AL DIVISION SERIES: GUARDIANS VS YANKEES

October 11, 2022

Gerrit Cole

Yankee Stadium

New York Yankees

Postgame 1 Press Conference

Yankees - 4, Guardians - 1

Q. Gerrit, you look at that third inning, early on they really made you work the third inning in particular the home run to Kwan and bases loaded twice. How were you able to get yourself out of that inning?

GERRIT COLE: I thought we played good defense. Picked each other up and made good pitches ultimately for the most part throughout the inning.

Q. You mentioned good defense. How important is Bader cutting that ball off before it gets to the wall to stop the second run from scoring?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah, I mean, excellent defensive play there. Reminds me of a ball George cut off in the World Series a few years ago holding Howie Kendrick to a single and we capitalized on it. Oswaldo made a great play up against the wall, kind of continues to just be so impressive. And, yeah, Donaldson was down and dirty for us, too, in the hot corner.

Q. Your first home playoff start here. What did it mean to come off the mound, not just with the lead but to get that response from the crowd?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah, it was very special for me. It was very special. You know, the game's not over. You've got a lot -- left with traffic. So it's not the most comfortable time to acknowledge the crowd, but I certainly felt it and appreciated it. I thought they were in every pitch tonight, and what a wonderful experience to have them behind us.

Q. What's the overall feeling of winning Game 1 in such a short series?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah, a good day's work, and get ready for the next one. Kind of simple.

Q. You had pitched obviously here with Houston in the postseason, and you've been looking forward for a long time to pitching in pin stripes here. How did you keep yourself calm about it and how much did you appreciate and get pumped up while you were doing it versus focusing on what you were doing?

GERRIT COLE: It was just a really awesome experience overall. Just sometimes when you feel the crowd or the energy, you know, it sometimes can become a little easier just to quiet things down because it's so loud. I don't know if that makes sense but it does to me.

And yeah, I mean, just what a great atmosphere. It was my dad's birthday today. So it was a good day.

Q. 62 pitches through three, 35 through four, five and six. What was different for you?

GERRIT COLE: You know, not a whole lot. We had a couple of breaks not go our way early that we had to kind of navigate around, and the third was obviously, you know, it was just kind of unfortunate. I thought Rosario made a pass at that fastball but it got him up on the hand. That was kind of unfortunate to not make a better chance at retiring him because he kind of extended it.

But I just got like early contact in that one inning, and that kind of reset it and that's the beauty of having the DH. Like seven years ago in Pittsburgh, it might have been a tougher decision in the fourth; tie game, double-switch kind of thing.

You just keep grinding and you keep making pitches, and if you're fortunate to catch one of those quick innings, you have more opportunities to find it. It doesn't always have to come in the first three.

Q. Were you trying to pitch to contact?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah, well, I mean, this team is like extremely hard to strike out. Like 29th or 28th in the League in terms of strikeouts. They put the ball in play. They lead the league in infield hits. They have good batting average and bat-to ball skills across the lineup.

You know, I had foreseen -- I don't know what the hell I'm saying there (laughter).

I had foreseen trying to work out of traffic because of undesirable contact. So I was lucky to make pitches in those situations.

Q. How much of a battle was it to keep your emotions and excitement in check having a playoff start. What was the early part of the day like compared to a regular season start?

GERRIT COLE: Honestly it wasn't -- yeah, it wasn't a whole lot different. I was in the tunnel during the festivities with the lights and stuff, because that was just -- that's not -- I don't want to be doing that, like be walking in or, you know, with like Swisher running around (laughter). I just kept my stuff down out of the way early.

So yeah, outside of that, it was pretty normal. It was kind of just relaxing just to hear the roar from everybody the whole time.

Q. And what did you think of the Swisher's job out there?

GERRIT COLE: I can't comment on it without watching it.

Q. Gerrit, like you said, this is an offense that doesn't really strikeout, but you wound up pulling four hits, eight strikeouts. The last few innings, did you feel like you had gotten to a point where you felt like you made them play your game instead of trying to work towards theirs?

GERRIT COLE: I thought that there's a conscious effort there to be a little more disciplined to the breaking ball at the beginning of the third inning. So you need to switch gears in some situations to either a different breaking ball, or find a different way to get strike one.

And then once we had the lead, then we just tried to play with it.

Q. So in the third inning after that home run, bases are loaded. Given the stakes and the circumstances, what's going through your head to make sure things don't domino on you from a mental standpoint on the mound?

GERRIT COLE: I don't know. Like I said earlier, I just kind of visualized and prepared myself for traffic, and I thought that I certainly had quite a bit of it. Too many experiences with traffic this year. So I just kind of just leaned on, like, you know, what I normally do. I thought that we were really clear on what pitches we wanted to execute in those situations.

So at that point, like, I knew we were prepared and just went out and threw the pitch.