Even before the three seasons of Rookie ball, the Rule 5 draft, the first time getting designated for assignment, the season of frequent shuttling between Triple-A and the majors, the second DFA, the trade, the outright waivers off another 40-man roster and rejoining the Yankees organization for a third time on a minor league contract in 2021, Nestor Cortes’ improbable rise to becoming one of MLB’s top pitchers this season almost never got off the ground.
To begin that long road in professional baseball, Cortes needed to get drafted and signed. And on the weekend of the draft in June 2013, 30 rounds came and went without Cortes hearing his name called.
So around the same time Cortes turned off the draft tracker on his computer, thinking his chances were busted, Carlos Marti planted himself outside of a bathroom in the Yankees’ complex in Tampa to wait for scouting director Damon Oppenheimer. Marti, at the time an area scout for the organization who also had coached Cortes on a summer travel team, wanted to make one last push to draft the 5-foot-10, left-handed pitcher out of Hialeah High School in Florida whose fastball averaged 89 miles per hour.
“I thought, ‘It’s now or never,’” Marti said. “That [conversation] will be etched in my brain forever.
