Shaky, dominant, shaky.
Those have been Gerrit Cole’s three postseason starts.
So far, it has been good enough for the Yankees. Tuesday night, it continued to be, thanks to more strong work from the bullpen, as the Yankees took a 2-0 lead in the ALCS with a 6-3 victory over the Guardians in The Bronx.
But this was not Cole at his best.
He lasted just 4 ¹/₃ innings. He walked four, struck out four and allowed six hits. He threw 89 pitches. He was frequently behind, unable to put away hitters.
“Just got to do better,” Cole said. “Got to do better.”
Following an up-and-down regular season that started late due to injury, it has been an uneven postseason so far from Cole.
He was hit around in the ALDS opener against the Royals, tagged for four runs in five innings.
In the series clincher, it was dominant Cole, one earned run over seven brilliant frames.
But his latest start was more like his first one. He had just a single 1-2-3 inning.
He did well to get out of the fourth unscathed, after the Guardians loaded the bases with one out.
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He got pinch hitter David Fry to pop up and caught Brayan Rocchio looking at a backdoor slider. But he couldn’t get through the fifth after four of the first five Guardians reached base.
“I lost a little bit of the zone, a few too many walks again,” Cole said. “But I think they threw a lot of quality at-bats together, and they strung them together, and they obviously — they won some of those long at-bats, and they ended up putting enough pressure on us that it didn’t allow us to continue to cruise and keep going deep.”
Cole has not been the same pitcher he was in the 2022 playoffs, when he had a 2.95 ERA in three starts across 18 ¹/₃ innings.
It marked the second-shortest outing of his playoff career spanning 20 starts, after he lasted just two innings in the 2021 wild-card game against the Red Sox.
The Yankees bullpen was there to pick up Cole. Clay Holmes retired two of the three batters he faced to ensure the Yankees kept the lead, striking out Austin Hedges with the bases loaded to end the inning.
Tim Hill threw 1 ²/₃ innings of scoreless ball, Tommy Kahnle added 1 ¹/₃ shutout frames and Luke Weaver pitched the ninth.
“Fortunately, we were able to kind of piece it together there, but he got us off to a good start and gave us a chance to secure the second game,” manager Aaron Boone said of Cole.
