Yankees: Will there ever be another Nestor Cortes Jr. in baseball again?

New York Yankees starting pitcher Nestor Cortes Jr. has taken the baseball world by storm in the 2022 season. He had a good 2021 season (2.90 ERA in 22 games/14 starts) but he has been even more dominant in the 2022 season.

Through his first seven starts, Cortes has an ERA of 1.35 (ERA+ of 271), both of which lead all of baseball. While he has had some good luck, his 2.44 FIP suggests that he is still pitching very well. He has a WHIP of 0.85, a walk rate of 2.5 per nine innings, and 11.0 strikeouts per nine innings, all three of which are excellent to elite levels.

Despite this, there is one area where he is unlike nearly all pitchers in this age: he doesn’t throw hard … and that’s something that teams are shying away from.

New York Yankees starter Nestor Cortes Jr. may be the last of an era: a true pitcher

New York Yankees starting pitcher Nestor Cortes Jr. has shown that the art of pitching (and not just throwing as hard as possible) is still alive … and batters have struggled with that concept so far in 2022.

For baseball fans out there who have watched the game for decades (or know their history well), fastball velocity is up more than ever before. Part of this is by where the radar gun measures a pitcher’s pitch (decades ago, it was when it reached the plate and now, it is as soon as the pitcher releases it) but average velocities have gone up.

As J.J. Cooper of Baseball America noted in this article in 2020, even the way that pitches are measured have changed in the last decade (MLB now measures Aroldis Chapman’s 105.1 MPH fastball in 2010 as a 105.8 MPH fastball). He also notes the difference in measuring from the release to the plate.

But even from 2008 (the start of the Pitch F/X era) to 2020, the average fastball velocity increased by two miles per hour.

In the 1970s and 1980s, even with measuring the ball closer to home plate (if there was a radar gun at all), the average fastball velocity has gone up significantly from the low-to-mid 80s to the mid-90s (which is realistically around 4-5 MPH when you consider the measuring distance).

With this, though, Nestor Cortes Jr. has one of the slowest fastball’s in baseball. His average fastball velocity (four-seam, cut, and sinking fastballs) is 88.1 MPH, which is in the 4th percentile.

For many pitchers in today’s era, their changeup is faster than that.

As a result, hitters aren’t used to seeing pitches be that speed or even lower with his offspeed pitches (his slider is at an average of 76.3 MPH), hitters aren’t used to it. That’s why his strikeout rate is in the 91st percentile.

But will his style of pitching change the way pitchers pitch? Unfortunately, probably not.

In 2015, we saw Dallas Keuchel (who is a left-handed finesse pitcher like Cortes Jr.) win the AL  Cy Young Award and come in fifth in AL Cy Young Award voting in 2020 and he didn’t usher the bygone era back into the fold.

Jamie Moyer (who was a left-handed finesse pitcher in the majors for a quarter of a century) didn’t either (especially by the end of his career in 2012).

But, perhaps, teams should give more of a look to high schoolers and college players that have good control and pitch under the current standard hitting speed, like Cortes Jr.

The problem is that with the shortened MLB draft (down to 20 rounds), Nestor Cortes Jr. wouldn’t even be drafted today, as he was drafted in the 36th round in 2013. So a true pitcher and not a hard thrower could never even be drafted, let alone dominate in the majors like Cortes is.

With the three-batter minimum bringing the end of the LOOGY era (Lefty One Out Guy) to an end, that further brings the end of an era the pitcher that out crafts a batter.

So Nestor Cortes Jr. truly could be the last of an era in baseball. If he is, it will truly be a shame.