TAMPA — Ron Guidry has walked in the shoes that Gerrit Cole is gearing up to wear as the reigning unanimous Cy Young award winner.
So the former Yankees ace knows what the current Yankees ace is in for.
“Everybody’s gonna be shooting for you the next time out because you’re elevated, you’re the best,” Guidry said Friday at Steinbrenner Field before Cole made his Grapefruit League debut in an 8-4 win over the Blue Jays.
“Now every team wants to beat you. Every hitter wants to get a hit. Everybody just wants to beat you. It’s harder to beat those guys. … When you have a great, great year, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a good year the next year. It’s just going to be hard to duplicate what you did, because somebody else might have a great year. But it doesn’t diminish who you are. You still gotta go out every five days and do the job you’re supposed to.”
The real test won’t begin until Opening Day on March 28, but for now, Cole was happy with his work across two-plus innings while throwing 39 pitches.
Aaron Boone pulled him midway through an at-bat with two outs in the first inning — two batters after giving up a home run to ex-Met Daniel Vogelbach — because his pitch count was at 22. But he re-entered to start the second inning, a spring training perk Cole appreciated, and got back to business.
“The stuff was pretty good,” Cole said. “I’m kind of trying to settle into the command and recover. The ability to repeat and groove the same location two, three times in a row. … When something feels good, just keep trying to groove that movement.”
Cole wouldn’t mind doing the same thing with regards to his 2023 season.
Guidry handled everybody’s best shot at him with little problem coming off his Cy Young year.
His ERA rose by over a full run, but it was still only 2.78 while placing third in the 1979 Cy Young voting — with rotation mate Tommy John finishing second to the Orioles’ Mike Flanagan.
The Yankees would sign up for that scenario if it meant Cole would get more help from his rotation than last year, when it largely crumbled around him.
But Guidry expects Cole to relish the opportunity of every team and hitter coming for him.
“He doesn’t shy away from anybody, which [is what] a No. 1 is supposed to do,” Guidry said. “You only pitch better when you pitch against the best guys.”
Besides Cole breaking a few of Guidry’s Yankees records over the last few years, the two have also developed a strong relationship, which gets renewed each spring training with Guidry serving as a guest instructor.
After Cole finally won his first career Cy Young in November, joining Guidry as only the second Yankee to win it unanimously, he said it was “fitting.” He credited Guidry for helping him get “acclimated to the pressures and the role and the organization and the style with which to pitch to maximize my contributions to the team.”
For his part, Guidry appreciates that Cole is a mix of old and new-school.
“He works hard to perfect what he does on the mound,” Guidry said. “He’s taken all the analytical things and then he’s put it together with a little bit of the old style of pitching. He understands analytically there’s a lot of stuff that goes with it, but there’s also the experience part. Because if you can’t do what you want on the mound with the baseball, analytics don’t do you any good. I think he understands that. I think he proved that to himself last year. Instead of worrying all about analytics, it’s a little bit of both.”
It’s an equation that Cole will keep trying to use to his advantage this season as he continues to evolve as a pitcher. Even before taking home the Cy Young, he was always trying to gain an extra inch wherever he could, continually making adjustments and trying to stay ahead of the curve.
That resulted in a dominant season last year in which Cole posted a 2.63 ERA with 222 strikeouts in 209 innings.
Now he will be tasked with finding a way to top it.
