The New York Yankees will not start their search for their first World Series championship since 2009 until Friday. That didn’t stop manager Aaron Boone
from announcing his starting pitcher for Game 1 against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday. The decision came as no surprise. Gerrit Cole, the 2023 American
League Cy Young Award winner and the team’s highest-paid pitcher, will start the first game of the unprecedented World Series.
Cole, 34, finished the regular season 8-5 with a 3.41 earned-run average after missing virtually the whole first half of the season due to an elbow ailment.
He has three playoff starts for the Yankees, going 1-0 with a 3.31 ERA. Cole last pitched in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series against the Cleveland Guardians, surrendering two runs in 4.1 innings as the Yankees won 6.
Cole, a native of Southern California, started two World Series games for the Houston Astros in 2019. In the series, the right-hander began the opening game for
Houston and won the second, with a loss in the first. The Washington Nationals defeated the Astros in seven games to win the series. Every year that he has played into October in New York, Cole has started the Yankees’ opening
postseason game. The World Series will be his first participation since he inked a $324 million, nine-year contract with New York in December of 2019.
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