TAMPA, Fla. — Back on Dec. 18, 2019 — which now seems like a lifetime ago for so many reasons — new Yankee Gerrit Cole spoke of his "hunger" to win.
Earlier in the month, the ace righthander had signed a nine-year, $324 million pact — a record free-agent deal for a pitcher ---with the team he grew up rooting for. He was not quite two months removed from coming ever-so-close to winning the World Series with the Astros.
Cole, brilliant in a Game 5 victory over the Nationals and ready in the bullpen in the late innings of Game 7, never got into the Astros' eventual 6-2 loss. The defeat left him without a world championship, one of the few elements — and by far the most significant one in his eyes — lacking in an otherwise sterling career resume.
"I’m as hungry as ever to finish that journey," Cole said that December day at the Stadium in his introductory news conference. "And in my opinion, there would be no better place to do it than in New York."
On Feb. 14, 2020, the day pitchers and catchers reported to spring training, Cole spoke of it again.
"It drives me a lot," he said. "I’m ready to go right now and take care of business."
The business of that pursuit, of course, would have to wait a while. In fact, it would be massively delayed. About a month later, COVID-19 turned the world upside down. The Major League Baseball season, trimmed to 60 games, would not start until late July.
Cole was mostly terrific in the shortened season, going 7-3 with a 2.84 ERA in 12 starts and striking out 94 in 73 innings. On three days’ rest, he started the 2-1 loss to the Rays in the deciding Game 5 of the ALDS, allowing one run and one hit in 5 1/3 innings with two walks and nine strikeouts.
I remember who we lost to and why we lost. It’s a motivational thing for me to try harder this year
Gerrit Cole
It was a fine performance — and in most cases, it would have been a winning one — but the bottom line was that the Yankees again came up short of a title. Mike Brosseau's eighth-inning homer off Aroldis Chapman proved to be the difference as the Rays advanced to the ALCS.
In spring training this season, the 30-year-old Cole, 101-55 with a 3.19 ERA in his eight-year career — including 42-13 with a 2.71 ERA, a 0.96 WHIP and 12.9 strikeouts per nine innings the last three seasons — again indicated that hunger to win a title.
"I can remember how every single season of mine has ended,’’ he said after Yankees pitchers and catchers went through their first workout.
"I was probably emotionally affected for a few weeks after that [the Game 5 loss]. We’ve got to move on, you’ve got to prepare, so you can’t let it negatively impact your preparation or mindset going forward, but I carry it in my back pocket. I remember who we lost to and why we lost. It’s a motivational thing for me to try harder this year and try to get past where we did last year."
When it comes to trying hard to "perfect that craft" of pitching, in the pitcher’s words, few go about it with the totality that Cole does.

And it goes well beyond his well-earned renown for being as fluent in analytics as many of those in front offices who oversee those departments.
While saying "I’ve gotten a reputation for the analytics. I think I can understand them and I can translate them" during spring training in 2020, Cole is first and foremost a competitor of the highest order.
And it shows in the almost endless ways he attempts to absorb information that might make even the slightest bit of difference.
He showed up for spring training 2020, for example, eager to learn from Masahiro Tanaka, the longtime Yankee who now is pitching in Japan.
"I think his delivery is really consistent, so I’m really looking forward to learning how his thought process is on the mound and maybe some drills he does to keep himself so centered and so consistent over his delivery," Cole said then.
And Tanaka isn’t the only pitcher Cole has taken note of.
During spring training the past two years, Yankees pitchers — whether big-leaguers, minor-leaguers or non-roster invitees — have been surprised and flattered to see Cole, his bullpen work done for the day, standing nearby watching their sessions. His reasoning is twofold.
"I don’t mind watching other people’s bullpens. I enjoy it," Cole said during his first spring training with the Yankees. "There’s also maybe something to be learned specifically in this environment here just trying to be accessible to people . . . I just try to take somebody else’s perspective. If I’m down in the bullpen watching their bullpen and they’ve had a question that maybe they wanted to ask me for a while, maybe that makes [me] a little more accessible."

There’s this, too: After facing teammates in live batting practice, Cole generally makes a beeline for the hitters to give them a fist-bump of thanks, but also to debrief them.
"He’s asking you how the ball’s moving," Brett Gardner said last year. "When we’re in the box, we’re standing still for the most part, we have a pretty good view of the baseball. Obviously, the catcher and the umpire do too, but the pitcher, he’s falling off the mound after just unleashing a 98-mile-per-hour fastball 60 feet away. He just wants to know how his pitches are moving and how they look coming out of his hand."
It is part of the reason Aaron Boone calls Cole "the complete package."
"He is a superstar in the sport, and he certainly has the talent to deliver the goods," Boone said recently. "And when you couple that with a real keen understanding of who he is, how to apply information, how he's probably grown in that understanding over the course of his career, I mean, you just see a real refined, polished pitcher and person with special stuff. It's why he's the best, or certainly one of the best, pitchers in the sport.
"Usually it's not all talent-related. There's got to be something between the ears that allows you to really apply it to another level, which he's able to do."

Gerrit Cole season averages (8 seasons)
Record: 17-9
ERA: 3.19
IP: 211
WHIP: 1.119
K: 238
K/9: 10.1
K/BB: 4.31
From the outside, that typically comes back to Cole’s ability to, as he said, "understand" and "translate" analytics. But don’t think he is consumed by them as the be-all, end-all either. Reputation aside, he isn’t.
"For me, they’re not an absolute," Cole said in spring training last year. "I certainly learned how to pitch in this game without them.
"My belief is while you’re out on the mound, you’re not going to reference the iPad or the analytics or have your pitching coach tell you what your spin axis or your spin rate is while you’re out there . . . The analytics are information. They’re there to help you better understand yourself, better understand the league, maybe sometimes correlate a good pitch analytically to a good feel. But in the end, we’re craftsmen and there’s a massive amount of human element to this game, especially in the most crucial of games . . .
"You can’t ignore the sample size of the analytics and what is deemed to be true. But then you have to play somebody seven times and beat them four out of seven [in the playoffs]. When it’s all on the line, people can deviate whenever they want in order to get an edge, in order to counteract or maybe they feel like they’re getting an advantage.
"It comes down to basic baseball, really, kind of down at the end. So I always try to keep that in mind."