Yankees' skid reaches new low in series loss to Texas

ARLINGTON -- In the time it took the Yankees to get a reliever ready in the fifth inning Sunday afternoon, starter Nestor Cortes had turned it into a whole new ballgame: the kind they’ve been suffering through too often lately.

The Yankees lost for the seventh time in their past 10 games, and for the third time in a row to the Rangers in a 15-2 rout. Sunday’s skid typified the Yankees’ misfortunes for most of the series at Globe Life Field -- incidentally, the most-attended series in the history of baseball’s newest ballpark, with 146,771 fans in total over the four games. A sizable number of those fans, clad in gray No. 99 jerseys, glumly watched as injured star Aaron Judge sat out the last three games and the Yankees scored just four runs without him.

The Yankees went 2-5 on the road trip, ending the month of April only one game above .500 (15-14) and already eight games behind the American League East-leading Rays. Asked to sum up the season’s first month, Yankees catcher Kyle Higashioka first took a deep breath.

“After today, it definitely feels pretty terrible,” Higashioka said. “But it’s something we’ve got to work through. We’ve got to just keep grinding.”

The Yankees hadn’t allowed 15 runs in a game since August 2019. Cortes was on the hook for seven of them, all earned. The lefty crumbled in the fifth, issuing a one-out walk and then back-to-back homers. Cortes had already experienced a turbulent first inning, in which he walked consecutive batters, allowed a single and then served up a grand slam to Josh Jung.

In the fifth, Yankees manager Aaron Boone stuck with Cortes after the walk even though his pitch count was creeping up. Reliever Albert Abreu wasn’t quite loose yet, so Boone and the Yankees could only watch as Nathaniel Lowe and Adolis García went deep on two of Cortes’ next three pitches. Those turned out to be the last of 100 pitches he tossed Sunday.

“I wasn’t commanding the fastball well today,” Cortes said after the game.

Added Rangers manager Bruce Bochy: “That's a very tough pitcher. He's got great command and he's got that cutter that's tough on everybody. I just thought we had some really nice at-bats."

After Abreu took the mound, he promptly gave up a Statcast-projected 433-foot homer to Jonah Heim on his second pitch. Abreu wound up allowing six earned runs as he presided over much of a six-run sixth that put the game out of reach.

Perhaps the only positive development out of an otherwise dispiriting stay in North Texas was starter Gerrit Cole’s eight-strikeout, two-run gem in the opener on Thursday.

Though mired in a morass of injuries and inconsistency, the Yankees are hopeful they have plenty of time for a course correction.

“It’s early,” Cortes said. “Obviously, we’re not playing the baseball we want to play right now. We’re not producing, and guys are banged up. Hopefully, we get enough guys back quick and start playing better baseball – I think on both sides of the ball, hitting and pitching. Apart from Gerrit, I think we’ve got to do a better job with the staff.”

After watching his captain get hurt and his team’s response to it amid a troublesome road trip, Boone also offered a blunt assessment of the Yankees’ recent tailspin.

“Tough trip,” he said. “Tough trip. Tough league. Adversity is coming for us, we know it, and we will get through it. The league waits for no one, and no one is going to feel sorry for us for what we’re going through. We’ve got to find a way right now. We’re capable of it right now. Even though we are beat up a little bit, we’re still capable of going out there and winning ballgames, and that’s what we’ve got to find a way to do right now.”