Ace Gerrit Cole Dominates. NY 3 Seattle 1

June 21, 2023 paperbacklou 2023 1

Gerrit Cole continued his stellar season with another dominant outing — pitching 7.1 innings of 4-hit, 1 run baseball, striking out 8 and walking 1 to go 8-1 2.64 on the year — in beating Seattle at Yankee Stadium on a Tuesday night.

Anthony Rizzo got 3 hits, including an RBI double in the 1st, and Billy McKinney hit a 2-run BOMB in the 2nd which was the decisive blow against tough Seattle righthander George Kirby.

Cole did what an Ace does — in this case break the Yankees’ 4-game losing streak.

“Definitely nice to hand the ball to him (Cole),” said manager Aaron Boone afterwards. “And knowing how well the Mariners pitch, and you know Kirby is going to be tough — so to have Gerrit go out there — definitely comfort in that, and knowing we really wanted obviously to get a win to stop the bleeding a little bit. And he went out there and was in complete control.”

NY improves to 40-33, 9.5 behind Tampa, 5.5 behind Baltimore, and 1 game ahead of Toronto. Seattle falls to 35-36, 9 games back of Texas.

1. Rizzo Rakes

Anthony Rizzo started breaking out of a mini slump in Sunday’s 2nd game, and was Red Hot in this one, stroking a double his first 2 times up, and getting 3 hits on the night.

He stroked his first double in the bottom of the first — a clutch, 2-out RBI hit — after Gleyber Torres had gotten on with a 1-out single against George Kirby, and Giancarlo Stanton struck out (again). Rizzo ‘just missed’ hitting a 2-run homer, as the sky-high bomb hit just off the top of the right field fence and bounded into play.

2. McKinney 2-Run BOMB

Harrison Bader was Back in center and so was his bat and speed — he led off the 2nd with a single, stole 2nd base and scored when next batter Billy McKinney hit a 432-foot BOMB to right center for a 3-1 Yankee lead.

3. Cole Dominant

After that George Kirby settled down — pitching around some trouble due especially to Rizzo’s hits — and threw 7 solid innings, 8 hits allowed and the 3 runs.

Gerrit Cole made those 3 runs stand up with the Dominant outing against Seattle’s tough hitting team.

“It wasn’t easy I can tell you that,” said Cole afterwards. “They put some balls in play and hit some balls hard that went our way, and they fought us all night. I think the best thing that we did was stay in command of the strike zone, move the fastball around, and throw a lot of quality pitches.”

Cole got into a tete-a-tete with Jose Caballero with 2 outs in the top of the 7th. Caballero kept stepping in and out of the box to waste the pitch clock. On a 1-2 pitch Cole threw a high fastball that went straight up and hit the top of the backstop.

“Sometimes a high fastball can be a really effective pitch, so… you have to change eye levels,” said Cole afterwards.

Cole seemed to be taking exception to what Caballero was doing — continuously stepping in and out of the batter’s box to waste the pitch clock. When Cole was asked if that was it, he said, “It seems like that’s his game, but I just work with it.”

Three Twitterers had the idea simultaneously to combine the replay of the HIGH fastball with John Sterling being hit by a foul ball last week — Ryan Cannon was first, Chris Schifano 2 minutes later, and Rob Friedman “The Pitching Ninja” 2 hours after that. Here’s Ryan’s:

Cole then struck out Caballero, starred him down, and walked off the field, wagging his finger at Seattle manager Scott Servais in their dugout.

“Their manager had some choice words for me coming off the field and he was wagging his finger at me so I wagged my finger at him,” said Cole.

Cole struck out the first batter of the 8th — his 5th straight strikeout — and left at 105 pitches.

4. Holmes Filthy

Clay Holmes relieved Cole with 1 out, nobody on in the 8th. According to John Sterling on the broadcast, Holmes ERA was 0.47 in the 19 games coming into this one.

Holmes got 5 straight outs — a groundout and a strikeout of Ty France to end the 8th, and groundout, groundout, strikeout in the 9th for the old ballgame.

The Boxscore

https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore/_/gameId/401472119

 

1 Comment

  1. Love Gerritt Cole. Fiesty.
    He’s been a great free agent signing by Cash.
    Hope he gets the Cy Young award this yr

    Reply

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