Gerrit Cole was rattled — even before he threw a pitch Friday. The Yankees ace was thrown off by an “unforeseen” schedule snafu with the Opening Day festivities. He was caught on camera looking annoyed yelling “Lets Go, Lets Go,” as celebrity and long-time Yankee fan Billy Crystal took to the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.
“That was an unforeseen challenge. The festivities got a little away from the schedule,” Cole said. He went on to explain that it was like “you expect something and you don’t get it.”
The delay was four minutes and the Yankees didn’t exactly get what they expected from their ace either Friday.
Cole opened the season by issuing a four-pitch walk to Red Sox leadoff hitter Kike Hernandez and then a home run to Rafael Devers. The Bombers bats took him off the hook and with home runs from Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo, DJ leMahieu and a walk-off, 11th-inning single from Josh Donaldson, they beat the Red Sox 6-5 to start the season.
“It’s a big win,” Cole said. “Opening day you can get off on the right foot and I think that these games are always just a little bit elevated between these two clubs. I think more so we just all kind of settled in and started to play some really good baseball and ended up pushing, pushing over the winning run.”
Cole picked up where he left off, unfortunately for the Yankees. The ace who was chased off the mound by the Red Sox in last October’s Wild Card game, came out and got hit hard in the first game of the 2022 season. Cole did not record an out before giving up three runs in the first inning — including giving up the two-run home run to Devers.
It immediately brought back memories of his disastrous start last October when the Red Sox chased him after completing just two innings.
Friday, he allowed those three runs on four hits. He walked one and struck out three. Cole got 11 swings and misses, but not one on his fastball.
The Red Sox left a mark on Cole last season. Including the two innings he completed in the Wild Card Game loss, Cole allowed 15 earned runs over 24 innings pitched against the Red Sox for an ugly bruise of a 5.63 ERA.
It was an overall strange season for Cole. He came out early in 2021 as the best pitcher in the league and then became the poster boy for pitchers using illegal sticky stuff on the balls in June when MLB decided to enforce their own rules more stringently. He adjusted and regained control of his season, only to catch COVID after the All-Star break. He got back on track and then whether it was a tight hamstring or the workload (181.1 innings pitched after just 91 in 2020), Cole went into that Wild Card game with a 6.35 ERA over his last four starts.
The Yankees are obviously looking for a bit of a bounce back from Cole this season and Friday wasn’t the best way to turn the page on his struggles. But Aaron Boone saw something encouraging.
“Obviously a very tough way to start your season, but I think he kind of embodied what we were today,” the Yankees manager said. “He didn’t fold the tent. It could have been a not-get-out-of-the-first-inning thing the way it was going and he settled in and started executing pitches. And I thought he pitched really well the rest of the way.”
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