DETROIT — There was warranted concern when Gerrit Cole was scratched from his start on the day of the trade deadline with what the Yankees called “general body fatigue.”
No matter what moves the club made that day, nothing was going to come close to the kind of impact that a healthy Cole could provide down the stretch and into October if he rediscovered his groove.
Three starts later, the right-hander is looking much closer to finding that form.
Cole turned in his first scoreless outing of the season, tossing six shutout innings to lift the Yankees to a 3-0 win over the Tigers on Friday night at Comerica Park.
The opposing lineup won’t be mistaken for Murderers’ Row any time soon, but Cole stifled the Tigers (59-64) anyways while striking out eight and allowing just six base runners.
It marked only the third time this season (in 10 starts) that he has completed six innings after missing the first two and a half months with elbow nerve inflammation.
In the three starts since being scratched against the Phillies, Cole has a 1.59 ERA with 22 strikeouts in 17 innings.
On Friday, he led the Yankees (73-50) to their third straight win.
There were still some residuals of the missed start his last time out, when Cole struck out 10 across 5 ¹/₃ innings of one-run ball but was pulled after just 90 pitches on what Aaron Boone called a “pretty strict” pitch count.
But Cole got to 95 pitches Friday — the last one coming on a 96 mph strikeout that struck out Jace Jung looking to strand a pair of runners in the sixth inning, at which point he turned it over to the bullpen.
Luke Weaver, Tommy Kahnle and Clay Holmes handled the rest, each tossing a scoreless inning to close out the win.
Things got dicey for the Yankees in the seventh inning after Weaver retired the first two batters. Former Yankees prospect Trey Sweeney (traded to the Dodgers last winter for Victor Gonzalez and Jorbit Vivas, then to the Tigers last month as part of the package for Jack Flaherty) extended the frame by recording an infield single for his first hit in his MLB debut.
Weaver then got Jake Rogers to pop up down the third-base line, which Anthony Volpe dropped.
But Weaver picked up his shortstop by getting leadoff hitter Parker Meadows to pop out to second to end the threat.
After the Yankees took a 1-0 lead in the first inning, they got the rest of their offense from a pair of solo home runs — Oswald Peraza’s first of the year in the fifth inning, in his season debut, and Aaron Judge’s 44th of the year in the eighth inning, the 301st of his career.
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