Nestor Cortes rocked for three homers, bats go quiet in Yankees’ 9-1 loss to Rays

Nestor Cortes got knocked around for three home runs and Yankees batters mustered five hits in a 9-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

Cortes, who entered Saturday’s game with the lowest ERA at home in all of baseball (1.81 over 64.2 innings), allowed six early runs as the Yanks fell to 59-41 on the season.

The Bronx Bombers managed just two hits in the first eight innings before cracking three in the ninth as Tampa moved to 49-49.

Here are the takeaways…

– After two quick outs in the first, Cortes was stung for back-to-back bloop singles on very weak contact (63.8 mph and 79.7 mph off the bat) to give the Rays’ all-righty starting lineup a scoring chance. But the lefty reared back to blow a fastball on the outside corner past Johnny DeLuca to end the frame.

After a fast 1-2-3 second, Cortes ran into trouble in the third allowing a leadoff walk and a sharp single past DJ LeMahieu at third. He got a bouncer right at LeMahieu for a 5-4-3 double play, but Curtis Mead cranked a hanging, first-pitch sweeper for an RBI double off the wall in left.

Cortes put two on with two out in the fourth on a single and then walk, and this time paid a big price when his 3-2 cutter down and away to Rays’ No. 9 hitter Alex Jackson carried just over the wall in the right-center gap for a three-run homer. The ball traveled just 364 feet and was a dinger in Yankee Stadium only. It was also the MLB-leading 14th homer the Yanks have allowed to the opponents’ nine hitters.

Cortes got into another 3-2 count to start the fifth and the sweeper just hung on the outside corner and Isaac Paredes (in a 3-for-34 slump) didn’t miss it, yanking it for a 346-foot home run to left field. The boo birds rained down when another sweeper spun over the middle of the plate and Randy Arozarena walloped a deep shot (103.7 mph, 418 feet) to the visitor’s bullpen in left center.

The ended Cortes’ day, his final line: 4.1 innings, six runs, eight hits, two walks, one strikeout with three home runs on 92 pitches (61 strikes).

– Ben Rice started the bottom of the first with a double to the gap in right-center; smacking Rays starter Taj Bradley’s fastball 107.8 mph off the bat. But he was left stranded. That double was the only hit the Yanks could muster off the Tampa starter through seven innings.

– Austin Wells, batting cleanup for the first time this year, got an RBI chance in the first but went down swinging. He came up again with a runner on first after a leadoff walk in the fourth but pounded a first-pitch fastball for a tailor-made 4-6-3 twin killing.

– Alex Verdugo, who was batting cleanup in Friday’s game but moved down to the six hole, hit into a tailor-made 6-3 double play on the first pitch he saw to erase a leadoff walk in the second. He finished 0-for-3.

On the morning of June 15, Verdugo was batting .266 with a .757 OPS. Since then he has 16 hits in his last 108 at-bats with just one home run and five RBI and 22 strikeouts for a .148/.207/.213 and.420 OPS slash.

Verdugo is now batting .231 with a .658 OPS on the season.

– In the eighth, Anthony Volpe got the Yanks’ second hit of the afternoon with a one-out double to the gap in right off Rays reliever Shawn Armstrong. But after a hit batter, Armstrong got LeMahieu looking and Rice swinging.

LeMahieu finished the day 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.

– After a 4-for-4 day in Friday’s win, Juan Soto started 0-for-3 before cracking a leadoff triple in the ninth, the ball just hitting off the glove of a diving Jose Siri in deep left center.

– Aaron Judge followed up a 2-for-4 day by going 0-for-2 with a walk and was removed for defense in the top of the ninth.

– Michael Tonkin pitched 1.2 out of the bullpen allowing one run to score when Josh Maciejewski’s changeup outside got tagged by Arozarena for a 412-foot two-run shot to left in the seventh.

– Carlos Narváez, who played 472 games in the minors since joining the Yankee system in 2016, caught the top of the ninth for his MLB debut and added a single in the bottom half in his first big-league at-bat.

– Tampa got back to .500 with the win and are now 22-22 as visitors and 27-27 as hosts.

MVP of the game: Taj Bradley

After allowing a double to the first batter he faced, the Rays starter locked in and shut the Yanks down. Coming off seven shutout innings in his last start, he duplicated the trick allowing two walks to go along with the one hit while striking out five on 99 pitches (62 strikes). Bradley retired the last 11 batters he faced.

What’s next

The Yanks and Rays get together two more times this series, with Sunday’s matinee starting at 1:35 p.m. in The Bronx.

Marcus Stroman (3.51 ERA and 1.324 WHIP in 105 innings) gets the start for the home team. In his last start before the All-Star break, the right-hander allowed one run on seven hits, two walks and a hit batter in 4.1 innings against Tampa.

Shane Baz (5.23 ERA and 1.452 WHIP in 10.1 innings)will make his third start on the year (12th in his career) for the visitors. The righty surrendered three runs on six hits with a walk and five strikeouts against New York last time out. He allowed two solo homers (Wells and Soto), but the Rays won the day.