#Gerrit Cole shows Yankees he can thrive while grinding: Sherman

In any other season, Gerrit Cole is the main story and two sidebars. What did you eat for breakfast and how did you feed the Nationals their lunch? No detail would be too small. This is what it is like when you are the big new Yankee making his debut.

Whether your name is Clemens or Matsui, Giambi or A-Rod, Sabathia or Stanton, the treatment does not waver. The Yankees’ history is to reel in the biggest baseball stars in the world then watch as the premieres are covered akin to the first moon landing — just more obsessive.

But this isn’t any season. Of course. Cole was making his debut on July 23 because the sports world stopped in March and only now is crawling back out, gingerly trying to navigate schedules amid a pandemic. MLB is trying first in North America.

So Cole was behind a global pandemic as a story. And also not as relevant as the pregame gestures of protest against social injustice, which included the Nationals and Yankees jointly holding a long black cloth then kneeling in unison for a minute before the national anthem.

This being 2020 Cole’s debut was ended by a torrential downpour in the top of the sixth inning, because it feels like all we are going to do with sports this year is see if we can keep ramping up the ole degree of difficulty. The game was called at that juncture, making the Yankees 4-1 winners and giving Cole one start, one win and one complete game with the team that guaranteed him $324 million for all of that. Though, of course, not like this.

Cole’s final line was deceptive. He allowed just one hit in five innings — a homer to the second batter he faced, Adam Eaton. That was Washington’s lone run. Based on that, Cole was dominant.

Except Max Scherzer was more so in yielding four runs than Cole was with the one. Cole battled his stuff as much as the Nationals. That he produced dominant numbers nevertheless speaks to, yes, the down-three-notches nature of this Washington lineup compared to what Cole faced twice in last year’s World Series — yep, before the game the franchise raised its first championship banner. But also that the righty’s stuff is so good, his craft so advanced and his competitiveness up in Scherzer realms, that even on a night when he does not have his “A” game, you would not know it from the numbers.

In an anticipated MLB season-opening matchup, Scherzer went slider heavy and struck out 11 — Brett Gardner and Gary Sanchez combined for six at-bats and six punchouts.

But Cole is familiar with a long lineup of support from his two years in Houston, and that even a great pitcher such as Scherzer will have trouble maneuvering through it all.

Giancarlo Stanton hit a 459-foot, two-run homer in the first and an RBI single in the fifth. Aaron Judge crashed hits in his first two at-bats, including an RBI double in the third. That hit scored Tyler Wade zooming — not to be confused these days with Zooming — from first.

Aaron Boone decided to hold back DJ LeMahieu as just not ready after missing most of spring training 2.0 with the coronavirus. Wade started at second. He walked and scored flying around the bases in the third. And he had a bunt single to help the Yanks to their fifth-inning run.

The Nationals’ depth was not as quality. They lost Anthony Rendon to free agency, Ryan Zimmerman to a decision not to play this year and — on the morning of this opener — their best hitter, Juan Soto, to COVID-19. Starlin Castro was the third-place hitter in his Nationals debut.

Yet, Cole threw strike one to just 8 of 18 hitters — and Cole actually hit one of those he got ahead 0-1 on (Eric Thames in the third). Eight of the 18 Nationals batters worked counts to either 2-0, 2-1 or 3-1. Yet, there was just the Eaton homer on Cole’s 12th straight fastball to open the game, the Thames hit-by-pitch and an Asdrubal Cabrera walk. The Nationals had plentiful hitter counts, yet did not deliver hits.

Some of that was who was missing, but also that Cole was present. He might have been behind the virus, the protest and, by the end, a rain that shortened the season opener, as storylines. He might have had a deceptive pitching line. But Cole was No. 1 as a starter, winning without his elite stuff because guile and guts matter too.

Thus on the weirdest Opening Day ever, Cole did something standard — he honored his role as the big new Yankee.