World Series: Can Gerrit Cole Keep the Yankees Alive vs. Dodgers?

NEW YORK — On Sept. 20, before a game against the Oakland A’s, Gerrit Cole addressed the lockers of the New York Yankees relief pitchers. In his previous start against Boston, Cole had called for an intentional walk with the bases empty on Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers, a move that triggered a catastrophic collapse. Cole had lasted just 4⅓ innings, putting pressure on his bullpen — at a point in the season when they were all gassed. Cole still felt bad. He promised Yankees relievers that they could be calm.

“You don’t have to do anything today,” Cole said.

Over the next 2½ hours, Cole put on a pitching clinic. He threw nine innings, by far his longest outing of the 2024 season, allowing just one run on two hits. Even after the game went into extra innings and necessitated a one-inning stint for closer Luke Weaver to secure the win, Cole was tagged. Despite coming off an elbow injury that caused him to miss the first 2 1⁄2 months of the season and shaving a cross or two off his fastball, greatness still lurks in the Yankees’ ace.

He will convene it again on Wednesday. The Yankees salvaged their season with an 11-4 shellacking of the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday night, and Cole will take the mound at Yankee Stadium in Game 5 with the same burden, trying to send the series back to Los Angeles.

Cole understands win-or-go-home games after starting six in the postseason. And he knows the pressure, not just of pitching in New York, but for five years with the largest contract ever given to a pitcher at $324 million. And he wants to be seen more as the guy who made the most important game of his life his playground than the guy who held up four fingers before Devers stepped to the plate. He wants to be the guy who told the relievers to relax and held up his end of the bargain.

“It was a different feeling,” Weaver said. “It was like, OK, Gerrit, you’re going to go do it, we don’t want to be mad about it. Do your thing. And he went out and did terrible. I thought he had maybe 10 in him.

“When you have a top dog like that and he expresses it, that’s what it feels like to me for (Game 5). You feel like they step up in big moments. He has a different side to him and when he gets into the killer mode that he did, it’s going to be a pretty tough task.”

This game—season on the line, win-or-stay-at-home—is exactly the kind of game the Yankees made him pitch. It’s the kind of game the Dodgers wanted him to pitch, too, when they recruited him during his free agency before the 2020 season and before he ultimately chose New York over his hometown team. With the Houston Astros in 2019, Cole had pitched an eight-inning, two-hit, 10-strikeout gem in a winner-take-all division series win. In 2022, he helped the Yankees bounce Cleveland from the postseason with another division win.

But in Cole’s other four must-win games, his teams lost — twice with the Yankees (2020 and 2021), twice with Pittsburgh (2013, 2015). Still, his New York teammates have faith that he will deliver in the biggest spots.

“He’s the best pitcher in baseball, hands down,” Yankees left-hander Nestor Cortes said. “He’s been doing it for years and only getting better. We all know he’s got talent, but he studies every at-bat, he studies every guy he’s going to face. He knows percentages, he knows trends. I’m out there trying to compete and throw strikes. He’s out there and knows what percentage that 2-1 fastball has to succeed.”

With Yankees manager Aaron Boone leaning heavily on his bullpen through the first four games, it’s even more urgent that Cole pitch well — and get deep into the game.

Cole has thrown fewer than 90 pitches in each of his previous four starts this postseason. Whether he can match or repeat his six outstanding innings of one-run ball in Game 1 — against a Dodgers lineup that grinds through pitchers — will depend on his effectiveness. After months of questions about the viability of his elbow, Cole is as confident as he has been this season, hitting 99 mph with his fastball in Game 1.

“I feel like I’m in good shape now,” Cole said. “I have a reserve while I’m pitching. So if I have to dip in the tank, I can pick it up, and then I can pick it up again. It’s not like a one-time thing. And then familiarity with both myself and my delivery, how I move, how well I concentrate the ball in the areas of the strike zone that I want to get — I very rarely lack east and west more defined.”

Game 5 will mark just the sixth time Cole has pitched with four days between starts this year. Two of those have come in the postseason: a seven-inning, one-run bravura performance in the division series clincher against Kansas City and a 4⅓-inning shutout against Cleveland five days later.

Even if Cole delivers another gem, the numbers are against the Yankees now. Never has a team faced a 3-0 deficit in the World Series and even forced a sixth game, let alone come back to win a ring. If they win Game 5, they would have to take two in Los Angeles – with a taxed bullpen, a star in Aaron Judge who has struggled all October and a lineup that was impeccable in the first three games when the Dodgers didn’t throw their rear arms.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Los Angeles will counter with one of its front-end starters. Like Cole, Dodgers right-hander Jack Flaherty is a Southern California native, a former first-round pick — and he almost played for the team he’ll oppose. The Yankees tried to acquire Flaherty from Detroit before the trade deadline. The deal fell apart when New York, wary of his back, requested another return to the Tigers. The Dodgers showed up perfectly content to add Flaherty to their rotation, and he’s been brilliant down the stretch, going pitch-for-pitch with Cole in Game 1.

Now they face each other again – a chance to beat his team to a championship at stake for Flaherty, survival on Cole’s mind. On top of that, the start could be a factor in whether Cole opts out of the remaining four years and $144 million on his contract, a move that could be voided if the Yankees add a year and $36 million to the deal.

Cole won’t promise the bullpen a rest day this time, not with the last complete game of the postseason seven years ago. The Yankees don’t need that. They simply want to meet the expectations posted on a video board in their locker room after Game 4. The clubhouse, it said, opens at 2 p.m. Wednesday. And below that, in capital letters, was less a hope than a mandate:

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