Thoughts after the Yankees announce Gerrit Cole will have Tommy John surgery

It is the worst case scenario for Gerrit Cole. Cole will have Tommy John surgery on Tuesday, the Yankees announced this evening. It will be full blown Tommy John, not the internal brace procedure, which is only viable for certain partial tears. Cole’s tear is apparently beyond whatever that threshold is, so his UCL has to be completely replaced, not just repaired. What a colossal bummer.

There is no sense in wondering how this happened. Cole’s UCL could have popped on one specific pitch. It could have been wear and tear over the long haul. Spring Training is peak Tommy John surgery season – 34% of Tommy Johns each year take place in February and March – because some guys do too much too soon as they ramp up for the season. Maybe Cole did. I dunno. What’s done is done.

Losing Cole for the season is a devastating blow. The Yankees will talk about this being an opportunity for someone else (i.e. Will Warren), and it is, and they’ll talk about how well they handled Cole’s absence last year, and they did, but the situations aren’t comparable. Replacing your No. 1 starter for 2.5 months is not the same as replacing him for an entire season and postseason. This will be a tall, tall order.

Between Cole’s elbow and Luis Gil’s lat, the Yankees are out what, 275-300 good to great innings? And that’s assuming Gil comes back in late May/early June as anticipated. The difference between Cole and whoever replaces him could be along the lines of 4-5 wins, which could be more than enough to swing the AL East race. Then there’s the enormous single-game impact of Cole vs. his replacement in October.

The timing really could not be worse. The Yankees will have a hard time signing/trading for a starter because free agency has been picked clean, and few teams are willing to trade impact pitching in March. We can dream about Sandy Alcantara (I know I am), though I’m not sure the Yankees have the prospects to swing that trade, or an owner willing to increase payroll enough to accommodate him. (Erick Fedde might be a more realistic trade target from a prospect/salary perspective.)

Furthermore, Tommy John surgery rehab is 14-18 months these days. This will cut into Cole’s 2026. We won’t see him on a big league mound again until sometime next June or July, maybe, and all it takes is one little setback to turn June or July into August or September. Old pal Luis Severino had Tommy John surgery on Feb. 27th, 2020. His next big league appearance was Sept. 21st, 2021. Yeah.

This is Cole’s age 34 season. He turns 35 in September. Best case is you get a partial age 35 season from him in 2026, and his next full season is his age 36 season in 2027. The injury will cut into his Hall of Fame case – Cole is 47 wins short of 200 and 749 strikeouts short of 3,000 – though that’s a small consideration compared to the impact on the 2025-26 Yankees and whatever remains of Aaron Judge’s peak.

Cole opted out this past offseason and the Yankees declined to add the extra year to his contract to void the opt out, though they did bring him back on the original terms of his deal. That’s $36M a year for the next four years, and now he’ll miss the first 1.5 of those four years. It’s possible these next four years are 1.5 injury years and 2.5 decline years, which is not the worst case scenario, but would be pretty bad.

I made the case for letting Cole walk at the time of the opt out and again in the Offseason Plan. There’s no putting that toothpaste back in the tube, and I don’t want to spend any time sitting here saying the stupid Yankees are dumb idiots. I just hope they learn a lesson from this (and also DJ LeMahieu). When you get the elite years up front and the baseball gods give you a chance to walk away from those mid-to-late 30s decline years, take it. Making difficult and unpopular decisions is part of the job.

The Yankees won’t have Cole on the mound this season but, based on his last year, he’ll spend his time on the injured list in the dugout as an extra pitching coach, essentially. There’s value in that. Cole’s really smart and can help guys with things like pitch sequencing and picking up on a hitter’s tendencies. I’d much rather have him on the mound, but, knowing Cole, he’ll figure out a way to contribute to his team.

No team this spring has suffered a loss as devastating as Cole, but it’s not like the rest of the AL East is healthy. The Red Sox will be without Wilyer Abreu (illness), Brayan Bello (shoulder), and Kutter Crawford (knee) to begin the season. The Orioles won’t have Kyle Bradish (elbow), Andrew Kittredge (knee), or Grayson Rodriguez (elbow). Every team’s been hit. The Yankees have just been hit harder than most.

The Dodgers won the World Series without Tyler Glasnow last year. The Rangers won the World Series without Jacob deGrom the year before. The Astros went to the World Series without Justin Verlander in 2021, then he came back from Tommy John surgery the next year and won the Cy Young and helped Houston win the World Series. Losing an ace hurts, absolutely, but it does not have to be a death knell. The rest of the team (i.e. the offense) must pick up the slack. Can it? I dunno. I hope so.

No Cole, no Gil for at least two months, no Giancarlo Stanton for who knows how long. People have been predicting the collapse of the Yankees for three decades and they’re still waiting. They’re beat up bad right now, there is no sense pretending otherwise, but there’s still enough talent to reach the postseason. Their margin of error is pretty much exhausted though. We won’t see Cole until sometime next year and there is still a lot of baseball to be played between now and then. Get well soon, Gerrit. Onward, Yankees.