Gerrit Cole

Gerrit Cole is the ace of the New York Yankees, a 6'4" flamethrower who signed the largest pitching contract in baseball history to wear the pinstripes he grew up dreaming about. Cole's 9-year, $324 million deal brought him to the Bronx in December 2019, and he's backed it up with a Cy Young Award in 2023, three All-Star selections as a Yankee, and the kind of competitive fury that makes you forget he once gave the worst press conference answer in modern baseball history.

The Long Way Home

Here's the thing about Cole that still blows my mind: the Yankees drafted him first. 28th overall out of Orange Lutheran High School in 2008. He was a kid from Newport Beach, California who grew up rooting for the Bombers -- there's a photo floating around of young Gerrit in a Yankees World Series shirt that gets passed around every December like a holiday card. But he turned them down. Went to UCLA instead, became the best college pitcher in the country, and went 1st overall to Pittsburgh in 2011.

Five years with the Pirates. Good, not great -- except for 2015, when he went 19-8 with a 2.60 ERA and looked like the guy everyone thought he'd become. Then Houston traded for him in January 2018 (Pittsburgh got Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, and Shane Baz back, which is one of those trades that looked fine at the time and absolutely brutal two years later). Whatever the Astros' pitching lab did to Cole, it worked. He went from a mid-rotation arm to a freakin' buzzsaw -- 15-5 with 276 K in 2018, then 20-5 with 326 strikeouts in 2019. That 326 number led all of baseball.

And then he hit free agency. And the Yankees -- the team that drafted him 11 years earlier, the team he'd rooted for as a kid -- backed up the Brinks truck.

Yankees Career

Cole debuted in pinstripes during the COVID-shortened season and went 7-3 with a 2.84 ERA in 12 starts. It wasn't a full season, but you could see it right away. This guy competed like he was pitching Game 7 every fifth day.

The first couple years had their bumps. In 2021, MLB cracked down on foreign substances -- the Spider Tack era -- and Cole's spin rates dropped overnight. When a reporter asked him point-blank if he'd used the stuff, Cole delivered a non-answer so bad it became a meme: "I don't want to answer that without checking with the union and the team." (Buddy. Just say no or say nothing. That was the WORST possible middle ground.) His spin rates fell, the hot takes flew, and the $324 million price tag started getting heavy in the tabloids.

Then came 2022 -- solid, not special. 13-8, 3.50 ERA, 200+ innings. The kind of season that's perfectly fine for a normal pitcher and a mild disappointment for a guy making $36 million a year. The whispers got louder.

And then happened. Cole went 15-4 with a 2.63 ERA and 222 strikeouts in 209 innings, won the AL Cy Young Award -- the first Yankee to win one since Ron Guidry in 1978 -- and shut everybody up. Forty-five years. That's how long it'd been. Cole didn't just win the award; he reminded the entire league that the sticky stuff wasn't the reason he's elite.

The 2024 Grind

The season tested Cole in ways the previous ones hadn't. His elbow barked at him early -- UCL issues, the two words every pitcher dreads hearing -- and he missed chunks of time between starts. He made 17 regular-season appearances, going 8-5 with a 3.41 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 95 innings. Not a full workload by Cole standards, but he gutted through it.

(The fact that he kept taking the ball every time they let him? That's the competitive psycho we signed up for.)

And then October came. Cole didn't just make the postseason roster -- he owned it. Five starts across the ALDS, ALCS, and World Series, grinding through 29 innings when his elbow had every reason to say no. He started Games 1 and 5 of the Fall Classic against the Dodgers, posting a 0.71 ERA with 10 strikeouts in 12.2 World Series innings. The Yanks lost the series 4-1, which still stings. But Cole? Cole was the best pitcher on either staff.

Let me say that again: a guy dealing with UCL problems all year posted a 0.71 ERA in the World Series. That's not a pitcher on the decline. That's an ace who refuses to lose.

Key Moments

Where It Stands

Cole's 34 now, with a contract running through 2028 and an elbow that's been giving him trouble. That's the reality. But if you watched what he did in October 2024 -- dealing on the biggest stage with a UCL that spent the whole summer acting up -- you can't write this guy off. A 0.71 ERA in the World Series doesn't scream "aging pitcher in decline." It screams "don't poke the bear."

The question isn't whether Cole can still pitch. He answered that one in the Fall Classic. The question is how many starts he can give you over a full season. Seventeen regular-season games in 2024 isn't what you want from your $36 million ace. But the stuff is still there, the competitiveness hasn't gone anywhere, and when Cole's jaw gets clenched and he starts stalking around the mound like every baserunner personally insulted his family -- that's when you remember why Cashman backed up the Brinks truck in the first place.

That Cy Young sits on the shelf now -- the first one a Yankee pitcher earned in 45 years. And if October 2024 told us anything, Cole's still got more shelves to fill.