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The night was over and the deed was done, and Gerrit Cole was doing what the best in his profession are forced to do on nights that go terribly wrong: he confessed.
It had been terrible, of course, and there was no escaping it. In a do-or-die game against the Red Sox at Fenway Park – the very definition of winning your captain’s bars as a Yankee – he had thrown 50 shots and had only recorded six strikeouts.
It was already 3-0 when Aaron Boone picked him up, and while he probably wanted to argue his case, he knew now was not the time for debate. He had handed the ball to Boone and had made a long walk to the cover of third base. Now, hours later, he was wearing it all.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” Cole said, “and it happens to 29 teams every year, coming home early and not reaching your ultimate goal. So focusing on the good that has got us can – being given that opportunity or the good you’ve done in the regular season just isn’t really – there’s really nothing you can do to make it feel better.
“You can’t be afraid of this feeling. You inevitably have to go through it to get that championship like you said, but there’s nothing that really makes you feel better.
The good news is that Cole is playing for the Yankees and so it’s a virtual lock that he will have other opportunities in October, many of them, to allow Tuesday’s parody to vaporize in the fog of time. For Cole, this can really go two ways. He can allow a bad night to define him – unlikely, given his makeup. Or he can bide his time and wait for redemption.
It’s worth remembering that the man who became the most feared playoff assassin in baseball history – Mariano Rivera – experienced what could have been a defining and damaging moment early in his reign as the Yankees were closing in. It was October 5, 1997, match 4 of the ALDS, eighth round. The Yankees led the Indians, 2-1 in points and 2-1 in games.
Rivera, an All-Star in his first year as closest to the Yankees, was asked to get six strikeouts and place the Yankees in the ALCS. He has two. Then Sandy Alomar Jr. reached out, drove a fastball over the wall into Jacobs Field right, just beyond Paul O’Neill’s reach. The Indians would win Game 4 a set later. They would win Game 5 the following night.
“It was not a good pitch,” said Rivera, then 27. “It was above the plate. He managed to get some good wood on it. It’s hard, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s already done.”
It was a classic closest response, committing to move quickly, and Rivera did just that. In his next 23 playoff games, spanning three years, he would save 16 games, allow 18 hits in 33 ¹ / ₃ innings and compile an ERA of… 0.00. In the 61 playoff games he appeared in after Alomar took him out, his ERA was 0.92.
He wasn’t perfect. But he was damn close. And he made sure he was so good that his flaws turned into footnotes, not failures.
There is also another extreme. For this, we can cite Jeurys Familia, who in October 2015 had become a confident and enlightened relative with three untouchable lengths that made him a scourge at the end of the round. Then he quickly threw Alex Gordon to two outs before closing out the World Series opener in Kansas City. Gordon pulled it out. The Royals won the game and the series.
“You must have a short memory,” Familia said at Kauffman Stadium that evening. “I’m already ready to take the ball back.”
And Familia… well, he hasn’t had a chance to redeem himself in the Rivera playoffs, or that Cole is likely to have. But the following year, he gave up a three-point homerun at the end of the season to Conor Gillaspie of the Giants in the NL wildcard game. And his second tour with the Mets was a reel of horribly timed collapses.
It is assumed that Cole is closer to the good extreme than the bad. He showed a lot of standing and admitted his failure on Tuesday night. He’ll show more when – if he – he’ll let his performance bury that moment in the weeds of ancient history.
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