TAMPA, Fla. — It took Nestor Cortes a while to figure it out. The Cuban native, who grew up outside of Miami and was picked by the Yankees in the 36th round of the 2013 draft, spent the first five years of his professional pitching career just trying not to get released. In the last three, he’s taken a deeper look at himself as a pitcher and like the Yankees, found out he’s more than the guy who uses the funky delivery to create deception.
Cortes is a good pitcher, who knows how to do the job as both a starter and a reliever and for the Yankees that is going to be critical this year.
“I think it’s huge,” Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake said of Cortes’ versatility. “It’s like, the more guys that we can create flexibility with gives us more ways to align them to get into situations that fit their skill set. So you know could be just being creative in the bullpen with how we’re using our back-end guys and trying to spread the workload a little bit better this year.”
