Is Yankees ace Gerrit Cole simply getting old?

New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole continued his road back from Tommy John surgery to mixed results in Detroit on Monday night.

Cole, making his sixth start of the season, pitched 4.1 innings and allowed five runs on nine hits. He struck out five and walked one. The Tigers won the game 5-3, with Cole falling to 2-2 with a 3.62 ERA on the year.

What’s more concerning is Cole looked pretty strong through two innings. He started the game by allowing a single to Kevin McGonigle, but then got three straight fly ball outs. Spencer Torkelson led off the bottom of the second with a double, only for Cole to then strike out the side.

Things then got weird in the third inning. Zach McKinistry turned the lineup over when he slugged a triple to start the bottom frame, then scoring on McGonigle’s groundout the next at-bat. This tied the game 1-1, and Cole then blew three fastballs by Dillon Dingler for the second out.

But that’s when Kerry Carpenter got an infield single out of a batted ball with a .140 expected batting average (xBA). Riley Greene walked before Torkelson snuck a single up the middle and scored Carpenter. Then Colt Keith scored Greene to make it 3-1 before Cole finally fanned James Outman to end the inning.

What’s going on with Cole? His fastball velocity is up along with the rest of his pitches. His ground ball rate (GB%) is down, but he’s a fastball-dominant strikeout pitcher who only just started throwing a sinker. Ground balls haven’t been part of his game since his salad days in Pittsburgh.

This being said, Cole’s strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) are indeed down, sitting at 8.07 compared to 9.38 in 2024. Cole hasn’t posted a K/9 north of 10 since 2022. His FIP and xFIP are each 4.24 and 4.40. The five home runs allowed this month are catching up with him.

So if the velocity isn’t the problem and the walks aren’t significantly increased, what’s eating Gerrit Cole on the mound? He posted a 5.28 ERA across all minor league rehab starts, so did the Yankees rush his return? Could be. Cole only made one start at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre before making his season debut at home on May 22.

Except we already established Cole’s velocity is up. Dig a little deeper, and one will notice that most of the damage against him on Monday was when he threw his four-seamer or sinker. Six starts is a smaller sample size, sure, but Cole has already thrown his sinker 7.9% of the time this season. It’s his highest usage rate on the sinker since 2018 in Houston, when his arsenal was 6.1% sinkers.

This leads us to Cole’s Plus-stats. As in how well his pitches move, how well he commands the zone, and how well he makes decisions in-game. Baseline average is 100, right where Cole’s overall Stuff+ sits on the season. Location+ is within the margin of error at 99 and not a grand concern, it’ll rise above average at some point.

Pitching+, however, is only 96. And the Stuff+ on Cole’s fastball, specifically, is at 102, well below his career mark of 116.

The sinker is his worst pitch, with Stuff+ at 82. Movement on his slider and knuckle curve is also down, but remains above average. Strangely, Cole started throwing his cutter more in 2024 and it posted a 106 Stuff+ with a 15.6% usage rate.

Cole hasn’t thrown the cutter once this season.

In fairness to Gerrit Cole, none of this means he’s a bad pitcher, cooked, over the hill, whatever. He can still play the game and be a frontline starter. He’s still former American League Cy Young winner and future Hall-of-Famer Gerrit Cole!

Except what do all future Hall-of-Famers have in common? They all get old and older. Age comes for them all and slows them down. Not every pitcher is a Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander who looks ageless into their late thirties.

Cole is 35 and turns 36 in September.

That’s the gist of it, folks. What ails Gerrit Cole is a three-pronged assault. He’s abandoned his cutter, he’s almost 36, and he’s working his way back from Tommy John surgery. Is he overprotecting his arm’s health? Certainly seems more likely than a full-blown decline in skill.

There is only one cure for Cole’s improvement: Time. And maybe reincorporating the cutter. Certainly beats leaning on his four-seamer to put hitters away. The Tigers caught up to it on Monday.

For now, all Cole can do is keep toeing the slab every fifth day and trying to build off of these struggles.