Nestor Cortes

The crafty lefty cemented his spot in the Yankees' starting rotation in 2022 with a 2.44 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and 163:38 K:BB across 158.1 innings, but he made just 12 starts in 2023 due to a rotator cuff strain. Cortes also struggled when available last season and finished with a 4.97 ERA over 63.1 innings to go along with a 1.6 HR/9 and a career-worst 40.1 percent hard-hit rate. A 3.71 xERA indicates some unfortunate results, while a 4.84 xFIP paints a less favorable underlying picture. Cortes' reliance on different arm angles and deliveries leaves less margin for error on his pitches, especially since his stuff doesn't really stand out. It also makes him more difficult to evaluate, as the numbers themselves tell less of a story than with most pitchers. A positive regression seems likely in 2024, but Cortes' lack of year-to-year track record leaves some risk coming off a poor campaign.

If you go back and look at Cortes's 2022 outlook, you can see he teased at what was possible, but without a large body of work, everyone was right to be skeptical of what Cortes would be as a starter. Those who took the chance in the late rounds were greatly rewarded by one of the best late round steals in 2022 as the lefty picked up where he left off in 2021 for most of the 2022 season. Cortes uses varying arm angles, deliveries, and pitches to frustrate hitters all season. 75% of what he threw were four-seamer and cutters, and those two pitches were paired so well that the league hit below .200 against both pitches while all five of his offerings had whiff rates above 20%. In 330 innings of work, he has a career 80% LOB rate and a .266 BABIP, so his 2022 numbers ( 79%, .243) are not terribly out of line and a continuation of what he did in 2021. The stuff is not paritcularly special, but his ability to spin and sequence it is certainly special and being a lefty in Yankee Stadium doesn't hurt either. The big question is if he can put up consecutive seasons of workload as he has never done so.

Cortes, when not running around Mushroom Kingdom attempting to avoid Bowser, enjoyed a surprising season for the Yankees. It was his second stint with the club, but this time he worked as a bandaid in the rotation rather than in low-leverage situations. He used a variety of arm angles, timing mechanisms and pitches making the most of his below-average stuff to effectively disrupt the timing of the opposing hitters. He is a throwback to the pitching of 30 years ago when guys relied on location and guile rather than velocity; somehow the league hit .196 off his fastball (.189 xBA!) when the pitch averaged 90.7 mph. Pitching where he does, and in the division he does, leaves Cortes with a thin margin for error, and he's been susceptible to the long ball throughout his career (2.0 HR/9 career rate). Cortes is really only rosterable if he were to secure a starting rotation spot in spring training.