Gerrit Cole injury puts onus on Yankees’ offense

The Yankees can still rake. We’ve seen that all spring. We saw that, most notably, during one of the most enjoyable spring-training baseball games you’ll ever see, a 9-8 win over the Braves at Steinbrenner Field a few days ago. Even if Aaron Judge isn’t right for Opening Day — though it now seems like he ought to be — it feels like the Yankees’ offense is trending as it should.

So there’s that.

But there is no minimizing how brutal the effect of losing Gerrit Cole is — whether it’s a month, whether it’s two, whether it’s longer. Cole isn’t just one of the two or three best pitchers on the planet, though that’s a big part of it. Every fifth day, Cole demands the ball, he throws the hell out of it, he leaves a large portion of his soul on the pitcher’s mound and often Aaron Boone needs to bring a court order with him to the mound to get the ball away from him.

What happens every fifth day isn’t just excellence of the first order — excellence that was finally recognized with hardware last year when he won the AL Cy Young Award. It’s something else. It’s something visceral. Too often the past few years we’ve seen too many Yankees who come up lacking when it comes to the basic task of competing. There is always a lot of talent in the room. There isn’t always a surplus of grit and grime and grinding.

Cole provided enough for half the clubhouse most days. He cares, deeply, in a way we aren’t always sure nine-figure conglomerate players care any more. And that rubs off, even on days when he’s merely cheering or charting pitches and not throwing them. Cole picks his teammates up on the days he pitches and perks them up on all the other days.

So that’s what gets on an airplane bound for Los Angeles, a date with Dr. Neal ElAttrache on his itinerary now, his next start not likely to happen until May, maybe June. It’s more than just an arm that heads west. It’s a large chunk of the Yankees’ soul.