Nestor Cortes must deal with the loss after Aaron Boone’s questionable Game 1 Move

Fame exudes the same atmosphere as its evil twin brother, Infamy. The natural laws of baseball require them to coexist.

There is no Tommy Henrich without Mickey Owen. No Don Larsen without Dale Mitchell. No Kirk Gibson without Dennis Eckersley. And now, linked to posterity with one throw, no Freddie Freeman without Nestor Cortes.

Thirty-six years and ten nights after Eckersley, through question after question, shared the sudden horror of one pitch against Gibson, Corte, the undersized New York Yankees left-handed pitcher, stood there in the visiting clubhouse of the same ballpark and underwent the same excruciating, demanding autopsy of eternal defeat. Each question was the turn of a scalpel. It may have been bloodless, but it wasn’t painless.

Two World Series Game 1s. Two walk-off home runs enter the right field pavilion of Dodger Stadium. Two hobbled left-handed Los Angeles Dodgers hitters.

Too many.

As in, too much demand for Cortes. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, in a decision he and his staff made several days earlier, wanted Cortes to pitch in place of Tim Hill for Shohei Ohtani and Freeman with Game 1 of the World Series on the line – even though Cortes had not thrown. 37 days. Freeman threw a fastball on Cortes’ first pitch for the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history and a 6-3 victory for the Dodgers Friday in 10 of the most pulsating, star-studded innings October can produce .

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Cortes headed straight down the hill as soon as the ball landed. Asked if he felt shock, anger or some other emotion, Cortes said, “I mean, a little bit of everything. To be honest, I was more upset about the pitch I didn’t make. I think when I make my pitch there, it’s obviously a different outcome.

“So I didn’t stay on the field long enough to think about it or see him run the bases. I just walked in and turned the page on the spot and started my workout and was ready for tomorrow.

Infamy’s hand only tapped Cortes when Boone’s did. Boone got Cortes and Hill hot as the bottom of the 10th inning began with Jake Cousins ​​on the mound and the Yankees three outs away from a 3–2 victory. The Dodgers needed their 7-8-9 hitters. Ohtani was four spots away, which meant that if a runner reached base, Boone would face the biggest decision of his managerial life.

Cousins ​​made the worst possible mistake in releasing Infamy: two outs after the win, he walked Lux, who went 0-for-15 and went without a hit for 16 days. When the task called for avoiding Ohtani, Cousins ​​gave Los Angeles a free baserunner to put the danger in play.

The ultimate story of Game 1 is that the three MVPs at the top of the Dodgers lineup are a Navy SEALS training course for a pitcher. Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman continually put pressure on the pitchers.

“Obviously there’s not a lot of room for error,” said Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole, who exhausted himself by striking out the MVThree in the sixth inning, leaving the tying run at second base. “No, there isn’t much room for error. And it will probably go back and forth as we go along. It is extremely difficult to keep him off the board. It is extremely difficult to get deep into a game. They have a great team. All you can do is give yourself a chance.”

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But there’s also a hidden story from Game 1: the Yankees often perform so poorly that even their home run power can’t cover up their mistakes.

Right fielder Juan Soto took a bad angle on a ball hit by Kiké Hernández and played a single or double into a triple. The extra 90 feet led to a sacrifice fly. Second baseman Gleyber Torres, running out of play at second base, didn’t move his feet to make a long jump or catch the ball in the air on a Soto throw. His lazy stab to the back, which failed to secure the ball, gave Ohtani another 30 yards, leading to another sacrifice fly. The Cousins ​​walk to Lux completed this triptych of inartistic play.

Tommy Edman followed the Lux walk with a groundball that second baseman Oswaldo Cabrera couldn’t corral. Lux should have been in third place, but he almost ended up in second place and had to run back to second place. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts should have put Chris Taylor at first base for Lux and ultimately made that move.

Now it was Ohtani’s turn. In any scientific process there are times when a choice must be made based on the currently available information. On a process flow diagram they are often shown as diamonds. Depending on the choice, different paths follow. These are called ‘decision points’. Ohtani is a human decision point.

Ohtani forces a manager before the game is played to find a path to victory through him. In the days leading up to Game 1, Boone decided he wanted Cortes on Ohtani instead of Hill, even though Hill had allowed just four hits in 36 at-bats against left-handed hitters since August 21, an average of .111 for two months of regular hitters. auxiliary work. Hill doesn’t have any swing-and-miss stuff. The Yankees worried that the movement of his best pitch, a groundball-inducing sinker, worked too much toward Ohtani and the plane of his swing.

Cortes had not thrown in 37 days due to such a troublesome forearm sprain that some family members warned him against throwing at all, fearing it would jeopardize his earning potential. But they loved his moxie and inventiveness on the mound. They thought he could create deception, similar to how the Mets’ Seam Manaea confused Ohtani with different arm angles. They preferred Cortes with rust over Hill’s sinker.

It seemed strange that Boone had both Cortes and Hill pitch in the 10th. But it spoke to the uncertainty of what the Yankees had in a rusty Cortes.

“I just wanted to make sure Nestor warmed up properly,” Boone explained, “and if there was a two-out situation, I wanted to at least have the consideration of putting Timmy in there.”

After the Edman single, Boone walked to the mound. Cortes wasn’t sure who would enter.

“To be honest, every time the lineup came up (since) the fourth inning, I was active, getting ready, getting warmed up in case my name was called,” he said. “That last inning, it was right before Cousins ​​went out, they picked me and Hill up. So I thought there was a possibility and I got warm and ready as best I could.

Boone gestured to the pen with his left hand. By lowering his left hand lower than normal, Cortes knew this was the signal for him.

Cortes threw a first pitch, 90 mph over the plate, to Ohtani, but got away with it when Verdugo made a big catch that sent him tumbling into the stands. Because he left the playing field, both runners were awarded an extra base. That became meaningful because, with first base open, Boone intentionally walked Betts to get Cortes to throw to Freeman.

Cortes threw his fastball in the high 80s during live batting practice before the World Series. He took the 150 km/h on the field to Ohtani as a sign that the adrenaline was starting to kick in.

The plan for Freeman, one of the most notorious first-ball fastball hitters in all of baseball, was the same: attack with a fastball. Unbeknownst to Cortes, Freeman was on a fastball, right up the middle.

“I wanted it maybe only two or three inches higher,” says Cortes. “I thought it went into the inner part of the record where I wanted it, but it didn’t come up enough.

“I wish I could have thrown it a little higher. He made a good swing and I knew he was going to be aggressive. Like I said, I wanted it to be higher. I just couldn’t get it on the spot. At first glance it looked good, but I just couldn’t get it high enough.”

The field was within 90mph and lower than above. Like the slider Eckersley threw to Gibson, its location made it the only throw Freeman could catch up front with pull-side power, given how limited he was in the playoffs with a sprained right ankle.

Freeman crushed it. A doubter. The clock read 8:35 p.m., just four minutes before the hit of Gibson’s famous homer at 8:39 p.m. Both nights the temperature was between 63 and 64 degrees. Both home runs turned the defeat into a victory.

Freeman had not hit a ball at 105 mph in 19 days. But the four days off between the NLCS and Game 1 turned out to be a blessing. The ankle had gotten worse every time Freeman ran. That’s why he didn’t walk for four days. When he ran out of the dugout for pregame introductions, he was pleased to discover no residual effects. He was back.

The visiting clubhouse at Dodger Stadium was renovated several years ago. The room where Eckersley spoke was converted into a personnel analysis room, which was converted back into an interview room for the World Series. The room where Cortes spoke is one of the smallest visiting clubhouses in baseball. Like Eckersley, Cortes answered each question patiently, but like Eck, the raw pain in his voice was evident despite that patience.

“If I wasn’t ready enough and healthy enough, I wouldn’t have done it and they wouldn’t have let me do it,” Cortes said. “So I think we’re in a good place. And like I said, I still have a chance. I want four games in this series. You know, the way it went, it was clearly within reach, but we’ll come back strong tomorrow.

The pain was too new. He’d come off the field, watched a replay once — shaking his head that the pitch wasn’t as high as he wanted — and tried to wash away the pain with a usual post-performance workout, even though he’d only thrown two. pitches. It takes longer to process.

There is another consequence to deal with: what to do with Ohtani, the human decision point. Boone had calculated that Cortes’ moxie was his best chance to catch Ohtani, but Freeman’s home run had to cause Boone to recalculate. Tommy Kahnle? Ohtani almost hit one of his predictable changes out of the park for a double. Lucas Wever? Certainly, but there are decision moments before the end. Cortes again? Hill? Tim Mayza? The intentional walk?

To win this series, the Yankees will need Ohtani, Betts and Freeman at key positions. It starts with taking on Ohtani. That decision tree is fraught with weak limbs. Every time the Los Angeles lineup turns to the top, Fame and Infamy are ready, breathing the same thick, dramatic atmosphere.