Gerrit Cole’s salary with the New York Yankees: The pitcher’s contract details

2024 will be the fifth year of the pitcher’s massive nine-year contract which is valued at $324 million. As much as there has been chatter, the reality is the franchise has failed to give the 2023 Cy Young Award winner proper cover. To that end, there is the possibility he could leave.

The low down on Gerrit Cole’s contract

As mentioned above, New York Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole is currently just past the halfway point of his more than lucrative nine-year contract which he signed in 2020. Cole’s contract has seen him earn $36 million annually to date. Where ROI is concerned, the right-handed pitcher has started a total of 108 games and thrown 664 innings with an ERA of 3.08 and 816 strikeouts. After receiving Cy Young votes in all four of the seasons that he has played since putting pen to paper, the right-hander finally won the award last year by a unanimous vote, after leading the American League in pitcher WAR (7.4), ERA (2.3), innings pitched (209), and WHIP (0.98).

This of course brings us to the eye-brow-raising part of Cole’s story: The opt out clause. If you didn’t know, the 33-year-old essentially has a “get out of jail free” card following the 2024 season which allows him to test the free agency market. At this point, we can assume that should Cole avoid any serious injury, he will do exactly that given where the Yankees are at currently - not in a good place - and where they are likely to be at the end of the coming season.

So, what comes next for Cole and the Yankees? That’s a tricky question. On one side, if he does choose to opt-out, the Yankees do in fact have a mechanism with which they can void his choice. Frankly, it would be in the best interest of the franchise to offer Cole a 10th year, regardless of the cost. Such a move would see him stay in New York through to 2029 at which point he would be 38 years old. Yet, this is essentially the best pitcher in baseball that we’re talking about and he has shown no signs of decline. On the other hand, it’s no secret that pitchers struggle once they cross the 30-year-old mark. With that in mind, it may be time for the Yankees to cash in. Ultimately if the right-hander does choose to leave, expect to see the Yankees getting creative as they seek to make whichever team takes him pay for the years