CLEVELAND — Gerrit Cole gave a wave to the cheering Stadium crowd on his way off the field in Game 1. Unlike last year, when he face-planted at Fenway Park in the wild-card round, Cole had honored the terms of his $324 million deal.

The fans thanked him for his work in beating the Guardians in the ALDS opener, and Cole acknowledged their acknowledgment. It felt like something was proven in the transaction. The ace who grew up worshipping the Yankees, and embracing their championship-or-bust mentality, wasn’t about to let his 2022 season be defined by all the home run balls he was surrendering to batters he was hired to get out.

Cole was going to be remembered the way all great players in pinstripes are remembered — for the difference-making work they do in October.

But given how he performed in Game 1, it seems almost unfair to blitz Cole with another round of you’d-better-win-this-one pressure. It feels like too much, too soon. It feels like his honeymoon lasted only four days before he was summoned right back to work under high-stress circumstances.

The Yankees blew a Game 3 they never should have blown Saturday night, and wasted a resilient effort from Luis Severino when the bullpen unraveled in the ninth, landing the season on the brink of an unmitigated disaster. Manager Aaron Boone said he decided against using closer Clay Holmes in back-to-back games because of what he termed “normal, you know, soreness.”

Holmes later said he was fully prepared to give his team a 2-1 series lead. If the Yankees go ahead and lose this series, who knows what this missed opportunity and strange little dance between Boone and Holmes will mean for the manager going forward.

All of which puts a 700-pound piano squarely on Gerrit Cole’s back.

“Love that Gerrit’s on the mound,” Boone said.

I bet he does.

“Let’s go get it,” the manager continued. “Tonight obviously was a gut-wrenching ending, but we got to get over it. Now we’re obviously up against it, but I still love our chances. Got Gerrit going [Sunday]. Got to go take care of business and try and get back to New York.”
This wouldn’t be an escape from New York, but an escape to New York. And no, it didn’t have to be that way at all.

Severino surrendered a leadoff double to Steven Kwan and three hits to the first four batters he faced, handing Cleveland a 1-0 lead. Sevy had to throw 31 pitches that inning (thirty-one!) before effectively delivering the same results in the second inning — allowing a leadoff double, three hits to the first four batters, and another run for the home team.
Domingo German had to get up early in the pen, and just about everyone in the park believed Severino would be out of the game before Cleveland’s Triston McKenzie, the Brooklyn-born Derek Jeter fan who looked poised to shut down his childhood team.
Baseball is such an unforgiving game.

“It finds a way to punch you in the face every single time,” Max Scherzer had said, correctly, after his Mets were eliminated.

And Severino was about to take a heavyweight hook to the chin from a light-hitting opponent. He could have gone down, hard, and attributed the failure to an accumulation of rust between his last summertime start on July 13, and the three starts he made at the close of the regular season. Or he could have done what he did — punched back, with a vengeance.

Severino didn’t just hold the Guardians to two runs for a while. He retired 13 consecutive batters from the last two outs of the second inning to the first two outs of the sixth, giving Aaron Judge and Oswaldo Cabrera the time they needed to belt the two-run homers that put the visiting team in control. Until they lost that control in the ninth at the worst possible time.

In the hours before that start, Cole was asked what he had seen from his teammate at the end of the regular season.

“Electricity,” he said. “Seems like just an intensity and his focus and his routine and his preparation. … I know he loves being a warrior for us.”

Severino was a warrior Saturday night, and it didn’t matter in the end, not when Clarke Schmidt gave up the winning two-out, two-run hit to Oscar Gonzalez. That means Cole has to be an even tougher warrior Sunday night.

“He’s our ace,” Judge said. “He’s pitched in big games for us. He always goes out there with intensity, and we’re going to match his energy and go out there and take this back to The Bronx.”

Approached at his locker as he dressed in a quiet corner of a somber clubhouse, Cole declined to comment on Game 4 beyond his press conference remarks made before Game 3. Asked then what he tries to do when pitching on the road before a hostile postseason crowd, Cole responded: “Just try to be indifferent to the environment regardless of where you’re at, really. Prepare yourself for cheering at certain times when you’re at home, and certain times when you’re on the road.

“And the main goal is always to cut through the noise and find your focus.”

If the Yankees are going to save their season in Game 4, Gerrit Cole will need his focus like never before.