There have been many legendary pitchers to don the pinstripes. From Mariano Rivera to Whitey Ford, Andy Pettitte to Ron Guidry, the franchise history is rich with Hall of Famers, Cy Young winners, and record holders. Gerrit Cole can certainly count himself among their ranks, and tallied a special milestone last Saturday against the Braves. He became the fastest player to tally 1,000 strikeouts in pinstripes, achieving the mark in 139 games and 837.2 innings to surpass CC Sabathia (162 games) and Roger Clemens (1,087.1 innings). Of course, that 1,000th strikeout had to be showcased on Sequence of the Week, but that wasn’t the only sequence worthy of mention from that game.
We join Cole with in the top of the fifth. He cruised through the first four innings unscathed but hit a brick wall to open the fifth, giving up a pair of doubles followed by a pair of singles to start the frame. Just like that, the Yankees’ 1-0 lead had turned into a 2-1 deficit, and given the impotence of the Yankees offense over the previous week-plus, it became essential that Cole stop the bleeding there. That was no easy task with the top of the Braves order coming to bat for the third time and even less so with runners on first and second with no outs.
There’s no messing about here, Cole going right at Drake Baldwin with a first pitch four-seamer at 97 mph.
This is what’s called in the industry an “F* you” fastball, Cole hoofing a heater right down Broadway and daring the batter to catch up with it. In all seriousness, you’d like to be a little more precise against a hitter as capable as Baldwin, and Cole’s a bit fortunate that Baldwin take a pitch right down the middle for strike one.
Given that Baldwin just took that center-cut pitch for a called strike, you have to figure that he is hunting something breaking or off-speed. Therefore, there’s an opportunity to steal another called strike with an inside fastball.
Cole does just that, executing this four-seamer perfectly to the inside edge of the zone. The pitch starts in off the plate before tailing back for a front door called strike, Baldwin once again leaving the bat on his shoulder.
It’s clear at this point that Baldwin is hunting something soft out over the plate. As a pitcher, once you identify what the hitter is looking for, you can beat him by either throwing to that spot and letting the stuff beat the hitter or making a pitch look like it’s heading for that area before movement moves it elsewhere to fool the hitter. Cole goes with the former approach attempting to gas a heater by Baldwin.
He almost throws this 98 mph four-seamer past Baldwin, who is just barely able to fight it off foul the other way with a super late emergency hack.
After three straight heaters, perhaps Cole feels that Baldwin will switch to sitting dead red, because he climbs the ladder with another four-seamer hoping that the hitter will get himself out by chasing up out of the zone.
Baldwin almost offers at this high heater as Cole again nails his spot, but is able to halt his swing in time for ball one.
Despite not getting the chase, that fastball was the perfect setup pitch. It reset Baldwin’s eye level for an elevated heater, which primes the situation for a back foot slider.
Cole isn’t quite able to bury this slider down and in and catches more of the zone than I reckon he was intending. He gets a bit lucky that Baldwin swings underneath it — unusual for a low slider — almost as if the hitter is ready for the slider and swings in the spot he’s anticipating a nastier pitch to brake, only for this one to essentially cement mix above his bat. You can see the look of bemusement from Baldwin after the whiff — he feels he did everything right with that swing but got beat by what ended up being a not-so-great backup slider from Cole.
Here’s the full sequence:
After a line out by Ronald Acuña Jr., the Braves are still threatening with their most dangerous hitter Matt Olson stepping to the plate with two outs. He’s the NL leader in home runs with 33 at that point, so despite a strikeout looking and fly out to that point in the game, Cole still has to be at his sharpest to escape the frame without further damage.
Cole starts things off here with a knuckle curve that nips the top of the zone for called strike one.
You don’t always want to leave your curveball elevated in a spot like this, but I think this was a totally intentional decision from Cole. He had thrown first pitch heaters to Olson in the first two at-bats, setting up this AB to steal the first pitch called strike by landing the knuckle curve on the top shelf of the zone. Indeed, you can see the way Olson is frozen by the pitch having given up on it early as it looks like a high fastball out of the hand.
Earning a first pitch called strike with the breaking ball opens a variety of options for Cole. He can try to bury another knuckle curve below the zone looking for a chase or attack the top of the zone with the heater, the elevated aiming point fooling the hitter into diagnosing another breaker and thus resulting in a late swing.
Cole chooses the latter approach, but Olson is right on time against this 97 mph four-seamer. Rather than the velocity, it’s the location that beats Olson, who fouls the high heater straight back to the backstop.
With Olson’s timing matched to the heater, you might expect Cole to throw something off-speed here to get Olson whiffing out in front.
Instead, he opts for precision over deception, dotting this 99 mph four-seamer right on the corner low and away. It’s a perfect pitch in a hard to barrel location, aided by Olson hunting a secondary pitch. He can only leave the bat on his shoulder as he watches the home plate ump punch him out for the 1,000th strikeout of Cole’s Yankees career. It’s fitting in a lot of ways that Cole achieve the feat on this pitch — a fiery fastball against a feared slugger to neutralize a threat and keep his team in a position to win the game.
Here’s the full sequence:
Despite some stumbles in his first handful of starts, Cole has been everything you could have asked for from a 35-year-old starter making just his 14th start since the end of the 2024 season after a long and arduous road back from Tommy John surgery. He has pitched to a 3.35 ERA and 3.37 FIP with 87 strikeouts in 80.2 innings, his fastball impressively sitting a tick above its average velocity in 2024. He’s going about things a little bit differently, leaning heavily on the four-seamer to post the highest called strike rate but also lowest swinging strike rate since his days in Pittsburgh. But that is the kind of evolution I expect from a pitching professor of Cole’s ilk, understanding that because his slider command isn’t all the way back, he can still record those outs with improved precision with the fastball instead. His ability to execute to the corners and edges of the zone seems to be getting better with age, which along with the intact velocity is a reminder that Cole is still absolutely capable of ace-caliber performance on any given day.