KANSAS CITY — Gerrit Cole found what he needed when he needed it. The Yankees ace may not yet have rediscovered the dominant stuff that he has been searching for, but Cole made the big pitches he needed in big spots Saturday night. The right-hander pitched six scoreless innings as the Yankees beat the Royals 3-0 at Kauffman Stadium.
The Yankees (15-6) won their eighth straight game, their longest winning streak since winning 13 in a row from Aug. 14-27, 2021. It is just the fifth time since 1959 the Bombers have won at least 15 of their first 21 games of the season.
Saturday night, Cole contributed to that on a night the Yankees offense was quiet. He scattered five hits and two walks. He struck out six.
“He executed when he needed to. I thought he got a big out of [Salvador] Perez earlier in the game when he lost command there for a couple of hitters — made a big pitch to Salvy,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “In the biggest moments, he made his pitches.”
Cole struck out one through the first four innings and then finished with six. He got 10 swings and misses, seven on the fastball, two on the cutter and one with his changeup.
The cutter, which he threw in college and reintroduced this season to his repertoire, was Cole’s safety pitch Saturday night. When he got in trouble in the third after throwing eight straight balls to issue back-to-back, two-out walks to load the bases, Cole went to the cutter against Perez. It got the desired ground out to get the Yankees out of the inning.
Cole likes that the cutter gives him a different look for hitters cheating on his fastball. Jose Trevino, who caught Cole for the second straight time, agrees it’s a good weapon to have and that it was the right pitch to use against the Royals’ All-Star catcher.
“It’s huge,” Trevino said. “If guys are gonna be sitting on the fastball, and those little horizontal movements it’s good, it goes just right off the end of the bat like you saw with Salvy to end that inning. It’s just right off the barrel.”
Make no mistake, the four-seam fastball is still his bread-and-butter pitch and he used it effectively later in the game. Cole started attacking with it in the fifth and went back to it when he was in trouble in the sixth. He struck out Andrew Benintendi to end the fifth with it, and with runners on first and second with one out, he struck out Bobby Witt Jr. on a 99 mph fastball and Kyle Isbel on a 98 mph one.
“Maybe that’s just his adrenaline, maybe something kicked in, but like I said earlier he’s an ace for a reason,” Trevino said. “You get those kinds of innings that get you going like big time.”
Those pitches in big spots made the little run support the Yankees managed to give Cole stand up.
After hitting four homers on Friday, the Yankees had to do it without power on Saturday. With strong winds blowing in, the Bombers had to manufacture their runs. In the second, Gleyber Torres led off with a single and scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s ground out. In the third, Josh Donaldson drew a one-out walk and scored on Torres’ sacrifice fly. In the fourth, Aaron Hicks drew a leadoff walk and scored on Kiner-Falefa’s sacrifice fly.
The Yankees had their 13-game streak without committing an error snapped when Kiner-Falefa bobbled a ground ball in the second inning, but locked down the Royals with good pitching.
“If you want to be a complete team and a really good one, you have to win games at times in different ways,” Boone said. “We’ve done that. We’re kind of finding our way offensively. We cashed in a couple of times, but had a few chances to break it open and couldn’t quite do it.
“I thought the pitching staff, led by Gerrit, made big pitches in the most critical times of the game.”
