About Last Night: CLE 1, NYY 8

By Ethan Semendinger

August 22nd, 2024

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Soto and Judge started off the games with home runs...and then Judge hit another and Nestor pitched great.

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Quick Stats -

• Winning Pitcher: Nestor Cortes (7-10, 4.00 ERA)

• Losing Pitcher: Joey Cantillo (-03, 8.47 ERA)

• Save: N/A

• Home Runs (Cleveland): Jhonkensy Noel (10)

• Home Runs (New York): Juan Soto (36), Aaron Judge (46, 47)

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Big Story - Tuesday night was an absolute disaster of a game, and to make it worse, the insult was added to with injury.

The Yankees made two moves prior to last nights game: sending Luis Gil to the 10-Day IL (with a lower back strain), and calling up Will Warren. The Yankees did not make any other moves to potentially address the lackluster offense (i.e. DFA'ing DJ LeMahieu and/or calling up Jasson Dominguez) or to add more arms to the bullpen (i.e. signing Hector Neris and/or calling up Scott Effross).

At the very least, Jazz Chisholm did participate in batting practice ahead of the game, and could return from the IL as early as Friday.

Here was the line-up for the middle game of a three-game series against the Guardians:

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Player(s) of the Game -

• Juan Soto: 2-3, 2 Runs, Double, Home Run, 5 RBI's, 1 BB

• Nestor Cortes: 7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB's, 4 K's

• Aaron Judge: 2-3, 2 Runs, 2 Home Runs, 3 RBI's, HBP

Notable Performances -

• Gleyber Torres: 2-4, 2 Runs

• Tim Mayza: 2.0 IP, 1 H, 1 R (1 ER), 0 BB's, 1 K

Better to Forget -

• Ben Rice: 0-4, 2 K's

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The Game - In the game summary for Tuesday's game, I ended my post stating that the Yankees were going to be hoping- and praying- that Nestor Cortes was going to be able to give them a lot of innings of work, and continue to build upon his success from last week against the Chicago White Sox.

I'm glad to report that Nestor Cortes showed up last night. I'm also happy to report that Nestor Cortes held the Cleveland Guardians scoreless over 7 innings, and only allowed 3 hits and 0 walks, because it makes my recap of last nights game really easy.

For the Cleveland Guardians, from innings 1 through 7, they got a 2nd inning single (that turned into a double-play), and two 5th inning 2-out singles that amounted to nothing. In the 8th inning, the Jhonkensy Noel hit a solo home run off Tim Mayza and Tyler Freeman got hit by a pitch. Nothing else would happen for them on offense.

Meanwhile, the Yankees bats (well, mostly Juan Soto and Aaron Judge) showed up to play...as they tend to do.

Juan Soto started off the game with another 1st inning home run, scoring Gleyber Torres (who got on via a bloop single) to give the Yankees a quick 2-0 lead. This was Juan Soto's 36th home run on the season, and is his new single-season career best! Giancarlo Stanton hit a single, but was a force out to end the inning on a groundball.

Nothing of note happened for the bottom 3rd of the order for the Yankees in the 2nd inning, but in the 3rd inning, Juan Soto worked a walk before Aaron Judge hit a 2-run home run of his own. (Yankees 4, Guardians 0.) Haven't I seen this story before?

But, the wheels fell off for the Guardians in the 4th inning. After an Anthony Volpe strikeout, Alex Verdugo and Oswald Peraza worked back-to-back walks. Ben Rice struck out and Gleyber Torres hit a groundball to the first baseman...but legged it out for an infield single to load the bases for Juan Soto! And, Soto did as he does, and immediately knocked a bases-clearing 3-RBI double (Yankees 7, Guardians 0.)

The Yankees would challenge in the 5th due to an Aaron Judge hit-by-pitch and an Austin Wells single, but their next damage would come via Aaron Judge's second home run on the game in the 7th inning- this one a solo shot- to give the Yankees an 8-0 lead.

And, we discussed how the Guardians scored their lone run earlier.

Yankees win! Let's hope they take the series today.

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This team brings me too many emotions. In Tuesday nights game I started off so happy after Soto and Judge went back-to-back with home runs. And then, for the next 4 hours I slowly descended into madness as the team just fell apart.

Last night, Soto and Judge hit early home runs again, but I couldn't get to the same level of excitement as I did the night before. I was worried that something was going to go wrong. I am incredibly happy that my internal forecast of doom did not come true.

And, with a nice win on both sides of the ball, I'm just going to leave it there with my Yankees discussion this morning. I want to see a series victory this afternoon (even though, technically, I'll be "watching" via updates in the airport).

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Next Up - Tonight, the Yankees (74-53) will play the final game of their series at home against the Cleveland Guardians (73-53). To try and take the series, the Yankees will be sending Gerrit Cole (4-2, 4.15 ERA) to the mound to face off against Gavin Williams (2-5, 5.02 ERA). The game will be on YES Network (and MLB Network for out-of-market fans) starting at 1:05 PM.