In a word, no.
That’s not to say that Gerrit Cole isn’t a good pitcher. He is. If he was trash, the New York Yankees wouldn’t have engaged Pittsburgh on multiple occasions about trading for the 27-year-old, who spurned the Yanks in the 2008 MLB Draft, choosing to attend UCLA rather than sign with the Bronx Bombers straight out of high school.
But his arrival to the Astros finds us saying “Houston, we don’t have a problem.”
As you’d expect, Cole, a righty who spent his entire five-year MLB career in the National League up to this point, has had very little exposure to the Yanks’ lineup—including the reigning NL MVP, Giancarlo Stanton.