Gerrit Cole almost didn’t throw a single pitch for the New York Yankees last season.
When news broke that the 2023 AL Cy Young Award winner would have an MRI on his pitching elbow, fans and analysts rightfully feared the worst possible outcome; a UCL tear that would require season-ending surgery. The Yankees were able to dodge a bullet as Cole only missed the first two months of the season, and he pitched to a solid 3.41 ERA in his 17 starts last season.
That came with a terrible start due to spotty command as Gerrit Cole was getting his legs under him again, and with a healthy 2025 season, he could remind everyone that he’s still an elite pitcher.
Gerrit Cole Could Bring the Yankees Some More Hardware In 2025
Through Gerrit Cole’s first four starts, he walked eight batters in 17.1 innings while allowing five home runs, a reflection that something was off with the Yankees’ ace. The right-hander had a 93 Location+ through those first four starts, looking all out of sorts and having to grind through at-bats instead of efficiently mowing down batters. Something would finally click for Cole after being knocked around for a bit, and it resulted in a very strong finish to his season.
An improvement over his final 13 starts stemmed from Gerrit Cole’s Location+ jumping to 102, as he posted a 2.67 ERA with a .272 xwOBA, which would have translated to a 3.03 xERA. When healthy, Gerrit Cole is one of the best blends of having elite-level stuff pitch quality scores with excellent command, and a huge reason he’s so successful is because he has such a diverse array of above-average offerings.
From a process standpoint, Gerrit Cole is an extremely effective pitcher who attacks the zone in a manner that makes him tough to barrel up, and he’s continuing to change his looks. Last season was the lowest four-seam usage rate for Cole in his entire career, and the ability to rely on his curveball, slider, and cutter to throw hitters off the fastball has kept an aging pitcher near the top of the sport.
He’s begun toying around with a sinker and changeup as well, pitches that he used a bit more in the postseason to continue keeping hitters off-balance. They weren’t very effective for him, but developing even one of those pitches into a league-average offering would add so much more to what Cole can bring to the table.
Gerrit Cole has the wide release point to make a sinker work by peppering it for called strikes that help him get ahead in the count, and it would give him a third fastball to throw. Pitchers have begun implementing multi-fastball approaches to their arsenals as a way to remain unpredictable, something that pitchers such as Luis Severino have done in recent years to combat a declining fastball.
It won’t help us get the 30% K% version of Gerrit Cole that we were used to seeing in the earlier years of his deal, but it could allow him to be one of the best damage preventers in the sport with a good K-BB%.
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What needs to improve in 2025 is simple but much easier said than done; the slider command has to get better. Cole has been unable to convert well-placed sliders into swings and misses the way he did in previous seasons, and if he can improve that pitch specifically the Yankees could have a Cy Young winner in 2025. His four-seamer is still going strong, the trust in his curveball has grown back from his Houston days, and his maturity and poise are through the roof.
Instead of using two different pitches nearly 75% of the time, Gerrit Cole is using three different secondaries alongside his fastball to keep hitters guessing. Each pitch individually is an excellent weapon, but Cole has the benefit of both talent and incredibly high baseball IQ. He’s a pitcher constantly striving to improve, and the constant adjusting to a changing game has kept Gerrit Cole at the head of the pack even in his age-34 season.