After 'emptying the tank' in World Series, Cole left empty-handed

NEW YORK -- Somewhere down the line -- hopefully, many years down the line -- when Gerrit Cole finally hangs up the spikes and closes the book on an illustrious career, let the first chapter of the New York ace’s Fall Classic legacy in pinstripes not be defined by the notion that his team dropped both games he started.

For in this age of short starts and World Series bullpen games, Cole twice showed the unabashed, undeterred, unwavering power of a big-game bulldog.

But in both Game 1 and Game 5, it still wasn’t enough.

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Twice in this Fall Classic, Cole pitched into the seventh inning, responsible for one earned run across those two starts. He pitched through an unbelievable five unearned runs in Los Angeles’ five-run game-tying rally in the fifth inning of the Yanks’ 7-6, season-ending loss in Game 5 to match the most unearned runs allowed in an outing in World Series history -- but kept going, and going, willing himself to set the tone, and set it again after that.

“I gave it everything I had,” Cole said, his voice faltering. “I'll be frustrated -- like, every time you have a tough loss, you use it to motivate you. But it's all out there. There's nothing a whole lot more that I could do. I gave it everything I had.”

Cole’s efforts made him only the second active pitcher with four World Series starts of six or more innings, a very short list that previously featured only Justin Verlander.

Wednesday night, he took a brutal path to get there.

It’s one thing to seemingly empty the tank with 38 pitches in the fifth inning to get not three, not four, not five … but six outs in that frame against this Dodgers lineup while being socked with the gut punch of losing a seemingly insurmountable lead in a do-or-die game, thanks in large part to two critical errors behind him.

To then come out for more in the sixth inning?

“He kept grinding, kept going,” reliever Tommy Kahnle said. “He gave us everything he had. Hats off to him, man. He was incredible tonight.”

To then come back out for even more in the seventh inning, facing two of the best hitters on the planet for a fourth time through the order with his pitch count soaring into the triple digits?

“It's a testament to him,” reliever Luke Weaver said. “It's a testament to his willpower, his motivation, emptying the tank, so to speak. You can't ask for any more than what he did.”

As the Yankees jumped out to a 5-0 lead through three innings with stirring homers by Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Giancarlo Stanton that brought the 49,263 fans at Yankee Stadium to an ear-splitting fever pitch, Cole rode that continued momentum from the Yanks’ offensive outburst in Game 4 and the raucous energy of his home crowd to retire 12 of the first 14 Dodger batters without allowing a hit through four innings.

Then, chaos.

Kiké Hernández led off that nightmarish fifth inning with a solid single to right field, breaking up the no-hit bid. Aaron Judge dropped a routine fly ball in center field for his first career error as a Major League center fielder. When Will Smith chopped a grounder to short, AL Gold Glove finalist Anthony Volpe spiked a throw to third for another error, loading the bases.

Still, Cole battled, striking out Gavin Lux. That should have been his third out of the inning.

He plunged onward, overwhelming Shohei Ohtani on four pitches for another strikeout, bringing him to the cusp of escape. That would have been his fourth out.

“I thought he was in complete command of his emotions -- or just of his nerves and the calm he had out there, which showed up right away in his command of all his pitches,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I mean, he was dotting it and featuring everything.”

Cole wasn’t without fault in the Dodgers’ rally, as the grounder to first he induced off the bat of Mookie Betts caught first baseman Anthony Rizzo off-balance and also found Cole not in position to cover first for an RBI infield single. That might have been a fifth out.

That, it turned out, was the breaking point.

“It's super tough,” Cole said. “Super tough. I mean, at that point, I'm just, like -- I just keep making pitches. I just did. I kept making pitches. I was totally exhausted. But there's just no quit in that situation. You've got to just keep pressing forward.”

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World Series MVP Freddie Freeman continued his onslaught with a two-run double, and Teoscar Hernández’s two-run single tied the game. Two batters later, Kiké Hernández finally, mercifully grounded out to end the threat. Six outs that inning, perhaps.

“In this game, when you're given extra outs, you've got to capitalize,” Freeman said. “That's what we were able to do in that inning.”

But even with a pitch count at 87 coming out of that ordeal, Cole stepped right back out of that dugout for the sixth, overwhelming five more batters before a two-out walk in the seventh finally coaxed him off the mound after he threw a season-high 108 pitches.

In a different world, that might well have been a legacy-defining sequence to add to his other triumph that might have lived on in Yankee lore in Game 1, when he defended a 2-1 lead in the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium by dispatching the Dodgers’ three MVPs -- Ohtani, Betts and Freeman -- to pitch around a leadoff double, long before Freeman wrote his own legacy with a walk-off grand slam in extras.

But in this world, it doesn’t ease Cole’s sting of defeat one bit.

“This is, like, as bad as it gets,” Cole said. “It's the worst feeling that you can have, especially since you have to keep, sometimes, willing yourself to believe and give yourself a chance. You just keep pushing, keep pushing, and ultimately, we came up short. It just … it's brutal.”