Gerrit Cole would have been a fit for the Yankees in any era. You could envision him sliding seamlessly into the championship rotation with Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, Eddie Lopat and Whitey Ford or the one decades later that featured David Cone, Andy Pettitte, David Wells and El Duque Hernandez.
Now, though, among the flotsam that has performed in Pinstripes this disappointing season, Cole is an outlier. He has been an exception to the rule of 2023 underachievement and also to the accumulation of players who have failed to live up to multiyear contracts either signed or acquired by general manager Brian Cashman.
Cole. Giancarlo Stanton. Aaron Hicks. Josh Donaldson. DJ LeMahieu, Aroldis Chapman, Luis Severino. One of these things is not like the others.
Cole has been more than a reliable 32-year-old right arm. He has been the Yankees’ security blanket. The team now is 9-0 after defeats and 16-7 overall with Cole on the mound after the 7-2 victory Wednesday over the Rays at the Stadium, in which he threw seven authoritative innings.
“Look, I think anytime your ace goes out there in the middle of the season that he’s having, and especially in a season that’s [had] a lot of adversity, he’s been that rock for us,” manager Aaron Boone said. “I mean, you have a pitcher you can count on to go out and pitch as well as he does, that probably gives you a little bit of an emotional lift, too.”
He is a rock. He is an island.
Wednesday, though, Cole was buoyed by a supporting cast that played such dynamic baseball that the fictional manager Lou Brown might well have said, “We’re contenders now.”
Everyone in the lineup, other than Jake Bauers, got a hit. The Yankees pilfered three bases including a double steal on which Gleyber Torres came home in the seventh inning. Anthony Volpe had three hits, including a home run that tied the score 2-2 in the second. Giancarlo Stanton smashed a three-run homer in the same inning. Left fielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa threw out two runners trying to stretch singles into doubles.
Cole — 10-2 with a 2.64 ERA that is second in the majors to Blake Snell’s 2.50 and a MLB-leading bWAR of 4.7 entering the game — is the rising tide that lifts all Pinstriped boats.
“That’s why he’s our ace,” Kiner-Falefa said. “He gives us some comfort.”
On a night when it all went swimmingly on the field, a dark cloud nevertheless intruded with the announcement that Domingo German had been placed on the restricted list to deal with alcohol-related issues that became apparent sometime after the trade deadline Tuesday.
The human toll is of course paramount for German, the most imperfect human to ever pitch a perfect game (apologies to the late Joe Trimble, under whose Daily News byline a variation of those words appeared to describe Don Larsen and his 1956 World Series Game 5 perfecto), but there now are rotation issues with which Boone and the Yankees will have to confront.
Nestor Cortes, down with a rotator cuff since May 30, will rejoin the rotation on Saturday to face the Astros. The left-hander, 5-2 with a 5.16 ERA in 11 starts before going on the injured list, will join Cole, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and presumably Luis Severino, who has gotten a reprieve.
German had pitched to a 5.64 ERA in his four starts since throwing his perfect game in Oakland on June 28. Severino’s ERA over five starts in July was 11.22. That hardly seems a silver lining.
The cavalry is not coming to the rescue. What you have seen on the roster, what you have seen in the clubhouse, that is what you are pretty much going to get over the final two months and 54 games. Or maybe there will be more games like Wednesday.
“We know it’s about us in that room now. [The deadline] has come and gone,” said Boone, whose team remained 3 ½ games out of a wild-card berth. “There are not going to be any more changes from outside the organization.
“So it’s on us to try and put our best foot forward every day to try and get right back in the middle of the race.”
It is going on 14 years without a trip to the World Series for the Yankees following the Core Four Dynasty. Fingers can be pointed in all sorts of directions, but not at Cole, who is 46-21 with a 3.10 ERA and an ERA+ of 132 and a 15.0 bWAR that ranked fourth in baseball in his four seasons in Pinstripes since signing that nine-year, $324 million free-agent contract during the 2019-20 offseason.
There has been a blip or two — Fenway Park in the 2021 wild-card game comes to mind — but Cole has been the ace the Yankees had sought since CC Sabathia stepped away. Four years into the deal, Cole can opt out after next season, but management can nullify the opt-out by adding a 10th season at $36 million onto the contract. Slam dunk, it would seem at the moment.
There are underachievers to the right, underachievers to the left.
But not Cole on the mound.
He has been a rock. He has been an island.
