It’s taken all of… *checks notes* …an inning of Spring Training for something to happen leading New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole to meltdown.
We’ve seen it before when the Yankees and Blue Jays square off, too, like in August 2022, when he and Alek Manoah beefed a day after Cole gave up four runs to the Jays.
“If Gerrit wants to do something, he can walk past the Audi sign [painted on the grass] next time,” Manoah said about the incident.
The most recent one, however, came on Friday night when Cole took offence to a 370-foot home run he allowed to Daniel Vogelbach in the first inning of a Spring Training game between the two sides. After retiring the first two Jays batters on three pitches, he coughed up a line drive single to Davis Schneider, before Vogelbach stepped to the plate.
Cole didn’t offer up much at first. His first of four pitches was well inside for a ball, while a well-off-the-plate cutter was called a strike. Pitch three, a four-seam fastball, just kissed the bottom of the zone for a ball. Pitch four was the money maker for Vogelbach, as Cole left a 96.1 MPH four-seam fastball on the inside edge of the plate, right in the middle of the zone.
That ball went 102.8 MPH off Vogelbach’s bat, and blistered to right field.
Vogelbach enthusiastically dropped his bat, something Yankees manager Aaron Boone called a bat flip that was “in the arena” of competition, before trotting the bases at a speed which you would expect from any player who just sent one to the seats.
Cole? Well, let’s say he wasn’t so enthused about it.
“Yeah, what’s the day? Are we still in February? March 1st?,” Cole quipped, via MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch. “Yeah, he enjoyed that homer.”
And when asked if he would remember Vogelbach’s trot, he replied, “I don’t forget a lot of things.”
Gerrit Cole was no fan of Daniel Vogelbach's slow trot in the 1st inning.
“Yeah, what’s the day? Are we still in February? March 1st? Yeah, he enjoyed that homer.”
Asked if he would remember Vogelbach’s trot during the season, Cole replied: “I don’t forget a lot of things.”
— Bryan Hoch ⚾️ (@BryanHoch) March 2, 2024
Daniel. VogelBLAST.
His first of #SpringTraining! pic.twitter.com/70MtEjYfQN
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) March 1, 2024
Okay Gerrit.
Taking aim at a guy who just signed a minor-league deal and is in Spring Training on an invite — coupled with the fact he’s known as one of the league’s few pure power hitters that can’t do much else — and the comments make Cole look plain silly.
Right after Vogelbach’s home run, he allowed a blistering triple to Ernie Clement and got pulled out of the game instead of Boone letting him get the final out of the first inning. Cole would return to knock out four of the next Jays batters before his day ended in the top of the third.
Who knows. Maybe some of Cole’s frustration stems from that, too.
Nonetheless, the drama between the Jays and Yankees is picking up sooner than anyone expected, and you won’t hear many complain about that.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
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