Gerrit Cole was everything the Yankees hoped for in the first half of his first full season since joining them on a record $324-million contract. Often very good during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, Cole was back to consistently dominating this year like he did with the Houston Astros during his 20-win season in 2019.
By mid-June, Cole was an early favorite to win his first Cy Young Award, and it wasn’t even close.
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MLB’s crackdown on pitchers applying foreign substances in-season changed everything. Cole suddenly was ordinary in a chunk of his starts and his regular season ended with a slump that continued into one-and-down postseason, a two-plus-innings start in Boston in the Yankees’ Wild Card Game loss.
Overall, Cole’s 16 wins led the American League, his 3.24 ERA ranked sixth, his 243 strikeouts and 181 1/3 innings were top five. But his second-half struggles weren’t ignored by baseball writers, who voted Toronto Blue Jays left-hander Robbie Ray as the American League Cy Young winner.
Cole finished a distant second, while Texas Rangers right-hander Lance Lynn finished third.
Ray received 29 of 30 first-place votes and finished first with 207 voting points. Cole was runner-up with 123 points after receiving one first and 29 seconds, while Lynn was third with 48 points. Red Sox ace Nathan Eovaldi was fourth with 41 points and White Sox lefty Carlos Rodon was fifth with 34 points.
Ray, 30, was 13-7 with an AL-best 2.84 ERA this season, his first full season with the Blue Jays.
There were two BBWAA voters from each American League city.
The disparity in Cole’s numbers before and after pitchers started getting checked for sticky stance during games was hard to overlook. He was 8-3 with a 2.31 ERA in his first 14 starts, then 8-5 with a 4.12 ERA in 16 outings after the crackdown began.
Cole also dealt with some health issues in the second half, as he sidelined for two weeks in August after testing positive for COVID and a tight left hamstring pushed back one of his September starts and perhaps played a role in his 6.15 ERA over his final five regular-season outings.
Cole refused to make excuses.
“At the end of the season we’re all going through and wearing whatever we’ve had to overcame,” he said in October. “The other teams are dealing with the same kind of situations.”
This was the fifth time since 2015 that Cole finished in the top five in the Cy Young voting. He also was the AL runner-up in 2019 when he was beaten out by Astros teammate Justin Verlander. Cole was 20-5 with a 2.50 ERA that year, then in the offseason signed with the Yankees.
“He was fantastic for us this year despite obviously injuries, some changes in the game,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said last week during the GM meetings.
“He’s never going to say the hamstring bothered him. He’s never going to say he was tired. But I think all of that’s possible.”
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Randy Miller may be reached at rmiller@njadvancemedia.com.
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