New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole to miss 2025 season following elbow surgery

Elbow surgery will sideline one of Major League Baseball’s best pitchers in 2025, an injury that presents an enormous challenge for his team as it attempts to return to the World Series.

Gerrit Cole, the hard-throwing right-hander for the New York Yankees who also endured elbow problems to begin last season, will undergo surgery after again suffering discomfort in his right elbow during Yankees’ spring training, the team announced Monday.

The Tommy John surgery will be performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Cole, 34, won the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher in 2023 but was shut down by New York last spring after he reported discomfort in his throwing elbow. Surgery was not necessary and Cole ultimately started 17 regular-season games and helped the Yankees reach the World Series after a strong performance to help close out the league pennant. In Game 5 of the World Series, Cole was on the mound as the Los Angeles Dodgers mounted an extraordinary comeback that helped clinch the Dodgers’ championship.

As the Yankees gathered last month in spring training to mount what they hoped would be a return campaign to the World Series, Cole told reporters he had begun his offseason throwing program earlier than usual and as a result felt he was “in a really good spot.” But last week, reports emerged that discomfort in the same elbow had led Cole to undergo testing. The Athletic subsequently reported that doctors had recommended Cole undergo Tommy John surgery, but that Cole was seeking a second opinion.

When healthy, Cole has proven an ability to dominate like few peers. With a career-high 326 strikeouts in 2019, Cole joined an exclusive club of pitchers who have produced the only 69 seasons with 300-plus strikeouts in MLB history. Cole has twice led the American League in earned-run average, and twice finished with a league-high number of strikeouts, including a career-high 326 in 2019. His 4.5 ratio of strikeouts to walks ranks eighth-best all-time and fourth-best among active pitchers, according to Baseball Reference. Cole also owns the fifth-highest Wins Above Replacement among active pitchers.

The Yankees had proactively bolstered their rotation in the winter by signing a top free-agent pitcher, Max Fried. Yet the prospect of losing Cole deals a sizable blow to a team that earlier in the winter lost another lineup pillar when hitter Juan Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million deal to join the New York Mets.