In a sport steeped in routine and timing, Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman are doing their best to disrupt it for the batters they face.
The Yankees rotation mates go about it in different ways, but both have mastered the art of hesitation and deception in their deliveries. Cortes is usually more extreme — including using a pump-fake against the Guardians earlier this month that MLB has since declared illegal — while Stroman is more subtle and rooted in his body control.
Their goal, though, is similar.
“Hitters are most likely used to just stepping in the box, doing their routine and then the pitcher doing the same,” Stroman told Sports+ during spring training. “So anytime you can f–k that up, I think it helps.”
Stroman and Cortes pick their spots for when to mix in the hesitation. They don’t go into any game or specific at-bat planning to use it, but based on reading hitters’ swings, they may decide at the spur of the moment to try it.
“In this day and age, it’s pretty unique to have guys that are still trying some of that stuff,” pitching coach Matt Blake said this week. “Obviously they do it in a little bit different ways. Nestor probably a little more arm angle/deception, little more hesitation. Stro, probably more just subtleties of his timing. But both of them do a nice job of trying to keep hitters off-balance with different looks.”
For Cortes, there are no bounds to what he might try.
If there are no runners on base, the left-hander will sometimes mess with his windup, either swinging his right foot backward or forward — or sometimes both — as he twists his torso and lingers mid-delivery before throwing his pitch. If there are runners on, the deception comes more in how he changes his arm slot on certain occasions — sometimes dropping down to more of a sidearmer, typically when throwing his sinker or slider — or mixes in a quick pitch.
“When people ask me how I do it, I always answer with, ‘I don’t know,’ because I don’t practice it,” Cortes said.
Stroman, meanwhile, usually stays more compact. A right-hander with strong balance, he uses it to his advantage during his windup, at times pausing at certain points — either has he takes a step back with his left foot or once that left leg is already in the air.
“I’m a big feel person when it comes to that,” said Stroman, who has a 2.93 ERA through his first five starts. “I do that on the mound, just whenever I feel. I don’t go into any at-bat or into any sequence like, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this.’ That’s something that if I get it in my gut to do it in the moment, I’m going to do it.
“I feel like Nestor’s kind of the same. It’s when you want to give someone a different look or a different angle. This game is all about timing. We essentially become robots as pitchers, giving them the same look every single time. So being able to keep that changing, it does nothing but help throw the hitters off.”
While Stroman does not plan ahead for when he is going to mess with timing, he does prepare for it with his strength and balance work between starts and before a game, which Cortes took note of early in camp.
“Now watching him, it’s like, I see him warming up and he does handstands,” Cortes said. “He’s super strong. He knows how to control his body.
“So now I’m like, ‘Hey, maybe I might be strong too,’” Cortes added with a laugh.
“We’re going to get him doing handstands and then his s—t’s only going to get better,” Stroman said. “But he does it really well. It’s hard to do. People don’t realize how hard it is to change arm slots and be accurate.”
Stroman has done more of the hesitation in recent years, but the roots of it date back to his rookie year with the Blue Jays in 2014.
rookie with the Blue Jays in 2014. X/@PitchingNinja
During his first major league start, on May 31, 2014 against the Royals, the Blue Jays were up big by the fourth or fifth inning when Jose Bautista — who would become one of Stroman’s best friends, with the pitcher calling him “a thinker, just like I’m creative” — offered a suggestion.
“My first big league start — I’m nervous, like, I’m pitching well — he sits down next to me on the bench and he’s like, ‘We should start messing with timing,’” said Stroman, who pitched six innings of one-run ball in that game.
So during his tenure with the Blue Jays, Stroman — a former two-way player at Duke — would often go sit in the batting cage with the likes of Bautista, Troy Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, Melky Cabrera and Jose Reyes, which helped plant the seeds.
“I credit all those guys to how I am as a pitcher,” Stroman said. “I used to go and pick their [brains] and sit in there. Even to this day, I’m someone who gravitates a little bit more towards hitters when it comes to that. But yeah, those guys really planted in my head how much timing messes with them, and these are the best hitters that I’ve been around. When I used to hear them talk about how guys would mess with timing and it would throw them off in the box, I just put that in the back of my mind and implemented it.”
Stroman and Cortes have both been able to use hesitation and deception without it becoming too much of a distraction to themselves. That’s not the case for every pitcher that tries it.
“Nestor toes that line a little bit with some of the tricks [he does], but it always kind of makes sense what he’s trying to do,” Blake said. “There’s enough track record of him doing it well. He has a high enough strike rate that it’s not going to derail him as far as finding the plate.
“Over the years, we’ve had a handful of other guys try some hesitation and I always feel like sometimes it comes at a cost of executing pitches and losing count control. I think being smart about the times you use it and what you’re doing in the flow of the game, those two have a pretty good understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish and it fits into what they’re doing.”
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As for Cortes’ pump fake in Cleveland that went viral? Well, that will be coming out of his bag of tricks as MLB informed him it was not legal. Cortes thought it was “kind of funny, kind of worked for me,” as Andres Gimenez fouled off the 0-2 pitch.
“I was kind of like, ‘Did that just happen?’” Blake said. “And then I had to watch the replay to make sure that’s what I saw. I wasn’t totally sure it was legal, which it wasn’t, but you do it on the fly without people expecting it and get away with it once in a while.”
Rotation depth impresses Cole
Stroman and Cortes are part of a Yankees rotation that has done a solid job early of holding down the fort until Gerrit Cole returns from the 60-day injured list — which at this point might be around mid-June in a best-case scenario.
Consider Cole impressed, as the rotation entered Thursday with a 3.01 ERA, good for the third-lowest in the majors.
“They’ve been excellent,” Cole said. “Throwing the ball well. I like the adjustments that we’re making. Just a concerted effort from one start to the next to improve. It’s nice to see that come to fruition. We’ve been executing it well. Guys are throwing the ball well and bouncing back after they had some challenges.”
Sterling sounds
From Aaron Boone’s lips to the Yankee Stadium speakers: The Yankees have added a nice touch after their wins in The Bronx. Right as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” begins to play, the Stadium is now playing a recording of John Sterling’s “Yankees win! Thuuuuhhhh Yankeeeeees win!” over the sound system.
Sterling may now be retired, but he’ll still have some presence when the Yankees win at home. It was an idea that Boone suggested ahead of Sterling being honored last Saturday in The Bronx and was quickly incorporated into the fabric of Yankees victories.
