Gerrit Cole still pitches every night before he goes to bed, at least in his mind.
That is as close as the reigning AL Cy Young winner will get to a Yankees game this season.
But with Tuesday marking eight weeks since he underwent Tommy John surgery on his prized right elbow, Cole has made it through the most intensive and delicate stage of his recovery. He has been free of his brace for two and a half weeks, is no longer worried about getting bumped into, has some range of motion back and is finally able to do some normal-person things around the house like grabbing a cup.
So the veteran spent Sunday’s game in the dugout for the first time this season and will start to become more visible and active around the team as he moves through the early stages of the typical 14-month recovery.
“It starts out really dark and then you work your way closer to the light at the end of the tunnel,” Cole said with a wry grin during a 21-minute session with reporters, his first since the surgery, while sporting a red scar extending from his right forearm up to up near his bicep.
Yankees Gerrit Cole in the dugout during the third inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, May 4, 2025.
“As we’re moving into this phase, I get to be involved and feel like I’m contributing a little more, which is probably good for my mental state [and] my heart.”
Cole’s March 11 surgery, which may have been in the making since he missed time last year with elbow inflammation but still delivered a gut punch to him and the organization just the same, included a reconstruction of his UCL and the use of an internal brace. If everything goes perfectly and he attacks his rehab aggressively, he could be back on a major league mound by next May.
“I hope it comes back, maybe like a fresh new set of tires,” Cole said. “That’s the best hope. Just a pit stop that took a little longer than you had hoped for.”
In the meantime, Cole is focused on the smaller milestones along the way. He spent two weeks in a cast and now is out of his brace, shifting his focus from mobility to strength — like working on his finger muscles and elbow muscles as he inches towards stretching the ligament.
The biggest checkpoint on his mind is picking up a ball and throwing in August for the first time, which he said will bring back some normalcy.
“It starts to go in August,” he said. “Once you pick up the ball, you’re weeks away from getting off the mound. Then there’ll be a hiatus through the winter. Then it’ll start back up again.”
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) during workouts at George M. Steinbrenner Field during Spring Training.
The last time Cole was on a mound was March 6 in Tampa, his second outing of the spring. He had trouble bending his elbow or moving his arm the next day, “so I had a pretty good feeling we were in some deep mud,” he said.
Before that, though, Cole thought he might be able to outrun the surgery that seems to come for every pitcher these days at some point in their careers.
“I never really did [think this day was coming], no,” Cole said. “The odds were saying it was going to, yeah. I think it’s 2,100 innings or something. I had defeated the odds for so long. And the anatomy of the elbow had looked the way it did. So it was like, well, ‘It’s still working, so who’s to say that it can’t?’ But it did catch up to me.”
The early days and weeks that followed the surgery were difficult, both physically and mentally. Aaron Boone knew that Cole was struggling with it and wanted to give him the space to deal with it how he needed to.
Yankees starting pitcher Gerrit Cole high-fives his teammates during Opening Day ceremonies at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.
Cole has found some positives in the upheaval of what had become his normal baseball season schedule. He has been able to be Dad more to his two sons, driving them to and from school and going to their baseball and soccer games, which has lifted his spirits.
“But I miss playing,” he said. “I miss competing.”
For now, Cole is looking forward to being around his teammates more often in addition to his daily rehab. He expects that as the season heads down the stretch, he will begin to dive into studying opponents and watching more baseball so that he can help develop plans of attack for the biggest games.
It may be mutually beneficial.
“That’s my encouragement to him is to make sure he’s in and around us and pouring into guys as much as he can,” Boone said. “I know he likes doing that and looking forward to that. I think that’ll be also therapeutic for him as he goes through this long road.”
