Gerrit Cole talked about how much he enjoyed pitching in games like this. On Saturday, he compared these must-win regular-season games to the playoffs and said he enjoyed the challenge. A day later, the Yankees ace was not enjoying it at all. Cleveland embarrassed Cole with a season-high 10 hits off him and the Yankees 11-1 at the Stadium.
“I came in here to try to win a series and put it out of reach,” Cole said when asked if he felt he let the team down. “So, yeah, definitely.”
The Yankees (83-67) are losing ground fast in their pursuit of a playoff spot. With both the Red Sox and Blue Jays winning Sunday, the Yankees are now 1.5 games out of the final American League wild card spot.
“We’ve got to do better than this. That’s an awful couple of days out there,” Aaron Boone said. “We’ve got to get better in a hurry.”
Cole gave up seven runs, including two home runs. He walked one and struck out four. It was the sixth time this season Cole allowed multiple home runs and the first time since he gave up three in Fenway on June 27.
Cole was supposed to be the firewall against losing streaks and the horse that would carry the Yankees down the stretch. Instead, he put their struggling offense into a hole early and cost them one of their most disastrous losses of the season.
“It still sucks to lose like this, it still sucks to like really not have a clear and concise answer for what the problem is so you can go ahead and fix it,” Cole said. “That in itself is challenging to deal with as well, because you’re out there trying to control what you can control.
“It’s going to be tough to shower off, it’s not going to be easy,” Cole continued. “It certainly doesn’t make it any easier to have confidence, but at the same time we don’t really have a choice.”
It was pretty clear early it wasn’t going to be Cole’s day. He began the game by getting ahead of Bradley Zimmer 0-2 and then hitting him. Then with a one-out walk to Jose Ramirez, Cleveland scored on Harold Ramirez’s single. After a clean second inning, the top of Cleveland’s order pounced on him again. Zimmer and Jose Ramirez singled this time to be driven home again by Harold Ramirez.
Cole pitched a clean fourth, but gave up a lead off homer in each of the next two innings to Jose Ramirez and Roberto Perez. He left to boos in sixth inning,
“It’s a bad game, man. That’s New York,” Cole said.
Cleveland was taking comfortable swings against Cole, leading to speculation he might have been tipping his pitches. Two scouts in the ballpark felt like Cleveland had figured something out, because they were hunting the fastball down and sitting on the sliders and changeups. Both scouts, however, said they did not see anything Cole was doing to give away his pitches.
Cole was once again trying to carry a Yankees offense that has been inconsistent at best this season.
After hitting five home runs on Friday, the Yankees were held to three runs Saturday and outscored 22-4 over the two games. While Boone said he had no issue with his teams’ effort or energy level, they looked lifeless as they went down quickly at the end with eight of the last nine Yankees batters striking out, including all three in the ninth inning. Gio Urshela’s homer off the top of the right field wall was the only run they managed off Eli Morgan, who came into the game with a 6.03 ERA.
Boone announced Sunday that Cole would pitch on regular rest despite the scheduled off day on Thursday. That means the ace will be able to pitch in all three of those crucial series if necessary. He would face the Blue Jays on regular rest in the middle game of the three-game series and then would be able to come back on short rest to pitch the final game against the Rays if necessary.
The Yankees have put themselves in a hole with just 12 games left and their path to the playoffs now going through the Rangers, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays.
“The bottom line is we still control it, but we’ve got to play better than this,” the Yankees manager said. “We’re gonna have a chance. … It’s been challenging, but we still have a chance to do something really special, and we gotta keep that in mind and keep that focus, and make sure we have that same focus and energy coming in tomorrow.
“But ultimately we got to play better.”
