The Legend Of Nestor Cortes Nearly Becomes Historic For The New York Yankees

New York is a city filled with pitchers considered to be must watch at various points. With the Yankees it can be Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino and across town with the Mets it is Max Scherzer and a healthy Jacob deGrom.

In the early returns you can add another name to the list and perhaps it is an unlikely one in Nestor Cortes, the left-handed 36th-round pick who nearly made some history Monday afternoon when he came within five outs of the second no-hitter of the season and the second in a New York ballpark.

Pitching a little over a week after Tylor Megill and four relievers combined to no-hit the Phillies in the second no-hitter in Mets history, Cortes seemed like a strong candidate to finish the no-hitter if he could get those final five outs, especially with how effective his 51 cutters were.

And for the most part he was cruising, though it seemed like some signs of fatigue were evident when he issued two walks in the seventh before getting Kole Calhoun to hit into the shift. He got the 22nd out when he fanned Charlie Culberson on three pitches, and he was a strike away from getting the 23rd out until Eli White cleanly singled to center on a 92-mph fastball, which in this age of velocity may seem a little slow but with the deception and movement, it can be just as tricky and elusive for hitters.

Instantly manager Aaron Boone popped out of the dugout and lifted Cortes but not before an ovation from a fanbase who enjoys the unheralded player as much as the star player if not more.

When Cortes’ flirtation with history ended, it gave him a 1.41 ERA and 15 straight starts of allowing three runs or less, a mark that is tied for third-most in team history with Ron Guidry.

Guidry did in the first two months of his 25-3 season in 1978 that included his famous 18-strikeout game against the Angels. Guidry was also a third-round pick by the Yankees, who picked him 67th overall in 1971.

Cortes was picked 1,094th in 2013, a position that often goes to players who do not sign out of high school, attend college, and improve their draft status a few years later.

Instead Cortes followed the path of another Miami-native in Raul Ibanez, who was drafted in the 36th round in 1992 by the Mariners out of Miami-Dade Community College. Ibanez made the majors in 1996 and wound up hitting 305 homers and getting 2,034 hits for six teams, including the Yankees in 2012.

A year after Ibanez’s only season with the Yankees, Cortes was selected but his progression was a series of stops and starts.

He was left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft following the 2017 season despite pitching to a 2.06 ERA at three minor league levels. The Orioles claimed him, but he lasted four appearances on a 115-loss team, returned to the Yankees, and had a 4.03 ERA in Triple-A.

“The three years, ’18, ’19 and 20 were pretty rough on me,” Cortes said. “I’ve been playing baseball since I was 4. I feel like that’s the only thing I know how to do. I came out of high school; I don’t have anything to fall back on, so I was going to ride this as long I could.”

Cortes won five games for the 103-win Yankees in 2019 but also had a high ERA which resulted him in being sent to Seattle. He lasted five games with the Mariners, got released, returned to the Yankees, and began to emerge last summer.

“I’ve been playing baseball since I was four,” Cortes said. “I feel like that’s the only thing I know how to do. I came out of high school; I don’t have anything to fall back on, so I was going to ride this as long as I could. Thankfully it started clicking last year, and hopefully I can continue to do it.”

Despite his emergence, going into the season there seemed questions from outside the Yankees about Cortes being a viable candidate for a rotation spot that seemed to be filled with questions beyond Cole.

It even appeared that way for Cortes, who spent part of his offseason calling pitching coach Matt Blake about his role on the team

Not so much for manager Boone, who invoked the name of Steve Carlton when discussing one of the cutters to Marcus Semien that seemed to vanish.

“He was guaranteed a spot in my rotation,” Boone said. “Oh, yeah. I went into the season — I’m not surprised at all by this. Now, if we go back 14 months, maybe I’m surprised that he’s this dominant, this kind of staple in our rotation. But going into spring training, not at all. — I think parts of last year when went into the rotation. He was this guy last year.

It was April 23 when Cortes took a no-hitter into the fifth against Cleveland and kept it going by diving at first to get an out on Steven Kwan. At that point, Boone described the play by saying “The legend of Nestor grows.”

Little did Boone or anyone know a little over two weeks later, the legend of Nestor nearly became a historical achievement done seven times by Nolan Ryan and four times by Sandy Koufax.