Yankees Lefty Verged on Unhittable over 8 Masterful Shutout Innings
Nestor Cortes pitched a three-hit shutout into the ninth inning, Matt Carpenter ignited a go-ahead 3 rally in his Yankees debut, as well as New York, defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 7-2 Thursday night in the AL East rivalry’s 1st meeting of the season.
Cortes (4-1) won his third consecutive start, striking out five batters and walking one in 8 innings. The 27-year-old left-hander lowered his ERA to 1.70 by retiring fourteen batters in a row at one point. He threw 109 pitches, a career-high.
Wandy Peralta came on in relief after Wander Franco’s leadoff single in the 9th, allowing Manuel Margot’s run-scoring infield hit and Isaac Paredes’ RBI grounder before completing with a six-hitter.
Cortes did come within 3 outs of pitching the Yankees’ 1st complete game of the season, and that was only the fourth by an American League pitcher this season.
Cortes has made 18 consecutive starts with 3 earned runs or fewer, 2 shy of the squad record set by Russ Ford in 1910.
With such a rash of injuries, New York signed Carpenter to a one-year, $1 million contract just before the game and inserted him into the starting lineup when Aaron Hicks was scratched due to right hamstring tightness. Carpenter, 36, was released from Texas’ minor league system last week and went 0 for 2 with two groundouts as well as a walk.
Aaron Judge had two RBIs, bringing his total to 36.
The Yankees took a 5 1/2-game lead over the Rays after winning the first game of a four-game series, the first of ten games between the teams in 28 days. New York managed to win its third consecutive game after a season-low three-game losing streak to improve to 32-13, matching 1994 for the Yankees’ second-best 45-game begin behind 35-10 in 1998.
Ryan Yarbrough (0-1) continued to hold the Yankees hitless through 5 innings before giving up a home run to Carpenter to start the sixth.
In the seventh inning, Ralph Garza Jr. did add a run-scoring wild pitch. Within the eighth inning, Judge hit a sacrifice fly, and Anthony Rizzo followed with an RBI double off Brooks Raley, with a second run scoring on an error by Vidal Brujan.
In 5 2/3 innings, Yarbrough allowed three runs, 2 of which were earned, and 2 hits.
UP NEXT
RHP Jameson Taillon (4-1, 2.95) will start for the Yankees on Friday, and LHP Jeffrey Springs (2-1, 1.32) will start for the Rays. Springs won his first major league start Saturday at Baltimore.
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