Donald Trump name drops Yankees' Nestor Cortes at rally
Penelope Carter
Updated on March 08, 2026
Nestor Cortes can count himself among those with a Donald Trump nickname all his own.
The Yankees lefty received a shoutout from the 2024 presidential hopeful, who seemed to believe Cortes was in the crowd at his Hialeah, Florida, rally on Wednesday night.
“And a great pitcher for the New York Yankees, they call him ‘The Hialeah Kid,’ Nestor Cortes,” Trump said in a now-viral clip.
“Where is Nestor? He’s a great pitcher, got that fastball.”
It is unclear if Cortes was actually in attendance, though the 28-year-old is indeed from Hialeah, where his family relocated from Cuba after winning the visa lottery.
Cortes struggled in 2023, finishing his injury-plagued season at 5-2 with a 4.97 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in 63 1/3 innings.
He was slated to take the bump on Aug. 11 at Miami’s loanDepot Park, though a second stint on the injured list due to a rotator cuff strain kept him from the homecoming he envisioned in his first start in Florida.
“Hopefully there’s a lot of ticket requests for when I pitch,” Cortes told The Post’s Greg Joyce. “Just going back to when [fellow Hialeah product] Gio Gonzalez was with the Nationals and he would go to Miami every year, as a high schooler growing up, watching your hometown hero pitch, hopefully I can have that impact.
“Hopefully somebody at Hialeah is looking up to me and has that same feeling I had.”
There is hope that Cortes will return to the form that earned him All-Star status — and saw him finish eighth in Cy Young voting — in 2022, a breakout campaign in which he went 12-4 with a 2.44 ERA and .922 WHIP.
The Yankees will need all the help they can get coming off the franchise’s worst season since 1992.
Cortes will be part of a rotation that includes likely 2023 Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole and a healthy Carlos Rodon with some slots still to be filled out.
He’ll come into training camp with a brand new nickname, to boot.
