Gerrit Cole threw two pitches Thursday he would like to have back.
The rest of his outing was strong, but a battle he expected nonetheless as he faced his former Astros teammates for the first time since leaving them to sign with the Yankees.
“I felt like I played chess out there for a couple hours,” Cole said after the bullpen spoiled his win in a 7-4 loss at Yankee Stadium. “Always enjoyable to go up against some of the best competition.”
Cole wasn’t quite as dominant as he had been for most of April, but still tossed seven innings with the only damage coming on a pair of solo home runs by Yordan Alvarez. Otherwise he gave up three singles — two of which came from his old personal catcher, Martin Maldonado — and didn’t walk a batter for the fourth straight start while recording a season-low four strikeouts.
After he struck out Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Correa to end the seventh inning, Cole left the mound with a 3-2 lead. But he settled for the no-decision after the Yankees bullpen blew the lead in the eighth inning.
“I don’t think he had his overwhelming stuff, by Gerrit Cole’s standards, but I thought he really pitched and he made a lot of really quality pitches,” manager Aaron Boone said. “They had some tough at-bats against him, but I thought he pitched.
“So I thought it was a bit of a grind for him today, but to be able to go out there and pitch as well as he did for seven innings and leave with the lead, I thought it was a really strong performance by Gerrit when he didn’t necessarily have his overwhelming stuff.”
Alvarez’s first home run came on a 1-2 slider from Cole, which the right-hander called “a mistake” for trying to throw it on back-to-back pitches. The second came on a 98.5 mph fastball that ran back over the plate.
Before Alvarez’s blasts, Cole had allowed just one home run across his first six starts of the season.
“I hadn’t seen Cole in person in a long time, but he wasn’t as sharp as I had seen him on TV,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “If you didn’t get him today to a degree, you were not going to get him, because I can’t imagine him any sharper than he was.”
Still, Cole allowed two earned runs or fewer for his 11th straight start, this one coming against a lineup that he had plenty of familiarity with.
“I thought it was solid,” Cole said. “I felt like we made a lot of good pitches. … They’re obviously a tremendous offensive team, so they’re going to battle.”
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