CLEVELAND – Chances are Gerrit Cole is sick of seeing the Cleveland Guardians.
Last Wednesday, Cole had the roughest start of his truncated season when he allowed four runs in 5 1/3 innings against the Guardians.
Those struggles continued on Tuesday night, as Cole went just four innings in New York's 3-2 victory over Cleveland at Progressive Field before being pulled for Paul Blackburn.
While Cole showed flashes of the frontline starter who was one of the best pitchers of the past decade, and while he hit 100 mph for the first time since 2022, he also showed plenty of the rust that has been evident since he came back (even if he has had some success in that time).
“I thought it was kind of a grind for him,” manager Aaron Boone said. “His stuff was up, but probably not the shapes he wanted. I thought overall his stuff was good. They made him work hard.”
After setting the Guardians down 1-2-3 in the first inning and working around some traffic in the second, Cole was derailed in the third thanks to a two-out rally that was set up by his long-time nemesis José Ramírez, who picked up a single and immediately stole second base. Ramírez is now 12-for-28 (.429) against Cole in his career.
That was followed by an RBI single from Chase DeLauter on a ball up the middle that seemed to cross up shortstop Anthony Volpe, who was shading up the middle.
Cole’s command seemed to momentarily get away from him after that, as he walked Kyle Manzardo and hit Rhys Hoskins on the hand with a pitch to load the bases.
The Guardians scraped the tying run across on an RBI infield single from Angel Martínez that included a fantastic diving stop by first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, followed by Cole sliding into the bag while covering first in an attempt to record the out.
Boone came out to check on Cole, who had hit the first-base bag with his pitching hand, but Cole stayed in and limited the damage by getting Steven Kwan to ground out back to him. Cole then immediately ran down the tunnel in the Yankees’ dugout after retiring Kwan.
“That’s about as deep of a jam as you can get in, but I guess the good part is that we were able to escape with only two and stay in the game,” Cole said.
Cole needed 29 pitches to get out of the inning, which might have seemed like 49 thanks to the muggy conditions on the field.
“Tonight was an all-hands-on-deck and persevere kind of night,” Cole said.
Cole went back out for the fourth inning and ran into trouble, allowing a single and a walk, but he was able to wiggle out of the jam by getting Ramírez to ground out and DeLauter to fly out.
“I executed a great slider against Ramírez and a nice fastball down to DeLauter,” Cole said. “A little bit easier to catch my breath that inning than the last one.”
Cole needed 83 pitches (53 strikes) to get through those four innings. He relied primarily on his fastball (47% usage) while also mixing in his slider, curveball and changeup.
Cole’s fastball averaged 97 mph (up 1 mph from his season average), and he was able to rear back and reach triple digits in the second inning against Austin Hedges. It’s the hardest pitch he has thrown in a game since Sept. 28, 2022 (the same day Aaron Judge tied Roger Maris’ home run record and Cole tied Ron Guidry’s Yankees record for most strikeouts in a season).
“It was just a little hit or miss,” Cole said when asked to describe his stuff in the outing. “The velocity was up, but that could be from sweating right from the get-go.”
But those conditions also provided maybe the first high-intensity moments Cole recorded since returning, which could help the Yankees come October.
“My heart rate had to be above 185,” Cole said. “I haven’t touched that in quite some time.”