Yankees' Gerrit Cole wrestles with latest spate of injuries to pitchers
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole looks on from the celebration line after an 8-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Gerrit Cole doesn’t have a whole lot of experience giving injury updates, though he did it very well Monday afternoon.
He played catch at 60 feet 25 times, “22 out of 25 in the chest,” he joked. There’s no firm timeline yet for his return from elbow inflammation, but he was encouraged, and the general projection is that he’ll be able to pitch again by June.
But then he had to contemplate one of the potential reasons he — a pitcher known for near-freakish durability — was standing in a clubhouse in April giving a detailed breakdown of a game of catch.
He also had to think about the fates of too many pitchers this year: Shane Bieber, Spencer Strider, Eury Perez, Trevor Gott and teammate Jonathan Loaisiga, all diagnosed with significant elbow injuries.
“Every time you adapt to something, there’s a cost,” Cole said. “To say that [the pitch clock is] not contributing to people getting hurt is — I don’t think that’s an accurate statement. I’m not necessarily saying that it is, but it’s certainly a variable that’s out there alongwith the importance of spin and the importance of velocity and the importance of location. They’re all contributing factors.”
Last week, the Players Association said MLB’s decision to cut the pitch clock from 20 to 18 seconds with runners on base before this season was responsible for the slew of pitching injuries. In response, MLB said the pitch clock wasn’t to blame; instead, it pointed to “velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries.”
To Cole, neither statement was complete: MLB is being too hasty in saying the pitch clock has no effect and the union is being too reductive in not fully taking into account the fact that pitchers are throwing harder and with more spin to compensate for stronger lineups, a more regulated strike zone and a slew of rule changes designed to create greater offensive production.
“I was kind of disheartened” by MLB’s response, he said. “I just didn’t think it was very thorough. To be able to say that you implement something in one year and it has no effect is short-sighted. We’re going to really understand the effects of the pitch clock maybe five years down the road. But to dismiss it out of hand is – I didn’t think that was helpful to the situation.”
The greatest frustration was with the lack of empathy for players. He acknowledged there is no easy solution.
“We need to get on the same page to try to fix this,” Cole said. “Rob [Manfred, the commissioner] cares about the players. He’s supposed to care about players — supposed to really deeply care about them. That’s his job.”
Instead: “I’m just frustrated by the fact that I don’t feel like the players [are] the main focus of it.”
Cole, who has stayed healthy throughout most of his 11-year career, also noted that pitchers are expected to produce at that optimal level at all times. He pointed to 2017, when he led the league in games started with 33 but also had a 4.26 ERA; a guy who gives up that many runs likely doesn’t get trotted out as much in the current landscape, he said. Pitchers also are learning new pitches and deploying them more quickly and with greater frequency than they used to.
He added: “The standard of performance is higher. The league is demanding that you throw your best pitch every single time because hitters are better, the strike zone is smaller, the balls are different, the bats are different. We’ve just evolved into just a higher performance product, which is good.
“But as we’ve evolved over the last 10 years, we’ve had two shortened ramp-ups. We’ve had a pitch clock. Guys have had to adjust to other different rules that are inside of the game and how they go about their business. I think it’s irresponsible for either side to say any one of those things definitely has no impact on pitchers’ elbows or shoulders. That’s not helpful.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
