he still had that swing and miss at the top of the zone or could get in on guys . . .They made him pay a little bit. [There were] a couple walks — untimely — at the bottom and that hurt. Overall, just a little bit of a grind today.”
The problem, of course, is that it’s been a grind for more than one day. And now the Yankees are in a position of wondering how much worse it can get.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
