“He’s gonna get one, maybe more.”
— Aaron Boone on Gerrit Cole and the Cy Young Award
This was the Yankees manager in the immediate aftermath of Cole’s two-hit, 10-strikeout shutout of the Twins on Sunday. I get it. There is the euphoria of the moment, that elevated feeling of seeing an elite player at the peak of his craft. Add to it that perhaps Boone’s greatest asset as a manager is his public support of his players whether they are at their lowest lows or highest highs.
Do that math, include how great Cole has looked four starts into this season and you get where Boone was coming from on Cole. It isn’t like he was going to say, “Gerrit has been great, but have you guys seen Luis Castillo this season?”
Instead you get from Boone: “He’s a great pitcher that, I believe, is going to end up in Cooperstown one day.”
But before we get to the “maybe more” Cy Youngs, perhaps Cole can win that one. Or be the ace of one champion. Or throw a no-hitter.
It is in this way that Cole — to date — reminds me of Mike Mussina. There is annual, durable excellence, but also a sense of being oh so close to the highest achievements without reaching them — yet.
Mussina was “Mr. Almost.” He finished second for the Cy Young once, fourth twice, fifth three times and sixth three times. Cole has finished second twice, fourth twice, fifth once and ninth once. Both had loads of postseason work (23 games and 21 starts for Mussina, 17 starts for Cole) without ever winning it all despite playing on teams that had three-games-to-two leads in the World Series and leads in Game 7 (Mussina with the 2001 Yankees, Cole with the 2019 Astros). Both established themselves as star pitchers before signing big free-agent contracts with the Yankees.
Mussina famously dabbled with no-hitters without securing one, notably when he was one strike from a perfect game on Sept. 2, 2001, before Carl Everett looped a single to left. Cole’s longest no-hit bid was seven innings last June 20 versus the Rays, and he was perfect for 6 ⅔ innings last June 3 against the Tigers.
Mussina — after winning 19 games twice and 18 games three times — did win 20 in 2008, his final season. Cole won 20 in 2019, the same year Mussina’s consistent excellence earned him election to the Hall of Fame in his sixth year on the ballot. So perhaps Boone is right that the ultimate career prize is there for Cole.
And perhaps this year’s Cy Young will be there, too. But don’t be a prisoner of the moment or to allegiance if you are a Yankees fan. In this week’s Award Watch, Cole leads the early precincts for the AL Cy Young. But it is not as if he is running unopposed for even the April distinction.
Let’s take a snapshot through Wednesday and four starts: Cole led the league in innings (28 1/3) and had a 0.95 ERA. Seattle’s Castillo was at 0.73 in 24 innings, Minnesota’s Sonny Gray was at 0.82 in 22 innings and the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani was at 0.95 in 21 innings. For those Yankees fans scoring at home, that would be the one who got away at last year’s trade deadline (Castillo), the one traded away because he couldn’t play here (Gray) and the one they hope to secure as a free agent in the coming offseason (Ohtani).
Among qualified starters, Texas’ Jacob deGrom led in strikeout percentage at 40 percent, and Minnesota’s Pablo Lopez was second at 33.7, followed by Ohtani at 32.9 and Cole at 32 percent.
We can keep going, but you see there is real early competition as Cole tries to be more than close but no Cy.
Whose career do you got?: Dale Murphy vs. Andrew McCutchen.
It seemed like a nice baseball story: The Pirates give $5 million to reunite with a homegrown star as he plays out the string. The Mets certainly didn’t like it. McCutchen was the righty-hitting fourth outfielder they had targeted most, and were willing to pay that $5 million before the Pirates signed the 36-year-old.
But it hasn’t just been a nice little story for an organization that keeps the payroll and expectations low.
The Pirates have been a pleasant three-week surprise at 13-7, and one reason was McCutchen was performing like the prime-aged star who was the team’s best player when it last made the playoffs from 2013-15.
In the four-year period from 2012-15, McCutchen was the best all-around player in the NL, playing center field (he won one Gold Glove) and finishing third, first, third and fifth for the NL MVP while accumulating a slash line of .313/.404/.523. These days, McCutchen is a DH, but has a slash line that looks as if it’s from a time machine: .290/.395/.548. He had four homers and three steals (in four tries) and as good a hitting eye as ever (11 walks to 11 strikeouts).
The performance made me wonder what a strong late-career year might do for McCutchen’s Hall of Fame chances. Which then made me think of whose career McCutchen’s resembles, and I thought of Murphy, a center fielder who also had a terrific but not elongated peak and who played until he was 37.
Murphy had a six-year prime run in which he won back-to-back NL MVPs followed by ninth-, seventh-, 21st- and 11th-place finishes. His defense (five Gold Gloves) and best peak might have been better than McCutchen’s, but Murphy fell precipitously at that point until the end of his career.
McCutchen has not been the same star in his 30s. But in his first 14 seasons, the only time he did not have an above-average OPS-plus was last season, when it was 99 (league average is 100).
Murphy, in 15 years on the Hall of Fame ballot, never received more than the 23.2 percent of votes he garnered in his second year of eligibility (75 percent is needed for election). Nevertheless, he has a large contingent that continues to champion his case. Last December, he was one of eight players on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, which elected Fred McGriff into the Hall of Fame. There were 16 members on that committee, 12 votes were needed and Murphy received six.
Murphy is next eligible to make that same ballot for a vote that will be held in December 2025. McCutchen is the rest of his career plus the five-year waiting period away from going on the writer’s ballot. So McCutchen has time to add (or perhaps detract) from his candidacy.
But here is a question that can be answered in real time (if you would like to play): Who’s career do you got, McCutchen or Murphy?
Got my attention: The Braves are tied for the NL’s best record at 14-5. It is only three weeks, of course. But it stands starkly against the starts Atlanta had the past two seasons en route to winning the NL East.
In 2021, the Braves were 52-55 and five games behind the Mets through Aug. 1, and never got over .500 until they reached 57-56 on Aug. 8. Yet they won the NL East for a fourth straight year and their first World Series title since 1995.
In 2022, over the first third of the season (54 games), the Braves were over .500 for one day — when they were 2-1. They were as many as 10 ½ games behind the Mets (on June 1), and did not go over .500 for good until June 5. Yet they still won 101 games and their fifth straight NL East title.
Roster stuff maybe only I notice: Jose Ruiz is a run-of-the-mill reliever who has a relatively minor distinction for the 2023 season: He was the first player to play for two teams, appearing in four games for the White Sox with an unsightly 22.09 ERA before being traded for cash to the Diamondbacks.
Why bring this up? Well, 169 players played in the majors for at least two teams last year. Yu Chang and Mike Ford led the way by playing for four each. Many of these were via trades. For example, Harrison Bader was traded for Jordan Montgomery, so each player appeared for the Cardinals and Yankees.
But annually there are players, very often pitchers, who are vagabonds of the season, moving from one team in desperate need of an arm to another. Take the saga of Chi Chi Gonzalez in 2022.
Gonzalez finished the 2021 campaign with the Rockies, and then signed a minor league deal with the Twins. He made two starts for the Twins last June before being designated for assignment and claimed on waivers by the Brewers, for whom he appeared in four games before being DFAd again. He signed a minor league deal with the Tigers in mid-July, and was released in late August having never pitched for them in the majors. He was signed by the Yankees and was used to start the final home game of the season.
He worked for four organizations in 2022, played in the majors for three and appeared in a total of seven games (five starts).
Again, why bring this up? Because while Gonzalez’s story is familiar, I have heard from many executives who think this kind of nomad pitcher is going to be more in use than ever before in 2023. There is this fear I keep hearing about the combination of the frailty of pitching, the lack of depth of quality pitching and the new rules bringing a crisis to find arms as the season progresses and the weather gets warmer and muggier.
Perhaps this is a “sky is falling” mentality from folks whose job it is to try to prepare for the worst-case scenario. But every scout I talk to says more than ever they have their eyes on excess pitching that can be attained during the season. There is worry that the current state of the game — with the ball flying, stolen bases climbing and having to deliver pitches against a ticking clock — will have a withering effect on arms and pitching psyches.
I have heard this refrain from several people involved in personnel departments as scouts or executives: “You better be doing a good job scouting the independent leagues.”
One scout for a projected second-division team who expects to have a bad pitching staff recently said to me, “I have real fear what it will look like against us in July and August. I have real wonder who is even going to be pitching those games.” One executive for a contender mentioned he already had better minor league pitching alternatives, but does not want to give up pitching depth so early in the season to get it to the major league roster.
Through three weeks, 12 teams had used just five starters. The Rays had used a MLB-high eight, and still had the best rotation ERA of 2.31. Just three teams had used 13 pitchers in all this year: the Blue Jays, Nationals and Astros. The Mariners, with 20, had used the most. The Mets had used 18, though that included Luis Guillorme in mop-up duty.
Again, maybe it is sky-is-falling stuff. Or maybe there are going to be lots and lots and lots of Jose Ruizes this year.
Last licks: By winning on Saturday and Sunday to split a four-game set, the Yankees kept the Twins from winning a series in The Bronx for the first time since May 30-June 1, 2014. The Twins made minor progress with a split — they had lost their previous seven series at Yankee Stadium, and were 0-3 in the playoffs. The total was 3-24 in that period in The Bronx.
In fact, only three players who played in the Twins’ series win in 2014 at Yankee Stadium were still active. And each is currently a New York player: Eduardo Escobar and Aaron Hicks were then with the Twins and David Robertson was a Yankee.
Matt Daley, the Yankees’ director of pro scouting, pitched twice in that series for the Yankees. Without looking it up, if you know who the starting pitchers for the Yankees were in the two games they lost, it might be time for a hobby.
Those would be Vidal Nuno and Chase Whitley.