It’s been a tumultuous June for pitchers across baseball, and none of them has operated under a brighter spotlight than New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole.
That pitch was a 96 mph four-seam fastball with a spin rate of 2,414 revolutions per minute, and it was deposited into the first row of seats above the Green Monster in left field at Fenway Park.
He could not know that later that inning, Cole would be touched up for a three-run shot off the bat of Rafael Devers — on an 0-2 count — and that Cole had never before allowed two first-inning homers.
Still, there is no doubt that because Cole’s dominance has been so consistent, it’s worth at least trying to understand why he struggled and whether those struggles are likely to continue.
New York fell to 0-6 against its chief rival with the loss and, with the Toronto Blue Jays beating the Baltimore Orioles, the Yankees slipped into fourth place in the AL East.
After Devers connected on a pitch located smack in the middle of the strike zone, Cole slammed his fist into his glove and stalked around the mound as Devers circled the bases.
Tried to make a good pitch to Devers and absolutely pulled it into the wrong part of the zone.
After Cole struck out 14.8 batters per nine innings during the March/April period, that figure dropped to 9.6 in May and 9.3 in June.
While a pitcher with Cole’s track record would ordinarily get the benefit of the doubt for having a so-so month, the timing of Cole’s downtick only feeds the spotlight shining on him.
Cole was hesitant to address the topic head-on when asked about it earlier this month, which pretty much assured that his spin rate would become headline news for his subsequent outings.
Cole’s spin rate against Boston wasn’t back to his pre-June levels, but with an average of 2,442 rpm on 37 four-seamers, per Statcast, it was up from his previous two outings.
The spin and velocity combinations on Cole’s fastball — just to pick on one pitch type — continue a recent trend, one that began this month as the news about baseball’s since-implemented enforcement guidelines began to circulate.
None of those numbers matter if Cole is pitching winning baseball, and despite the poor bottom-line numbers in June, he really struggled in only two of five outings.
“The bottom line is he’s coming off of two really good starts,” Boone said.
As bad as things seemed at times Sunday, and as much scrutiny as Cole and the Yankees have been under of late, with more than half the season to go, there are still few pitchers in baseball you’d rather have on the mound than Cole.
Nevertheless, on a day the Yankees tumbled another rung in the standings, the spotlight on Cole and his teammates is glaring.