Yankees' Gerrit Cole suffers first bump in road in return from Tommy John surgery
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole walks to the dugout after the third inning of a game against the Detroit Tigers on Monday in Detroit. Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya/Paul Sancya
DETROIT – A stone-faced Gerrit Cole handed the ball to Aaron Boone and slowly made his way to the visitor’s dugout at Comerica Park.
Far earlier than the player or manager would have liked.
Or, based on how Cole had performed so far this season, expected.
Cole, who entering Monday night had overwhelmingly defied expectations for a pitcher coming off Tommy John surgery, saw some cold water splashed on what collectively had been a solid, and at times spectacular, start to his 2026 season in a 5-3 loss to the Tigers.
“Just a tough night,” Cole said after allowing a season-high five runs and nine hits in 4 1/3 innings.
In short, the 35-year-old had the kind of night the vast majority of pitchers returning from Tommy John have in their first year back – for most of them, the plural of night.
Many pitchers who undergo Tommy John – and this is the case for those having significant surgeries of any kind, whether it be forearm, elbow or shoulder – say it takes them being a full two years removed from those procedures before they again feel like their pre-surgery selves.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with that,” Cole said. "The reality is, pitches over the heart of the plate, there’s three.”
Those pitches: a 96.4-mph four-seam fastball to Spencer Torkelson leading off the second that he sent into the gap in left-center for a double (Cole promptly struck out the next three hitters); a 97.6-mph four-seam fastball that Colt Keith roped to center for a two-out RBI single to cap a three-run third that gave Detroit a 3-1 lead; and an 89.4-mph changeup to Riley Greene in the fifth inning that got hammered 422 feet to right-center for a 5-1 lead.
“They kind of put extra pressure on us from those mistakes, but they hit a good amount of good pitches,” Cole said. “But we just weren’t able to respond with the type of quality pitches, I think, to get out of those situations.”
Five starts into his year, Cole, bringing a 2.57 ERA into Monday, had not faced many of those situations. He mostly resembled the pitcher who took home the 2023 AL Cy Young Award.
But Monday Cole’s night went sideways after a promising first two innings that saw him with a 1-0 lead, courtesy of a two-out RBI double by catcher Ali Sanchez that snapped a team-wide 0-for-23 skid with runners in scoring position (Sanchez would leave the game in the seventh inning when he took a 98-mph Drew Anderson fastball off his right wrist area).
Zach McKinstry, the Tigers No. 9 hitter who entered the day hitting .177, led off the bottom of the third with a triple and Detroit was on its way to the 3-1 lead.
The Yankees offense, shut down in weekend losses to the Reds at the Stadium – going 0-for-9 with RISP on Saturday and piggybacking that performance with a 0-for-13 effort in the same category on Sunday – largely stayed in stall mode to start this three-game series in the Motor City.
Lefthander Framber Valdez, an occasional Yankees nemesis from his time with the Astros and in his first year with the Tigers, allowed the Sanchez RBI single and not much else (four hits, two walks over six innings in which he struck out eight).
The Yankees didn’t score again until the seventh when Amed Rosario hit a two-run homer to make it 5-3.
All of which is to say the loss wasn’t solely at the feet of Cole.
The Yankees, after two hard-on-the-eyes weekend games in the Bronx, were sloppy again. They committed two errors – a catcher’s interference on Sanchez and a hideous throw from leftfielder Jose Caballero in the fourth that only generously could be described as being in the direction of home plate.
The Yankees ran out of ABS challenges in the sixth when Anthony Volpe, who did save a run in the eighth inning with a terrific stop and throw to keep it 5-3, used an ABS challenge on a not particularly borderline strike three call.
Then there was Jazz Chisholm Jr. spotted in the field sucking on what was a dead ringer for a Charm’s Blow Pop, something that assuredly earned the second baseman an invitation to Boone’s office.
Still, the headline from the night was Cole.
“They didn’t really miss,” said Boone who, like Cole, felt the pitcher’s stuff was good overall. “When he missed, or was a little off with the fastball, they were able to square it up.”
One rough start doesn’t necessarily mean a sharp downturn for Cole, whose velocity again held steady in a positive from the night, in his return from Tommy John.
But the general history of those coming off the surgery suggests there could be, and will be, a few more of the kind of nights Cole experienced Monday.
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.
