A minor league free agent. A mediocre minor league hitter whose average generally hovered in the .240s-.250s. Mostly an afterthought of fans discussing the Opening Day roster. That’s Carlos Cortes.
Carlos Cortes is also the player who is batting .387/.457/.694, 214 wRC+, 1.151 OPS, with a 10.0% BB rate and 5.7% K rate. He’s 4 for 4 this season against LHPs and 6 for 9 in his career.
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Last week’s Player of the Week started the new week by coming off the bench (???) to add 3 plate appearances to his season: a HBP, a walk, and a single. When asked why his minor league stats with the Mets were so pedestrian and his MiLB/MLB numbers with the A’s so improved, Cortes pointed to regular playing time that he never got with the Mets.
Which makes it all the more odd that despite attributing his success to regular playing time, being the hottest hitter in MLB right now, and yet to be retired by a left-handed pitcher this season, Cortes found himself sitting at the start of last night’s game. Perhaps it was divine intervention that Tyler Soderstrom jarred his body diving for a base hit, opening up a clear spot for Cortes for at least the time being.
Here’s a bold prediction: When he celebrates his 29th birthday on June 30th, Cortes won’t be hitting .387 for the season or .340 for his career. But it’s still worth noting that the sample is growing and the available indicators don’t scream “fluke!” so much as they explain his success.
The sample for Cortes’ career is now up to 169 PA, which is still considered to be tiny. But he is already in the territory of some metrics that tend to stabilize quickly and his Statcast page reads like a Hall of Famer. Specifically, along with walking nearly twice as often as he strikes out, here are some eye-popping stats to savor on this sunny Wednesday:
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Cortes’ “expected batting average” is .387, identical to his actual batting average. What he can sustain is a different matter, but he has not come to his current success by luck or chance.
While Cortes’ wOBA is a gaudy .495, his xwOBA is almost as gaudy at .473. For reference, in his 10.1 WAR season driven almost entirely by his bat Aaron Judge won last year’s MVP award with a wOBA of .463.
Cortes’ “average exit velo” comes in at the 84th percentile, his “barrel %” at the 89th percentile, and his “hard hit %” at the 92nd percentile. Chase % and whiff % are also high end at 81st and 92nd percentiles respectively.
Cortes’ K % (5.7%) ranks in the 100th percentile, leading the American League and second only to the contact guru Luis Arraez (3.4%). Don’t be jealous of Arraez, though, because his ISO is a paltry .065. Cortes’? .306.
And then there are the eyeballs, who have as much praise to heap on Cortes as the numbers do. He routinely spits on “chase/put away” pitches you see players on the A’s or opposing teams routinely whiffing on. He has an actual two-strike approach where he cuts down his swing and takes pitches away to LF. He is extremely discerning early in the count hunting only pitches he can truly drive and often getting into a hitter’s count. He can spoil borderline pitch after borderline pitch in 10+ pitch PAs that drive pitchers crazy and often end with Carlos on base. At least for the first 169 PAs he has been the real deal.
What does that mean for Cortes, who was let go by the Mets and not hotly pursued around baseball, going forward? Nobody really knows. He will come crashing down to earth, and at the same time he could watch this season’s BA plummet .060 points and he would be hitting .327, most probably with high BBs and low Ks.
We’ve been through John Mabry (2 incredible months out of the blue during a non-descript career), we’ve been through Brandon Moss (blossomed at about the same age when given a regular opportunity), and we’ve seen plenty of players who fall in between — at some point we’ll know exactly what we have in Carlos Cortes and we can look back to see at whom the comp needle points closest.
I can’t make a confident prediction based on less than 200 PAs, but I will say this: I don’t think the needle is going to be pointing at Mabry.