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Gerrit Cole joins exclusive K club in MLB

The New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole becomes the third-fastest pitcher in history to notch up 2000 strikeouts in Major League Baseball.

Jeffrey May
Jeffrey MayJeff_DiarioAS
The New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole becomes the third-fastest pitcher in history to notch up 2000 strikeouts in Major League Baseball.
ELSAAFP

On Tuesday night against the Baltimore Orioles, Gerrit Cole reached a career milestone for pitching excellence in Major League Baseball, notching up 2000 career strikeouts.

This makes the Yankees ace the third-fastest in history to have reached the mark, taking on 1714.2 innings to get there. The top five are:

  1. 1626.0 Chris Sale (2019 Boston Red Sox)
  2. 1711.1 Pedro Martinez (2002 Boston Red Sox)
  3. 1714.2 Gerrit Cole (2023 New York Yankees)
  4. 1733.1 Randy Johnson (1997 Seattle Mariners)
  5. 1784.0 Max Scherzer (2017 Washington Nationals)

This puts Cole in the company of the best that the game has ever produced, with Martinez and Johnson already in the Hall of Fame and Scherzer seen as a virtual shoo-in. Chris Sale is more problematic, with the jury still out on his hall-worthiness.

Cole is a lifetime 3.19 ERA pitcher and has five top-five Cy Young finishes in his career. Winning the award outright may be his only hill left to climb in the game.

The five-time All Star signed a mega-deal with the Yankees before the 2020 season, which will see him in pinstripes until 2028 on a nine-year, $324 million contract.

For all of the heroics of Cole on Tuesday against the Orioles, he only lasted five innings, leaving the game in precarious circumstances as Baltimore took a 4-1 lead. The Yankees fought back and it took a bottom-ninth home run from Aaron Judge to bring things level again at five to send the game to extra innings.

The game took an exciting twist in the bottom of the tenth as wunderkind Anthony Volpe smashed his first career walk-off home run with a solo shot that saw the Yankees win the game 6-5.