KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s another night that Gerrit Cole and the Yankees could rest easy. After struggling in his first three starts, the Yankees ace had his second straight strong start as the Yankees shut out the Royals, 3-0, for their eighth straight win.
The Yankees (15-6) clinched their third straight series win. The eight-game winning streak is their longest since winning 13 in a row Aug. 14-27, 2021. It is just the fifth time since 1959 the Yankees have won at least 15 of their first 21 games of the season.
After hitting four homers on Friday, the Yankees had to do it without power on Saturday.
With strong winds blowing in, the Yankees had to manufacture their runs. In the second, Gleyber Torres led off with a single and scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s ground out. In the third, Josh Donaldson drew a one-out walk and scored on Torres’ sacrifice fly. In the fourth, Aaron Hicks drew a leadoff walk and scored on Kiner-Falefa’s sacrifice fly.
The Yankees had their 13-game streak without committing an error snapped when Kiner-Falefa bobbled a ground ball in the second inning.
It was the second straight solid start for Cole, who needed it. He admitted that last Sunday, his first solid outing of the season, there was a moment to finally exhale.
“It was like a little bit of an exhale, but honestly, I just kind of feel like that was like a team exhale,” Cole said of his first win.
“And I certainly slept better.”
He and the Yankees should sleep well Saturday night, too.
Cole threw six scoreless innings, getting stronger as the night went on. He struck out one through the first four innings and then finished with six. He got 10 swings and misses, seven on the fastball, two on the cutter and one with his change-up.
The cutter was Cole’s safety pitch Saturday night. When he got in trouble in the third after throwing eight straight balls to issue back-to-back, two-out walks to load the bases, Cole went to the cutter against Salvador Perez. It got the desired groundout to get the Yankees out of the inning. Cole threw the cutter in college and this offseason decided to bring it back and has slowly been increasing his reliance on it this season.
“The thought was I can throw this pitch, so let’s see how good it is ... and then let’s see if it can be used in a situation where you have the ‘C game,’ or you don’t really have anything working and you’re basically just trying to fill the zone up with different shapes,” Cole said. That can be an extra shape that if it throws else off to be an extra shape that matches up well against a particular player’s swing.”
Make no mistake, the four-seam fastball is still his bread-and-butter pitch and he used it effectively later in the game. After striking out just one hitter through the first four innings, Cole started attacking with it in the fifth and went back to it when he was in trouble in the sixth. He struck out Andrew Benintendi out to end the fifth with it and with runners on first and second with one out, he struck out Bobby Witt Jr. on a 99-mph fastball and Kyle Isbel on a 98-mph pitch.
At least, last Sunday, Cole looked more like the ace the Yankees signed in the winter of 2018. He threw 6 2/3 scoreless innings, scattering four hits and striking out nine.
“Just a lot of good quality pitches and I think that you know we’ll try to replicate,” Cole said of Sunday’s start. “And try to replicate just staying on the attack really.”
It’s been quite a contrast from his first three starts. Cole managed just 11 1/3 innings and posted a 6.35 ERA. That was capped by a career-shortest outing in Detroit, where he was yanked in the second inning after having walked five.
