Inside The Pinstripes

Yankees' Gerrit Cole Admits Regret Over Intentional Walk to Rafael Devers

New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole got honest about the decision to intentionally walk Rafael Devers during Saturday's game.

Grant Young

Sep 14, 2024; Bronx, New York, USA; New York Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) reacts during the fifth inning against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images
Sep 14, 2024; Bronx, New York, USA; New York Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) reacts during the fifth inning against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images / Brad Penner-Imagn Images
In this story:

The New York Yankees fell to 86-63 on the regular season after losing to the Boston Red Sox by a score of 7-1 on Saturday.

All seven of Boston's runs came in the third and fourth innings against Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole. While the reigning AL Cy Young winner was rolling through 3.1 innings pitched (only having given up a Hit-By-Pitch to Rafael Devers in the first inning), he elected to intentionally walk Devers with one out and nobody on base in the fourth.

Cole's outing unraveled after that, as he conceded 7 earned runs on 5 hits over an inning after that intentional walk occurred.

While this walking decision caught those watching the game off-guard, Cole revealed after the game that intentionally walking Devers in select scenarios would be a part of their game plan.

"We had discussed in the days prior to and during the game, strategically, walking [Devers] because of the past success that he's had," Cole told reporters, via Tyler Milliken.

Devers has a .350 average with a whopping 1.410 OPS, 8 home runs, and 20 RBIs in 46 plate appearances against Cole in his career.

When asked what went into the decision to walk Devers in the fourth inning, Cole said, "We were in the tunnel before the inning and had discussed that if [Jarren] Duran was retired, were we going to stick to aggressively intentionally walking him, and that was the plan. And during the inning, I looked to the dugout and stuck to the plan.

"If I make pitches after that and I continue to execute at a high level then the plan works. But evidently, the plan didn't work," Cole continued. "So I need to make better pitches afterwards in order for it to work."

When Cole was later asked whether he'd have stuck with that decision if left to his own devices, he said, “Clearly, that was a mistake. I think that I bought into the plan going into it, but afterwards, it was the wrong move.”

Hindsight is 20/20, of course. But it's hard to imagine that Cole will ever intentionally walk Devers again with the bases empty.

Published |Modified
Grant Young

GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, and Women’s Basketball for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco, where he also played Division 1 baseball for five years. He believes Mark Teixeira should have been a first ballot MLB Hall of Fame inductee.

Home/News