Gerrit Cole flirts with perfection as Yankees crush Tigers

It was yet another near-perfect night at the Stadium.

After Jameson Taillon retired the first 21 Angels hitters on Thursday night, Gerrit Cole retired the first 20 Tigers hitters on Friday night.

Jared Walsh broke up Taillon’s bid for a perfect game leading off the eighth, and the Tigers’ Jonathan Schoop ruined Cole’s bid with a two-out single in the seventh.

Still, perfection is in the eye of the beholder, and the Yankees ultimately would describe both nights as such because both ended in victory.

On Friday night, backed by an eruption from the offense that produced 15 hits, including homers by Jose Trevino, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo and Matt Carpenter, Cole settled for seven scoreless innings in a 13-0 win over the Tigers before a noisy crowd of 42,026 at the Stadium.

Cole (5-1, 2.78), who lost his perfect game when Schoop’s ground smash made it past a diving DJ LeMahieu, allowed two hits and no walks in an outing in which he struck out nine.

Cole graded the first-pitch cutter Schoop hit as “probably a ‘B,’ but not quite as much break as maybe we would have liked to.”

“It was pretty exciting,” said Cole, who made it eight straight starts of at least six innings by the rotation. “Fans were in it. I heard them chanting my name, which was pretty magical. It just means so much to have them behind us. They can be such a force and almost will us to do better.”

It would be difficult for the Yankees (a season-high 22 games over .500 at 37-15), who have won eight of their last 10 and have allowed 12 runs in their last nine, to do much better than this.

Judge had four hits, including his MLB-leading 20th homer. He is 48-for-143 (.336) with 19 homers, 39 RBIs and 37 runs in his last 37 games.

Every Yankees regular except for Josh Donaldson, who made his return from the injured list, had at least one hit. Judge and Trevino homered in the third to make it 2-0. Carpenter’s two-out bunt single down the third-base line to beat the shift jump-started a three-run fourth that featured a two-run triple by Trevino and made it 5-0. Rizzo’s three-run homer and Carpenter’s two-run shot, his fourth homer since joining the Yankees on May 26, highlighted a seven-run fifth against a 21-31 Tigers team that came in having won seven of nine.

Judge added an RBI single to left in the eighth but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. So Roger Clemens never got Judge out, but his son, Tigers rookie leftfielder Kody Clemens, can say he did.

“We banged, we played great ‘D,’ and Manny got in,” Cole said. “It’s a good night.”

That would be Manny Banuelos, who was awarded the championship belt that goes to a team-designated star of the game after a victory. Banuelos, a one-time top pitching prospect in the sport whose career has been defined by injuries, pitched the final two innings in finally making his debut for the club that drafted him in 2008.

The Yankees became the first team in the expansion era (since 1961) to open back-to-back games with at least six perfect innings, but for Cole, Banuelos getting to don pinstripes was “the coolest part of the night.”

Banuelos, 31, who said he was “shocked” to receive the belt given Cole’s performance, was teary-eyed in discussing his night. “My dream came true,” said Banuelos, who as a 19-year-old had an electric spring training in 2011 but whose injury issues began a year later. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

Cole struck out the side in the third and did so again in the sixth, part of striking out four straight batters two different times in the game.

Cole, whose season high in pitches was 114, started the seventh at 86 pitches, but Aaron Boone said he didn’t envision a scenario — except getting into the 140 range in his pitch count — in which he would have asked his ace for the ball.

“No. Um, no,” Boone said with a smile. “I certainly would have been inclined to let him chase history.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

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.