Gerrit Cole Shines As Yankees Pitch Combined One-Hitter to Top Guardians

Well, I guess I have to ease off on my favorite saying, “It’s never easy with this team” because the last two games against Cleveland were absolutely easy. About as easy as it possibly could be. The Yankees put that Tuesday tragedy behind them quite nicely and won the series with two solid performances to keep them in first place with the best record in the AL at 75-53. Honestly, I don’t know how they can be in that position, but they are. Lets get to it.

Aug. 22: Yankees 6, Guardians 0

Steven Kwan led off the top of the first inning with a solid single to right-center off Gerrit Cole, and rather incredibly, that was the only hit the Guardians had all afternoon. If you think that’s pretty rare, how about this: It’s the first time in Yankees history that has happened.

Cole earned his 150th career victory with six scoreless innings, and though he struggled with his control and walked five, the fact that he allowed just the one hit and Kwan wound up being the only Guardian to touch third base in the game was pretty impressive.

Pitcher wins are a useless stat which is why I almost never reference them. There is so much silly randomness in which pitcher gets the win, and we have dozens of numbers that tell us which pitchers are good and which are bad. Still, 150 is a nice round number and Cole is now one of only four active pitchers with at least that many, trailing Justin Verlander (260), Max Scherzer (216) and Clayton Kershaw (212).

“I grew up when they were widely viewed as important by everybody,” Cole said. “To me, it’s one of the stats that everyone has a hand in. It’s really about your teammates and how often you take the field and play well together.”

Cole threw 95 pitches and he struck out only two which is another indication that he didn’t have his best stuff, but the Guardians have really been struggling at the plate and they couldn’t take advantage. Outside of that stupid six-run 12th inning the other night, Cleveland scored only four runs in the other 29 innings in this series.

With the victory, the Yankees won the season series 4-2 against the Guardians, and that could prove to be meaningful because if they were to finish with the same record by season’s end, the Yankees would be the higher-seeded team and if they were to meet in the postseason, the Yankees would have home-field advantage.

“It was big to get that series,” said Giancarlo Stanton who had the big blow in the game, a three-run homer that put it out of reach in the fifth. “Every series is going to be big the rest of the way.”

Here are my observations:

➤ After Cole departed, the bullpen did its job, too, as Tim Hill, Luke Weaver and Michael Tonkin combined for three hitless innings, the only blemish being a Weaver walk in the eighth.

➤ On offense, it turned out that all the Yankees needed was the solo homer Aaron Judge hit in the fourth inning, his 48th of the season. His slugging percentage is now .728, which is higher than the OPS of 18 teams. To put into perspective how absolutely insane that is, remember, OPS is compiled by adding a player’s on-base percentage and slugging percentage together. It’s crazy what he’s doing.

➤ This is what Cole said about Judge: “There’s no one that can compare to him. Certainly not walking around right now. I mean, outside of Bonds. What a wonderful experience to have him on my team.”

➤ Judge’s homer gave the Yankees the lead, but they were really struggling against Guardians starter Gavin Williams even though he came in with a 5.02 ERA. However, everything changed in the fifth. Williams walked Ben Rice and Gleyber Torres, and after he got Juan Soto to ground into a fielders choice, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt took him out and brought in Nick Sandlin. His first order of business was to intentionally walk Judge to load the bases, and Austin Wells made them pay when he hit a sacrifice fly. Still, it was only 2-0 and Cleveland was in it, but Stanton changed that with his three-run bomb to dead center to blow it open.

➤ The last run came in the eighth when Anthony Volpe doubled, stole third and scored on Rice’s sacrifice fly. It was nice for Rice because he’s in a 1-for-24 slump and his average is down to .180 which is even worse than DJ LeMahieu. There is no team in MLB that has worse production from first base than the Yankees with their combined .199 average and .591 OPS from all of who have played the position.

➤ And it was good for Volpe who’s now 6-for-18 with three walks in his last five games. Of course all that means is his maddening inconsistency is starting to trend positively at the moment.

➤ One guy who is certainly not trending well is Alex Verdugo. Remember when he had that big night on June 14 in his first game back at Fenway Park? Yeah, it was all happening for him at that point in his brief Yankee tenure. Since then, he’s batting .181 with a .250 on-base and his .510 OPS is the worst among all qualified hitters in MLB. Do you know how difficult it is to compile such a horrendous OPS? Of his 38 hits since then, he has 12 doubles, just one home run and 12 RBI, and it feels like about a million ground outs to second base. And still he plays every day! He’s 0-for-19 in his last five games and the Yankees have to stop screwing around. Bring up Jasson Dominguez once and for all and let him play left field full time.

➤ “I got some shit that I understand that we got to fix and address,” said Verdugo. “We’ll get there. Every time that I do hit the ball hard or make a good swing, it seems to be right at somebody or somebody makes a good play.”

The Yankees dodged a bullet on the Jazz Chisholm injury. He’s expected to be back in the lineup Friday when the Yankees open a series against the terrible Colorado Rockies, and to make room, Oswald Peraza was sent back to Triple-A.

The Rockies are 47-81, just a half-game better than the Marlins for worst record in the NL, and as I said last week before the White Sox series, there is no excuse for the Yankees not to sweep these three games. They somehow lost a game to Chicago, but in the Bronx, anything less than a sweep would be a failure.

Colorado has a minus-205 run differential; only the White at minus-259 are worse. Because they play half their games at hitter-friendly Coors Field they aren’t horrible on offense as their .704 OPS actually ranks 15th. The primary weapons have been first baseman Michael Toglia and outfielder Brenton Doyle who each have 20 home runs with Doyle’s .801 OPS the best on the team and Toglia’s .789 is second. Also, third baseman Ryan McMahon is a nice player with a team-best .335 on-base and his 55 RBI trail only Doyle’s 60.

On the mound, oh my God, what a disaster. Their team ERA of 5.54 is worst in MLB and is nearly three-quarters of a run higher than the White Sox. The opposition is hitting .288 against this staff and the WHIP is 1.53. We may have finally found a team that Verdugo, LeMahieu, and Rice can have success against.

The pitching matchups are incomplete on the Yankees side as I send this out. Friday at 7:05 on YES it’s Carlos Rodon (4.34 ERA) against Kyle Freeland (5.97); Saturday at 2:05 on YES it’s TBD for the Yankees (but it seems like it’s Marcus Stroman’s turn) against Bradley Blalock (2.92); and Sunday at 1:35 on YES I would guess it will be Will Warren against Austin Gomber (4.64).