NEW YORK — New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole exited Tuesday night’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays with two outs in the fourth inning because of tightness in his left hamstring.
After a 5-1 loss, Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Cole was not scheduled for an MRI and that it was too early to know if he would miss his next scheduled start.
Cole was pulled after allowing a sacrifice fly to Reese McGuire that gave Toronto a 3-1 lead.
“I was sitting out there for a couple of pitches weighing the pros and cons and I just wasn’t quite sure I was going to be able to get through the inning and get some treatment on it to get back out,” Cole said after a 5-1 loss. “So unfortunately, I just had to pull the plug.”
After the throw from center fielder Aaron Judge deflected off his glove, Cole motioned to the dugout and was checked by trainer Tim Lentych. Cole was then replaced by Albert Abreu.
“Right now, he’s just experiencing some tightness, so we’ll kind of see where we’re at tomorrow on it,” Boone said. “I know in talking to Gerrit he feels pretty optimistic about it. It’s something that’s popped up before with him on other pitches.”
“Just something that he felt like if he was going to push through in there, (he’d) risk doing something a little bit more. So hopefully it’s something that he got out in front enough and we’ll just see where we’re at tomorrow and in the coming days,” he said.
Cole allowed three runs, two of them earned, and five hits in 3 2/3 innings. He threw 70 pitches as the Blue Jays put together several lengthy at-bats against him.
Cole struck out two, tying Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler for the major league lead with 217.
The star right-hander is 14-7 with a 2.78 ERA. He had been 4-0 with a 0.73 ERA in four starts since missing time following a positive test for COVID-19 and struck out 15 in seven innings on Wednesday against the Angels.