Yankees Thoughts: Nestor Cortes Can’t Win

The Yankees lost 9-4 to the Angels. They are now 8-16 in games started by Nestor Cortes and 60-32 in all other games.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Does any Yankees fan feel confident in the starting rotation? I don’t know how you could. Aaron Boone said after Thursday’s second straight loss to the Angels that he feels confident about the rotation, but he’s the same person who continued to play Anthony Rizzo after Rizzo told him about his fogginess and head injury last summer.

Between Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman, 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation is not worthy of being on the postseason roster. On days Carlos Rodon pitches, you pray the version of Rodon that pitched himself into a $162 million contract shows up, and on days Gerrit Cole pitches, you pray his elbow doesn’t tear and that he can be even a shell of his Cy Young self. And once every five days Luis Gil pitches, and even when he doesn’t have his best stuff (like he didn’t on Wednesday against the Angels and still pitched five scoreless innings), he’s still great. So one day every time through the rotation Yankees fans can feel confident in that day’s starting pitcher.

2. It’s been a long time since any Yankees fan could feel confident with Cortes getting the ball. After losing on Thursday, the Yankees are now 8-16 in games Cortes starts and 60-32 in all other games. Cortes has given the Yankees one quality start over the last seven weeks and has failed to get through five innings in four of his last five starts. Against the Angels, for the fourth time in his last five starts he put at least 10 baserunners on.

“To their credit they fought off a lot of good pitches that I threw tonight,” the delusional Cortes said after giving up six earned runs on nine hits and a walk in 4 2/3 innings.

Over Cortes’ last five starts, he has pitched 23 1/3 innings and put 56 runners on base with a 9.26 ERA and 1.082 OPS. So he has turned every hitter over his last five starts into somewhere between Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.

3. During the All-Star break, Cortes tweeted the following:

“Everyone talks down about the yanks but they wanna be us. It’s a privilege to wear pinstripes. Every year we are in contention. I’m blessed to be able to compete for a playoff spot and always be contenders at the end.“

I don’t know who wants to be Cortes with his 9.26 ERA over his last five starts and one quality start since mid-June. But if wearing the pinstripes is such a privilege, you would think Cortes would do more to try to ensure he keeps wearing pinstripes, rather than just talking about how good he was despite his pitching line and the scoreboard suggesting otherwise.

4. It’s not entirely Cortes’ fault that he has trouble giving an honest evaluation of his starts since his manager continues to blow smoke up the left-hander’s ass.

“I actually thought Nestor threw the ball OK,” Boone said after his starter put 10 runners on in 4 2/3 innings and allowed six earned runs. “He wasn’t giving up a ton of hard contact.”

Just hard enough for the Angels to hang six runs on him.

5. After Cortes’ July 11 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings, Boone said, “He pitched well.”

After Cortes’ July 20 start against the Rays when he put 10 baserunners on in 4 1/3 innings again, Boone said, “I thought the profile of the stuff was there.”

The start after that Cortes put 12 baserunners on in a loss to the Red Sox and the start after that he gave up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings to the Phillies.

Despite all of that positivity from Boone after each failed outing, here is what Boone said after Thursday’s loss to the Angels about Cortes’ run of poor performances.

“There were a few starts there where it wasn’t great.”

What? You told everyone how well Cortes was pitching and good the profile of his stuff looked. Now it wasn’t great?

“A couple where he didn’t have that extra gear on his heater,” Boone said. “Felt like he got that last time in Philly.”

Cortes gave up three earned runs on 5 1/3 innings in Philadelphia. That’s a 5.09 ERA. That is Cortes having an extra gear on his heater?

6. “Felt like today, you look at the profile was good,” Boone said after Cortes lost to the Angels.

The Angels have the third-worst offense in the American League and scored six runs off Cortes in 4 2/3 innings and Boone thought the “profile” of his pitches was “good.” How can that be? What would a Cortes start look like if the profile of his pitches was bad?

The offense was also a problem over the last two-and-a-half games against the Angels. Over the last 23 innings of the series, the Yankees scored six runs. They didn’t score in the last five innings of the first game of the series, were held to two in the second game and scored three meaningless, garbage-time runs at the end of the third game, while the Angels blasted them for 17 runs in the second and third games.

7. Boone keeps mentioning “guys coming back from injury.” Who is coming back from injury? Clarke Schmidt is a ways away. Anthony Rizzo is swinging a bat. Jon Berti keeps getting hurt while hurt. The only potential difference-maker that could return is Schmidt because he pushes Cortes and Stroman out of the equation, but he’s not close to returning. Boone kept talking about Stanton returning before he returned and how that would seemingly fix everything and Stanton has been the bad version of himself and has fixed nothing as Judge keeps getting intentionally walked.

Boone loves to speak under the assumption that players will return from injury, but that no one will leave the roster to injury. He thinks the roster is what it is and will add pieces, forgetting that he could very well lose pieces. No team is ever at 100 percent, and the Yankees haven’t been at 100 percent late in the season or in the postseason in a long time.

8. With the loss the Yankees are now 9-18 in their last 27 home games, having won one of their last nine home series. That seems impossible for an organization that always puts up gaudy numbers at home and always has one of the best home records in the league, but it is.

The Orioles lost too so no ground was lost by the Yankees in the division. That’s both good and bad. It’s good because no ground was lost. It’s bad because the Orioles’ lack of winning continues to give the Yankees an excuse for a lack of urgency. The manager and players of the Yankees have preached about the great position they remain in since mid-June despite their wildly inconsistent play, even though the only reason they are in that position is because the Orioles have been equally as bad.

9. With the soft, cupcake schedule the Yankees have in August, I expected them to get fat in the win column and possibly even create separation from the Orioles. Through six August games, all at home, against a Blue Jays team that gave up and traded pieces off their major-league roster at the deadline and an Angels team that hasn’t been good since Opening Day, the Yankees are 3-3. It’s unacceptable for a team that has World Series aspirations.

10. An organization that has actually won the World Series within the last 14 years (and appeared in three of those 14) comes to town in the Rangers. The Rangers have been desperately trying to save their season and avoid missing out on the postseason a year after winning it all. It’s a team the Yankees should beat, It’s a series the Yankees should win. But I thought the same thing about the Angels series. This weekend would be a good time for the Yankees to begin to manage and play with urgency. If they know how to.