Nestor Cortes

Nestor Cortes throws in the low 90s, drops his arm slot wherever he feels like on a given pitch, and once got hitters out with a delivery he says he "just kind of thought of in the moment." The New York Yankees drafted him in the 36th round for $85,000, lost him twice before he ever stuck, and still got parts of five seasons out of a homegrown lefty who made an All-Star team and headlined a trade for a closer. They call him "Nasty Nestor." Nasty has never had less to do with velocity.

Path to the Bronx

Cortes went to Hialeah Senior High School in South Florida, committed to Florida International, and figured that was that. Then a Yankees scout who'd coached him back in middle school lobbied the front office, and the Yanks popped him in the 36th round of the 2013 draft. Eighty-five grand later, he was a Gulf Coast League nobody with modest stuff and a knack for not getting hit hard. (Nobody drafts a 36th-rounder expecting a big-league rotation piece. That's kind of the whole point of this story.)

Four years in the system wasn't enough to protect him. The Yankees left Cortes exposed after 2017, and Baltimore grabbed him in the Rule 5 draft. He debuted in the majors with the Orioles on March 31, 2018 -- and it went about as well as a 36th-rounder's Rule 5 tryout usually goes. Four appearances, a 7.71 ERA, and on April 13th, Baltimore sent him back to the Yankees, per the Rule 5 rules. The Yanks got him back for nothing. They still weren't sure what they had.

They found out again in November 2019, and again decided not much: designated for assignment ahead of a roster deadline, then shipped to Seattle for international bonus pool space -- about $28,000 worth. That's not a change-of-scenery trade. That's a change-of-scenery afterthought. Cortes hurt his elbow with the Mariners in August 2020, and while he was rehabbing at their alternate site, a Mariners coach tweaked his fastball grip to add backspin. Seattle outrighted him that October anyway. (Handed him a grip that would help make him an All-Star, then let him walk. That's the Mariners for you.) He became a free agent. On December 20, 2020, he signed a minor-league deal to come back to the Bronx a third time.

Read that again: the pitch grip that helped turn Cortes into a Yankee success story came from a team that had already let him go. Baseball's funny like that.

Yankees Career

The third time was the charm. Cortes broke out in 2021 as a multi-inning weapon and spot starter -- 22 appearances, 14 of them starts, a 2.90 ERA and 103 strikeouts in 93 innings. The deception was working. Hitters knew what was coming and still couldn't do much with it.

2022 is the year "Nasty Nestor" became a real thing and not just a nickname somebody tried out. Cortes made the rotation full-time and went 12-4 with a 2.44 ERA and 163 strikeouts across 158.1 innings, a freakin' 0.92 WHIP that still looks like a typo. He struck out 12 twice -- once at Baltimore in April, once in a rain-shortened complete-game shutout against the Orioles in September, one hit and two walks the whole night. In July, he made his first All-Star team, took the mound in the 6th inning at Dodger Stadium with Jose Trevino catching him, struck out two, walked Pete Alonso, hit Travis d'Arnaud, and got out of it anyway. A 36th-round afterthought, on the All-Star mound, doing exactly the thing that got him there -- making good hitters look silly without blowing anybody away.

The groin got him in October. Cortes pitched through discomfort in an ALCS start against Houston, and it turned into a Grade 2 strain that ended his postseason. Aaron Boone later admitted Cortes had been fighting it the whole run. (Pitching hurt in October is either heroic or reckless, depending on how the next test comes back. His came back a strain, not a tear. He got lucky.)

2023 was rough in a different way -- a left rotator cuff strain that cost him most of the year. IL in June, transferred to the 60-day list in July, one start back in August, right back on the IL days later, and done for good by mid-September. Twelve starts, a 4.97 ERA, and a Yankees team that missed the postseason for the first time since 2016. Cortes wasn't the reason. He also wasn't around to help.

He answered with a bounce-back in 2024 -- 30 starts, a career-high 174.1 innings, 162 strikeouts, a 9-10 record that undersells a 3.77 ERA and a genuinely good season. He closed it out on a heater: 4-0, 1.58 ERA over his final six starts, with a career-best 20 straight scoreless innings in August. Then, in late September, a left elbow flexor strain put him on the IL to end the year. Nobody thought much of it at the time. It mattered more than anyone knew.

Key Moments

Where It Stands

The Devin Williams trade looked like a fair swap the day it happened -- a durable, deceptive lefty starter for a two-time National League Reliever of the Year. It looks worse for the Yankees in hindsight. Williams struggled through a rough 2025 in the Bronx and lost his grip on the ninth inning by August. Cortes, for his part, barely got a foothold in Milwaukee -- two starts before an elbow issue shut him down -- and was flipped again to San Diego that July. The flexor strain that first showed up in September 2024 came back around, and in October 2025 he had surgery to repair a torn tendon in his throwing arm. Nine to ten months, they said. That pushes him toward the tail end of 2026 at best.

None of that erases what he did in pinstripes. A kid the Yankees drafted for $85,000, lost twice, and got back on a minor-league deal turned into a rotation mainstay who made an All-Star team throwing a fastball that wouldn't scare anybody on paper. The deception was always the point. For a few years in the Bronx, it was more than enough.

A 36th-round pick, cut loose twice, still made an All-Star team without ever touching the mid-90s. If that's not a Yankees story, I don't know what is.