Michael Kay clearly wasn’t a fan of Aaron Boone’s decision to pull Gerrit Cole in the sixth inning of the Yankees’ Game 3 loss to the Astros on Saturday.
While the Yankees offense was listless in the 5-0 defeat that saw them fall behind 3-0 in the ALCS, the game was 2-0 when Cole loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth. He was at 96 pitches at that point, and Boone lifted Cole for Lou Trivino, who allowed all three inherited runners to score.
“I don’t get it,” Kay said on the YES Network postgame show. “I heard [Boone’s] answer, he said ‘We’re down 2-0, we have to keep it right there.’ Well don’t you trust Gerrit Cole more than Lou Trivino? Even Gerrit Cole at [96] pitches, I trust him to save my season. Not a knock on Lou Trivino, but that’s not even your top reliever. That doesn’t make sense.
“The only thing that would’ve made sense was if Cole was hurt. He’s not hurt. He’s your ace. He won those two games against the Guardians. He’s why you’re in the American League Championship Series, and you take him out there because you didn’t want the game to get out of hand? He’s the guy [who] can keep it from getting out of hand.”
Cole began the sixth by giving up a double to Alex Bregman, a walk to Kyle Tucker and a single to Yuli Gurriel to load the bases. Trivino then gave up a sacrifice fly to Trey Mancini, which advanced runners to second and third, before Christian Vasquez drove the remaining runners in with a single.
“I was hoping to get Gerrit through there,” Boone said after the game. “Thought he threw the ball incredibly well. I got Trivino up just in case he needed some help there with the bottom righties that we liked him against. Obviously it turned out that it didn’t work for us.”
Boone addressed the decision more later in his postgame press conference.
“With us struggling to obviously put some points on the board and down a couple already, I felt like Mancini had some good at-bats against him already. Three consecutive guys getting on there. I just felt like maybe we could get some soft contact and put them on the ground,” Boone added.
“Part of my hesitation was maybe we get the strikeout ball here too and then we can go to him and try to put the ball on the ground in that situation where we’re really up against it.”
Cole was charged with five runs on five hits and two walks while striking out seven. Two of the runs were unearned after a Harrison Bader-Aaron Judge mishap caused a fly ball to drop in the second with two outs before Chas McCormick hit a two-run homer.
Asked if he was surprised when Boone emerged from the dugout to remove him from the game, Cole said, “I feel like as a pitcher like myself, I’m probably mostly surprised. You know, I always want to keep going.”
The Yankees had just one hit through eight innings and were shut out in a playoff game for the first time since Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS against the Astros.
