Yankees Gerrit Cole 'disheartened' by pitching injury discourse - ESPN

NEW YORK — Gerrit Cole threw a baseball for the first time in four weeks Monday. He threw it 25 times from 60 feet. He noted 22 of the 25 tosses hit his target.

The catch session, the first of three scheduled this week, represented an important checkpoint in Cole's recovery from nerve inflammation in his right elbow that will sideline him at least until late May. That's a better outlook than a few of his peers across the majors.

Cole is one of several prominent pitchers to sustain a major arm injury since teams reported for spring training in February. The recent surge was unnerving enough for Tony Clark, the Major League Baseball Players Association executive director, to release a statement Saturday blaming the increase in elbow injuries on the pitch clock. Major League Baseball responded with its own statement, without attribution, dismissing Clark's thesis that day, pointing to the rise of pitcher injuries in recent decades, long before the pitch clock was enforced.

For 20 minutes Monday, Cole, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, addressed the surge of injuries and the ensuing exchange between the parties, saying he was «disheartened» by the back and forth.

«I'm just frustrated it's a combative issue,» he said. «It's like, 'OK, we have divorced parents and the child's misbehaving and we can't get on the same page to get the child to behave.' Not that the players are misbehaving, but we have an issue here and we need to get on the same page to at least try and fix it.»

In the meantime, pitchers are dealing with similar injuries.

Across the clubhouse from Cole on Monday was Jonathan Loaisiga, diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. He said he is tentatively scheduled to undergo