Cole still has something to prove entering fourth season with team
NEW YORK — It’s been two full years plus a COVID season since Gerrit Cole joined the Yankees, and his most memorable exploits were getting blasted at the 2021 wild card game in Boston and the infamous press conference where he froze like a deer in the headlights when asked about his use of sticky stuff.
To kill any nonsense from the peanut gallery, he’s still been very good. In fact, he’s been one of the best pitchers in the league. Since signing his colossal contract with the Yankees, Cole ranks second among qualified pitchers in strikeout rate, fourth in innings pitched, fifth in WHIP and ninth in Wins Above Replacement. He’s been an All-Star in each of his Yankee seasons where the exhibition wasn’t canceled by the pandemic and has finished in the top 10 of Cy Young voting in all three years.
Anyone trying to hot take their way into the opinion that Cole has been bad is flatly incorrect.
But it does feel like he’s still waiting to deliver a true Yankee Moment, particularly one in front of his home crowd. His entire first year with the team was played in empty stadiums, which was beyond his control. But then Cole’s three-hit, complete game shutout of the Astros in 2021 — probably his finest moment in a Yankee uniform — came on the road. So did his 15-strikeout masterpiece against the Angels later that year. Last season, his best start at Yankee Stadium was either a seven-inning blanking of the offensively deficient Cincinnati Reds or his June 3 takedown of the Detroit Tigers, who weren’t exactly a juggernaut either.
He was sensational in his two starts against Cleveland in last year’s Division Series, and if Cole does have one undeniable playoff moment, it was his swinging strikeout and emphatic fist pump to end the seventh inning of Game 4 in Cleveland, which was an elimination game for the Yankees.
Cole reached back and fired three straight fastballs to end the Guardians’ threat and put a cap on his outing, but that assertive moment came against Will Brennan, who had played in just 11 MLB games prior to the postseason. It was a great showcase of Cole’s ability to power clean the weight of Yankee expectations on a big stage, it just so happened to be against a career minor leaguer trying to punch severely above his weight class.
In the next round, one of the storylines to emerge from the Yankee clubhouse was Cole being stunned by his sixth-inning removal from Game 3, leading directly to the sac fly and RBI single off Lou Trivino that essentially clinched the series for Houston.
That is the last memory of Cole heading into 2023, a year where he finds himself with a lot to prove. It is certainly not out of the question at all for newly-acquired lefty Carlos Rodon to outpitch Cole and become the de facto ace of the staff.