A quality start like the one Nestor Cortes had on Monday was just the boost that the New York Yankees’ pitching staff needed, and for multiple reasons.
For starters, it reinstates fans’ confidence in Cortes. The 29-year-old southpaw had a starkly different 2023 season compared to his 2022 All-Star campaign, where he had a career-best 2.44 ERA across 28 games started.
Last season was polluted with injuries to the left rotator cuff and shoulder, limiting his outings to just 12. In those dozen starts, he wasn’t dealing at the top of his game: his ERA was inflated at 4.97 and he was less-than-consistent when he had the ball.
The common thread throughout the last two seasons is that he forces flyouts more than any other out that’s not a strikeout, coincidentally 36.4% in both years. This is, in large part,
due to the combination of his four-seam fastball, cutter, and sweeper combination that batters
typically get under.
His splits this season show that the top half of the zone is where he does the most damage per Baseball Savant. If examining the strike zone from the umpire’s perspective, 69% of batters take swings when they see a pitch in the top-left corner and 45% of batters have whiffs in the top-right corner.
With a healthy pitcher that can go the stance, this bodes well for a bullpen that has recently
gotten a setback with Jonathan Loaisiga needing UCL surgery along with Tommy Kahlne still being on the IL.
This time around, “Nasty Nestor” is different. He went eight innings on Monday, giving up only two singles in the process. Half of his outs were flyouts, and a quarter of them were strikeouts. He was efficient, throwing 102 pitches en route to the win.
“That was fun,” Cortes said. “When you’re out there giving guys zeros, you just keep them in the game long enough for them to explode like that. That’s what you hope for as a starting pitcher.”
