Gerrit Cole is really really good at pitching. His last outing against Boston, an admitted stinker, left a smelly miasma. Otherwise, he’d been locked in for the last couple months. Tonight, Cole took it to another level. If the offense had come through in time, he’d have tossed a Maddux. Instead, he had to settle for the rare nine-inning win that was not a complete game, the Yankees’ first since 1976.
I suspect though that if the Yanks had asked, he would have stomped back out to the mound for the 10th inning to try and lock down the extra-inning CG. Nonetheless, Luke Weaver capably nailed the 4-2 victory and his third save in as many opportunities since unofficially moving into the closer’s role.
Speaking of the offense, I can’t prove this without doing a ton of research, but it feels like the Yankees are infuriatingly incompetent against pitchers they are facing the first time. They’ve been like this since time immemorial (or at least the last decade or so). Boy oh boy, they were on brand tonight. Through four innings against J.T. Ginn they mustered two paltry baserunners: singles by Gleyber Torres in the first and Anthony Volpe in the third. Both, of course, were promptly erased by double plays by the very next hitters. Nothing like making a rookie starter who entered the game with an ERA that flirted with 5.00 look like Greg Maddux…