Yankees' Gerrit Cole set to play catch this week in first step on road to recovery
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole is introduced before the team's home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Friday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
As a debate rages in baseball about what is causing serious injuries to so many pitchers, Gerrit Cole’s slow road to recovery might have him playing catch early this week.
“I think in the next couple of days,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said on Sunday morning. “Maybe [Monday] or Tuesday.”
Cole said after Sunday's 8-3 win over the Blue Jays that he most likely will play catch on Monday.
Even a tentative first step is significant for Cole, who is out with right elbow inflammation. The righthander is hoping to return in early June.
Pitching injuries and the underlying causes were the subject of an angry missive from Players Association chief Tony Clark on Saturday.
Clark, a former Yankees and Mets first baseman, railed against MLB’s unilateral decision to shave two more seconds off the pitch clock with runners on base this season.
“Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified,” the statement said. “The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset — the players.”
MLB struck back on Sunday with its own statement, which said: “This statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries.”
MLB said a Johns Hopkins analysis “found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries.”
In recent days, pitchers such as the Yankees' Jonathan Loaisiga, Cleveland’s Shane Bieber, Atlanta’s Spencer Strider and Miami’s Eury Perez have suffered serious elbow injuries.
Said Boone: “There's no easy answer for it. It is disturbing, the amount of injuries that are happening . . . I think [the pitch clock] could be one of the factors. It's possible. I don't know that for sure. But I think everything's kind of on the table and probably part of the stew that's causing some of this.”
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Boone said he wasn’t sure if the Yankees would adjust their batting practice schedule or other outside activities during Monday’s solar eclipse.
The club on Thursday moved its scheduled 2:05 p.m. game against Miami to 6:05 p.m. to avoid the eclipse, which is expected to begin in New York at 2:10 and be over by about 4:36.
Boone said he was in the room when general manager Brian Cashman was speaking with MLB about changing the game time.
“I hate to plead ignorance, but I didn't give it much [thought],” he said. “I was next to Cash when they had first broached at the league about getting this changed. I was like, ‘Yeah, OK, great. Six o'clock Monday.’ Obviously, it's probably the right thing to do.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
