<\/p>\n
Gerrit Cole<\/a> showed minimal rust in his first start back from Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n His follow-up performance on Wednesday didn\u2019t seem to feature any.<\/p>\n In fact, Cole\u2019s pitch count was the only indication that he is still easing his way back from major elbow reconstruction surgery. The Yankees\u2019 ace was limited to 79 pitches in the team\u2019s series-sweeping, 7-0 win over the Royals, but he certainly made the most of them.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Even with his restrictions, an efficient Cole \u2014 who threw 72 pitches over six scoreless innings in his season debut on May 22 \u2014 had no trouble pitching into the seventh inning. With 6 2\/3 innings totaled, he did not permit a run once again.<\/p>\n Cole didn\u2019t allow much contact either, holding Kansas City to four hits while fanning 10 batters. The right-hander, who missed the entire 2025 season, hadn\u2019t had a double-digit strikeout game since Aug. 10, 2024.<\/p>\n Better yet, Cole didn\u2019t walk any Royals after issuing three free passes in his first start. That\u2019s a particularly encouraging part of Cole\u2019s stat line, as command is often what eludes Tommy John patients the most after they return.<\/p>\n Stuff-wise, Cole looked sharp once again. His fastball maxed out at 98.4 mph, and he totaled 15 whiffs with a six-pitch mix. The Cy Young winner\u2019s slider led the way with six whiffs.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The Royals did come close to scoring off Cole in the third inning, as Michael Massey<\/a> doubled before racing home on a two-out single to right from Maikel Garcia<\/a>. However, Aaron Judge<\/a> fired a pinpointed rocket to the plate, where Austin Wells<\/a> applied a bang-bang tag on a sliding Massey just in time.<\/p>\n Judge also plated a run with a sac fly in the fourth frame. An RBI triple from Ben Rice<\/a> got the Yankees their first run earlier in the inning.<\/p>\n The Yankees padded their lead in the seventh inning when Paul Goldschmidt<\/a> worked a walk with the bases loaded. Rice followed with a two-run single, while Ryan McMahon<\/a> added a two-run home run in the eighth inning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gerrit Cole showed minimal rust in his first start back from Tommy John surgery. His follow-up performance on Wednesday didn\u2019t seem to feature any. In fact, Cole\u2019s pitch count was the only indication that he is still easing his way back from major elbow reconstruction surgery. The Yankees\u2019 ace was limited to 79 pitches in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2435439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[350142,463003,377375,463367,313842,313843,386019,463005,336209,22091,477520,441877],"class_list":["post-2435438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-aaron-judge","tag-austin-wells","tag-ben-rice","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-michael-massey","tag-paul-goldschmidt","tag-ryan-mcmahon","tag-scoreless-innings","tag-the-royals","tag-the-yankees","tag-tommy-john-surgery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Gerrit-Cole-fans-10-works-with-efficiency-in-Yankees-rout.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2435438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2435440,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435438\/revisions\/2435440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2435439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2435438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2435438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2435438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}