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Austin Wells’ most important job of this postseason is what he’s doing behind the plate.
His offense, which has been inconsistent at times throughout his rookie season, has been underwhelming or worse in October. It helped land him on the bench in Game 3 of the ALCS against Cleveland and got him dropped from the cleanup spot to eighth in the lineup.
But if the Yankees are going to beat the Dodgers to win their first World Series title since 2009, they’ll have to continue to pitch well and Wells is a key part of that.
And it will begin Friday in Game 1 in Los Angeles with Gerrit Cole on the mound.
In 10 regular season starts with Wells behind the plate, Cole pitched to a 2.83 ERA, as opposed to Cole’s 4.91 ERA in six starts pitching to Jose Trevino.
Wells, in turn, credited the Yankees ace — who’s been shaky in two of his three outings so far this postseason — with helping him mature as a catcher in his first full season in the majors.
“Gerrit’s been great for me this year,” Wells said on a Zoom call from Yankee Stadium before the team left for Los Angeles on Wednesday.
“He’s been able to allow me to really focus on the minute details you don’t look at,” Wells said of how Cole has impacted his approach to the game. “That’s contributed to him being so successful in his career. That attention to detail has really helped me.”
From picking up Cole’s tics and body language and — perhaps most importantly — getting as many called strikes as possible, Wells has also played a part in what the right-hander has done, even if it’s not up to his usual standard after returning from the elbow inflammation that sidelined Cole the first half of the season.
“You want to give a pitcher confidence that no matter what they throw, it’s gonna work and we’re gonna win the game,” Wells said.
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Wells didn’t catch Cole in a game before this season and Cole can be hard on his catchers — as Ben Rortvedt found out in 2023, when cameras frequently caught Cole screaming and gesturing at the young catcher.
Due in part to Wells’ emergence, Rortvedt ended up being traded during the spring to Tampa Bay as part of the three-team trade that landed the Yankees Jon Berti from Miami.
After splitting time with the veteran Trevino for much of the first half, Wells emerged as the regular backstop in July and has stayed there.
What is worrisome for Wells, though, is his lengthy slump at the plate.
He closed the season in a 3-for-45 tailspin, with just a pair of doubles in his final 13 regular-season games.
And he’ll enter the World Series 3-for-33 with a homer, three walks and 15 strikeouts in the postseason.
Wells said he found something in his swing prior to Game 4 of the ALCS against Cleveland, when he homered, but he went hitless with a walk and a strikeout in the Game 5 clincher.
The issue, he said again Wednesday, is that opposing teams are pitching him up in the zone and he hasn’t been able to adjust.
“I just noticed I was a little underneath the ball and being pitched up in the zone a little bit exposed that,” Wells said. “It was the same trend toward the end of the season.”
He’s had a few more days to fix it before the Dodgers go after it — and he tries to figure out how to get Cole through their lineup.
