New York Yankees Ace Gerrit Cole Slams MLB, MLBPA for Response to Rise in Pitcher Injuries

New York Yankees ace and reigning American League Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole isn’t very happy with how the league is responding to a rise in pitcher injuries.

Cole, who opened the 2024 season on the 60-day injured list due to elbow inflammation, spoke to reporters on Monday about the rash of injuries to starting pitchers, specifically to the elbow and shoulder area.

He doesn’t appreciate the response from Major League Baseball or the Major League Baseball Players Association.

“I’m just frustrated it’s a combative issue,” Cole said. “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 to at least try to fix it… (MLB Commissioner) Rob (Manfred) cares about the players. He’s supposed to care about players. He’s supposed to really deeply care about them. That is his job.”

The MLBPA issued a statement over the weekend about concerns over the reduced length of the pitch clock just one season after “imposing the most significant rule change in decades.”

The MLB responded with a statement of their own:

“This statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries. Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the causes of this long-term increase, interviewing prominent medical experts across baseball which to date has been consistent with an independent analysis by Johns Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries.”

Both the pitch clock and the increase in velocity and spin rates could be contributing to the issue, but at the end of the day, Cole doesn’t feel like the sides are focused on the right things.

“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,” Cole said. “When I read the response from MLB, I didn’t think it was very thorough. To be able to say 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. I think the players are obviously the most important aspect of this industry and this product, and the care of the players should be of utmost importance to both sides.”

Cole is one of the many pitchers who are either sidelined to start the season or have suffered a major injury in the first few weeks of it. Cole appears fortunate enough to have avoided a season-ending surgery, but some of his counterparts haven’t been as lucky.

Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Guardians is set to undergo season-ending elbow surgery after two dominant starts to open the 2024 campaign.

Spencer Strider of the Atlanta Braves experienced elbow discomfort in his most recent start on Friday and could be headed for a season-ending surgery of his own.

Eury Pérez of the Miami Marlins had his season end before it even began when it was announced late last week that he would have to undergo Tommy John surgery. He joins his fellow Marlins teammate, Sandy Alcántara, who underwent Tommy John at the end of last season and won’t pitch in 2024.

MLB clearly has a problem, and the league needs to figure out something to prevent their superstars from missing significant time with injury.

As for Cole, he just wants to see them show some care for the players.

“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,” Cole said. “But those aren’t going to have a direct correlation to better performance. 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.”