When the Yankees landed Gerrit Cole on a historic, $324 million pact after the 2019 season, both sides envisioned the superstar lifting hardware.
Four seasons later they have not yet risen to a World Series title, but Cole likely will soon loft another award that he has earned.
The Cy Young award winners will be announced Wednesday night, when it would not be a surprise if Cole is the unanimous, American League choice.
In what was an otherwise dreary season for his club, Cole stood out as every bit the ace the Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman dreamed he would be.
Among qualified starters, Cole led the majors in WHIP (0.98) and opponents’ on-base percentage (.259).
He led the American League in ERA (2.63), quality starts (24), innings pitched (209), opponents’ batting average (.206) and OPS (.581).
During Cole’s 11-year career, he has been named to six All-Star teams and started the 2023 edition in Seattle.
He has been regularly one of the best pitchers in the game — “This is Gerrit Cole’s era,” Aaron Judge said at the end of the season — but has not yet won an award for being his league’s best pitcher.
He has been the Cy Young runner-up twice, including during his first full season with the Yankees, in 2021.
Any talk about the 33-year-old joining legends such as Nolan Ryan and Juan Marichal as the best to never win the honor likely will cease Wednesday, when Cole will be able to officially enunciate what the award means to him.
Consistently through this season, he declined to go into detail, preferring to focus on the team’s goals (which were not met).
After his season-ending, two-hit shutout of the Blue Jays that all but clinched the award, Cole accepted that he would be viewed as the Cy Young front-runner and credited everyone around him.
“I’m just very grateful for my teammates,” said Cole, who allowed seven earned runs in his last 48 ²/₃ innings. “In the 33 games I was able to play this year, they showed up every single time. Lately, they kind of rallied around that fact and maybe in a certain sense, after some of our collective hopes fell by the wayside, that motivated them to continue to play hard. I’m just so grateful to that.”
Last week at the GM meetings in Arizona, Cashman called Cole “the smartest player I’ve ever come across.” The Yankees — who last month released a flattering “2023 Season Recap” of Cole’s season — have tried to promote their ace as much as possible.
“I think he deserves [the Cy Young],” Cashman said of Cole, who still owns the contract with the largest total salary among pitchers in MLB history. “He’s already knee-deep into finding ways to be better. How much better can you be than what he just did? But that’s how he’s wired.”
All that’s standing between Cole and the first Yankees Cy Young since Roger Clemens in 2001 is a former Yankee and a Yankees rival in Sonny Gray and Kevin Gausman, respectively.
Gray was the best pitcher in the majors — by a significant margin — at limiting home runs. He surrendered just eight all season with the Twins. Still, his 2.79 ERA was worse than Cole’s while pitching in a much weaker division.
Gausman actually edged out Cole in FanGraphs’ measure of Wins Above Replacement largely due to his strikeout ability. The Blue Jays’ power righty led the AL with 237, but the majority of his other stats paled in comparison to Cole, who threw 24 more innings.
Because he largely outshone the rest of his contemporaries, Cole’s competition became pitchers of the past.
— He allowed two runs or fewer in 26 of his 33 starts, which tied Ron Guidry (26 in 1978) for second-most in Yankees history (behind Jack Chesbro’s 28 in 1904).
— Cole’s 2.63 ERA was the lowest by a qualified Yankee in a 162-game season since Rudy May in 1980 (2.46 ERA) — also the last Yankee to lead the league in ERA.
— Cole posted the fourth-best ERA by a qualified Yankee in the past 51 years: Since 1973, only Ron Guidry (1.74 in 1978), May and Catfish Hunter (2.58 in 1975) have been better.
This season Cole acknowledged that starting an All-Star Game was on his baseball bucket list.
Shortly before crossing it off, he said the next item to accomplish would be winning a World Series.
The title has been elusive, but a Cy Young award is not a bad consolation prize.
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