At 73 years old, Ron Guidry still enjoys spending spring training with the Yankees.
The former Cy Young winner is a regular presence at the team’s Tampa complex during exhibition play. There, Guidry will talk pitching with current Yankees, passing down tips that helped him become one of the most accomplished hurlers in franchise history.
Over the years, Gerrit Cole has become a frequent conversation partner when it comes to the topic the two are experts on. Sometimes, too frequent.
“I tease him, ‘The only drawback is that you talk all the time,’” Guidry jokingly told the Daily News. “’Give it a rest! Take a break. Sit down and relax one time. It’s not always all about pitching. They got other things in the world you can spend time doing.’”
While Guidry exaggerated about Cole’s lack of other interests, it’s no secret that the 33-year-old is obsessed with his job. Brian Cashman attested to that last week, detailing how the righty wanted to meet shortly after the 2022 season ended with the Yankees getting swept by the Astros in the ALCS. The duo spent two hours in a Greenwich, Conn., coffee shop as Cole, coming off his worst season with the Yankees, relayed feedback about his and the team’s performance.
While the 2023 season went far worse for the Yankees — they failed to make the playoffs — Cole put together one of the best years of his career. The ace went 15-4 while leading the American League 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 bWAR.
On Wednesday night, Cole will likely win the first Cy Young Award of his career. Toronto’s Kevin Gausman and Minnesota’s Sonny Gray are also finalists, but the expectation is that Cole will run away with a trophy that he’s been a runner-up for twice.
On the final day of the 2023 season, Cole said winning the award would be a “tremendous honor.” The idea of joining the five other Yankees to win the award — Guidry, Bob Turley, Whitey Ford, Sparky Lyle and Roger Clemens — delighted the history-appreciating pitcher, and he said that he would have to chat with Guidry some more if he took home the prize.
“Life’s good,” Cole told The News. “It’s a little bit of a dream, man. I mean, it’s hard to put it into words. It’s just very humbling because everybody dreams this stuff, but to be able to be blessed to have the opportunity to actually fulfill those is something quite special that I don’t lose sight of.”
Cole also won’t lose sight of his job. Even after a season worthy of baseball’s top pitching prize, the man is hard at work.
“He’s already knee-deep into finding ways to be better,” Cashman said. “How much better can you be than what he just did? But that’s how he’s wired.”
Indeed, that wiring helped Cole earn this opportunity. But there were also other factors — and people — at play.
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All throughout the season, Aaron Boone cited Cole’s increased comfort level when discussing the success the pitcher had in his fourth season with the Yankees. That should not be overlooked following the unusual start to his pinstriped tenure.
Cole signed a nine-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees in December 2019 following a closely-watched free agency sweepstakes. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the labor issues it sparked in baseball then interrupted the MLBPA-involved Cole’s first spring training with the club and shortened the 2020 season. His family, meanwhile, had to settle into a new part of the country as chaos unfolded in the world.
“I’m certainly aware of how blessed I am and how the pandemic probably affected a lot more people more adversely than me,” Cole said. “But it was just so tough on our family coming across the country and having to go through that. And, you know, the expectations here, the expectations on me, nobody cares about that kind of stuff. You gotta shut up and produce. [My wife] Amy’s a big advocate of that and, obviously, we did our best and put up solid campaigns right from the get-go.
“But I had no friends in the community. We’re raising kids away from family and all the tribal aspects of life that were normal before 2020 — we expected to lean on those types of things, and then those things got taken away. It was just such a big adjustment.”
The disorder didn’t stop there, as the pandemic negatively impacted the 2021 season as well. The owners’ lockout then delayed spring training and the season in 2022 as Cole returned to the bargaining table.
Four years into his contract, 2023 offered Cole his first ordinary spring training and season in pinstripes.
“It’s a lot more accustomed this year,” he acknowledged. “This is definitely my first normal full year with the Yankees. It’s so much more time for focusing on baseball.”
Past Cy Young winners also noticed Cole’s increased coziness, as ex-Astros teammate Justin Verlander and former Yankee CC Sabathia — another California kid who signed a big deal in the Bronx — also mentioned it.
“Much more even-keel,” Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake told The News. “I think he’s more comfortable in the environment. I think he’s just more settled in the Yankee environment in general. I think his relationships are a lot stronger with Boonie and myself and some of his teammates.”
Cole has been a No. 1 starter for years, but his comfort helped him take his game to another level in 2023. So did some changes on the mound.
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When Guidry thought back to his most recent spring training conversations with Cole, he recalled the pitcher talking about how he wanted to do a better job of commanding the strike zone in 2023. Cole had a good, but not great, season in 2022, registering a 3.50 ERA while leading the league with 33 homers. He didn’t want a repeat performance.
“When we talk about commanding the strike zone, we’re talking about throwing four different fastballs in four different areas,” Guidry said. “Up and in, up and away, low and in, low and away. So if you can command a fastball in those zones anytime you want to, you can go two or three innings without throwing any other pitch.”
Guidry also encouraged Cole to pitch to more contact, instead of chasing strikeouts, when possible. Doing so, Gator reasoned, would save some bullets in Cole’s arm as games and the season dragged on, especially with pitchers now up against the pitch clock.
“He was just committed throughout the year to relentlessly seeking the weaker contact and taking the strikeouts when they came,” Blake said, “but not necessarily seeking them out like we had in the past.”
Blake also said that Cole’s home run woes, while partially due to poor luck last season, led to an increased focus on pitch selection. Boone, meanwhile, raved about how much better Cole became at managing tough situations.
Asked how one improves at that, Cole said it mostly came down to execution.
“Ultimately, you just have to throw better pitches in those situations,” Cole said before the gears started turning. “So how do you throw better pitches? Well, why did you throw bad pitches? Were they bad because they weren’t convicted? Were they bad because they were the wrong pitch or the wrong location? So just kind of like reverse engineering some of the situations from last year. I just thought that the sequencing and the game planning leading up to those situations could be optimized.
“Those situations, where the game inevitably gets to a high-leverage point, we have to be prepared for those and know what we’re going to do. I think that both pitching unpredictably to give yourself a little bit of a larger margin for error and being convicted in what that plan is going to be when you’re in those situations gives you more confidence to execute. And then when you execute and you give the pitch a chance, if it’s a success or a failure, you learn something because all those other variables are controlled. You’re not questioning was it the right pitch. You’re not questioning was I convicted to it. Was the location poor? Was the pitch sharp? You gotta give the pitch a chance. So I think that the confidence and the conviction, along with the preparation, kind of go hand in hand. It’s a little bit of a chicken or the egg. But when it’s all said and done, you gotta throw better pitches in those situations, and we did.”
While Cole primarily relied on his four-seamer and slider to get hitters out, he used his curveball more than he did in 2022. His changeup usage went down, but Verlander noted that Cole made strides with his cutter this past season.
Other than that, Verlander said not too much has changed for his friend’s game.
“He’s just continuing to take steps forward as a pitcher,” the Astro told The News. “He’s just constantly learning and seeking out information of how he can better his craft, and I think you start to see the fruits of that labor.”
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Back when Cole worked in Houston, Martín Maldonado always respected his teammate’s “f–k you mentality” on the mound. The catcher also appreciated how he could challenge Cole — as long as he had his facts straight.
“Before you say something, you made sure you had to be right because he wasn’t gonna take it for granted,” Maldonado told The News. “He was gonna go back and look if you’re right about the conversation that you had.”
A seasoned veteran, receiving Cole came easy to Maldonado. But he recognized how difficult of a job Ben Rortvedt had this year.
Only 26, Rortvedt had 39 games of MLB experience prior to this season. But he essentially became Cole’s personal catcher when wrist surgery sidelined Jose Trevino midway through the season.
“I wish I could have stuck with it the whole time,” Trevino said of Cole’s Cy Young bid, but he prepared Rortvedt to take over. The two backstops went over how Cole likes to prep and how one of his starts should be called.
“Ben has just been so incredible,” Cole said after 13 games with him. “I’m sure it’s a thrilling position to be in for him. At the same time, difficult. We haven’t really gotten our feet settled in the major leagues. Of course, he’s a professional. He’s got a routine, but it’s different up here. To be able to balance those things and perform at such a high level with not much experience, it’s just another gift, another blessing.”
Cole didn’t keep things light for the young catcher, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There were times when the ace barked at Rortvedt on the mound, or gave him an earful in the dugout, or shook him off repeatedly. As Cole competed for a Cy Young, the Yankees were also fighting to stay in contention. There was no time to ease Rortvedt in.
He wouldn’t have had it any other way, and he learned to push back, just like Maldonado did.
“We feel comfortable talking to each other in whatever fashion is gonna get our point across or get the job done and make us better. He’s an emotional pitcher,” Rortvedt told The News. “When he sees something, he lets you know, which is awesome. That’s all you can ask for, is transparency. I’ve learned so much about pitching from him.
“When you have conviction behind what you’re thinking and what you’re throwing, it just kind of comes out in that way. It’s all out of love. It’s all good.”
The untested Rortvedt’s emergence behind the plate showed that, even in a Cy Young-caliber season, so much is out of the pitcher’s control. It also showed that it takes more than just the man on the mound to pull it off.
Cole made it a point to shout out all of his catchers at the end of the season, and he did the same for Blake and Sam Briend, the Yankees’ director of pitching, during the year. There were the talks with Guidry, too. Even Verlander helped Cole make a midseason tweak despite pitching for a rival.
While more than a few people — many who haven’t been named here — made Cole’s Cy Young candidacy possible, most downplayed their supporting roles.
“Obviously, he’s the one putting in the work,” said Blake, who spent countless hours with Cole. “Over the last couple of years, you’re living and dying with him as he has his ups and downs in a Yankees uniform. It was nice to see him take the steps from last year where everyone’s getting on him about the home run ball and the ERA and things like that.”
Added Rortvedt of the award: “It’s really more for him.”
Cole strongly disagrees, however.
“I’m extremely fortunate for all the hard work that everybody has put in here,” he said. “To a certain extent, all of us feel like they share a piece of the success that we’ve had.”
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It sounds absurd now, but multiple Top 10 lists excluded Cole from the ranks of baseball’s best pitchers prior to the season.
Blake said that those lists didn’t bother Cole. But they didn’t go unnoticed around the Yankees, either.
“In some way,” the coach said, “all these guys that are very competitive and pitching at the highest level will feel some level of slight and allow it to motivate them to continue to improve their craft and continue to prove to people that don’t believe in them.”
Cole responded to the lists by spending pretty much the entire season as the Cy Young favorite. After finishing second for the award in 2019 and 2021, it’s almost his. At least that is the expectation prior to an official announcement at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
“That would be like a feather in his cap,” Guidry said. “For everything that he has done so far, to win that award would put him in another category. Because when you start talking about the Justin Verlanders and the [Max] Scherzers, you’re going to be talking about the Gerrit Coles.”
Having won three Cy Youngs himself — including a win over Cole in 2019 — Verlander is excited for his former teammate.
“He would probably trade off a chance to win a World Series for a personal accolade,” Verlander said. “But the thing that’s nice about winning those awards isn’t that you have your name as like the best pitcher that year. I think it’s more of an appreciation for the work that you put in to get where you got, if that makes sense. I know how hard he works behind the scenes to hone his craft. You eat, sleep and breathe baseball. It’s always on your mind. It’s just in your core, it’s in your being. So if you put that much effort into something, it’s nice to have it work out.
“I don’t want to say this the wrong way, but you feel good about all the work that you put in. It’s not like you like it because it’s shiny and says you were the best. It’s like all that was worth it.”
Cole echoed similar sentiments when asked what the Cy Young would mean to him.
Despite the near-misses in the past and all it took to contend for the award this year, Cole said that he never pursued it. Rather, he pursued being the best version of himself.
Like Verlander, Cole sees the Cy Young as a byproduct of all the work he and others put in. Then again, only one person gets to keep it.
You best believe he wants to be that person.
“I’ve put up several seasons that have been worthy or deserving of the award in some way, shape or form. So that’s validating, but my mindset is to be the best version of myself and put that forward and trust that process,” Cole said. “Finishing first or second — finishing in that top echelon — is validation for those things.
“There’s just a little extra caveat: one person’s winning it and the rest aren’t. So as a winner, I like to win. So it’ll be a little bit different if I get that opportunity this year. But the process leading up to that point has been the same, and the intent has been the same.”
