Where are you now Dan Cortes?

Dan Cortes Looks Super Coordinated

Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

I don’t know where I saw this, on twitter or maybe in some blog article, but for those who were unaware, Dan Cortes was still in professional baseball as of April 2013. That’s right, the same guy who I remember as the dude who should have struck out way more people and threw a walk-off wild pitch, is still in baseball. He played for the AA Diamondbacks team and posted some hilarious stats. 8.1 innings pitched, 16.20 ERA, 14 BB’s, 11 K’s. For those people who think better with rates, his K/9 was 11.88 and his BB/9 was an incredible 15.12 BB/9.

Those numbers really shouldn’t surprise me, Cortes never really had any command. I also shouldn’t remember Dan Cortes, he only pitched 15 innings for the M’s in 2010 and 2011. But let me set the scene for Dan Cortes’ most memorable appearance as a Seattle Mariner. The day was September 29^th, 2010 and the M’s are playing a very meaningless game against the Rangers in Texas. It’s a tie game,  bottom of the 9^th, two outs and Mitch Moreland is on first. Dan Cortes is facing Nelson Cruz, and is able to work him to a 2-2 count. This next pitch could send the game into extra innings. Cortes looks in, gets the sign from Guillermo Quiroz. The pitch is in the dirt, but Cruz swings through it and it gets away from Quiroz. Cruz takes off for first, in a dejected manner, all Quiroz has to do is throw it to Justin Smoak at first. Somehow, Quiroz is unable to do that and the throw goes into right field and Moreland scores from first. Here is a video

Ok, so that game was much less Cortes’ fault then I remember, but lets recall this is not an article on Guillermo Quiroz, it’s about Dan Cortes. I do really hope Cortes is able to find a job somewhere, he has not made an appearance for AA Mobile since the end of April and I cannot find anything saying where he went. The morale of this article is this, even when the Mariners lose badly, at least we didn’t lose on a walk-off swinging strikeout. And let’s all be grateful that Dan Cortes was generous enough to show us how spoiled we are to lose games 10-0 and 8-1, when we knew we had no hope. Thank you Dan Cortes.