PHOENIX — There always was the understanding that there would be some bumps along the road in Gerrit Cole’s first season back from Tommy John surgery, as there are with any pitcher returning from major elbow surgery. Yet, for most of his first 20 starts back, he looked like the Cole of old. 

The last two, however, have started to ring some moderate alarm bells at an inopportune time — or, if viewed through the Yankees’ pinstriped glasses, a decent time so that he can get himself straightened out over his final two starts before the playoffs. 

That quest begins Friday, when Cole will take the mound against the Diamondbacks having allowed seven home runs over his last two starts, the most in any two-start span of his career. 

“I expect him to be right next time,” manager Aaron Boone said after Cole’s last start against the Mets. 

Cole has insisted throughout that he is feeling good physically, 115 ¹/₃ innings into the season after missing all of last year.

The metrics on his pitches over the last two starts against the Mets and Padres have mostly stayed in line with where they have been over the course of the full season, including his fastball velocity, which averaged 97.1 mph and 96.9 mph in those two starts (both faster than his season average in 2024). 

Except all of a sudden, that four-seam fastball has become a lot more hittable. Dating back to Cole’s last four starts, hitters are batting 16-for-48 (.333) against the pitch, compared to 32-for-173 (.185) across his first 16 starts. Perhaps even more concerning is that hitters are not just hitting the fastball — they are hardly even missing it.

Over his last three starts, Cole has generated just eight whiffs on 69 swings against his fastball (11.6 percent), including zero on 16 swings last time out against the Mets, compared to a 22.8 percent whiff rate on the pitch in his first 17 starts (which is still down from the rest of his career). 

Former American League Cy Young Award winner and current YES Network analyst David Cone, speaking this week on “The Show with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman,” theorized that Cole often has been in between on which secondary pitch to use, which has allowed hitters to wait and attack his fastball. 

“To me, that just leans back to they’re not respecting your secondary stuff, they’re sitting on your fastball,” Cone said. “You got to get some protection for your fastball, and you got to do something about your secondary pitches and get your slider tunneling again on that same plane off of that fastball. That will give you what you’re looking for.” 

Of the seven home runs Cole has given up in his last two starts, four have come on his fastball.

During those two starts, hitters have put 22 fastballs in play, with 15 of them registering as hard-hit balls, meaning they have come off the bat at exit velocities north of 95 mph. The average exit velocity on Cole’s fastballs during those two starts has been 98.3, compared to 92.7 in his first 18 starts. 

All of that suggests that hitters are seeing Cole’s fastball well. Whether that is because of a lack of deception, he is not getting it to the spots he wants, or they simply are sitting fastball and unleashing their best swings when they get it is a matter of opinion. 

Now, it is on Cole to adjust back in his final two starts of the regular season (lined up to come against the Diamondbacks and Rays). Prior to the clunkers against the Padres and Mets, he had pitched to 3.29 ERA across 18 starts, looking very much like the kind of pitcher the Yankees would want to start in a potential AL wild-card series along with Cam Schlittler and Max Fried. 

While the concerning last two starts probably still are not enough to make the Yankees change course and start Carlos Rodón over him, Cole could go a long way in offering some reassurance by solving his home run and fastball problem before the postseason arrives.