Yankees Ace Cole To Have Tommy John Surgery

 

Gerrit Cole pitching on June 19, 2024, when he made his season debut. Photo by Jason Schott.

The Yankees sent out a dispiriting update on their ace, Gerrit Cole, on Monday evening that will already alter their season 17 days before Opening Day in The Bronx on March 27.

It read: "RHP Gerrit Cole was seen earlier today at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan Jobe Institute in Los Angeles by Dr. Neal ElAttrache and is now scheduled to undergo 'Tommy John' surgery tomorrow. Dr. ElAttrache will perform the surgery. Further updates will occur post-surgery."

The recovery for Tommy John surgery is at least a year, so Cole will be out for the 2025 season.

The 2023 American League Cy Young Award winner made one start in spring training before his elbow started acting out, and he was diagnosed with elbow nerve inflammation and endema.

Then, last Thursday, Cole made another start, in which he gave up six runs in 2 2/3 innings against the Minnesota Twins. That's what prompted the Yankees to send him for tests on his elbow on Friday.

That was an eerie reminder of what happened in spring training a year ago, when Cole suffered nerve inflammation in his elbow. That led him to miss the first three months of the regular season. The remarkable thing was that the Yankees went 51-24 in his absence until he returned on June 19.

When Cole returned, he had flashes of brilliance, but it ultimately was a mixed season, as he went 8-5 with a 3.41 ERA (earned run average), as he made 17 starts, threw 95 innings, and allowed 38 runs (36 earned) on 78 hits and 29 walks, while allowing 11 home runs, and striking out 99.

Then, in the playoffs, Cole made five starts, as earned a win in the American League Division Series against Kansas City.

In the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cole allowed one run on four hits and no walks in six innings in Game 1, which the Yankees went on to lose, 6-3, in extra innings.

Then, in Game 5, with the Yankees facing elimination, Cole went 6 2/3 innings, and allowed no earned runs - with all five runs he allowed in the infamous fifth inning unearned - on four hits and four walks, with six strikeouts. The Dodgers went on to win that game 7-6, with one of the lasting images being Cole not covering first base on a grounder by Mookie Betts that would have been the third out and instead opened the floodgates in that fifth inning in which L.A. erased a 5-0 deficit.

In Cole's five years with the Yankees, he has gone 59-28 with a 3.12 ERA, has made 125 starts, and struck out 915 in 759 inning pitched.

Even though Cole won 16 games in his second season in pinstripes, 2021, it all came together for him two years later when he won the A.L. Cy Young Award after going 15-4 with a 2.63 ERA - his best as a Yankee and second-best in his career to the 2.50 in 2019 when he was still in Houston. Cole made 33 starts in 2023, when he threw 209 innings, and allowed 64 runs (61 earned) on 157 hits and 48 walks, while notching 222 strikeouts.

The Yankees were already entering this season with questions on how their offense will make up for the loss of Juan Soto, and now they have to fill an equally big hole on the mound.