NEW YORK – On September 20, before a game against the Oakland A’s, Gerrit Cole approached the lockers of the New York Yankees relief pitchers. In his previous start against Boston, Cole had called for an intentional bases-empty walk to Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers, a play that caused a disastrous collapse. Cole had lasted just 4⅓ innings, putting pressure on his bullpen — at a time of the season when they were all gassed. Cole still felt bad. He promised the Yankees relievers they could rest easy.

“You don’t have to do anything today,” Cole said.

For the next 2.5 hours, Cole put on a pitching clinic. He pitched nine innings, easily his longest outing of the 2024 season, and allowed just one run on two hits. Even after the game stretched into extra innings and a one-inning stint was necessary for closer Luke Weaver to secure the win, Cole’s point was made. Despite suffering an elbow injury that forced him to miss the first two and a half months of the season and shaving a few ticks of velocity off his fastball, there is still greatness in the Yankees ace.

He has to call it up again on Wednesday. The Yankees saved their season Tuesday night with an 11-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series, and Cole will take the Yankee Stadium mound with the same burden in Game 5, trying to regain the series to steer. to Los Angeles.

Cole understands win-or-go-home games, having started six in the postseason. And he knows the pressure, not just of pitching in New York, but for five years with the largest contract ever given to a pitcher, at $324 million. And he wants to be seen more as the man who made the biggest games of his life his playground than the one who stuck up four fingers before Devers stepped up to the plate. He wants to be the guy who told relievers to chill and kept his end of the bargain.

“It was a different feeling,” Weaver said. “It was like, OK, Gerrit, you want to go do it, we’re not going to be mad about it. Do your thing. And he went out and did the damn thing. I thought he had maybe 10 in him.”

“When you have a top dog like that and he makes that voice heard, that’s what it feels like to me (Game 5). You feel like they’re stepping up in big moments. He’s got a different side to him, and if If he gets into that killer mode like he did, it’s going to be a pretty tough task.”

This game – season on the line, win or stay home – is exactly the kind of game the Yankees signed him for. It’s the kind of game the Dodgers also wanted him to throw when they recruited him during free agency before the 2020 season and before he ultimately chose New York over his hometown team. With the Houston Astros in 2019, Cole had thrown an eight-inning, two-hit, 10-strikeout gem in a winner-take-all division series win. In 2022, he helped the Yankees vault Cleveland out of the postseason with another division series win.

But in the four other games Cole had to win, his team lost: twice with the Yankees (2020 and 2021), twice with Pittsburgh (2013, 2015). Still, his New York teammates are confident he will perform in the biggest places.

“He’s hands down the best pitcher in baseball,” Yankees left-hander Nestor Cortes said. “He’s done it for many years and he’s just gotten better. We all know he’s got talent, but he studies every shot, he studies every man he faces. He knows percentages, he knows trends. I’m out there trying to compete and throw strikes. He knows what percentage this 2-1 fastball should strike.”

With Yankees manager Aaron Boone leaning heavily on his bullpen through the first four games, the need for Cole to pitch well — and get deep into the game — is even more pressing.

Cole has thrown fewer than 90 pitches in each of his previous four starts this postseason. Whether he can match or repeat his six excellent innings of one-run ball in Game 1 — against a Dodgers lineup that is burning through pitchers — will depend on his efficiency. After months of questions about the viability of his elbow, Cole is as confident as he is this season, hitting 90 mph with his fastball in Game 1.

“I feel like I’m in good shape right now,” Cole said. “I have a backup while I’m pitching. So if I have to dip into the tank, I can go get it, and then I can go get it again. It’s not a one-time thing. And then familiarity with both myself and my pitch, how I move, how well I concentrate the ball in the areas of the strike zone I want to reach – I … very rarely miss east and west more defined.”

Game 5 will be only the sixth time Cole has pitched this year with four days between starts. Two of those came in the postseason: a bravura seven-inning, one-run performance in the division series final against Kansas City and a 4⅓-inning slog against Cleveland five days later.

Even if Cole delivers another gem, the numbers are now against the Yankees. Never before in the World Series has a team faced a 3-0 deficit and forced even a sixth game, let alone come back to win a ring. If they win Game 5, they would have to take two in Los Angeles — with a loaded bullpen, a star in Aaron Judge who has struggled all October and a lineup that was flawless through the first three games when the Dodgers weren’t pitching. their hind arms.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Los Angeles will counter with one of its front-end starters. Like Cole, Dodgers righthander Jack Flaherty is from Southern California, a former first-round pick — and he almost played for the team he was set to oppose. The Yankees attempted to acquire Flaherty from Detroit before the trade deadline. The deal fell apart when New York, wary of its back, requested another return to the Tigers. The Dodgers came in perfectly happy to add Flaherty to their rotation, and he was brilliant down the stretch, going pitch-for-pitch with Cole in Game 1.

Now they face each other again: a chance to pitch his team for a championship on the line for Flaherty, and Cole is thinking about survival. Additionally, the start could be a factor in whether Cole opts out of the remaining four years and $144 million on his contract, a move that could be voided if the Yankees add one year and $36 million to the deal.

Cole won’t promise the bullpen a day of rest this time, not with the last full postseason game coming seven years ago. The Yankees don’t need that. They just want to live up to the expectation written on a video board in their locker room after Game 4. The clubhouse opens on Wednesday at 2 p.m. And underneath, in capital letters, was less hope than a mandate:

WIN TOMORROW FLY THURSDAY