Yankees’ Nestor Cortes takes dominance of Orioles to new heights, makes unexpected adjustment
BALTIMORE — You won’t find too many pitchers in baseball with better numbers against one team than Yankees left-hander Nestor Cortes and the Orioles.
Cortes entered play on Sunday afternoon with a 1.06 ERA in his career against Baltimore, allowing only four runs in 34 innings. While pitching for the Yankees, toeing the rubber in Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Cortes had given up just one earned run with 31 strikeouts in 19 2/3 innings pitched. Last season, he threw 11 scoreless frames with 19 strikeouts on the road in Baltimore, two of the best starts of his All-Star season.
The southpaw picked up where he left off against the Orioles on Sunday, shutting them down over his first five innings of work. Cortes was charged with two earned runs after Yankees manager Aaron Boone called to the bullpen with one out in the sixth — Albert Abreu allowed a two-run double on his first pitch in relief — but the left-hander still got the win and the point still stands.
Cortes against the Orioles — the team that cut him five years ago — is like the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington Generals. OK, maybe not that dominant, but you get the picture.
“Feels like every time I’m here, I throw to my spots and I’m able to locate and use the field to my advantage,” Cortes said after the 5-3 win. “I felt like they hit two or three fly balls to left field that probably would have been homers anywhere else and the field played in”
Cortes is right. Several deep flyballs stayed in the yard on Sunday, including a couple towering shots to left field — from first baseman Ryan Mountcastle and outfielder Austin Hays — that would’ve been gone if Baltimore didn’t move the left field fence back prior to last season. The new dimensions couldn’t contain two home runs from Aaron Judge and another from lefty slugger Franchy Cordero, though.
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Factoring in his numbers on Sunday, Cortes now has a 1.02 ERA as a starting pitcher against Baltimore with 54 strikeouts in 35 1/3 innings. He’s 1-0 with an 0.90 ERA this season, striking out eight batters in 10 frames.
Cortes was designated for assignment by Baltimore in 2018 — five years ago to the day on Monday — but he wasn’t treating this start as a revenge game. Maybe his first and second outings against Baltimore after they cut ties were an opportunity to show them what they were missing. Now, it’s just another game against another opponent for a southpaw entrenched in the Yankees’ starting rotation.
“You try to do well against all of them,” Cortes said. “Luckily I’ve had good success against them so far.”
Sunday’s start also featured an unexpected adjustment. At one point in the early innings, home plate umpire Bill Miller pulled Cortes aside, telling the lefty that he needed to make a change to his glove, pointing to the white bold letters that read “44″ on the back of the leather.
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Cortes was taken aback. He’s used that brand since he was 17 and never had any issues. He didn’t have any problems using the same mitt last week when he pitched against the Phillies. Still, he obliged, coming out for the next inning after shading over the logo with a black marker.
“I’ve been pitching with a white 44 forever, so the fact that he came over to me and said that it was a problem kind of pissed me off,” Cortes said. “Other than that, I didn’t have a big problem with it. It wasn’t a big issue.”
Cortes’ only issue came in the fifth. Mountcastle’s seven-pitch at-bat and sharp double to put catcher Adley Rutschman on third base showed that Baltimore was starting to figure the lefty out. Later in the season, Cortes probably has a chance to continue pitching, even with two men in scoring position with only one man out. This early in the season, with 92 pitches already thrown by Cortes, Boone made the decision to pull the plug.
“We just weren’t going to go over 90 [pitches] with him,” Boone said. “I just felt like I had to get him, but I thought he was sharp, especially after the first inning. He was really strike one, strike two, ahead, dictating counts. They’re a tough lineup and they’re a good team. They made him work.”
