GM: Cole should be paired with Higgy for playoffs
Brian Cashman has been Gary Sanchez’s biggest backer whether it was in 2018 when the catcher struggled with passed balls and wild pitches, or this year when Sanchez hasn’t come close to being the hitter the Yankees expect him to be.
The Yankees general manager believes, however, that staff ace Gerrit Cole and backup catcher Kyle Higashioka should be paired in the postseason.
“I do and I think it played out that way and is something that can easily be taken care of,’’ Cashman said in an interview with YES that aired prior to Wednesday night’s 14-1 loss to the Blue Jays in Buffalo. “If it gives us our best chance of winning that is something we should do. Hopefully it pays dividends for us.’’
Higashioka has caught Cole’s last four starts and the numbers are impossible to ignore. Paired with Higashioka in those starts, Cole is 3-1 with a 1.00 ERA and has limited hitters to a .432 OPS and two homers. With Sanchez catching in eight games, Cole has a 3.91 ERA and has given up 12 homers.
➤ Masahiro Tanaka has rarely spoken about this being the final season of his seven-year contract with the Yankees of what the future holds for him as a free agent after the World Series.
Following Wednesday night’s debacle in which he absorbed the loss, however, Tanaka admitted thoughts of his potential last regular-season start as a Yankee were dancing inside his head.
“You are not thinking about it all the time,’’ said Tanaka, who will start the Yankees’ second postseason game next week, with the opponent and site still unknown. “Just going into today’s game you realize this is the last start of the regular season for me which means the last start of my sevenyear contract with the Yankees. I did have that thought going into the game but it wasn’t like I was thinking about it all the time.’’
➤ If the Yankees face the Twins in the first round of the playoffs, they know who will be on the mound for Minnesota since manager Rocco Baldelli announced his starters for the best-ofthree series on Wednesday. Baldelli said he will go with Kenta Maeda, Jose Berrios and former Yankee Michael Pineda.
➤ Manager Aaron Boone shouldered the blame for the lineup-card snafu during Tuesday night’s game when reliever Tyler Lyons wasn’t on the umpires’ lineup card but was on the Yankees’ card.
When Lyons went to the mound to start the bottom of the eighth, the umpires sent him away.
“It is a reminder of how diligent we have to be on that kind of stuff,’’ Boone said.
➤ Zack Britton opted not to bring his pregnant wife and three children, ages 5, 3 and 1, to New York when the season started in late July and that has led to the lefty reliever experiencing his toughest big league season.
“It’s been harder than any 162-game season I have ever played from that aspect, not seeing my kids and not seeing my wife,’’ Britton said. “It has been multiple months and that has been the hardest thing for me to navigate.’’
Britton and the rest of the Yankees will check into a Manhattan hotel when they return from Buffalo on Thursday night as part of the pre-postseason quarantine bubble.
➤ Gio Urshela extended his hitting streak to 12 games with a second-inning single. In that stretch, the slickfielding third baseman is hitting .447 (21-for-47).