Gerrit Cole strikes 15 and fans Angels 'Shohei Ohtani three times to snatch the Yankees' four-game shit
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Five days ago, the New York Yankees ran a 13-game winning streak, their longest since September 1961. They followed up with four straight losses, making them the first team to follow a 13-game winning streak with a four-game losing streak since the Braves in 1982. The Yankees went from one extreme to the next.
Wednesday night against the Angels, the Yankees gave the ball to Gerrit Cole to stop the bleeding, and he did what aces do. Cole dominated his hometown Angels, hitting 15 strokes in seven innings of one-run shot. He waved Shohei Ohtani three times, generating a career-high 32 swings and misses. Anaheim’s 2-3-4-5 hits went 1-on-11 for 10 strikeouts against Cole.
The 15 strikeouts are Cole’s most as a Yankee (he has two 13-strikeout streak fights, one in the off-season) and a brief of his career highs, set with the Astros in 2018. They are also just as numerous in a game this season ( Jacob deGrom and Corbin Burnes each have a 15-strikeout game) and they are right up to the fifth most in a single game in Yankees history.
Here is New York’s all-time single-game strikeout leaderboard:
|
Ron Guidry
|
June 17, 1978
|
Angels
|
18
| |
David Cone
|
June 23, 1997
|
Tigers
|
16
| |
David Wells
|
July 30, 1997
|
athletics
|
16
| |
Michael Pineda
|
May 10, 2015
|
Orioles
|
16
| |
Bob Shawkey
|
September 27, 1919
|
athletics
|
15
| | Whitey Ford |
July 22, 1959
|
Senators
|
15
| |
Masahiro Tanaka
|
September 29, 2017
|
Blue Jays
|
15
| |
Gerrit Cole
|
September 1, 2021
|
Angels
|
15
|
The Yankees also have a 15-strikeout game in the off-season: Roger Clemens made it against the Mariners in Game 4 of the 2000 ALCS. Cole’s outing Wednesday was a top 10 strikeout game in Yankees history, including off-season. Cole also joins Pineda and Tanaka as the only Yankees with 15 strikeouts and zero walks in a game.
Wednesday’s game was Cole’s fourth since returning from the COVID-19 list last month. He has allowed two runs in total with 39 strikeouts and four runs in 24 2/3 innings in the four starts. For the season, Cole now has a 2.73 ERA and an MLB-leading 215 strikeouts in 155 innings. He’s stuck in the AL Cy Young mix, if not the favorite with a month to play.
Luke Voit and Aaron Judge supported Cole with a two-run single and a solo home run, respectively. Wednesday’s win tricked New York’s four-game losing streak (NYY 4, LAA 1), and they sit 2 1/2 games up on the Red Sox for the first wild card spot and 3 1/2 games up on the A’s for a wild card spot in general.