BALTIMORE — The story that epitomizes Nestor Cortes’ 2022 All-Star season took place months before the season began.
In November, before the MLB lockout started (and players were no longer allowed to communicate with team staff members), Cortes reached out to Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake and asked if he thought he would be on the roster to start the 2022 season.
Cortes had a breakout season in 2021, pitching 93 innings with a 2.90
ERA. He made 22 appearances for New York last year, including 14
starts. Yet, he needed to make a decision about whether or not to play
winter ball. So, he gave Blake a call.
“I asked him, ‘Hey, what do you think? Am I on the inside looking out, or the outside looking in?’” Cortes recalled Saturday afternoon in
Baltimore. “I wanted to know where I stood in the organization. I mean,
I’ve been DFA’d before. I’ve been up and down. So I was trying to see
where I stood.”
Blake shared this story with reporters in early May, after Cortes had
made six starts and sported a 1.41 ERA. Blake laughed as he shared the
anecdote, understanding that everyone in the room likely understood that
Cortes would have been entering spring training with a rotation spot to
lose.
He couldn’t tell Cortes explicitly that he would be in the rotation
on Opening Day, but he told him, “I think you’ve got a shot at making
the team,” which was enough for Cortes to sit out on winter ball for the first time since 2016.
Security and stability are not concepts that have made themselves
present throughout Cortes’ nine-year professional career. His breakout
campaign, which began late last May and has carried him all the way to
the All-Star Game, has created a strange form of dissonance for the
27-year-old left-hander.
He was a 36th-round pick who has built himself a career in
professional baseball through being reliable, durable, and throwing
strikes consistently. But he’s been designated for assignment, traded,
removed from a roster, and was optioned to the minor leagues seven times
in one season.
Now a star, Cortes is experiencing the strangeness of success that comes when you’re used to scrapping.
“For Matt to sort of hint that I was going to be in the starting
rotation was kind of surreal for me,” Cortes said. “It’s hard to know
where I stand. My whole career, it’s been like, ‘Oh, he’s a fifth
starter — if that.’ So to think about being chosen to be part of the
Yankees’ starting rotation was incredible.”
Months later, when manager Aaron Boone got word that Cortes had spent
his offseason unsure of whether or not he would make the opening-day
roster, he visited the left-hander’s locker and told him that not only would he be on the team, he expected him to be an All-Star.
“I didn’t really believe that on the inside,” Cortes admits. “I
just thought he’s doing his job as a manager, saying that to give me
confidence.”
Cortes says his All-Star selection didn’t begin to really hit him
until he was shagging fly balls in the outfield at Dodger Stadium before
the Home Run Derby, envisioning the chance to pitch an inning for the
American League team in the All-Star Game the next night.
“I was like, ‘Man, I hope I get picked to pitch an inning tomorrow,’”
Cortes said. “Then they told me I was going to pitch the sixth inning.
That’s when I was like, ‘Oh sh—, I’ve got the sixth.’”
Cortes’ humility isn’t a put-upon act by a ballplayer who always felt
destined for the top of the mountain. It’s not an ‘aw-shucks’ sort of
shy humility, either. It’s the genuine, informed perspective of a man
who has spent his career being treated as ‘good enough’ but never
‘better than the rest.’
“I think the fear of failure is what keeps me motivated,” Cortes
said. “If I pitch tomorrow and I give up seven runs, I expect I might be
optioned, no matter what I’ve done this season, no matter if I was in
the All-Star Game. That’s what keeps me afloat: The fear of going back
to what I was is what pushes me, it drives me.”
Cortes was naïve about what his life might look like when he was
drafted by the Yankees out of Hialeah (Fla.) High School in 2013. Not
only were more than a thousand players drafted before him between the 30
clubs that year, the Yankees picked 37 other players before selecting
Cortes, who was 5-foot-10 and threw 87 miles per hour.
“I felt like a million bucks,” Cortes says. “Even though I got $85 grand.”
He didn’t know that he’d be competing against hundreds of other players to ascend to the major leagues, and that it would take more than two
years to get there (it took five). He didn’t understand that getting
into pro ball was the easy part, ascending through the ranks as a
non-prospect without the obvious “projectable” physique and
flame-throwing repertoire would be a battle.
Cortes has some intangibles working for him, however. He’s extremely
personable and likable, remarkably adaptable, and willing to take on a
tough assignment and go out there and throw strikes. Often, he was
tapped to make spot starts in higher levels because the coaches felt he
could at least give them a few solid innings before sending him back
down to Low A, or High A, or Double A.
The Orioles
selected Cortes in the Rule 5 draft in late 2017, and he made his
major-league debut in 2018. Baltimore would go on to lose 116 games, but
they entered that season intending to contend. Cortes, who had a 7.71
ERA in four starts, was not part of the plan.
He was designated for assignment that April and returned to the
Yankees (players selected in the Rule 5 draft have to remain on a
major-league roster all season or be offered back to their original
club). Cortes has never planned for a life outside of baseball. He’s
played the game since he was four years old and intends to play until he
is 40, even if the final 10 years of his career are in the minor
leagues. But the DFA by the Orioles — which he now sees as the best
thing that could have happened to his career — did shake his confidence
at age 23.
Back in Triple A with the Yankees, he gave himself a reality check.
“I’m like, ‘Man. There’s people out there that have it worse than me
and are super happy,’” Cortes recalled. “I’m out here living a dream and
I don’t want to be here anymore. There are people out there working
terrible shifts from 10 pm to 7 am, unable to see their families or
sleep on a normal schedule. And I’m here complaining about playing
baseball.”
The idea of quitting the game never occurred to Cortes, who says he
saw too many talented players in the minor leagues quit, or threaten to
quit, when they didn’t get what they felt they deserved. He was there to
play baseball, wherever that took him. Throughout it all, he maintained
major-league aspirations. But as a recently-designated 23-year-old
eating up innings in the minor leagues, he certainly could not have
imagined this.
Over the last offseason, Cortes decided to get a new tattoo. His left
arm is his money arm, his right arm is the one he has marked. On his
forearm, he has a large Cuban flag and a depiction of a highway shield
with ‘305’ and ‘Hialeah’ on it, the former being the area code for his
vastly Cuban-American hometown. On the top of his right wrist, he wanted
to get his new nickname — ‘Nasty Nestor’ — but he felt a little bit of
hesitation.
Funny Nasty Nestor Cortes Jr New York Baseball Lover Gift Light Gray Vintage Grunge T-Shirt “I imagined some people would be like, ‘Look at this guy. Nasty
Nestor, blah blah blah,’” Cortes recalled. “But the truth is, every
Yankees fan calls me that. And 20 years down the road, I can know that I
was once ‘Nasty Nestor,’ even if I am never again ‘Nasty Nestor.’ In
2021, this is how Yankees fans referred to me. So I got the tattoo.”
Success has called Cortes’ name, but he knows it might be fleeting.
There are new expectations of him now, though. He’s not just the
spot-start hero asked to eat five innings one day to save the shoulders
of pitchers higher than him on the depth chart.
After more than eight years of working to obtain regular major-league
success, Cortes’ responsibility is now to sustain it. It’s a different
assignment for the left-hander, who has pitched his way to a perch on
which there are now higher expectations of him than there were before
his breakout campaign in 2021.
“It does feel strange when our bullpen guys are like, ‘Hey, we need
you to go seven today,’” Cortes said, laughing. “On the inside, I’m
like, ‘Come on, it’s so hard to go five, and you want me to give you
seven or eight?’ But it shows the confidence they have in me and the
results of my work.”
Cortes has already set a career-high in major-league innings pitched,
throwing 95 2/3 innings over 17 starts thus far for a 2.63 ERA. He has
grown more confident in his major-league identity, which has led to more
consistent results, but he recognizes the things he can’t control.
Funny Nasty Nestor Cortes Jr New York Baseball Lover Gift Gold T-Shirt
On May 30, 2021, he was called up to the Yankees again with the assignment of being the “bulk guy” in a game against the Detroit Tigers.
He pitched 3 2/3 innings, allowing one earned run, and spent the rest
of the season on the major-league roster. The alternate history feels
present to Cortes even though he never lived it.
“If I get optioned after that because the Yankees needed a fresh arm
for the next day, I probably wouldn’t be Nasty Nestor today,” Cortes
says. “I would have had to be in the minor leagues for 10 days after
that, then I would probably go another month without being called back
up and sent back down again.”
Instead, Cortes made some relief appearances in June, then was in the
rotation full-time by the end of July. He kept his aspirations modest:
He just wanted to be on the roster when the Yankees traveled to his hometown of Miami
on July 30. His wish came true, and he made 11 starts across August and
September.
Still, when it came time to decide whether or not to showcase himself
in winter ball, he needed to ask his pitching coach if he had a chance
to make the 2022 roster.
“I think it gets me in trouble sometimes, but I’m super realistic
about opportunities and situations,” Cortes said. “I knew this offseason
we might sign somebody, or things might change with Luis Severino
coming back. Or maybe somebody performs better than me in spring
training and I need to fight my way back into the rotation again, or
onto the team.”
Blake turned out to be correct — Cortes did indeed have “a shot” at
making the team. Boone turned out to be correct, too: Cortes wound up an
All-Star. These anecdotes have become part of the Legend of Nestor, the
guy who doesn’t expect anything but keeps earning his opportunities.
As Cortes continues to take the ball for the Yankees every fifth day,
the feeling of stability is starting to settle on his mind.
“I think I feel more secure with my standing,” Cortes said. “There’s
gonna be bumps in the road. Maybe I give up seven runs in one inning.
That’s just part of the game. Honestly, I might be in the minor leagues in three, four
years, or next year, whatever. But I won’t forget what I’ve been asked
to do this year, and that has to give me some belief and some security
in feeling like I won’t be the old version of myself again.”
On the outside, friends, fans, and observers see a man who has made
it to the top — the New York Yankees’ starting rotation — and is the
portrait of determination, persistence, and success. On the inside,
Cortes is adjusting to his newfound status. The Yankees simply consider
him a stable member of their rotation. He is a fan favorite who has a
nickname — Nasty Nestor — that was printed on shirts for a stadium
giveaway item and Cortes now has tattooed on his wrist.
Cortes ascended from being drafted 1,094th overall to a star player
on a team with serious championship aspirations. He is still
acclimating, and taking a look at the scenery as he stands at the top.
After all, a person can’t climb a mountain that steep without feeling a
little bit out of breath.
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