Before Gerrit Cole had even been named the 2023 American League Cy Young, the Yankees ace found himself searching for ways to improve.
Never mind that Cole had just put together one of the most dominant seasons in franchise history, going 15-4 while leading the AL with a 2.63 ERA and 209 innings pitched. Cole also paced the league in H/9, ERA+ and Win Probability Added while topping all starters in WHIP and WAR, according to Baseball Reference.
Yet by the time last month’s GM Meetings began in Scottsdale, Arizona, Cole had returned to the lab.
“He’s already knee-deep into finding ways to be better when, how much better can you be than what he just did?” Brian Cashman said on Nov. 7, a few days before Cole won the first Cy of his career. “But that’s how he’s wired.”
Cashman asked a valid question that day, one that has since been repeated to others.
Upon winning his hardware, Cole had some answers.
“I want to refine a little bit of the command with some of the offspeed,” he said after pausing to think. “It’s really evident when the curveball is working well on the edge of the plate that it adds another element of timing to the approach.
“And the cutter being really something that was a regular presence for two-thirds of the year, that’s just in the infant stages of being developed to a certain extent. I mean, the use of it this year was unpredictable and surprising. The break is obviously a different break from the slider and the fastball. And I think the next element, the next step there, is going to be the command. I mean, we want to use this, ultimately, to both sides of the plate, just like we use all the other pitches.”
Cole used his cutter 7% of the time (230 pitches) in 2023 after introducing it at a 6.4% clip the year before. He offered the pitch to righties almost twice as much as he did to lefties, and he used all of his other pitches more. Opponents hit .271 off the cutter, easily the highest average against any of Cole’s pitches.
Of course, the cutter’s sample was also the smallest.
While Cole would like to enhance some specific pitches, Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake told the Daily News that he wants to see the hurler continue to build on limiting hard contact and managing difficult situations, areas of focus for the right-hander in 2023.
Cole cut opponents’ barrel rate by nearly 2% last season while logging roughly the same or identical amounts of soft, medium and hard contact as he did in 2022. He also significantly cut down on the amount of home runs he allowed, a problem that plagued him two seasons ago.
In 2023, batters hit .197 against Cole with runners in scoring position, .209 with men on base, and .223 in high-leverage situations.
Blake also wants to see Cole combine the aforementioned elements with his ability to strike people out more. Cole struck out 27% of the batters he faced in 2023. It was the first time he didn’t crack 30% since 2017, but Blake and Yankees legend Ron Guidry encouraged him to pitch to soft contact instead of chasing punchouts as a way to be more economical.
“I think it’s just a balance of how he went about this year and then continuing to refine the swing-and-miss approach,” Blake said of Cole moving forward.
After winning the Cy Young, Cole also joined the list of Yankees who have commented on how the team uses analytics.
While not as pointed as Aaron Judge’s end-of-season remarks, the topic did come up as Cole talked about ways he can better himself.
“I just want to make sure that we’re having as much of an understanding of those [numbers] as possible,” he said before diving into some hypothetical ways metrics can be applied. Cole added that he wants to make sure the Yankees are “wrapping our heads around [that] and we have a concerted effort on the why things are happening, just to better kind of understand ourselves, really.”
When asked about Cole’s comments and if understanding metrics was an issue last season, Blake said, “You’re constantly trying to refine the language you’re using for guys as an organization.”
“Does our approach have a consistent language?” the coach continued. “Is it tailored to each individual player the right way? Some guys want a lot. Some guys want a little. So I just think it’s constantly making sure that the guys are getting what they need on an individual basis and we’re providing for the whole as an organization. Just having some nuanced conversations around what that looks like for each guy is really where the devil is in the details.”
It should be noted that Cole and Blake are both well-versed in analytics. Meanwhile, other members of the Yankees organization have acknowledged the need to improve when it comes to implementing data and communicating it to players.
“That’s something we’re discussing and looking at,” Michael Fishman, an assistant general manager and the team’s former director of quantitative analysis, said at the Winter Meetings. “I think we welcome the feedback. We’ve had discussions with players to get their perspective on any issues they have, as well as some internal discussions of potential adjustments we need to make or not.”
While all of these things may seem small in the grand scheme of things, Cole will take every advantage he can get in 2024.
Winning a second consecutive Cy Young won’t come easy, but it’s not impossible. Jacob deGrom was the last to do it, claiming the trophy in 2018 and 2019 while with the Mets. Max Scherzer won the award the two years before that while throwing for the Nationals.
No Yankee has ever accomplished the feat.
Cole likely won’t publicly declare his desire to defend his title in 2024, as he was hesitant to say how much the first award would mean to him until his final start of the 2023 season. But it’s safe to say the competitive pitcher would like to finish on top again.
“He’s always looking for ways to improve,” Blake said. “He’s never satisfied.”
