Adding a cutter has been a good move for Yankees ace Gerrit Cole
Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole stands on the mound during the seventh inning against the Cleveland Guardians in an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, April 24, 2022. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A pitch Gerrit Cole decided during the offseason that he should add to his repertoire quickly has become a go-to pitch, one he’s been throwing with more regularity as the season has progressed.
A cutter.
“Without giving away too much, what we’re trying to do with that pitch is look for opportunities to use it effectively, to either enhance what else we’re trying to do in the at-bat or to be unpredictable,” Cole, set to make his fifth start of the season Saturday night against the Royals, said Friday afternoon.
The cutter is added to a pitch mix that already featured a four-seam fastball, a curveball, a slider and a changeup, all of which are generally considered plus-pitches when Cole is on.
Before working on the pitch during the winter — work that continued throughout spring training — Cole last threw a cutter in his college days at UCLA.
After throwing three cutters in his first start of the season April 7 against Boston, Cole has thrown the pitch 11, 10, and 18 times, respectively, in the three starts that followed (numbers according to PITCHf/x).
“The thought was, ‘OK, I can throw this pitch. Let’s see how good it is,’ No. 1,” Cole said of his thought process in adding the cutter. “And then let’s see if it can be used in a situation where . . . you don’t really have anything working and now you’re just trying to fill up the zone with different shapes, and that [the cutter] could be an extra shape to throw somebody off. Or it could be an extra shape that matches up well against a particular player’s swing.”
Hicks returns
Centerfielder Aaron Hicks rejoined the club after missing the Orioles series while on paternity leave in Arizona.
Hicks and his wife, professional golfer Cheyenne Woods, welcomed the couple’s first child — a baby boy — at 10:26 a.m. Tuesday morning
Using a baby names app, according to Hicks, the couple settled on Cameron Jaxson Hicks.
Hicks, who started in center Friday night, is hitting .273 with one homer and a .377 on-base percentage in 15 games.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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