New York Yankees starter Nestor Cortes had a rough outing, and the Toronto Blue Jays topped the Bronx Bombers 9-3 on Saturday.
Cortes allowed seven hits and three earned runs in just 4.1 innings, including a home run to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
The Yankees, who won Friday to snap a season-worst four-game losing streak, lost for the 10th time in their past 13 games. After the game, Cortes discussed his tough outing, per the YES Network.
Said the Yankee's starter, “It just felt like, from the beginning, just missed a lot of pitches, a lot of locations. And they put a lot of good swings on balls that I thought were pretty well-located. Just overall, I mean, they're swinging hot bats right now, but I've got to do a better job of coming out in the first [inning] and putting pressure.”
Yankees outfielder Juan Soto was scratched from the lineup because of a bruised right hand about 20 minutes before Saturday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays, but Boone said afterward that X-rays did not reveal a fracture.
“He took some swings pregame, and it just wasn’t good enough to go today,” Boone said. “Obviously a lot of treatment today and into the night. We’ll see what we have tomorrow.”
Hopefully, Juan Soto will have a speedy recovery from his injury. The 25-year-old has been a vital piece of New York's offense. Through 81 games, Soto has batted a .302 average and hit 20 home runs, the latter of which ranks him seventh in the league. In addition, he has accumulated 60 RBI to go with a 1.005 OPS, which rank sixth and third, respectively.
Nestor Cortes not the only struggling Yankees pitcher
An area of concern for the Yankees in recent games is the performance of starting pitcher Carlos Rodon. On Thursday night, the Blue Jays didn't even give Rodon a chance to rebound. Toronto hammered Rodon to the tune of eight earned runs in five innings en route to a 9-2 loss for New York, continuing a troubling trend for the 31-year-old lefthander.
Regardless, as disappointing as that performance was from Rodon, Boone still saw some positives in the way the southpaw pitched. Maybe a few tweaks here and there and some better luck from the baseball gods could have prevented the game from spiraling out of control.
“I don’t want to sugarcoat it too much, but in and around it, you see a lot of the really good tonight. You see the stuff. You see what, [eight] punchouts?” Boone said in his postgame interview, via Talkin' Yanks on Twitter (X). “Maybe it's just some pitch selection in certain situations. We obviously got to execute at a higher level and make the adjustments. Clearly, some teams' game-planning are doing a good job of against him.”
“But while he's wearing it right now and going through it, there's also a part of it that's a gutsy effort to kind of not want out. Want to finish through five, especially with what we're going through as a team right now. We'll make the adjustments. The stuff is there.”
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