David Lennon: Yankees' Gerrit Cole's return from Tommy John surgery still a work in progress
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole throws in the first inning against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Saturday in Boston, Mass. Credit: Getty Images/Jaiden Tripi
BOSTON — It took Fenway Park, of all places, to drive home the message that Gerrit Cole, by his own admission, isn’t quite vintage Gerrit Cole yet.
Not the 2023 Cy Young Award version, anyway. Or even the ’24 ace who shook off elbow issues during spring training to pilot the rotation to the World Series.
This Cole, coming off Tommy John surgery, remains a work in progress, and the Red Sox were more than happy to take advantage Saturday. They thumped him for four runs, including a pair of homers, during the first three innings of his 5 1/3-inning stint as the Yankees dropped their third straight game in this series, a 4-1 defeat that never really felt that close.
“The reality is, it’s probably close,” Cole said of Saturday’s mistakes. “But this is the big leagues, so sometimes close isn’t good enough.”
Cole never pitches well at Fenway Park. He slipped to 2-4 with a 5.66 ERA in nine career starts on Jersey Street. But the circumstances around this visit seemed ripe to reverse that trend, with the banged-up Red Sox even less intimidating this season while playing in the shadow of the Green Monster (their .689 OPS at home ranked 25th in the majors).
Plus Cole figured to be due for a bounce-back after Monday’s slip-up in Detroit, where his five-start streak of dominance came to a sobering end.
Turns out, that wasn’t just a blip. It was a dashboard warning light blinking.
Cole’s frustrating Saturday could be summed up by three four-seam fastballs. His second pitch of the game was a 94-mph heater — well above the strike zone and on the outer half of the plate — that Masataka Yoshida hammered over the right-centerfield wall. It was the second home run in 174 plate appearances this season by Yoshida, a DH with a .316 slugging percentage.
As shocking as Yoshida’s blast was, the next stunner came in the second inning, when Anthony Seigler — 44 games into his major-league career — launched a 3-and-1 fastball teed up in the heart of the plate for a high fly ball that landed in the front row of the Monster seats in leftfield.
That put the Yankees in a 2-0 hole, and Cole wasn’t done digging yet. After a pair of singles in the third, he jumped ahead 1-and-2 against cleanup hitter Willson Contreras but missed again with another four-seamer. It wound up a 114-mph two-run double to deep left-center.
With the Yankees’ offensive malaise, a 4-0 deficit is fatal these days, which is partly why Cole felt the need to be perfect early on. And only seven starts into a post-Tommy John surgery rebound is not enough runway for a pitcher to be at the height of his powers.
We all got fooled by Cole’s dazzling numbers in those first fab five starts: a 2.57 ERA, four homers, eight walks and 24 strikeouts in 28 innings, with opponents batting .196 (20-for-102) against him. But the last two? A crashing letdown, with an 8.38 ERA, three homers, two walks and 10 strikeouts in 9 2/3 innings.
Cole insists he’s made similar mistakes in those disparate sample sizes. The difference is getting away with them, which didn’t happen as often in the latest pair.
Physically, Cole’s vitals appear fine. His four-seam fastball averaged 97.2 mph — significantly above the 96.6 for the season — and his other pitches were mostly up across the board, aside from the slider being a few ticks down. But the command still can be off on occasion, and that can lead to costly gaffes.
“For him, coming back off surgery, there’s going to be little things that you slowly start to unlock,” catcher Austin Wells said, “and start to feel like yourself again.”
It’s hard to uncover a silver lining in a loss at Fenway, especially with the Yankees in jeopardy of being swept by the Red Sox. But that “unlocking” eventually did happen for Cole, who finished up by retiring nine of 10 before Caleb Durbin’s sixth-inning single ended his afternoon at 89 pitches.
Small consolation, maybe. But it’s important in the big picture, as the Yankees will most need an ace-caliber Cole for the stretch run and into October. If Saturday got him a little closer to being that pitcher again, the outcome is somewhat easier to digest.
“I take a little bit of encouragement out of what I saw from him in the final few innings,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He was like, screw this, let’s get after it, let’s go. I felt like he was on the attack and aggressive and letting it eat with everything as opposed to maybe early being a little bit careful. So hopefully that’s something he can build into his next one.”
That’s not necessarily what anyone wants to hear about Cole, who made us believe he was ace-ready right from the jump this season despite not throwing a real pitch in a game that counted since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. But it wasn’t feasible for him to perform like that without a few glitches along the way, and as long as he’s healthy, consider these just a part of Cole’s re-calibration process.
That’s how Cole — a very analytical, cerebral pitcher — is viewing this process.
“I just tried to free myself up, to be honest,” he said of those more effective innings. “The command just sometimes isn’t there, so I just try to be more aggressive and not care as much about where the pitch was going or not really try to define the pitch. Just attack.”
In a few weeks, if Cole evolves into being Cole again, Saturday’s Jersey Street clunker will be forgotten. The Red Sox, who improved to 11 games under .500 (35-46), would need to beat the Yankees (48-34) another dozen times in a row to be any sort of threat.
And the good news for Cole? He won’t have to worry about pitching any meaningful games at Fenway Park this season.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
