Cole Hard Truth: Why the Yankees’ Ace is Still Baseball’s Best Pitcher
More of this is coming in 2022, I promise.
Gerrit Cole is the best pitcher in baseball. Laugh if you want, but I still hold firm to that belief. Admittedly, it’s been a rough start to the 2022 season for the Yankees ace.After a shortened outing on Opening Day against Boston and an average start against Toronto, the wheels came off for Cole on Tuesday in Detroit. He did not escape the second inning, walking five and leaving with the bases loaded. Last year, Cole’s walk rate was historic and to see a start like this from him was shocking. His final line could have looked even worse if not for Clarke Schmidt’s masterful Houdini job from the bullpen. It was Cole’s shortest start as a Yankee and one of the worst of his career. Afterwards, the cries for Cole’s head were loud and plentiful. Frustrations from the end of Cole’s 2021 and the uneven start to the season in general have seemingly boiled over. Insane takes such as Cole should be demoted from the rotation and that Cole isn’t worth the massive contract the Yankees gave him have been bandied about on the Internet by many baseball fans and analysts.
As this blog’s resident Gerrit Cole stan, my Spider Tack Sense was tingling as I scrolled through my Twitter feed this week. I couldn’t believe my eyes - these same people that last summer were lining up to bow down to our ace and savior Gerrit Cole were now smearing his name in the mud. It was the worst example of baseball fandom - the what have you done for me lately attitude taken to the extreme. Instead of slinging insults, let’s speak in facts.
Fact #1: Gerrit Cole has not gotten off to a good start this season.
Fact #2: Gerrit Cole needs to improve his performance.
Fact #3: You should still trust Gerrit Cole more than any other pitcher in baseball in a big game and he is almost certainly going to get better.
All of these things can be true at once, despite what many people would have you believe! Let’s look at why Cole has struggled, where these misguided thoughts of Cole being washed up have come from, and see how he can improve.
Cole Start to 2022
In 2022, Cole’s struggles have manifested in a few different forms. On Opening Day, all of the damage done against him came in the first inning, when he gave up four straight hits and three runs to open the game. In watching the first inning, Cole was clearly overthrowing, showing good velocity but bad location and leaving some hittable pitches over the plate, specifically the pitch that Devers hit out of the park. After that rough beginning, he settled into his regular performance, only leaving after four innings because of a pitch count stemming from an abbreviated Spring Training.
In start #2, Cole dominated all Blue Jays not named Vlad Guerrero. In this game, Cole looked like his old self for the majority of his performance but was beat by one of the best hitters in baseball, which happens from time to time. 5.2 innings and three runs allowed is by no means a bad start, but Vlad’s career night made the final line look worse than it would have otherwise been. This isn’t an excuse - Cole needs to get all hitters out, not just the lesser hitters in a lineup. It just identifies that this second start isn’t part of some larger issue, as many people are alleging. Additionally, if you really want to pick nits, the first Vlad home run was barely out of the park, aided by some suspect Aaron Hicks defense, and the second home run was hit on a pitch that basically no other hitter could have hit out.
The third start was the clear outlier, as Cole clearly had no command and was hurt by the cold weather and by a long break between innings due to a pitching change and injury for the Detroit pitcher. Even in this terrible outing, Cole showed flashes of his Cy Young self, specifically in the first inning when he struck out the side.
These are not excuses, just facts, but they paint a story of Cole’s rough start to the season. He has only given up 9 hits in 11.1 innings, a rate of 7.1 hits/9 innings which is better than his rate from last year. However, Cole has been uncharacteristic in how many batters he’s walked. In 2021, he walked 41 batters in 181 innings; this year, he has already walked 7 in his 11.1 innings. Combined with a home run rate of 2.4/9 innings, the story is clear - Cole is giving the Yankees less length while putting more guys on base via the walk and giving up the long ball to drive them in.Cole has always had an elevated home run rate (about 1.0 for his career, which is league average but below average for a pitcher of his caliber) but they usually have been solo shots due to a stellar WHIP. In 2022, this hasn’t been the case, especially in his first two starts.
Diving deeper into the Gerrit Cole Baseball Savant page provides even more context for his rough start. Cole has been giving up more hard hit balls this season while striking out less players. In his career, Cole’s hard hit rate is 35%; this year it is 53.3%. In his career, Cole has struck out 29.7% of batters; this year it is 24%. All across the board, Cole’s stats have been down as reflected by the Baseball Savant visual page.
When looking at his pitch breakdown, it is clear that his fastball and slider are getting pounded much more than normal as well, compared to his 2021 statistics and his career as a whole.
Whether it has been the shortened spring training, the cold weather, or a Billy Crystal induced delay of game, Cole has not had it working in 2022.
Deconstructing the Narratives
We’ve looked at how bad Gerrit Cole has been this year, but is that a reason for Yankees fans to write him off completely? Of course not! Let’s deconstruct this narrative that Gerrit Cole is not worth his contract with some “Cole” hard facts.
Cole’s 2021 season was an incredible season that ended on a very down note. I wrote a whole article last August (https://www.yankeesfiles.com/blog/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-gerrit-cole) breaking down Cole’s first 18 starts and how he was on his way to a Cy Young campaign. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but we can easily break Cole’s 2021 into four quadrants with pretty clear causes for each shift in performance.
Quadrant 1: Cy Cole (April-May) 6-2, 1.78 ERA
Quadrant 2: Cole Without Spider Tack (June-July) 2-4, 5.24 ERA
Quadrant 3: Cy Cole Part 2 (July-September) 6-3, 2.52 ERA
Quadrant 4: Injured Cole (September-October) 2-2, 6.35 ERA
For the first two months of 2021, Cole was pitching at a Cy Young level. In the second quadrant, he was adjusting to the loss of sticky stuff and trying to figure out how to still pitch at a high level. Starting with the incredible Astros game in July, Cole was back at his peak, only hindered by a hamstring injury in September that clearly threw off his game and hurt him into October. 2021 Gerrit Cole was the Cy Young runner up, not the terrible pitcher many would have you believe. Additionally, this was a follow-up to his 2020 campaign, where he came in third in Cy Young voting.
Gerrit Cole has also been labeled a postseason choker solely based on his Wild Card game start last year. Yes, that was not a good start - there’s no denying that. But we can’t let one game overshadow his career postseason excellence. Since coming to the Astros in 2018, Cole is 7-3 with a 2.70 ERA in October. Don’t care about how he pitched for the Astros? Let’s remember Cole’s stellar 2020 postseason for the Yankees, where he gave them three great outings, striking out 13 Indians in the Wild Card Series and almost single handedly helping the Yankees beat the Rays in the ALDS. Labeling Cole a postseason choker based on one start on an injured hamstring is unfair and inaccurate. You would much rather have Cole pitching in October than someone else, trust me. Cole at his best can pitch better than anyone in baseball, bar maybe Jacob DeGrom.
Where Does He Go From Here?
Is there hope for Gerrit Cole to improve? The short answer is yes, of course. It has been three starts for the Yankee ace and there will be about 30 more to come, plenty of time to turn things around. Indeed, it has only been two years since Cole posted a 5.22 ERA in his first five starts and went on to almost win the American League Cy Young award. Slow starts happen, but with the pressure on the Yankees to win immediately and the struggles that their offense has had, the spotlight has been turned up on the pitching staff. The stellar performance of his peers makes it easy to live with a struggling Cole, but in some respects it has made his poor performance even more glaring.
The shortest and least satisfying answer to address the Gerrit Cole conundrum is to wait for his next start. He faces Cleveland on Sunday and Kansas City the following week, two matchups that are in his favor, before taking on Toronto again. We’ve been spoiled by Cole’s Cy Young performances in pinstripes, but there’s no reason to think there won’t be more of the same this year. Cole’s velocity is right where it should be and in each start, he has had stretches of dominance. He has averaged 98 miles an hour with his fastball and 88/89 on his slider and changeup, with the right amount of movement on each pitch. Small sample size is to blame here, in addition to the previously discussed factors. It’s not like Cole has been helpless in every start. The stuff has been there and he’s been hurt by a few bad swings and one bad inning in Detroit. The sample size right now is too small to make an accurate judgment on his 2022 performance and anyone who tries to harp on his 2021 performance hasn’t looked at the statistics and is basing their opinion off of one poor start in October. Every great player has their struggles, but when they come at the beginning of a season and on a player trying to prove that the end of the previous season was a fluke, they become a bit more hihglighted
The 2022 Yankees have issues, specifically with their offense. However, their pitching staff has been the best in the league and when your ace is weighing your team ERA down, it is almost assuredly a sign that things can get better still. Gerrit Cole is the heart and soul of this rotation and blaming the Yankees’ uneven start on him is using recency bias and preformed opinions to judge his performance. It is undeniable that he has not pitched well this year, but his past performance almost guarantees that he will not hold a 6.35 ERA all season. The point of this article has been to show just how a few bad pitches or innings can overly impact an early season stat line. It is far too early to make a summary judgement on a pitcher who has more upside potential than anyone else on this Yankees team. Hop on board the Cole Train now; there might not be room for you in a few weeks.
