Alek Manoah, who starts for the Toronto Blue Jays, named Yankees’ star starter Gerrit Cole as the MLB’s biggest during an interview on the show “How Hungry Are You” hosted by NBA player Serge Ibaka.
When the host asked Manoah why he prefer to call Gerrit Cole since he didn’t know anything about the history of the New York Yankees star, Manoah replied:
“He cheated. He used a lot of sticky stuff to make his pitches better. And he got called out on it.”
During the 2021 campaign, there was a crackdown on the use of sticky things by pitchers. The league hasn’t allowed them for a long time, but pitchers still found ways to put them on their hands to help them move more and have better control. When MLB decided to check pitchers while they were on the mound, many people pointed fingers at Gerrit Cole and other pitchers because they thought they were using it.
In fact, Gerrit Cole was last thought to be using something during a start against the Cleveland Guardians at the beginning of the 2022 season. After each pitch, he seemed to be touching a spot on his rear. But Gerrit Cole never got in trouble for breaking the rules, and he never did that for the rest of the season.
Gerrit Cole played for the Houston Astros, who were caught cheating in the 2017 season. But they went on to win the World Series. But the pitcher arrived in Houston in 2018 and became part of two All-Star games while he was there. In both of those years, the Astros were accused of cheating, but only in 2017, they were proof of this.
While the Astros marked garbage cans to articulate when to hit, which helped them win the World Series, the Toronto pitcher pointed a finger at his AL East opponent Gerrit Cole. However, he has a personal grudge against the Yankees pitcher. Manoah and Cole have had problems with each other before.
In August, Manoah throws a ball at Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and it hit the elbow of the power hitter. Gerrit Cole jumped out of the dugout and looked like he was trying to get Manoah thrown out of the game. After the game, Manoah had some things to say to Cole.
“I made a pitch, obviously it hit Judge,” Manoah told, “Obviously, I looked at him and I said, ‘Man, I’m not trying to do that.’ I think he understood that. I think if Gerrit wants to do something, he can walk past the Audi sign (in front of the Yankees dugout) next time.”
Even though many pitchers had trouble after sticky stuff was banned, Gerrit Cole finished second in the Cy Young voting in 2021. He had a 3.23 ERA over 181.1 innings and struck out 243 batters.
Manoah, on the other hand, proved that he was one of the best young pitchers in MLB by throwing 196.2 innings with an ERA of 2.24 for his first All-Star game. Gerrit Cole is in the middle of a big contract with New York, and Toronto wants Manoah. This means that these two will see a lot of each other on the diamond for many years to come.
Meanwhile, the Yankees fans took to Twitter to support Gerrit Cole and flay the Toronto pitches.
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