Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: New York Yankees

Introduction & Glossary Post Here

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Pitchers

Gerrit Cole

The ERA came up a bit on Cole in 2023, but that’s pretty much the end of the bad news on the guy.

200.2 IP, 3.50 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 32.4% K%, 6.3% BB%

I don’t think we really need to talk about Gerrit Cole. As you see above, everything stayed right on pace with his recent career, he’s elite. The K-BB% at 26% is great, and the SwStr% and CSW% stayed amazing. The barrel rate is up there, but that’s nothing new. The guy will give up some homers, but he’s a bonafide ace and he’s been an iron man to boot. Only Aaron Nola has faced more batters than Cole since 2018, and nobody has thrown more pitches. Cole is a top three SP for me.

Comps/RankArounds: Corbin Burnes, Sandy Alcantara

Nestor Cortes

Cortes was one of the big surprises of 2022, coming relatively out of nowhere to do this:

28 GS, 2.44 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 26.5% K%, 6.2% BB%

Those are sparkling numbers, and the K-BB% stayed above 20% there which backs them up. The numbers that aren’t as impressive:

29.6% CSW%, 12.4% SwStr%, 34.2% GB%

None of his pitches get a ton of whiffs, but he clearly is deceptive and is able to locate his pitches well. He will turn 28 in December, so he’s still quite young.

In 2021:

14 GS, 93 IP, 2.90 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 27.5% K%, 6.7% BB%

So we saw some pretty good stuff there as well, maybe we should have seen the strong 2022 season coming!

There’s nothing here that should make me not like Cortes, but for some reason I don’t really like Cortes. But I will try to swallow that and trust the numbers.

Comps/RankArounds: Alek Manoah

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