Yankees star Gerrit Cole was caught in a lawsuit involving the Angels and a dismissed club manager after Brian “Bubba” Harkins’s lawyers sent a text message, allegedly from Cole, to the Orange County Superior Court (California) ) on Thursday, according to reports, including one in the Los Angeles Times.
“Hey, Bubba, it’s Gerrit Cole, I wonder if you could help me with this complicated situation,” wrote the launcher, then with Astros, on January 17, 2019, adding a wink emoji, according to the reports . “We don’t see them until May, but we have some road games in April that are in places with cold weather. What I had last year crashes when it gets cold. “
Harkins, who was fired in March after the Angels were informed that a Major League Baseball investigation found that he was supplying prohibited substances to pitchers to increase control over baseball, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Angels and the MLB in August. The team and the league filed a motion in November to reject the lawsuit. In response to that motion, which claimed that Harkins, 55, was being used as a “scapegoat”, his lawyers presented evidence, including the text.
The source of this information has not been verified and may be in question. More than a dozen other pitchers were also mentioned – both angels and visitors – in the costume as having used the substance provided by Harkins. Pitchers have used similar substances over the years, but the MLB has sought to crack down on the practice.
Last year, Trevor Bauer wrote in The Players’ Tribune that he suspected how the pitchers on the Astros teams that Cole pitched had improved their turnover rate so dramatically.
“When I see a guy stop being a good pitcher for a team and spin the ball at 2,200 rpm, to spin the ball at 2,600 or 2,700 in Houston, I know exactly what happened,” wrote Bauer.
Bauer never mentioned Cole’s name in the story. Joel Sherman of the Post asked Cole about the matter in February, after he signed a nine-year, $ 324 million contract with the Yankees. Cole did not respond to Bauer’s story, but in relation to the notion that the Astros were better at creating a sticky product or teaching how to use it, Cole repeated three times, “No.”
In response to the LA Times story, Bauer wrote on Twitter: “It’s almost as if it exists. Wow. The more you know … how crazy. “