The morning after his first rehab start, Gerrit Cole was feeling like he hoped he would.
The Yankees ace, just over 13 months removed from undergoing Tommy John surgery, was feeling “good” and experiencing only the normal soreness to be expected from throwing 44 pitches across 4 1/3 innings on Friday night with Double-A Somerset.
“Pretty standard,” Cole said Saturday morning at Yankee Stadium.
Friday marked another significant step in Cole’s long road back to the big leagues, though he will still have several more rehab starts before he might be in a position to rejoin the Yankees in mid-to-late May.
The Yankees will continue to be deliberate in building up Cole’s workload, with his next start likely to come with High-A Hudson Valley or Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which are both home next week.
“I would say building up is a pretty big physical box,” Cole said. “We’re in an environment now where — it’s nice to work on things, but at the end, you have to get outs. There might be some situations where I get stressed – long innings, short innings, long innings on the bench, those things like that, just trying to handle them when they come your way.
“Then continue to work out the recovery in between. Finding what’s working, what’s helping and get in a good pattern and rhythm, lay some baseline down for what’s to come next. Just staying curious with what comes my way and how to best handle that.”
Cole’s fastball sat around 95-96 mph on Friday, which he indicated was a few ticks up from where it was during his live batting practice sessions in recent weeks.
The 35-year-old flashed that higher velocity in his two spring starts before going through a deload process and then ramping back up again, this time for good.
“Just a lot of strike throwing and a pretty solid delivery overall,” Cole said of his takeaway from Friday’s outing. “Control better than command, but command pretty good.”
Aaron Boone planned to watch Cole’s full rehab start Saturday night, but said the reports he got on it were positive.
“All in all, a really strong step for him,” Boone said. “We’ll be disciplined to make sure we take the right amount of time. What’s important is, coming off a year where not only he’s rehabbing and coming back from a major surgery, but that means no innings last year. So we want to put him in a position where not only is he ready to go at the start, but also able to carry that throughout the season.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
