TAMPA — Of course, it was all kumbaya. Naturally, the Yankees insist that they never wanted Gerrit Cole to go anywhere. And the righty claimed he never wanted to leave.
You didn’t expect we would be dissecting a Cole press conference Wednesday like a Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl halftime performance to find the dissing Easter eggs torpedoed at an enemy. These are the staid pinstripers, after all, and G. Cole, not J. Cole.
But it is difficult to forget the road navigated between pitcher and team from the outset of spring training last year to the beginning of the offseason. When Cole showed up at camp in 2024, he easily could have won a vote as most indispensable Yankee. But soon after the World Series, the Yankees made a move that, at minimum, opened the door to living without Cole going forward — of the possibility of dispensing with him.
In February 2024, it was a foregone conclusion that they would tack on a 10th year to Cole’s nine-year, $324 million pact to contractually prevent him from opting out. But soon after a World Series loss, the Yankees said they were standing on the four years at $144 million remaining rather than turning it into five years at $180 million. At best, the Yankees were playing chicken with a player they thought would not leave. At worst, they were delivering a vote of no confidence about wanting to invest more money on Cole’s future.
