Can Nasty Nestor Turn Around the Yankees?
The pitcher has become an unlikely star for the Yankees. He’s just happy to be here.
On a muggy afternoon at the ragged end of July, Nestor Cortés Jr., the mustachioed, heavily tattooed left-hander for the New York Yankees, was pouncing off the mound to field ground balls and fire them to first base. The night before, the Yankees had won on a walk-off home run from Aaron Judge, their six-foot-seven, 282-pound juggernaut and the front-runner for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Not since Derek Jeter have the Yankees enjoyed such a captivating superstar. But the 27-year-old Cortés, built at the human scale of five-foot-11, has emerged as a star in his own right, quietly capturing the hearts of the Yankee faithful as the team tries to win its first World Series title in 13 years.
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For most professional athletes, there’s a time, usually in late childhood or adolescence, when they realize they are superior. The other kids can’t hurl a ball as far or tackle as hard, and high-school competition melts away. Scouts arrive in droves to herald a bright, limitless future. For Cortés, such a moment never came. “I was a 36th-rounder out of high school, throwing 87, 88,” he told me in the Yankee dugout, fresh off his rigorous stretching-and-throwing routine. “I didn’t know how long my career was going to be. I would’ve been happy with a two-, three-, four-year minor-league career.”
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Nicknamed “Nasty Nestor,” Cortés contorts his torso and right leg into
quasi-yogic poses on the mound, deceiving hitters who are sure this will
be the time they crush a fastball that clocks, at best, in the low 90s.
They rarely do. In an era of behemoths—the putative pitching ace of the
Yankees, the $300 million, six-four Gerrit Cole, casually throws a
baseball 100 mph—Cortés is an anomaly, succeeding at the highest level
of the sport with guts and guile. “I think there’s been a change for
scouts to look at guys like me,” he said, “who aren’t very tall or throw
very hard but have a big heart, who have that edge.”
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In the next few months, Cortés, now a crucial part of the pitching rotation, will be far more than a feel-good story. Cole has struggled at times, and the Yankees’ other pitchers appear to be regressing. Meanwhile, since Cortés has never pitched this much before, the Yankees are seeking to limit his innings in August and September to make sure he doesn’t burn out. But come October, when the postseason begins, Nasty Nestor will be summoned for the biggest games of his life.
He already pitches as if each game were his last. Having gone through
the “bad stuff,” as he calls his struggles in the minors, he knows he
can’t afford to make mistakes. “Every day I’m out there pitching, I’m
nervous until I actually get there,” he said. “Once I step on the mound,
it’s like, Okay, I’ve been here before.”
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