Gerrit Cole Pitched Like An Ace In Game 1 Of The ALDS, Earning Every Dollar The Yankees Are Paying Him

Sarah Stier. Getty Images.

Gerrit Cole showed up for the Yankees in Game 1 of the ALDS. The $324 million man stymied the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday night for 6.1 innings striking out 8 and only just one run. Ohio's Tate could write 1,000 blogs and it wouldn't matter. Cole was on and that was the end of it. 

The money pitch tonight was the knuckle curve and boy did he have it biting from the jump. Outside of Kwan who teed up a middle-middle fastball, no one had an answer for him. Any little trouble he found himself in whether it be from bad defense (IKF) or a hit here and there, Cole escaped. He found the answer he'd been looking for to limit the big innings. Tonight it was the knucklecurve. He relied on it way more than usual in Game 1 which was the no brainer move with the kind of swings it was generating.

Big thing I like to see from Cole is body language. When he's confident and upbeat it goes a long way for him. Keep this energy rolling into the next start. 

The offense came from the bats of Harrison Bader, who decided to blast a homer in his first ever postseason AB as a Yankee….

And Anthony Rizzo whose two run bomb really allowed everyone watching to relax. My god do I love this man. 

Coming into this game and series I had three areas of concern/concentration. 1) Cole 2) hitters around Aaron Judge who would need to come through 3) the bullpen. In Game 1 we got three resounding check marks around those needs. Loaisiga, Wandy, and Clay Holmes pieced together 8 eights to bring home the W. I probably would have left Wandy in to finish the game, but Boone wanted to get Clay in there and he got the job done. No harm no foul despite the immediate HBP. 

Negatives? IKF was pretty shaky in the field and Donaldson got thrown out thinking he hit a homer. Take that out and it was a perfect night. 

All in all, good fucking W to start the series. Judge didn't do a thing and they cruised. Now Nestor gets the ball in Game 2 which might get pushed to Friday based on the incoming weather. We'll see, but either way that's how you start this series. 

We went live after the game to give a rapid reaction. Love the still shot we went with on YouTube I look completely normal.