{"id":68449,"date":"2024-03-16T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=68449"},"modified":"2024-03-15T21:42:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T01:42:28","slug":"yankees-nestor-cortes-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/16\/yankees-nestor-cortes-opening-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Name Nestor Cort\u00e9s Opening Day Starter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Opening Day just got nasty after the Yankees announced on Friday that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/cortene01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nestor Cort\u00e9s<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will be their Opening Day starter. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cort\u00e9s will take the mound for the Yankees when they open the season in place of an <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/13\/troubling-gerrit-coles-elbow-injury\/\" target=\"_self\">injured Gerrit Cole<\/a>. The reigning AL Cy Young winner is expected to miss the next 10-12 weeks with an elbow injury. Cole was experiencing \u201cdiscomfort\u201d in his elbow and was not recovering well between outings, which led the Yankees to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/11\/yankees-gerrit-cole-mri-elbow\/\" target=\"_self\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">order an MRI<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The injury will not require surgery now, and Cole could return after &#8220;rest, rehab, and some conservative, non-surgical&#8221; treatments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Nestor Cortes will be the Yankees\u2019 Opening Day starter.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bryan Hoch \u26be\ufe0f (@BryanHoch) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BryanHoch\/status\/1768734203045175440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 15, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yankees manager Aaron Boone ruled out both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rodonca01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carlos Rod\u00f3n<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/stromma01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marcus Stroman<\/a> for Opening Day, saying it was too late to change their spring schedules. That left the Yankees with fan favorite Nestor Cort\u00e9s and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/schmicl01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Clarke Schmidt<\/a> as their Opening Day options.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Yankees Name Nestor Cort\u00e9s Opening Day Starter<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nestor Cort\u00e9s had a breakout season in 2022, earning his first All-Star selection and finishing eighth in Cy Young voting. Cort\u00e9s struggled through 12 starts last year and spent most of the season on the injured list. He spent much of the offseason between his South Florida home and the Yankees\u2019 Tampa complex, focusing on his rehab. The offseason rehab appears to have helped, as Cort\u00e9s says that he feels healthy and is recovering well between outings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cort\u00e9s has had a rough spring, allowing nine earned runs on 17 hits while striking out 13 over 10 innings. Most of the damage came when he gave up six runs on nine hits over 3.1 innings against Minnesota. Cort\u00e9s has two spring starts left and focuses on getting outs and not allowing runs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Yankees hope Cort\u00e9s can return to form this season and help them return to the postseason. He will open the season against a formidable Astros lineup looking to get back to the World Series. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s special,\u201d Cort\u00e9s said about being named the Yankees\u2019 Opening Day starter. This will be his first Opening Day start, and according to Boone, the 29-year-old is \u201cready to go.\u201d Nestor will become just the fifth pitcher drafted and signed by the Yankees to start a season opener. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cort\u00e9s will also be the first left-hander to start an Opening Day game for the Yankees since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sabatc.01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CC Sabathia<\/a> in 2014. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He will oppose Astros lefty <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/valdefr01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Framber Valdez<\/a> when the Yankees travel to Houston to face the Astros on Opening Day, March 28.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opening Day just got nasty after the Yankees announced on Friday that Nestor Cort\u00e9s will be their Opening Day starter. Cort\u00e9s will take the mound for the Yankees when they open the season in place of an injured Gerrit Cole. The reigning AL Cy Young winner is expected to miss the next 10-12 weeks with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":68461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,1071],"tags":[1787,197,858,2359,611,246,285,1130,895],"class_list":["post-68449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-featured","category-mlb","tag-aaron-boone","tag-carlos-rodon","tag-cc-sabathia","tag-framber-valdez","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-houston-astros","tag-marcus-stroman","tag-opening-day","tag-spring-training"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}