Credit: Unsplash

Cole threw only six outs before being taken off the mound.

Gerrit Cole is the pitcher of the New York Yankees. As the Yankees are one of the most prolific teams in the entire MLB, and they paid $324 million to get him, Cole understandably has a bit of a heavy burden on his shoulders. Most of the time, he lives up to that standards, striking batters out with abandon. Tuesday’s AL Wild Card game against the Boston Red Sox was not one of those times.

By the third inning of the game, Cole had only managed six outs. Meanwhile, the sox had managed multiple home runs, culminating in a 3-zilch lead for the Sox. It was at this point that the Yankees manager Aaron Boone made the executive decision to take Cole off the mound.

“Especially just how great a pitcher Gerrit is and how much respect I have for him, how much I know he wants it, prepares for it and competes for it — it’s a difficult decision, but I felt like the one I needed to make,” Boone said.

"Sick to my stomach."

—Gerrit Cole on the disappointment he's feeling after not getting the job done in the AL Wild Card Game pic.twitter.com/jPG4Z8DALe

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 6, 2021

Benched for the remainder of the game (which the Yankees lost 6-2), to say Cole was in a bad place would be an understatement. “I’m sick to my stomach,” said Cole, adding that “When it’s all said and done, I didn’t perform the way I wanted to perform.”

“He’s a gamer and a competitor,” Boone said. “If you go back, he had COVID, came back, had the hamstring. I do think he was sound and capable of going out and pitching like the dominant ace that he is, but I think it’s fair that at least the interruptions of his season in the second half with COVID and the hamstring could have contributed some.”

Cole has repeatedly insisted that his medical conditions had nothing to do with his poor showing.