The Phillies did not sign Nestor Cortes because they need another ace.
They signed him because late August has a funny way of turning pitching depth into something much more valuable.
Cortes, the former Yankees All-Star who signed a Major League contract with Philadelphia this week, arrives as one of the more intriguing bets the Phillies have made this season. He was optioned to Single-A Clearwater after signing, essentially beginning a late-summer audition for a role that has yet to be determined.
And that uncertainty might actually be the point.
“I think it’s depth. It’s another guy that’s got experience,” interim manager Don Mattingly said this week.
The Phillies can use both.
Cortes, 31, has not pitched in a Major League game since Sept. 3, 2025, when Baltimore knocked him out after 2⅓ innings in his final start with San Diego. He underwent surgery last October to repair a torn tendon in his throwing arm and remained unsigned until Philadelphia brought him aboard Wednesday.
So this cannot be treated like the Phillies simply added the Nestor Cortes everyone remembers from the Yankees.
That pitcher was excellent.
From 2021 through 2024, Cortes posted a 3.33 ERA across 489 innings for New York. His breakout came in 2022, when the former 36th-round pick went 12-4 with a 2.44 ERA over 158⅓ innings, earned an All-Star selection and finished eighth in American League Cy Young Award voting.
He did it without overwhelming velocity. Cortes survived — and often thrived — through deception, command, changing deliveries and an ability to disrupt a hitter’s timing.
That is also what makes his most recent season concerning.
Cortes made only eight starts between Milwaukee and San Diego in 2025 and finished 2-4 with a 6.29 ERA. His four-seam fastball averaged 90.1 mph, down from 92.1 the previous season, and hitters punished it to the tune of a .362 average and .828 slugging percentage.
For a pitcher who already operates without premium velocity, losing two miles per hour is not insignificant.
But there is another side to those numbers.
Cortes’ changeup produced a 48.6 percent whiff rate last season, with opponents hitting just .133 and slugging .200 against it. His sweeper held hitters to a .154 average and .154 slugging percentage.
The secondary stuff was still capable of getting outs.
The Phillies now have to determine whether the fastball has recovered enough to make those pitches work.
That is why Clearwater matters. And it is why Cortes should not necessarily be viewed through the traditional starter-or-reliever prism.
Maybe he becomes both.
Philadelphia entered Thursday 4½ games behind Atlanta in the National League East while holding a two-game cushion for the second Wild Card spot. The top of the rotation — Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler and Jesús Luzardo — remains a strength. The issue has been everything behind them.
Even after Aaron Nola delivered seven strong innings Wednesday, the Phillies were just 19-37 this season in games started by someone other than Sánchez, Wheeler or Luzardo. Nola owns a 5.12 ERA. Rookie Andrew Painter is at 6.43.
That is where Cortes becomes interesting.
If he can stretch out sufficiently, the Phillies could temporarily use a six-man rotation. It would give Wheeler, Sánchez and Luzardo an extra day of rest at times while limiting Painter’s workload during his first Major League season.
Cortes would not need to pitch like an All-Star.
Five competent innings every sixth day might be enough.
But there may be an even more useful role.
Picture Painter throwing four innings and Cortes handling the next three. Or Nola running into trouble early and Cortes entering before the game becomes a bullpen parade. The Phillies could use him as a bulk left-hander capable of turning an abbreviated start into something manageable.
That matters even more because the bullpen has hardly been untouched. Brad Keller is out for the season following surgery, while José Alvarado and Orion Kerkering have endured their own struggles.
It might also be the easiest path considering the calendar.
There are barely five-plus weeks remaining in the regular season. Asking a pitcher who has not appeared in a Major League game in nearly a year to rebuild toward 90 or 100 pitches is one thing.
Asking him to get nine outs is another.
And Cortes has done this before. Of his 143 career Major League appearances, 94 have been starts. He has experience pitching behind openers, working in relief and adjusting his routine.
That versatility is the real wager here.
Nobody should expect the Phillies to uncover the 2022 version of Nestor Cortes in Clearwater.
They do not need to.
They need to find out whether enough remains — enough deception, enough command, enough fastball, enough of those secondary pitches — to give Mattingly another way to navigate September.
Maybe that means a sixth starter.
Maybe it means a bulk reliever.
Maybe it means three innings on a night when Painter lasts four.
And maybe Cortes never gets far enough to become any of those things.
But for a team trying to get through the final weeks of the season without exhausting the pitchers it will depend upon in October, the potential payoff is obvious.
The Phillies did not necessarily sign Cortes to take somebody’s job.
They signed him so that, when September inevitably creates a pitching problem, they might have another way to solve it.
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