Erik Boland: Yankees ace Gerrit Cole gets dose of reality with subpar start at Stadium
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole throws during the first inning against the Cleveland Guardians at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery often talk about how it takes them being a full two years removed from the procedure before they truly feel like themselves again.
Gerrit Cole?
As the Yankees righthander said after throwing six scoreless innings in his season debut May 22 against the Rays at the Stadium: “It was almost like I’d never left.”
The results in the 35-year-old’s first two outings since coming off the injured list certainly reflected that as Cole followed his performance against Tampa Bay with 6 2⁄3 scoreless innings against the Royals on May 27 in Kansas City.
Wednesday night against the Guardians, Cole experienced more of the norm for a pitcher just back from Tommy John surgery, grinding through 5 1⁄3 innings in which he allowed four runs and six hits, three of those home runs, in a 5-4 Yankees loss.
After Cole (1-1, 2.00) ran his scoreless-innings streak to 13 2⁄3 innings with a 1-2-3 first, Kyle Manzardo drilled a 2-and-2 curveball off the facing of the second deck in right for his second homer in as many nights.
“Impressive swing,” Cole said. “He was able to beat it to the spot and lift it.”
Cole, momentarily taken off the hook when Jazz Chisholm Jr. homered into the second deck in right off tough Cleveland power righthander Gavin Williams, pitched a perfect third before getting touched up again in the fourth.
Cole recorded his first strikeout by getting Chase DeLauter looking at a 97-mph fastball (catcher Austin Wells executed a successful challenge on a ball call) and got Manzardo to pop out. But Rhys Hoskins pulled a 1-and-0 slider just inside the leftfield foul pole for a two-run shot that made it 3-1.
“The one pitch that really just mechanically got away from me,” Cole said of the slider.
After Jose Caballero’s home run in the bottom of the fourth made it 3-2, Cole went 1-2-3 in the fifth. But Yankee Stadium nemesis Jose Ramirez belted his third career home run off Cole, skying one into the second deck in right to extend to a 4-2 lead.
Ramirez ranked first among all visiting big-leaguers entering Wednesday with 100-plus at-bats at this edition of Yankee Stadium, which opened in 2009. That included a .402 batting average with a .476 on-base percentage and 1.185 OPS.
On Wednesday, Ramirez singled in his second at-bat (improving the third baseman to 10-for-25 in his career vs. Cole) and in the eighth singled off lefthanded reliever Tim Hill and later scored in the inning to make it 5-3.
“Well, he’s a Hall of Famer,” Cole said of the challenge the switch-hitting Ramirez, who in the postseason against the Yankees has generally not been able to duplicate his regular-season success at the Stadium, poses. “He’s got incredibly quick hands and incredibly great barrel accuracy.”
Cole, though his pitches clearly lacked the bite from his first two starts, still showed up until a 23-pitch sixth-inning forced him from the game, the pitch-efficiency characteristic of his first two starts, particularly in an eight-pitch first inning and 10-pitch fifth.
Through five innings, Cole stood at just 60 pitches before needing those 23 pitches to record all of one out in the sixth.
There were still far more positives in the outing than not, starting with Cole’s velocity holding steady throughout, frequently an issue for pitchers returning from Tommy John.
Cole’s second-to-last pitch of the night was a 98.5-mph fastball that Hoskins fouled off, and the designated hitter walked a pitch later, a sinker that came in at 97.8 mph.
Williams simply was just a bit better on this night. He held the Yankees to three runs and four hits over 5 1⁄3 innings with six strikeouts and improved to 9-3 with a 3.20 ERA.
Williams is a longtime admirer of Cole and made a point of meeting the 2023 Cy Young Award winner before Tuesday night’s game. Like Cole, the 26-year-old is represented by Scott Boras.
He mostly successfully navigated a Yankees offense that had only five hits and looked lackluster for a second straight night without Aaron Judge.
No surprise there, of course.
The three-time MVP’s prognosis remained up in the air as the Yankees on Wednesday sought a second opinion, having a specialist look over imaging results from Monday that showed a bone bruise in Judge’s right shoulder/upper rib cage area.
“I’ve got nothing for you, I’m sorry,” Boone said before the game of a Judge update.
Afterward, Boone said: “The specialist got back to us, confirmed what we had seen to this point. [Judge has] gone back, though, for some more imaging. They just want to get some more specifics spots. We’ll have more on that later tonight, tomorrow.”
Certainly, more cryptic and obscure than optimistic.
No, as immediate Yankees concerns go, a Cole hiccup doesn’t come close to making the list.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
