This Date In Transaction History: Yankees Sign Nestor Cortes

Every winter, every organization in baseball signs dozens of free agents to minor league deals, mostly in hopes of finding a useful bullpen or bench piece on the cheap or giving a veteran the opportunity to battle for a roster spot during Spring Training. Finding a true diamond in the rough through this process is exceedingly rare, but it happened for the Yankees four years ago to the day when they officially signed left-hander Nestor Cortes to a minor league deal. At the time, the southpaw was just one month removed from his 26th birthday and had a career 6.72 ERA across 79 innings of work at the big league level. Despite that brutal start to Cortes’s MLB career, the Yankees’ decision to bring him in as pitching depth for the 2021 season quickly proved to be one of the most fruitful minor league signings in recent memory.

The club was plenty familiar with Cortes when they signed him to the deal, as it was actually the lefty’s third stint in the Bronx. First drafted by the club in the 36th-round of the 2013 draft, Cortes was plucked from the club in the 2017 Rule 5 draft by the Orioles, but was returned just a few months later. He then threw 66 2/3 innings of work for the Yankees during his rookie season in 2019, though he struggled to a 5.67 ERA and found himself traded to the Mariners that November. Cortes made just five appearances in Seattle before electing minor league free agency and returning to the Yankees prior to the 2021 season.

The lefty’s return to the Bronx wouldn’t get underway in earnest until deep into May, when he was added to the club’s roster as a multi-inning relief option out of the bullpen. Cortes’s first appearance of the year came on May 30 against the Tigers, and he pitched somewhat unevenly with two runs (one earned) allowed in 3 2/3 innings of work that saw him strikeout three, give up three hits and walk four. Throughout the month of June, however, Cortes looked utterly dominant. He pitched to a microscopic 0.64 ERA across six appearances (14 innings) that month and struck out a whopping 42.3% of opponents.

That overpowering run of success earned Cortes a spot in the starting rotation when the calendar flipped to July, and he managed to keep a hold on that spot in the Yankees’ rotation throughout the remainder of the season. In 14 starts throughout the second half of the season, Cortes pitched to an excellent 3.07 ERA in 73 1/3 innings of work and struck out a respectable 25.4% of his opponents. His emergence helped the Yankees to weather injuries to Corey Kluber, Luis Gil, and Domingo Germán that tested their starting depth throughout the season. While Cortes didn’t pitch in the postseason that year as the Yankees fell to the Red Sox in the AL Wild Card game, he entered 2022 with a firm grip on a role in the starting rotation.

It turned out to be a career year for the left-hander. Cortes was among the very best pitchers in the sport in 2022, earning his first (and to this point, only) All-Star appearance and finishing within the top 10 of AL Cy Young award voting that year. While his 158 1/3 innings of work weren’t enough to qualify for the ERA title, he made a respectable 28 starts and his 2.44 ERA was the seventh-lowest in the majors among hurlers with at least 150 innings of work and left him sandwiched between Shohei Ohtani and Max Fried on that year’s leaderboard. His 26.5% strikeout rate, 3.13 FIP, and 3.7 fWAR all ranked in the top 20 among that group as well. The season to remember saw Cortes go on to make three key postseason starts for the Yankees that October. He cruised through two starts against the Guardians with a 2.70 ERA in ten innings but was ultimately on the mound for the Yankees’ final game of the season, when the Astros completed their sweep of the Bombers in Game 4 of the ALCS.

Following Cortes’s career year in 2022, the lefty saw his production take a bit of a downturn. 2023 was something of a lost season for Cortes, as he made just 12 starts due to a pair of rotator cuff strains and struggled to a below-average 4.97 ERA when he was healthy enough to take the mound. 2024 was a step in the right direction for the lefty as he was healthy for the majority of the year, but his results paled in comparison to what they had been in the first two years of his return to Yankee Stadium. In 174 1/3 innings of work for the Yankees last year, he pitched to a 3.77 ERA (109 ERA+) with a 3.84 FIP but struggled in the second half with a 4.41 ERA over his final 12 appearances.

Still, that’s solid mid-to-back of the rotation production overall and it was a worrying hit to the club’s depth when a late-season flexor strain seemingly endangered Cortes’s postseason in late September. The lefty made it back to the mound in time for the club’s World Series appearance against the Yankees, although some fans might wish he hadn’t done so after he surrendered a walk-off grand slam to Freddie Freeman in the tenth inning of Game 1. Cortes went on to throw 1 2/3 scoreless relief innings in Game 3, but had little impact during the rest of the series as the Yankees dropped the series to the Dodgers in five games.

New York traded Cortes for a second time last month when they packaged him with infield prospect Caleb Durbin and cash considerations to acquire star Brewers closer Devin Williams. At least for the time being, that trade has brought Cortes’s lengthy Yankees story to a close. With Cortes entering his age-30 season and just one year away from free agency, it’s anyone’s guess if he’ll find himself back in the Bronx at some point before his career comes to a close, but he leaves New York as one of the club’s most valuable signings in recent years.

Over the last four seasons, the lefty has pitched to a 3.33 ERA in 489 innings of work across 93 appearances (84 starts) while punching out 25.2% of his opponents. It’s a performance that was worth 9.4 fWAR and 10.3 bWAR, and even in 2025 the decision to bring Cortes back into the fold figures to be a gift that keeps on giving now that Williams and his career 1.83 ERA will spend his final year before free agency closing out games in the Bronx. Garnering that level of production out of a mid-20s minor league signing who has a career ERA north of 6.00 is something any club would be elated about, and the outcome stands as a clear win for Brian Cashman’s front office.