Elbow surgery will end the season for one of Major League Baseball’s best pitchers in 2025, a crushing injury that presents a tremendous roadblock for his team as they attempt to return to the ‘Fall Classic’ this October.
Gerrit Cole, the flame-throwing right-hander for the New York Yankees who also suffered through elbow issues to begin last season, will undergo surgery after experiencing discomfort in his right elbow during Yankees’ spring training, announced Monday.
The Tommy John surgery will be performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Cole, 34 years-of-age, captured the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher in 2023 but was shut down by the ‘Bronx Bombers’ last spring after he expressed discomfort in his throwing elbow. Surgery was taken off the table and deemed not necessary, and Cole ultimately hit the mound, starting 17 regular-season games and helped the Yankees reach the World Series after a strong performance to help close out the league pennant. In Game 5 of the World Series, Cole was on the mound as the Los Angeles Dodgers mounted an extraordinary comeback that helped clinch the Dodgers’ championship.
Embed from Getty ImagesAs the Yankees came together last month in spring training to start what they hoped would be a return appearance to the World Series, Cole told the media he had begun his offseason throwing regiment earlier than usual and as a result felt he was “in a really good spot.”
But last week something went wrong, and reports surfaced that pain in the same elbow had led Cole to undergo testing. The Athletic later reported that medical experts had recommended Cole undergo Tommy John surgery, but that Cole was seeking a second opinion.
When he is clicking on all cylinders and 100% healthy, Cole has proven to have the ability to dominate like few in the game. With a career-high 326 strikeouts in 2019, Cole joined an elite club of pitchers who have produced the only 69 seasons with 300-plus strikeouts in MLB history. Cole has twice led the American League in earned-run average and twice finished with a league-high number of Ks, including a career-high 326 in 2019. His 4.5 ratio of strikeouts to walks ranks eighth all-time and fourth best among active pitchers, according to Baseball Reference. Cole also owns the fifth-highest Wins Above Replacement among active pitchers.
The Yankees had aggressively improved their pitching staff in the winter by signing a top free-agent pitcher, Max Fried. Yet the daunting idea of losing Cole for the season delivers a gut punch to a team that earlier in the winter lost another lineup pillar when hitter Juan Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million deal to join their rival, the New York Mets in Queens.
