Not worried after giving up four home runs to Tigers

“Miguel, his first home run, was [a] poor pitch. Demeritte’s home run on the slider in the first inning was a poor pitch,” Cole said.

That’s right, that was just the first of the two home runs Cole would give up to Cabrera and Demeritte Thursday.

In the second, Jake Rogers led off with a single before Cole got Willi Castro to swing and miss on a 98-mph fastball for his third strikeout of the day and Reyes to pop out. Demeritte, however, then hit a 92-mph slider out of the park for his second two-run homer of the game and Cabrera hit a first pitch homer to cap off the barrage.

It’s all part of the work. “I got the curveball going a little bit for strikes and some for chase, and I ended the outing on a good changeup,” Cole said. “I misfired on the first two sliders and got punished on them. But I found some good sliders after that. But like I said, I was probably pleased with most of the pitches, but I just got blistered. But I got punished on a handful of bad ones.”

Cole had not given up six runs in an outing since last May, but he had allowed five in a World Series game against the Nationals for the Astros last fall. A spring training game where the main purpose is for him to work on getting a good feel for his pitches and build up his arm strength, hardly ranks among the Yankees concerns. It wasn’t among Cole’s top concerns Thursday either.

“I was convicted to some of the ones that we threw, but there are probably times [in the regular season] I’d get a little more creative in those situations for sure,” Cole said. “I don’t want to say we’re going through the motions out there. We’re competing. But there are some other things that are important. Like when you throw a bad fastball, you want to throw a good one on the next one. You don’t want to shy away. You want to keep trying to repeat it. That’s kind of what we fell into [with] the second back-to-back homer.

“I thought I threw a good 2-2 fastball at the top with Demeritte. I flirted with the strike zone there, but he put a good swing on it. I was like, ‘You know what, screw it, let’s just execute it again.’ I moved the ball up and inside on

Miggy, and I just got punished for it again. You just take it for what it is. I’ll just learn from it and get better.”

Cole did not want to make excuses, but there are reasons to put an asterisk next to this one.

There was a strong wind heading to center-right field, however, and he did not have a regular work week leading into this start. He reported to the Yankees medical staff that he was ill on Monday and dealt with a fever.

“It was more like tonsils and back of the throat. I don’t think that’s what coronavirus is. I was initially worried a little bit about strep, but it turned out not to be there,” Cole said. “So we just knocked the fever out after a couple days.”

He is still lined up to pitch March 26 in Baltimore to open the season with an extra day’s rest.

And Cole, himself wasn’t thrilled with Thursday nor was he worried about getting there ready for the season. “It’s not my favorite day of 2020 so far, but it is just spring training,” Cole said. “There’s probably an element that we are going to continue to push the fastball, especially this early in the spring, and they’re probably [hitting] to get timed up on the fastball. That’s probably their priority, too. So we’ll have a more normal routine coming off this start than the last one and we’ll be able to work on a couple things and get it cleaned up.”