AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: YANKEES VS ASTROS

October 20, 2022

Gerrit Cole

Minute Maid Park

New York Yankees

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Houston Astros - 3, New York Yankees - 2

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Gerrit Cole.

Q. How do you feel about taking the ball at home with kind of a big game now that you guys are down 0-2?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah. It's always a great pleasure to pitch at home in front of our fans. I'm sure there will be a bunch of pageantry and everything, so it should be a nice night.

Q. Does your mindset change at all when your offense is struggling to score runs? I mean, I assume you don't want to give 'em up ever, but understanding how precious they might be right now against Houston and its run prevention.

GERRIT COLE: I feel like I should probably dedicate all my focus to the Houston hitters, really. That's probably the best way to combat that.

Q. You know this ballpark well. Watching from afar, from the dugout, how did you think the open roof played?

GERRIT COLE: I thought it was a nice night. Some dicey fly balls, wind affected a couple of them, but we had -- it doesn't affect line drives up the middle, you know? So the deciding factor was just a little bit more pressure from the opposition and a striking blow and we came up just short.

Q. When you see how razor thin the margin has really been, it's a couple of 0-2 pitches -- two-strike pitches here, did you feel any pressure to go out there and be perfect, given the fact how close these games have played out so far?

GERRIT COLE: To be honest, I just kind of expected it. The Astros went down six runs in Game 1 and it was still a razor thin margin too. So that's the way it is in the postseason and that's the way it is against great teams.

Q. Framber Valdez told us that in 2019 that 4th inning would have doomed him, that he wouldn't have been able to get out of it. You were here, you were his teammate, how have you seen him grow as a pitcher and also with his mound presence?

GERRIT COLE: His mound presence has always been a bit whimsical, and I still think it is. That's who he is. I feel that -- I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. Obviously there's been a lot of improvement. It's hard for me to answer that question specifically because I haven't seen him pitch quite as much as you guys have or enough to really answer that question thoroughly.

But certainly the body of work speaks for itself. He trusts his teammates, trusts his defense, and continues to make pitches in big spots. I mean, that's certainly what he did tonight.

Q. With the historic implication that if you guys don't win Game 3 you probably will not win this series, do you carry implication into a game like that as encouragement, trying to find some fuel from it, or do you want to ignore it at a hundred percent?

GERRIT COLE: You asked me a similar question last series and just, like, the answer is, regardless, if it's 2-0 or if it's 1-1 or it's 0-2, it just, it can't affect the way I go about my business. I mean, like, we all have a job to do. We play each and every game in and of itself, play each and every pitch within each and every game until there's no more pitches to play, win or lose.

I alluded to it earlier, like, the club that's opposing us, certainly any club demands as much focus as you possibly can put into trying to execute your game plan and your pitches in order to be successful. So the rest of the stuff is irrelevant.

Q. What do you expect from the crowd going back home in the Bronx?

GERRIT COLE: Yeah, I mean, we're excited to see them. It was really special for us to win Game 5 and win it in front of them, and that was my first experience, fully hot in the bullpen. I got showered with beer and hit in the head with french fries as we got the last out.

So there's a part of every baseball player that I think just, you know, really enjoys making the fan base happy, just enjoys making the people in the ballpark happy, or vice-versa, if you're in an opposing team's ballpark.

So any time that we can go back there, we worked really hard to be in this position. We worked really hard to get through the Division Series. So we're excited to celebrate that hard work at the beginning of the game with the fans and excited to get after baseball. We just get another opportunity to play, which is what we love to do.

Q. Obviously you played with a lot of these guys, you faced many of them as well since you've been in New York and you've obviously watched these two games. Is there anything in particular about their approach offensively that you find is a big challenge or the big challenge facing them?

GERRIT COLE: It's tough to narrow it down to one thing. But probably one characteristic that connects all the dots is the way that they play together. So whatever it is in any given game, they're going to try to gang tackle you, really. And they play until the whistle blows, like they say in the NFL or something like that. It's just a very team-oriented mentality.

And I find that that's really a commonality amongst any good teams or any teams that are getting this deep in the postseason. But certainly it's just at another level of familiarity with them, with the type of veterans and the type of players that they have had in all these big situations over all the years. So that's what got them to the level that they are at and it's what sustains them probably.