Yankees’ Nestor Cortes exits with eye roll for Aaron Boone after another clunker

BOSTON — With runners on the corners and two outs in the bottom of the fifth, Aaron Boone left the Yankees’ dugout on Friday night.

Nestor Cortes had just hit Boston’s Ceddanne Rafaela, yet the manager’s steps toward the mound were met with a look of frustrated surprise from a starter who had pitched himself into jams all evening. An eye roll followed — and made the rounds on social media — before Boone took the ball from the Cortes, who had clearly earned himself an early shower in what became a 9-7 loss to the Red Sox.

Nestor Cortes not happy soon as he sees Aaron Boone coming out to take him out of the game #REPBX #Yankees pic.twitter.com/Lm35k6lOs9

— Lucasparmenter23 (@Lucasparmenter0) July 27, 2024

“As a competitor, as a starter, you’re always gonna be frustrated coming out of the game there,” Cortes said. “[I had] 81 pitches with the nine-hole up. I understand I had 10 or 11 people on base in the night, but I thought I made a lot of good pitches throughout the whole night. A lot of soft contact. Gave up some hard ones in, obviously, unopportunistic times, and that’s why the runs scored. But I feel like as a competitor, you’re always going to be a little mad when you get out of the game.”

Previously in the fifth, Cortes let the Red Sox retake the lead on a Masataka Yoshida sac fly. The Yankees had worked hard to tie the game at three in the top of the inning, scoring two runs on a Trent Grisham double and an Alex Verdugo sac fly.

Prior to that, Cortes put the Yankees in a quick hole, surrendering a sac fly to Tyler O’Neill in the first. The Bombers also erased that lead on Anthony Volpe’s eighth home run, a solo shot in the second inning. But a Rafael Devers single off the Green Monster gave the Red Sox a 2-1 advantage in the third.

Ex-Yankee Rob Refsnyder added an RBI double in the fourth.

“I thought Nestor threw the ball well, but they made him work,” Boone said. “A lot of traffic against him. I thought he managed contact pretty well. They didn’t hit a ton of balls real hard against him. But definitely a lot of base runners.”

By the time Cortes’ outing ended with attitude, he had permitted nine hits, four earned runs, two walks and five strikeouts over 4.2 innings.

Despite being ineffective, he tried to stay on the mound.

“I held the ball in my glove to see if [Boone] would second-think what he wanted to do,” Cortes said. “But he asked for it. I gave him the ball and just walked off the mound.”

Boone said that Cortes did not verbally push to stay in the game, but the two talked after the pitching change.

“I think he wanted to stay in the game, but I felt like it was the right time to get him with the amount of traffic we had all night.”

While Cortes pitched poorly and failed to complete five innings for a third straight start, the Yankees still had a chance to win after Aaron Judge and Austin Wells gave them a 7-4 lead with homers in the seventh. Judge’s, a three-run bomb, traveled 470 feet.

Alas, Luke Weaver gave up a two-run blast to Rafaela in the bottom of the seventh before Clay Holmes came in for a five-out save in the eighth. The Red Sox scored three more runs after that on a Wilyer Abreu double and a Yoshida single.

The bullpen’s implosion overshadowed another dud from Cortes, who has struggled on the road all season. According to Stathead’s Katie Sharp, he is the only pitcher in Yankees history to have a single-season span of 11 road games with a 6.00 ERA or higher, zero wins and more than 55 innings pitched.

Cortes, whose previous start actually fell flat in the Bronx, isn’t the only Yankees scuffling. It’s really a team-wide issue, as the Bombers are 15-26 since June 7. Only the lowly White Sox have been worse over that span.

“It’s a good question,” Cortes said when asked why it’s taken the Yankees so long to snap out of it. “It feels like when we hit, we don’t pitch. And when we pitch, we don’t hit. I’m sure there’s other ways and other points that people can point out. If I had the answer for you, I would obviously tell the team and make it work. But it’s a tough stretch. Tough month. Tough two months.

“I don’t know what you want to call it, but we do need to turn it around.”

Originally Published: July 27, 2024 at 9:46 a.m.