Yankees star pitcher excels in his first minor league rehab outing following an elbow injury.
The Yankees ace took the mound at TD Bank Ballpark on Tuesday, pitching for the Somerset Patriots in his first rehab appearance since sustaining an elbow injury during spring training. He displayed his full array of pitches, throwing 3 1/3 scoreless innings against the Hartford Yard Goats, striking out five without issuing any walks. The right-hander’s fastball, clocked between 94-97 mph by the stadium radar gun, showed its usual vigor. During his Cy Young-winning 2023 season, his fastball averaged 96.2 mph.
Everything appeared to go as planned, with Cole expected to throw between 40-50 pitches. He exited the game after his 45th pitch.
It remains unclear how many rehab outings the 33-year-old will require. Yankees manager Aaron Boone mentioned on Tuesday that Cole would need “at least a few starts.” However, with their MLB-best 42-19 record, the Yankees are in no rush to bring him back.
“As far as how many [starts], I don’t know,” Boone said. “At least a few, but that’s something that we’ll kind of work through as we go. Like, when do we want to take him? How many pitches do we want him built up to? Those will all be factored in. We’ll kind of work through that with Gerrit as well.”
The team has 30 days to decide whether to build their ace up to a 100-pitch count in the minors or if they will leave some work to be done in the majors.
Cole is expected to return to the Yankees soon after recovering from a concerning elbow injury that required multiple rounds of testing to rule out Tommy John surgery.
“I have no idea,” Boone said on March 13 when asked if Tommy John surgery was unlikely. “We’re not withholding anything. If we had information, like, ‘OK, here’s the diagnosis. Here’s the course of action.’ Like, we’ll give that to you. We don’t have that yet.
“Any time you start taking pictures of any part of the body or the elbow, it’s not always clear on first looks, second looks. That’s why you do a lot of different [things] to try and get the best possible diagnosis.”
Cole and the Yankees narrowly avoided disaster in spring training. Now, they hope to reintegrate arguably the best pitcher in the game into arguably the best team in the league.
