Yankees: Losing this many Gerrit Cole starts is unforgivable

Not sure how much of the Yankees’ season has gone “according to plan” so far, but racking up the losses in Gerrit Cole starts and reaching the .500 plateau definitely wasn’t written in stone before the year started.

Following his tough-luck outing against Ryan Yarbrough and the Rays on Thursday, though, a marquee matchup made tougher by the fact that both men threw to completely different home plates, the Yanks are officially 6-6 in Cole starts.

Of the many things wrong with this current bunch, the offense’s remarkable inability to show up when Cole pitches, whether he needs a pick-me-up or just a run or two, is downright Mets-ian.

Add in Cole allowing a few less-than-welcome home runs in key spots, mainly to Austin Meadows, and here we are.

These are Cole’s four most recent starts. The Rays game was against Yarbrough, as we know, and the Rangers came was against Jordan Lyles, whose ERA was licking 6.00. A good offense working well figures out how to win three of these games.

The Yankees lost three.

The Yankees need to win more Gerrit Cole starts.

The good news about signing Gerrit Cole is that Gerrit Cole is extremely talented, and occasionally looks untouchable.

The bad news so far has been that, when Cole looks even somewhat mortal, his Yankees teammates seem completely unable to wriggle out of the hole he creates.

And if you believe the Yankees are more than a true-talent slightly-over-.500 team (33-27 in 2020, too), then they need to find a way to win baseball games when their ace is on the mound. It sounds simplistic, it is simplistic, and it’s accurate across generations.

Sometimes, an ace loses a battle of wits with an opponent’s ace. After all, that’s how the schedule is built, right? So they’ll line up?

So far this season, Cole has matched up with Hyun-Jin Ryu on Opening Day (L), Dean Kremer, Robbie Ray, an Andrew Kittredge/Yarbrough combo (L), Shane Bieber (now we’re talking!), Tarik Skubal, Lance McCullers Jr. (L), a weird Rays combination — also featuring Yarbrough — that he defeated 1-0, and the aforementioned list. Hardly a murderer’s row, and it includes Ol’ Yarbs three times.

No matter who was on the other end, unless it was Kremer or Skubal, the Yankees offense chose not to participate.

Even in 2020, a season mainly remembered for being an historic team-wide flop in which Cole seemed to get outfoxed in big games against the Rays, wrongly coloring his image for many Yankees fans, the team ended up 8-4 in regular season Cole starts. That was followed by a 2-1 record in the postseason, ending with a Mike Brosseau home run that was very much not allowed by Cole himself.

Arguably, the Yankees did not play well once in the four-game set against Tampa that just ended. They pitched their way to two wins, nearly running themselves out of both victories.

If the team is ever going to do more than split, though, they’ll need a win every fifth day from their ace — and trust us, he wants it as badly as we do.

You guys really couldn’t get five runs for him against Jordan Lyles? Really?

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