Yankees Pitcher uses funky deliveries to trick Shohei Ohtani, a breakdown
What Happened
On June 29, 2021, Yankees lefty Nestor Cortes faced Shohei Ohtani during one of the best stretches of Ohtani's MVP season. Ohtani had already hit two home runs in this game, part of a home run binge that ran through most of June. With two strikes and room to play, Cortes broke out a delivery with somewhere around 10 or 11 leg pumps before the slowest leg kick imaginable, drawing a hold-up from the umpire and leaving Ohtani laughing in the box. Cortes then mixed a quick pitch and his normal motion, and Ohtani put decent wood on a curveball that turned into a routine flyout to Brett Gardner.
Why This Matters
Cortes is the rare big leaguer who openly admits he doesn't have the velocity to overpower hitters, so timing disruption is his whole game. There's no rule against varying your windup or leg pumps as long as you don't balk or stop and restart with runners on, which is why the umpire only stepped in to keep the at-bat moving. Doing it against Ohtani in the middle of his MVP year, with two homers already on the board that night, raised the stakes and the comedy. It worked too. Ohtani flew out, and the moment helped turn Cortes into a fan favorite who later made an All-Star team in 2022. For a guy who'd been designated for assignment and bounced minors to majors, deception wasn't a gimmick. It was survival.
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Key Moments
Who / What Is Involved
Players: Nestor Cortés, Shohei Ohtani. Teams: Yankees.
Key Terms Mentioned
Full Transcript
Click timestamps to jump to that momentwe've got an incredibly fun at bat here
between shoi Otani and Nestor Cortez and
it is brought to you by the morning brew
a free daily newsletter delivered Monday
through Sunday and let me explain and
some people watch these that don't know
a ton about that baseball but they enjoy
the videos Otani on the left is a Phenom
and he's hitting home runs at an
incredible pace and that was a home run
on June 13th and he's just breaking
pitchers hearts or their necks or their
souls in June 8 18th he hit two home
runs June 19th he hit a home run June
20th he hits a home run June 25th he's
hitting a home run June 27th he hits a
home run June 28th hits a home run
against the Yankees now on this date
June 29th hits one home run June 29th
hits two home runs now this is June 29th
Nester Cortez on the other hand he's an
up and down pitcher minors to Majors
doesn't have great stuff so he readily
admits he he relies on deception and
messing up hitters timing and doing
stuff like you just saw and weird wind
ups and funky deliveries you can see
three right here on the left you have a
quick pitch in the middle you have his
normal delivery and on the right you
have I'm going to do whatever I want to
do and have some fun just to make you
think about what I'm doing so here he is
against shohi who has two home runs in
this game already up to this point gets
a swinging strike there normal delivery
on the 78 M perh curveball then gets sh
swinging big big there and misses so now
he's got two strikes and some wiggle
room so he's going to have some fun one
pump two pump three pump four pump five
pump six pump seven pump eight pump nine
pump slow like and the umpire's like
enough enough and Jo's like what are you
doing man is this real am I in a prank
show or something what's going
on maybe the most I've seen a lot of
Nester Cortez delivery and then he goes
straight for the quick
pitch I seen a lot of neeter Cortez
funky deliveries to mess with the guy's
timing i' never seen this he goes 1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 nine 10 10 or 11 pumps into
the slowest leg kick before the Umpire
Taps out he's like dude you lost to me I
can't even keep up but he's got Shi
disarmed man shi's laughing doesn't have
the Killer Instinct he gets pretty good
wood on that curveball and nestor's like
oh no please stay in the park Brett's
got it for an hour out and they're still
laughing as they round the bases otani's
just going to start chuckling thinking
about it neeter Cortez is like babbe
maybe all that nonsense work how about
that and showy looks at his teammates
and he's like what was that I don't know
what was he doing that was weird here's
three different deliveries netor showed
Otani in this at bat got a lot of
options here it's all about timing so
some pitchers if they don't think they
got the stuff to get you out they'll do
this strowman does it quo does it a lot
of pitchers do it and if you want to
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