For six-plus innings, this looked like exactly the start the Yankees needed from Gerrit Cole. He's still working his way back from the Tommy John surgery that cost him all of 2025, and he'd been building steadily since his season debut back in May. Friday night against the Dodgers at Yankee Stadium, he was locking in, mowing down a lineup that includes Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, and the building was buzzing.
Cole froze Freeman with a 0-2 slider in the 6th, part of a start that had the Bronx feeling good.
That's the kind of moment that had guys like Eric Hubbs practically giddy watching it live. This wasn't just a good outing, it was a reminder of who Cole used to be before the elbow blew out. But baseball has a way of turning storybook nights sideways in one pitch, and that's exactly what happened.
With Cole sitting at 97 pitches and working through the Dodgers order for a third time, Aaron Boone came out to the mound to check on him. Cole convinced his manager to leave him in. Six pitches later, on his 103rd of the night, he hung a 2-2 slider to Max Muncy, who hadn't managed a hit in his previous 10 at-bats and had never gotten one off Cole in 5 career meetings. Muncy deposited it into the second deck in right for a two-run shot that flipped a 1-0 Yankees lead into a 2-1 Dodgers advantage.
Muncy's go-ahead two-run homer off Cole, his first hit against him in five career tries.
That was the ballgame, and the Dodgers held on to beat the Yankees in the Bronx for the first time since celebrating their 2024 World Series title on that same field. The homer immediately sparked the obligatory second-guessing of Boone's decision to leave his ace in, but Hubbs wasn't interested in piling on for the sake of it, noting Cole simply didn't execute the pitch he needed.
Hubbs' take on the Boone decision after the fact.
Easy to second guess Boone with Cole but in the moment I was fired up to leave him in. Just didn’t execute the putaway pitch. Can second guess it but I’m not gonna criticize just to criticize
The homer wasn't even the most maddening part of the loss for Yankees fans. Two innings later, Trent Grisham got caught looking back at a ball crushed into the gap instead of running through second, turning what should've been a sure double, or more, into a runner cut down at the plate on a relay throw. It was the kind of gaffe that turns a tough loss into an infuriating one.
The relay throw that nailed the Yankees runner at home and killed a potential rally.
Hubbs didn't hold back on that one either, calling the baserunning inexcusable and pointing out the offense's larger issue: a lineup still searching for a true table-setter at the top. Add it all up and it's a loss that had a little bit of everything for a fanbase already running short on patience, a returning ace who couldn't finish the job, a costly baserunning blunder, and a Dodgers team that's beaten them at their own building for the first time in years. Cole's stuff was there. The results, for one pitch and one bad read on the bases, weren't.