Yankees ace Gerrit Cole plays catch, pleads for ‘helpful’ conversations as elbow injuries plague MLB: ‘I’m just frustrated it’s a combative issue’

Gerrit Cole took a step in his recovery from elbow inflammation on Monday, playing catch from 60 feet at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees ace said that he made 25 throws and hit his partner in the chest 22 times. The reigning American League Cy Young threw roughly 71 mph and plans on having two more throwing sessions this week.

Cole is on the 60-day injured list and can’t return until at least May 27, but he didn’t have a problem while tossing on Monday. Instead, his issue is with the recent debate over pitching injuries in baseball.

Cole’s positive progression comes at a time when the injury bug is biting pitchers especially hard. The Yankees just lost Jonathan Loáisiga to season-ending UCL surgery, while Cleveland’s Shane Bieber, Miami’s Eury Pérez and Atlanta’s Spencer Strider are among those who recently suffered serious elbow injuries.

In response, the Major League Baseball Players Association released a statement on Saturday that blamed the pitch clock. Major League Baseball shot back with a statement that dismissed the pitch clock as a culprit and blamed increases in velocity and spin rate.

After discussing his rehab plans, Cole called MLB’s statement “combative,” and he described the back and forth between the league and union as a “verbal dustup” that left him “disheartened.” A former union representative, he spent about 20 minutes discussing the subject in detail.

Below are some of Cole’s most notable thoughts and comments. Some quotes and questions were edited for clarity and length.

Is the pitch clock contributing to these injuries?

“The one thing when I read the response from MLB, I just didn’t think it was very thorough. To be able to say that you implement something in one year and it has no effect is shortsighted. We are really going to understand the effects of what the pitch clock is maybe five years down the road. But to dismiss it out of hand, I didn’t think it was helpful for the situation. The players are obviously the most important aspect of this industry and this product. The care of the players should be of the utmost importance to both sides. MLB did nothing illegal by pushing the pitch clock. They have unilateral rights to create whatever rule they wanted to, and they’ve had that since I’ve been in the league. There’s an expedited amount of timing that allows them to implement what they want at this point, but they’ve never not had the right to do that. That’s the reality that we deal with.

“Two seconds (off the pitch clock)? I don’t know what advertising money you’re getting for two seconds that makes it logical to move it up for two seconds. I know the games got longer as the season went on (last year), but you’re not going to change the curve of that direction. You’re always going to start off with shorter games at the beginning of the year and finish with longer games. The games become more important at the end. I asked somebody very high up who doesn’t work there anymore what exactly the reason was for it, and he couldn’t really give me a good answer.”

Do you know the forces and physical exertion involved with speeding up like that?

“I don’t know what the answer is. I know it’s not black and white like both of the statements that were put out. I know that there are other factors in terms of velocity.

“The league is demanding that you throw your best pitch every single time because the hitters are better, the strike zone is smaller, the balls are different, the bats are different. We’ve just evolved into a higher-performance product, which is good. But as we’ve evolved over the last 10 years, we’ve had two shortened ramp-ups (due to the pandemic and the lockout). We’ve had the pitch clock. Guys have had to adjust to other different rules that are inside the game and how they go about their business. I think it’s just irresponsible for either side to say any one of those things definitely has no impact on pitchers’ elbows or shoulders. That’s not helpful.”

Pitchers and teams are obsessed with velocity and break…

“We have the ability to teach more break and teach new pitches. We can do it within one month. But what kind of effect does that have on a pitcher going forward?

“We don’t really know. What we do know is when guys were more healthy, we weren’t able to go into a pitching lab and concoct a new pitch and then use that at a 35% clip for the next six months and only have practiced it two months before we roll it out. We have no data on that. To say that it’s not contributing to people getting hurt, I don’t think it’s an accurate statement. I’m not necessarily saying that it is, but it’s certainly a variable that’s out there, along with the importance of spin and velocity and location. They’re all contributing factors, as far as I’m concerned.”

So if teams and pitchers are both obsessed with those things, who is responsible for pumping the brakes?

“You have to meet the demands of the game. That’s your job. I think it’s both people’s responsibility. I think it’s both sides.”

You got hurt after the first year of the pitch clock. Did the clock have something to do with it?

“No. Not in terms of directly correlating… We’ve narrowed down other personal variables and how we’re going to adjust going forward. But it is something that we have to adapt to. Every time you adapt to something, there is a cost. I can’t sit here and show you exactly what the data is that says what exactly the cost is. I may be able to do that 10 years from now. Everybody is talking about the effect of the pitch clock in one year. What are MRIs going to look like 10 years from now, five years from now? What are guys’ elbows going to look like pitching under the pitch clock for a prolonged period of time? Is there going to be an issue with that? Are they going to adapt? Is it going to be too quick? I don’t really know.”

*Cole declined to share the “personal variables” that he believes caused his injury.

If there’s not enough data yet, what can be done in the short-term?

“Well, we can start by having more helpful conversations and not pointing fingers and not saying that it’s absolutely this or it’s absolutely not that. And we can make it feel that players aren’t necessarily caught in the middle of all of it.

“I don’t have the answers. I’m just frustrated by the fact that I don’t feel like taking care of the players is the main focus of it.”

After calling MLB’s statement “combative,” Cole was asked: Did you have an issue with the union’s statement?

“It doesn’t include all the other factors that may have also contributed to it as well. It’s still very narrow. It seems to me that the biggest issue (expressed by) the union statement is we unanimously have given feedback that we are not comfortable with this going on and we have not been heard or listened to, or our opinion has not been considered (on the pitch clock).”

You’re a player of seniority and stature. Do you feel compelled at some point to call the union and/or MLB and say, “What are we doing here?’ Why don’t we have this conversation?”

“I was part of the union for the first 10 years of my career as a player rep and I’ve had a lot of these conversations over the years. I’m in a position now to have maybe a less formal conversation. And if I have the opportunity to do that, I will certainly share my thoughts. I’m always trying to be helpful. So I’m not going to say that I’m going to go do it or I’m going to go solicit a conversation. And even if I do have a conversation, I probably won’t make it public. But I’m always here to help.”

How do you feel that teams are further instilling this need for max effort on every pitch?

“I don’t think it’s a teams thing. It’s just the game. Like in 2013, you could pitch to 85% of a lineup fastball away and have no threat of it leaving the park. There were maybe a couple teams where there’s only one or two guys that can leave the park oppo. We have teams now where it’s slug to the opposite field on fastballs all the time. It changes the way you pitch. It changes everything. That’s good. We want higher performance, but we also want durability with that higher performance. We want to see our favorite players out on the field as much as possible. We want (Shohei) Ohtani to pitch. We want Shane to pitch.”

It seems hard to slow the injuries when all these other factors have been trending the way they have…

“I know, I know. I don’t have a solution for it, and I don’t have all the answers. But some empathy, some something. If there’s one thing everybody should be able to get on the same side about, it’s that you want your best players out there as much as possible.”

Did the pitch clock impact your recovery or soreness last year?

“I had a couple of specific situations where I ran out of gas early in the year and was caught off guard by it, which obviously is directly correlated to having to adapt to the rules. But in terms of soreness or anything like that, I feel like I prepared for it as best as I could and obviously performed well and didn’t have any anything extracurricular in that regard. I was able to handle it.”

A few years ago, Tyler Glasnow was convinced that the crack down on sticky stuff was the reason why he got injured. Do you view that as a contributing factor when pitchers are throwing harder or gripping the ball harder? Is that more challenging?

“I don’t know if I can objectively say it’s more or less challenging, but I would certainly say that was something that a lot of players in the league had to adapt to.”

Is it just too much, too soon, too fast?

“I don’t know. I just know that they’re all happening. You have to consider that all of these may be contributing to a certain extent. And some of them may have a net positive outcome in the long run, but let’s just not dismiss things out of hand.”

Is there a first step that can be taken where guys don’t have to max out on every pitch?

“I put a lot of thought into stuff I say, and I just don’t have enough information to point you in a direction, especially because pitchers are so different. Each guy is different. Some guys train better with high volume and low intensity. Some guys train better with low volume and high intensity. It’s just different organisms. So it’s not a blanket thing for the league. One of these variables could have affected a certain group of guys more than another group of guys, and vice versa.

“I’m just frustrated it’s a combative issue. It’s like, ‘OK, we have divorced parents, and the child is misbehaving, and we can’t get on the same page to get the child to behave.’ Not that the players are misbehaving, but we have an issue here and we need to get on the same page and at least try to fix it. And it’s like we’re (points finger). Rob (Manfred) cares about the players. He’s supposed to care about the players. He’s supposed to really deeply care about them. That’s his job.”

*It was noted that no one put their name on MLB’s statement. Cole noted that MLPBA executive director Tony Clark put his name on the union’s statement.

Do you think that MLB might be acting out of concern of liability?

“That’s over my head. Is anyone here a lawyer?”

Do you think it’s reached a point where players have to be willing to sacrifice their health in the pursuit of meeting the demands of performance?

“I’m not necessarily sure I would say that.”

_____