July 23, 2020. An empty Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. -- no fans, a prerecorded national anthem, and the defending World Series champions raising a banner nobody was there to see. Seven months after signing the richest contract ever given to a pitcher, Gerrit Cole finally took a Yankees mound in a game that counted. He walked off having done exactly what the New York Yankees paid $324 million for: he won.
Seven Months of Waiting
Cole signed his 9-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees on December 11, 2019. Normal circumstances, he's throwing his first pitch in pinstripes sometime in late March. Instead, COVID shut down spring training, wiped out two full months of the calendar, and turned 2020 into a 60-game sprint that didn't start until late July. So Cole waited. And waited. And when the Yankees finally got their opener, they got it on the biggest stage MLB could build for a season that otherwise had no business feeling big: Opening Night, nationally televised on ESPN, at the ballpark of the team that had just won it all.
The opponent mattered too. Washington had won the 2019 World Series behind Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and a rotation that outpitched everybody in October. And the guy on the mound for the Yankees that night had spent the previous October doing something eerily similar -- Cole started Game 1 of the 2019 ALCS for Houston and shut the Yankees down on the way to the pennant. Seven months later, the team he'd tortured was paying him $36 million a year to never let that happen again. (Funny how baseball works. Beat the Yankees badly enough in October, and they'll just buy you.)
An Empty Park, a Loud Debut
Here's the part that still feels like a freakin' fever dream if you think about it too long: the Nationals raised their championship banner in a stadium with nobody in it. A few fans watched from a rooftop bar beyond the outfield wall -- not exactly the crowd you'd want for the greatest moment in franchise history, but 2020 didn't care what anybody wanted. (Somewhere, a sound engineer queued up crowd noise for a title nobody in the building actually got to celebrate.)
Aaron Judge led off the Yankees' half of the first inning with a single. Giancarlo Stanton followed by turning on a Scherzer fastball and depositing it 459 feet into the DC night at 112.2 mph off the bat -- the first home run of the entire 2020 MLB season, and it happened before Cole had thrown a single pitch. Yankees up 2-0, Cole hadn't even loosened up in the bottom of the first yet.
He took the mound and it went almost perfectly. Trea Turner led off and made an out. Then Adam Eaton turned around a pitch for a solo home run to right field, and that was it. That was the entire damage report for Gerrit Cole's Yankees debut: one swing, one run, done.
Cole worked five innings on just 75 pitches, striking out 5 and walking 1. Judge added an RBI double in the third. Stanton tacked on an RBI single in the fifth. Yankees 4, Nationals 1 -- which is exactly how it ended, because rain rolled in during the top of the sixth, forced a delay of just under two hours, and got the game called with the score frozen right there. Since both teams had played a complete five innings, it stood as an official final. Scherzer, for what it's worth, was brilliant in defeat -- 5.1 innings, 11 strikeouts, 6 hits, 4 runs, the loss. Didn't matter. Cole got the win.
| Date | July 23, 2020 |
| Opponent | Washington Nationals |
| Venue | Nationals Park, Washington, D.C. |
| Final Score | Yankees 4, Nationals 1 |
| Cole's Line | 5.0 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 5 K, 75 pitches |
| Decision | Win (Cole) |
| Scherzer's Line | 5.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 11 K, Loss |
Cole Signs the Richest Deal a Pitcher's Ever Gotten
Cole agrees to a 9-year, $324 million contract with the Yankees, the largest ever for a pitcher in both total value and average annual salary, coming off a 20-5, 2.50 ERA season in Houston.
COVID Shuts Down Spring Training
MLB suspends the rest of spring training and delays Opening Day amid the coronavirus pandemic, pushing Cole's Yankees debut back indefinitely.
Cole Finally Debuts on Opening Night
Cole takes the mound at an empty Nationals Park on the delayed Opening Night, beating Washington 4-1 with 5 shutout-adjacent innings -- 1 run, 5 strikeouts, 1 walk on 75 pitches.
A Shortened Season Ends in the ALDS
Cole finishes the 60-game season 7-3 with a 2.84 ERA, good for fourth in AL Cy Young voting, before the Yankees fall to Tampa Bay in a decisive Game 5 of the ALDS.
The Debut Pays Off in Full
Cole wins the AL Cy Young Award unanimously, finally putting a trophy on the deal the Yankees started writing checks for back in December 2019.
"I was so excited," Cole told reporters after the game. "I was walking through the clubhouse before, and I saw a bunch of guys in Yankees uniforms; I don't know, it just hit me that this was for real." He admitted he was "definitely battling some adrenaline early" -- which, fair. Take the richest pitching contract in baseball history, strap a live TV audience and an empty, echoing ballpark onto it, and see how calm you feel in the first inning. Aaron Boone kept his reaction simple afterward: "It was really good to see him out there." (Boone's never been one for the dramatic quote. Cole didn't need him to be.)
What It Set Up
One start doesn't make a career, but this one set the tone for everything that followed. Cole went on to post a 7-3 record and a 2.84 ERA across 12 starts in that shortened season, finishing fourth in AL Cy Young voting in a year that gave him almost no runway to build on. The Yankees finished 33-27, got bounced by Tampa Bay in the ALDS, and 2020 mostly gets remembered around here as the season that felt like a scrimmage with real standings attached.
But the debut itself held up. No walks in bulk, one mistake pitch, five strong innings against a lineup that had just won the World Series. Whatever came later -- the 2021 spin-rate mess, the shaky 2022, the 2023 Cy Young that finally silenced the noise -- it all traces back to a rain-shortened Thursday night in an empty ballpark in Washington, where the guy who'd tortured the Yankees in October showed up wearing their uniform and made it look easy. Cole earned his money in the very first outing. Everything since has just been him proving it wasn't a fluke.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Gerrit Cole make his Yankees debut?
Cole made his first regular-season start for the Yankees on July 23, 2020, on Opening Night of the COVID-shortened season, against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park.
Who did Gerrit Cole face in his first Yankees start, and did he win?
Cole faced the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals and their ace, Max Scherzer. Cole won, throwing 5 innings and allowing just one run -- a solo homer by Adam Eaton -- while striking out 5 in a 4-1 Yankees victory.
Why was Gerrit Cole's Yankees debut delayed until July?
Cole signed with the Yankees in December 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic shut down spring training and pushed the start of the 2020 season back to late July, cutting the schedule to 60 games. His debut came about seven months after he signed instead of the usual three-plus.
Were there fans at Gerrit Cole's Yankees debut?
No. COVID-19 protocols kept fans out of Nationals Park entirely -- a prerecorded anthem played over the speakers, and nobody sat in the stands, even though the Nationals raised their 2019 World Series championship banner before the game.