Nestor Cortes' Home Run Problem Requires A Creative Solution

The San Diego Padres lost another game on Wednesday. It was their sixth loss in their last seven games, and a sweep at the hands of a rather listless Baltimore Orioles squad (which followed a series loss to a Minnesota Twins club that traded virtually everybody they could prior to last month's trade deadline). The team remains in the hunt for the division lead (2.5 games back of Los Angeles), but things have gone south fast to start the month of September.

At the center of the team's latest tale of woe is the Wednesday start from Nestor Cortes. The same Cortes who looked so strong against the Dodgers barely two weeks ago. Therein, he threw six innings of one-hit ball in a crucial game against an upper-echelon team. His pair of subsequent starts, however, have not featured remotely the same level of efficiency that Cortes was able to demonstrate there. 

The first sign of trouble emerged against the Twins on Friday. Cortes was only able to work three innings, ceding five hits and a pair of walks en route to allowing three earned runs. He threw 66 pitches before being lifted with no outs in the fourth inning. The bullpen contingent of Wandy Peralta, David Morgan, and Yuki Matsui couldn't hold it down in relief, as each allowed at least a run in addition to what Cortes' short outing had wrought on the scoreboard. 

Things were much worse on Wednesday, however. Cortes wasn't even able to replicate his work from the prior outing, as he only worked to one out into the third inning. Across those 2 1/3 frames, he walked three Orioles hitters and allowed seven hits, four of which were home runs. It's the latter component of the line that represents the largest issue, because this isn't the first time we've seen this from Cortes in 2025. 

Back on March 29, Nestor Cortes made his first start with the Milwaukee Brewers against his old mates out of the Bronx. He allowed five home runs in that game as torpedo bat fever gripped the nation. Four of those came in the first inning. It was a trend we saw early in his tenure in San Diego, as Cortes had a similar outing against the San Francisco Giants on August 18. There, he allowed a trio of homers in the first inning, including back-to-back shots to open the game. Cortes was able to settle in and work into the sixth inning, but it was a game that the Padres would go on to lose. 

Which allows us to circle back to Wednesday's start versus Baltimore. Things started with a leadoff home run off the bat of Jackson Holliday. Cortes' first inning included an addition hit, a walk, and another hit before he was able to close out the side. After working through an uneventful second, things went off the rails in the third. A walk and a single got the inning underway before the outcomes read homer-homer-homer from each of Colton Cowser, Coby Mayo, and Alex Jackson. The start was a microcosm of Cortes' 2025... in two ways. 

The first is the home run angle. Across 34 1/3 innings of work in '25, Cortes has a home run rate against of 24.5 percent. The highest among qualifying starting pitchers is St. Louis' Andre Pallante, at 18.7. Tampa Bay's Shane Baz follows at 16.9. If we changed the criteria to pitchers with just 30 innings to their name at minimum, the Athletics' J.T. Ginn takes over at 26.7 percent. The difference, of course, is that Ginn plays his home games at a minor league park for a team not remotely in playoff contention. Cortes, who holds down the second spot, has no such luxury. The homers are a massive problem. 

That's especially true given factor number two, which is when the home runs are primarily manifesting. Courtesy of Baseball Reference, here is where issues are presenting themselves for Cortes over the course of a ballgame: 

It's not a mystery as to what is plaguing Cortes in his poor starts, which are starting to pile up. A .421 average and .488 on-base percentage is ugly enough as it is. But the real issue is in the nine homers. Of the 13 total home runs that Cortes has allowed this year, nine have come in the first inning. He's been largely fine elsewhere.

If we wanted to extend this to overall performance splits, Cortes has a 7.53 ERA and 11.65 FIP the first time through the order. That drops to 6.89/6.27, respectively, the second time and 0.00/4.52 in those rare instances in which Cortes has worked to a third pass through the order. The ultimate point here is that Cortes is having issues getting out of the gate. He can be fine once he settles in, but there's a real issue confronting the beginning of an outing. 

Which presents two possible solutions. The first simply requires Cortes to be better to start individual plate appearances, both at the top of an inning and the start of the plate appearance itself. He's demonstrated a tendency to groove a first pitch for a strike, reflected in a .429 average and .500 OBP to the first batter of a game and a .273 average/.368 OBP to the first batter of an inning. Further, if opposing hitters are swinging at the first pitch of an appearance, they're hitting .385, reaching base at a .419 clip, and have hit seven homers. There's an obvious need for improvement from the jump, in whatever form that needs to take. 

The solution that has yet to be explored is that of an opener. Even in the absence of Jason Adam, the Padres' bullpen runs deep. They have a number of bridge arms that could be serviceable in the first inning, including someone like David Morgan. Getting the first inning squared away and then deploying Cortes as a bulk reliever could help to relieve him of some of the issues early in games. 

Either way, there's a drastic need for a change in the approach toward Nestor Cortes outings. This isn't a rotation that runs particularly deep, a fact that's only being made more worrisome with each inefficient outing from Dylan Cease and the sustained absence of Michael King. Whatever form the solution may take, one is certainly needed if the team is to derive any value out of Cortes' arm down the stretch.