Juan Soto has taken all of the headlines during the season as the big guy the Yankees have to bring back. This focus is in part to the fact that, consciously or not, it feels like a foregone conclusion that Gerrit Cole would, one way or another, continue being a Yankee at the end of the day.
Cole exercised his opt-out, which gives the Yankees a short window to decide if they want to exercise that extra year worth $36 million to keep him around or take a shot at bringing him back in free agency.
First things first, the fact Cole exercised this opt-out is actually great news for the Yankees, as it indicates little to no immediate concern from Cole’s camp regarding the elbow issues that affected his availability during the 2024 regular season. One would be pretty justified in assuming that if there was any lingering issue, Cole would just stick with the current contract, in which he is owed a rather hefty sum.
Keeping that in mind, we’re not necessarily here to discuss what’s the best course of action for the Yankees as far as just adding on the year or reworking the contract a bit to also keep flexibility for Soto. It’s more so to talk about how, in many ways, Cole stands out as the guy you want to hitch your wagon to. All that he means for this fan base, indicating from the very beginning a desire to come here, having grown up as a Yankee fan, is rather significant. Obviously, the contract he got didn’t hurt the cause, but there was no shortage of suitors for his services.
Baseball has many elite arms, Tarik Skubal was outstanding in 2024 and will likely win the AL Cy Young, throw a rock at T-Mobile Park and you have favorable odds of hitting an ace. And there is obviously the pending free agent, Corbin Burnes.
Overall, though, since becoming a Yankee back in 2020, Cole has been all that was advertised and then some, providing a rock at the top of this rotation and as reliable of a postseason presence as you’ll find. The last image of half a season missed is a little tricky, and shouldn’t be ignored. Still, it was the first occasion in which he missed time as a Yankee. We’re talking about an arm with six 200 IP seasons, a smooth delivery with repeatable mechanics that every young starter seeks.
It’s kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t deal with pitchers. In some ways, you have to take what context is available and choose how to look at a situation. If a guy has missed a lot of time, you can say his arm is still fresh, if he’s consistently brought 30+ starts to the table, that reliability can be seen as a lot of fatigue on the arm, a so-called accident waiting to happen.
Let’s say for a second the Yankees decided to let Cole go because the extra year is not worth the risk. Given the state of the rest of this rotation, you have to aggressively hit the market in search of an ace. Who are you getting that’s a better option?
Ignoring the likely bidding war and eventually just as big of a commitment you’d be required to take on, Burnes has also gone through similar strikeout dips as Cole at a younger age, with his cutter going through some small changes in shape to adjust to his current outlook. No one looked as dominant as Blake Snell at specific times in 2024, but we all know the history of inconsistency with the two-time Cy Young winner. Virtually the opposite of Snell is Max Fried, and his reliability since 2020, but the best version of Fried won’t be as dominant as that of Cole’s or Snell’s.
Perhaps more importantly than any player-to-player comparison, Cole has been here at Yankee Stadium and delivered, and while not ideal, the sacrifice of an extra year to keep him around was always in the cards for the Yankees. Even at the time he signed this contract, it’d have taken an unexpected development for Cole not to exercise that opt-out, and one pretty concerning for the Yankees. It’s probably a fair assumption that barring outstanding circumstances, the Yankees planned on adding that extra year to keep Cole around.
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