After a Lost Weekend in Boston, Gerrit Cole's Imminent Return Eases the Pain

I enjoyed covering Gerrit Cole’s rehab start in Rochester and talking with the Yankees ace. I also had a nice talk with Jasson Dominguez for a story I wrote about the top prospect. As for the series with the Red Sox, a fun Friday was followed by perhaps the worst baseball the Yankees have played all year, a miserable, eye-opening pair of losses to their fiercest rival. Lets get to it.

Friday night, while the Yankees were opening their series at Fenway Park, Gerrit Cole was at Innovative Field in Rochester to make his third rehab start, doing so with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre against the Red Wings.

Naturally, I was there to cover it for the Democrat and Chronicle and it was certainly a cool night for the record crowd of 13,605 - many of them wearing Yankees’ apparel - because not only did Cole pitch great with 10 strikeouts in 4.1 innings, but the hometown Red Wings walked it off in the bottom of the ninth to win 2-1. The usual Friday night post-game fireworks followed, so as I said, it was a fun night to be downtown.

Before the game I was down on the field watching the Rail Riders take batting practice so I got a great look at Ben Rice, Oswald Peraza, Jorbit Vivas, T.J. Rumfield and of course, Jasson Dominguez. While I was down there I was talking to Josh Whetzel, the play-by-play broadcaster for the Red Wings, and he was telling me that Cole’s father lived for a time in Syracuse, as did I.

So I decided to walk down the tunnel that leads to both clubhouses to see if Cole was hanging around and sure enough, he was at a table where he was mixing some supplement powder into a bottle of water, so I said hello and I asked him about his dad. We ended up talking for a minute or so, and he said he knew his dad lived in Syracuse, but he couldn’t confirm what high school he went to. Then I just asked him how he’s been feeling, he said great, I wished him well and I went back out to the field.

During the game, he was dominant. He gave up a line-drive double in the first but left the runner stranded there. Then he began mowing down the Red Wings and the only run he allowed came in the fourth when Rice, playing first base, had a routine throw from shortstop glance off his glove for a two-base error, and the runner eventually scored on an RBI single .

Cole met with me and the other reporters in the clubhouse about 20 minutes after he was finished and he was in a good mood answering all our questions because he pitched well. My old D&C pal, Scott Pitoniak, asked him for his thoughts on how the Yankees rotation had “weathered the storm” without him so far and he said, “I feel like weathering the storm is a bit of an understatement. I feel like they’ve excelled as one of the top rotations in the league so far and the depth has been great. Obviously Cody (Poteet) comes in and doesn’t miss a beat. So a lot of respect to those guys. Super proud of what they’ve been doing and I know they are, too.”

When the scrum was done, I went alone over to his locker stall and I asked him if he had seen on replay on the TV in the clubhouse Alex Verdugo’s home run trot in the top of the first inning at Fenway which had happened about an hour earlier.

He laughed and he said, “Oh yeah, Verdugo revenge game!” And then as a joke I asked him if he’d called his father to ask what high school he went to and he smiled and said, “Sorry, I was a little busy.”

You can read the story I wrote about the night at this link: https://shorturl.at/7Ar9D

Also, I sat down with Dominguez in the visitors’ dugout Thursday to interview him for the story I wrote, and if you want to read that one on the top prospect, who is now in the injured list, here’s that link: https://shorturl.at/72kHb

Now, on to the Boston series.

June 14: Yankees 8, Red Sox 1

The Lead: Alex Verdugo revenge night

When Verdugo arrived at Fenway Friday night, a place where he played four seasons for the Red Sox, he was asked by reporters how he thought he would be greeted.

“Like a Yankee,” he said with a smile, meaning he was now on the enemy side of baseball’s great rivalry and he expected to be treated as such.

And he was, boos drowning out the cheers of the Yankees fans in attendance, but here’s the thing: Verdugo met the moment and went out and played like most Yankees have against the Red Sox throughout this century-long skirmish which has historically been dominated by the Yankees.

On the first pitch he saw from Red Sox starter Brayan Bello, Verdugo crushed it to dead center for a two-run homer which started a three-hit, four-RBI night for him.

“It was pure adrenaline, man. Just fired up,” said Verdugo, who apparently used it all up Friday because he did nothing the rest of the weekend. “I wasn’t really expecting to swing first pitch. To put it out of the ballpark and give us an early lead was big. I let a little yell out around first, and when I saw my dugout going crazy, all the guys barking, I lost it again. There’s no secret that this was a big series for me.”

The Yankees knew this was a big night for Verdugo because his departure from Boston had been frosty. Twice he was disciplined last season by Red Sox manager Alex Cora, once for arriving late to the ballpark, the other for lack of hustle as perceived by Cora. It was time for a change and then the Red Sox made the interesting choice to trade him to their arch rival, knowing full well he was probably going to be fired up whenever he played against Boston.

“Dugie is a good kid,” Cora said before Friday’s game. “I think people are making too much about it, to be honest with you. He's a good player. He got traded, we got three good pitchers, that's the business of it.”

All I know is Verdugo has been mostly terrific for the Yankees as he plugged their gaping hole in left field and has been an outstanding fielder, and he has also delivered on offense since being moved into the cleanup spot.

“We were all on him coming in, flying in, on the bus,” Anthony Rizzo said of the Yankees trying to get him even more fired up. “He’s such a spark for us. It’s hard to bring that type of energy every day. He does a good job, and helps us do a good job of that as well. I’m sure it means a lot more to him, as it should, just playing somewhere for that long. I’m sure if you asked him last year at this point if he wanted to play for the Yankees, he would say absolutely not. To get traded and to get traded to your rival, not a lot of trades happen (like that). He was pumped.”

Game notes and observations:

➤ This was the Yankees 13th win in their last 16 games, they became the first team in MLB to reach 50 wins, and it’s just the 10th time in franchise history they’ve won at least 50 of their first 72 games in a season, the most recent occurrence being 1998. That season turned out pretty well.

➤ Luis Gil was not at his best which began a troubling trend across the weekend for the rotation. He battled command issues with his fastball and grinded through five tough innings, needing 104 pitches. Still, he gave up just one run on four hits and four walks as he made big pitches when he needed to. He continues to lead MLB in hits allowed per nine innings at 4.4, and his .160 opponent batting average is the lowest mark through a pitcher's first 21 career starts in MLB’s live-ball era (since 1920). That’s amazing.

➤ The Yankees jumped on Bello quickly as Juan Soto doubled in front of Verdugo’s homer, and they tacked on a run in the fourth when Bello dropped a toss covering first base on a grounder by Oswaldo Cabrera that would have been the third out, but instead allowed Giancarlo Stanton to score from third.

➤ Two walks and a double by Emmanuel Valdez got the Red Sox on the board in the fourth, but Gil struck out the next two men to end that threat, and in the fifth, now up 5-1 after Verdugo’s RBI double and Rizzo’s RBI single, Gil got into another jam. He walked two and it looked like Boone was going to lift him, but he let him battle his way out and he got Masataka Yoshida to ground out.

➤ Verdugo then capped his night in the ninth. Jose Trevino homered, and with two outs Soto walked, Judge doubled off the Green Monster for a run, and Verdugo singled for another run. “He likes the action,” Boone said of Verdugo. “He’s a gamer. That’s what I’ve admired about him from the other side the last few years, and that’s what he’s brought over here.”

➤ This was also part of what I like to call the perfect baseball night. Yankees won, and the Red Sox, Rays, Jays and Orioles all lost. And then for the rest of the weekend, it was the complete opposite of perfect. In fact, it was a god damn shit show of the highest order.

June 15: Red Sox 8, Yankees 4

The Lead: A stinker from Carlos Rodon

Rodon was brutal in the first two innings and that ultimately decided the game. The Red Sox jumped him for three runs in the first and two more in the second, adding several dents to the Green Monster as they looked like a team seeking redemption after getting lit up by their former teammate the night before.

Rodon had his MLB-best seven-start winning streak snapped, during which time his ERA was 2.08. He threw 62 pitches in the first two innings and across his five innings allowed seven hits (including four doubles), two walks and threw a wild pitch. Two of the hits came on 0-2 pitches.

“Just left some balls over the middle part of the plate,” Rodon said. “They hit some balls really hard off me, and I just didn’t get to the areas I wanted to. To put the team down five runs is tough, so it makes it hard for them to claw their way out of it. That’s on me. I wish I could have figured it out sooner and got to the spots I wanted to sooner.”

Game notes and observations:

➤ Rodon did one thing to help as he got it together and pitched well over the next three innings so he saved some wear and tear on the bullpen as all the Yankees needed were two innings from Ron Marinaccio and one from Victor Gonzalez to finish the game. True to form lately with the bullpen, though, Marinaccio gave up a run in the seventh and Gonzalez was lousy in the eighth as he allowed two big insurance runs, just after the Yankees had pulled within 6-4 in the top half. One of the runs, though, came when Trevino threw a ball into left field trying to pick off Jarren Duran at third and Duran trotted home to make it 8-4.

➤ The Yankees had traffic on the bases but they went 2-for-8 with runners in scoring position. In the second, DJ LeMahieu came through with a two-run bloop single to cut the deficit to 3-2, only to see Rodon immediately give back two runs when Rafael Devers and his face of evil drilled a two-run double.

➤ In the fifth the Yankees loaded the bases on an error and two walks with one out, but Verdugo grounded into a forceout at home and Stanton struck out with three absolutely horrific swings at pitches way out of the strike zone to waste a great threat. Seriously, Stanton’s strikeouts are usually epic fails. I’ve never seen a guy swing at more terrible pitches than him, and he never friggin’ learns his lesson. Just maddening. I don’t know why any pitcher would ever throw him a fastball. Throw breaking pitches off the plate all night and he’ll get himself out every time.

➤ Soto homered over the Monster in the seventh to make it 5-3, and after the Sox made it 6-3, the Yankees saw another big chance peter out in the eighth. Ex-Yankee Greg Weissert, who was part of the Verdugo trade, walked Rizzo and Gleyber Torres and Austin Wells singled to load the bases with one out. But LeMahieu could only manage an RBI groundout, and closer Kenley Jansen came on and Anthony Volpe flied out to leave men on first and third.

➤ The Yankees had only six hits as Verdugo came back to earth with an 0-for-5, same as Volpe whose recent slump deepened. By night’s end Volpe was down .267, the lowest he’s been since May 12 because he’s in a massive 4-for-37 rut.

➤ Soto, who is playing left field at Fenway because right field is tougher and Verdugo has more familiarity with it, reported all is well his forearm. He told reporters, “It’s been pretty good. I’ve been making a couple throws, like today I made a couple throws and it was pretty good. It’s been reacting really well. Like in the morning when I wake up, it’s really loosened up. We don’t have to do too much work on it. We’re still working, but little by little, we’re getting to 100 percent.” Soto has now reached base at least twice in 11 straight games, a career-long for him.

June 16: Red Sox 9, Yankees 3

The Lead: Horrible end to a bad weekend

You knew this had the very high potential to be a shitty day after news from right here in Rochester that Dominguez left Saturday’s game for Scranton with an oblique injury - those are always problematic - and was placed on the injured list Sunday, once again stalling his development. Y9u just shake your head sometimes, right?

Then the game started at Fenway and it was just horrendous in every way. Marcus Stroman stunk; Caleb Ferguson stunk; Luke Weaver stunk; Ian Hamilton stunk; Gleyber Torres made me want to throw the remote through the TV as he capped a truly egregious and hitless series for himself; the Red Sox embarrassed Trevino and the pitchers by stealing a franchise-record nine bases; and a bunch of bearded Boston guys who could walk down Boylston Street and not even be recognized shredded the Yankees all night, just as they did Saturday.

I shouldn’t even waste any more of your time this morning, but I do have a format for the newsletter that needs to be adhered to, so read on if you want the gory details.

Game notes and observations:

➤ All you needed to see was the second inning to know how this was going to go. Just a terrible job by Stroman to turn a 1-0 lead courtesy of a Aaron Judge homer in the first into a 2-1 Boston lead, one that it never relinquished. He got the first two men out, then walked Valdez, a .213 hitter, and Dominic Smith blooped a single to right field and it looked like either Judge or Verdugo could have caught it but neither did. Smith, not exactly a speedster, stole second which began a night at the races for the Red Sox on the base paths, and thus he and Valdez both scored when Rafaela, down 0-2 in the count, singled on the eighth pitch of his at bat. Had I had any common sense, I should have turned it off right there.

➤ Boston added a run in the third when Stroman put two men on and one scored as Devers was grounding into a double play, then scored one in the fifth when David Hamilton singled, stole two bases and scored on a Devers sac fly. Devers kills the Yankees and then spits on their grave every god damn time he plays against them.

➤ The Yankees showed brief life in the sixth when Trevino homered, then Volpe singled, took third on a groundout by Soto, and scored on a wild pitch. But that led to an absolutely galling, gut-wrenching seventh inning, maybe the most maddening full inning of the season.

➤ In the top, the Yankees loaded the bases with no outs on singles by Verdugo and Stanton, and Rizzo reached first on an error but in doing so fell on his wrist and had to leave the game. He’s getting imaging, but it looks like a wrist injury that could cost him some time, not that the Yankees would really miss him given the way he has played this season. Here, the Red Sox sent in some Amish-looking reliever named Zack Kelly who quickly fell behind Torres 3-0. And then this happened: Torres took two perfect meatballs for strikes, then swung at a pitch in the dirt for a Stanton-esque strikeout. Appalling is the only word for it, that is until Trevino looked even worse on his three-pitch whiff. LeMahieu, who just can’t hit anymore, ended the threat by flying to center. No runs. Loaded the bases with no outs, had a 3-0 count, and did not score a single run so the score remained 4-3. That’s almost impossible to do, and it proved costly a few minutes there.

➤ On to the bottom of the seventh when it did not stay 4-3. Ferguson took the mound and gave up a walk and a single. Thanks Caleb for yet another shitty outing. Boone hooked him for Weaver who has been so good this year, but he wasn’t in this one. Devers immediately ripped a single for a run, then Connor Wong tripled home two. So in the decisive seventh, the Yankees got nothing, the Red Sox got three and that was the ballgame.

➤ The Red Sox piled on later, scoring runs and stealing more bases, gleefully rubbing the Yankees’ noses in the heaping pile of shit that this game was. When it was done, they had stolen a franchise-record nine bases. As I said, just a ridiculous, ludicrous performance from the Yankees in every way.

This is not the way the Yankees wanted to head into an off day, knowing the Orioles are in town starting Tuesday for three games. The last two nights in Boston were terrible, just so many things to bang your head against the wall, and at the same time, the Orioles took two of three from the Phillies in a high-leverage series in Baltimore and come to the Bronx flying high.

My mind has not changed one bit on this: While this has been a great start for the 50-24 Yankees, there’s no way that they’re better than the 47-24 Orioles. It just so happens that they lead by 1.5 games, but by season’s end, I can almost guarantee you that Baltimore will be sitting atop the AL East. If things go really poorly this week, the division could get flipped for good.

If it seems like I’m overly pessimistic today, it’s because I am. I hated an awful lot about this Boston series and now the Yankees are home this week to play the Orioles, a team that leads MLB with 114 homers and is second to the Yankees in runs (364), and is second to the Yankees in team ERA (3.07).

The Yankees would seem to be catching a huge break in the pitching matchups because they are missing Baltimore’s top three of Corbin Burnes, Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez, so they have to take advantage of this. The problem is, they won’t be missing any of the Orioles’ outstanding hitters.

The matchups look like this: Tuesday at 7:05 on YES it’s Nestor Cortes (3.59 ERA) against Albert Suarez (1.61); Wednesday at 7:05 on Amazon Prime it’s possibly Gerrit Cole against Cade Povich (4.76); and Thursday at 4:05 on YES it’s Luis Gil (2.03) against Cole Irvin (3.03).