Cole accused of illegal pitches
MINNEAPOLIS — The pitches Gerrit Cole threw in his last start weren’t rotating as much, and the New York Yankees ace said the spin rate dropoff was due to mechanical flaws — sidestepping a recent accusation that he cut back on tacky substances amid a Major League Baseball crackdown.
“I attribute it to just not being as good or as sharp as I wanted to be. It’s as simple as that,” Cole said Tuesday before the Yankees began a three-game series at Minnesota.
Twins third baseman Josh Donaldson, as part of wide-ranging comments last week about the presence of pitcher-friendly sticky stuff, casually wondered aloud whether Cole was suddenly trying to hide usage of grip aids — a mix of rosin and sunscreen — to avoid being caught.
According to MLB Statcast data on the website Baseball Savant, Cole had a 125 rotations per minute decrease in his four-seam fastball last week when he allowed five runs in five innings in a loss to Tampa Bay. Cole, not quite halfway into the second season of a $324 million, nine-year contract, is third in MLB with 104 strikeouts. The three-time All-Star has a 2.26 ERA over 75 2/3 innings and 12 starts this season.
“I’m just not quite bringing out my best delivery. Of course it’s something that we monitor. Of course there are other variables that we monitor as well when we’re evaluating our performance from every game. You try to take as much information as you can as a player, and certainly that’s one of them,” Cole said. “We’re trying to get better this week and put in the work, and I’ll be as prepared as I possibly can for my next start.”
Cole is scheduled to pitch Wednesday against Donaldson and the Twins.
Four minor league pitchers have been suspended this season by Major League Baseball after being caught using banned foreign substances to doctor baseballs, evidence of a stronger crackdown in the game’s feeder system than in the big leagues during this historically dominant stretch of pitching. The use of homebrewed sticky substances is suspected to have spiked in recent seasons as grip aid to increase the spin rates on fastballs and make those pitches harder to hit.
Donaldson suggested the timing of the news of the minor league suspensions was related to the changes in Cole’s spin rate. Cole called the criticism “undesirable.”
“I understand this topic is important to everybody that cares about the game. In regards to Josh, I kind of felt like it was a bit of a low-hanging fruit, but he’s entitled to his opinion and to voice his opinion, so I just have other things that I need to keep my focus on,” Cole said.
Donaldson said the sticky substance situation is going to be “the next steroids of baseball ordeal” for its performance-enhancing effect on the game.”
