Before Cam Schlittler came along and before Tommy John surgery -- and even before his long-overdue Cy Young Award -- what Gerrit Cole will be at The Trop on Saturday night against the Rays is exactly what he was hired to be: Game 1 Cole.
Schlittler, who is almost certainly going to win this year’s Cy Young in the American League, was everything a Game 1 guy and an ace was supposed to be Tuesday night against the Red Sox, from the time the first pitch he threw lit up the radar gun at 100.6 mph and until he had thrown the last of his 117 pitches. Schlittler threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings, and he struck out 10. He was about as dominant as he had been the previous October when Aaron Boone gave him the ball for Game 3 of the AL Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, when he struck out 12 across eight scoreless innings.
The kid is unquestionably the Yankees ace now, expected to start Game 2 of the AL Division Series. If it goes the distance, it is almost impossible to see how Schlittler wouldn’t get the ball for a deciding Game 5.
For now, though, the Yankees look for Cole to pitch like the ace they fully expected him to be when they gave him a $324 million contract in December 2019. In their deciding game against the Astros in the ’19 ALCS, they’d had to go with an opener, Chad Green. And lost. The year before that, Game 4 against the Red Sox in the ALDS, the 38-year old CC Sabathia had gotten the ball. The Yankees lost that night, too. CC had also gotten the ball the year before that in Game 7 of the ALCS against the Astros. He didn’t make it out of the fourth inning, and the Yankees left another season in Houston.
The last time they’d had a dominant ace, truly, had been when Sabathia was still young. So Brian Cashman went after Cole hard, willing to give a starting pitcher a whopping nine-year deal. Here’s one of the things Cashman said at the time about Cole:
“I was … in a position to sell the opportunity here and put a significant offer in front to make it hard for him to say no.”
Ten months later, as MLB managed to play out its postseason at the end of a season shortened by COVID-19, it was Cole who got the ball twice for the Yankees when they were playing in the ALDS against the Rays. He pitched six innings in Game 1, giving up three runs but also striking out eight as the Yankees rolled the Rays, 9-3.
He then got the ball on short rest for Game 5, lasting into the sixth in that one, leaving after giving up one hit, two walks and one run and striking out nine. The Yankees ultimately lost that game and their season when Aroldis Chapman gave up an eighth-inning home run to Tampa Bay’s Mike Brosseau. The Yankees went home. The Rays kept going all the way to the World Series.
And even though a trip to the World Series won’t be on the line with this series, it feels a little bit as if it might be, just because the Rays and Yankees were far and away the two best teams in the AL this season. The Yankees are coming off their sweep of the Red Sox, teed up in such dazzling fashion by Schlittler.
Now it is Cole’s turn.
In his comeback season from Tommy John surgery, he didn’t make his first start until May 22. He made 22 starts, finishing with a 3.61 earned run average and a 10-9 record.
Big picture? It was a terrific comeback season for a power pitcher who turned 36 years old in September. And Cole’s overall numbers would look a lot better -- and Yankee fans would be far more optimistic than they might be going into Game 1 -- if it hadn’t been for two early September starts when Cole gave up seven total home runs. Included in there, of course, was a shocking outing at Petco against the Padres, when Cole gave up consecutive home runs to Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado, all of that happening in a space of 15 pitches in the bottom of the first inning.
“Sometimes it is what it is,” Cole said afterward. “You've got to separate that from doing your job, which is to continue to take it one pitch at a time and leave the mistakes behind you. You keep working.”
He had a rough outing against the Mets after that. But then he pitched well against the Diamondbacks. His last regular-season start was against none other than the Rays: 5 2/3 innings, two runs, three hits, three walks, eight strikeouts, 105 pitches. And a win. Cole, one of the best pitchers of his time, kept working.
Now he gets another October start against the Rays, which is where he really came in with the Yankees. This is not exactly the way he once envisioned himself to be Game 1 Cole for the Yankees. Here he is, anyway. The Yankees paid him a lot of money. A different kind of money is on the table at The Trop on Saturday night.