MESA, Ariz. — Gerrit Cole will return to the back fields of Tampa, and not long after, the minor league circuit.
But on Tuesday, he gave the Yankees one more reminder of the potential prize waiting for them as soon as mid-May, as long as the rest of his rehab from Tommy John surgery continues to go as smoothly as it has to date.
Cole made his second and final start of the spring, looking sharp once again as he built up to 26 pitches and 1 ²/₃ innings in an 8-3 win over the Cubs at Sloan Park.
“All in all, pretty good,” said Cole, who struck out three, averaged 96.3 mph on his fastball and topped out at 98. “I feel like the level of execution has been really strong. Recovery, for the most part, has been really strong. Just kind of plugging away.
“Long way to go, but it’s a good body of work so far.”
For the umpteenth time this spring, Cole reiterated that he is sticking to a 14-to-18 month timeline for a return from surgery — “You can write it down, never fails, every single time,” he quipped — which could put him on a big league mound as early as mid-May.
Cole said the potential of going on the 60-day injured list — which would make him ineligible to return before May 24 — has not been brought to his attention, though the Yankees currently do not need to open a spot on the 40-man roster.
Though it might seem like he is ahead of that timeline, Cole indicated he will be going through “a little bit of a download” in his workload for his next few outings.
He will throw in Tampa his next time out and then come to New York for the home opener April 3, after which the Yankees could begin thinking about starting his rehab assignment.
“I’m confident, but there’s a lot of pitching to go,” said Cole, who gave up a solo homer to former teammate Alex Bregman. “We’ll see what challenges come my way. But so far, so good. … I’m very pleased with how things have gone. Even last week, the command wasn’t that great, but we hammered that out this week, stayed disciplined in this game, no overthrowing, corrected some of those mistakes from last week.
“The threshold of pitches, the threshold of velocity, we’ll hopefully start to increase a little bit.”
Ryan Weathers piggybacked Cole for his final tuneup of the spring, building up to 80 pitches across five innings of one-run ball. The lefty said he “needed” an outing like this after some ugly numbers his last few starts.
“I think just making quality pitches,” he said. “It felt good today to get the ball on the ground and it go to people, honestly. It was a little bit of a sigh of relief when the first two outs were ground balls finally right at somebody. I was just happy with how my body felt.”
Reliever Osvaldo Bido, one of the final cuts from big league camp, was claimed off waivers by the Braves on Tuesday. … The Yankees traded non-roster infielder Zack Short to the Nationals in exchange for cash considerations.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
