NEW YORK – Yankees pitcher Jimmy Cordero was suspended for the rest of the season by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday for violating the sport's domestic violence policy.
Major League Baseball said the 31-year-old Dominican right-hander accepted the suspension and will miss the season's final 76 games and the postseason. He loses $309,677 in pay.
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Asked if he would welcome Cordero back on the team, New York captain Aaron Judge told reporters: “I think that’s a ways away. I’m not sure. I’ll have a better answer for you when the season’s over.”
Cordero was 3-2 with a 3.86 ERA in one start and 30 relief appearances and has a $720,000 salary, the major league minimum. He missed the 2021 season after having Tommy John surgery while with the Chicago White Sox organization and spent 2022 with the Yankees' Triple-A team at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
“I found out about the suspension last night. He came to me a couple days ago and gave me a heads-up as to an investigation going on. That’s kind of the extent of it,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Wednesday night before a game against Baltimore.
“You get that news or you hear about that and it’s sad. Your heart goes out to everyone involved. Again, I don’t have any details, I don’t know what went down, which is part of the idea of the investigation and the policy in place is, it’s meant to work that way.”
The Yankees said in a statement they supported MLB's discipline and “there is no justification for domestic violence.”
As per the policy, MLB said Cordero will “participate in a confidential and comprehensive evaluation and treatment program supervised by the Joint Policy Board.”
“We talked in person. He kind of just filled me in on what was going to happen before I heard it from anybody else," Judge said. "I just said, `Hey, learn from this.' I was pretty upset. I know a lot of the guys on the team were upset. But this is in the league’s hand. The league handed down the suspension. Hopefully, he learns from this and becomes a better person on the other side.”
Cordero is the 18th player disciplined by MLB since the sport's domestic violence policy was implemented in 2016. New York pitcher Domingo Germán was given an 81-game suspension under the policy that he served in 2019 and 2020. Germán last week pitched the 24th perfect game in major league history.
Boone said the Yankees got wind of a possible MLB investigation underway involving Cordero within the past week or so.
“When things like this that are about as serious as it gets come up, there's a heavy price to be paid," Boone said. "And certainly I support that, I know the organization supports that. And hopefully now it turns to hopefully genuine healing.”
Boone said he thinks Cordero began speaking to teammates about the situation after Tuesday's game. The manager said a large group of Yankees got together Wednesday to talk about it.
“My biggest thing right now is just feeling for the situation and hoping and praying that something good comes out of this, that there's maturity, that there's growth, that there's healing in whatever is going on,” Boone said. “As far as (the) bullpen, I mean that's — I wouldn't even say secondary. That's baseball, we'll deal with that. This is real life and a much more serious situation.”
The players’ association said Cordero did not ask the organization to issue a statement from him.
“It's a sad situation. Just thinking about Cordero’s family and his wife and kids, you know, it’s a tough situation that you never want to see anybody go through,” Judge said.
“I just got a chance to meet Jimmy this year in spring training, and it definitely came (as) a surprise to a lot of us because we really didn’t know about it and all of a sudden you come in today and there was a suspension. So I’m hoping he can get some help and his family can get some help and they can get through this process, man, because it’s a very terrible, terrible incident.”
The 6-foot-4, 245-pound Cordero is 6-7 with a 4.36 ERA in 114 major league games, including one start, over four seasons with the Nationals, Blue Jays, White Sox and Yankees. His most recent outing was Sunday in St. Louis, where he allowed three runs and five hits in two innings against the Cardinals.
Cordero was placed on the restricted list. New York recalled rookie right-hander Randy Vásquez from Triple-A to start Wednesday night against Baltimore.
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