Dodgers vs Yankees World Series live updates: Game 5 score, lineups, predictions and odds

In World Series Game 1, the ace on a nine-year, $324 million dream of a contract threw six-plus innings and surrendered only four hits and one run. Gerrit Cole pitched well enough for his team to win, though Freddie Freeman’s home run in extra innings pushed Cole’s performance to a mere footnote in a Dodgers victory.

Now in Game 5, Cole — who had a 3.41 ERA in the regular season — will seek to replicate his Game 1 results with the season on the line.

One of the game’s most prolific fastball-oriented starters, Cole used his heater on 51 percent of his Game 1 pitches. He threw 13 sliders and generated three whiffs and three called strikes. He limited Los Angeles to bundles of weak contact — the Dodgers mounted an average exit velocity of only 85.7 mph against Cole.

But even though Cole ended a drought of 44 plate appearances where he failed to strike out a right-handed hitter, he is still looking to summon better swing-and-miss stuff. Cole generated only nine whiffs on 49 swings in Game 1. That 18.4 percent rate was well below his season average of 28.5 percent, a figure that happened to be his worst since 2017.

Still, there is merit in efficiency. Cole has yet to top 90 pitches in an outing this postseason. He mostly breezed through a hard-nosed Dodgers order in 88 pitches, allowing him to cover six valuable innings his last time out. Before Game 4, Cole spoke of feeling increasingly better this year after his return from a March elbow injury.

“I feel now like I’m in good shape,” Cole said. “I have a reserve while I’m pitching. So if I need to dip into the tank, I can go get it, and then I can go get it again. It’s not like a one-time thing.”

When the Yankees signed Cole in the winter of 2019, it was at the time the biggest pitching contract in history. He has pitched in six playoff elimination games and his teams went 2-4. Now he faces a seventh must-win situation. He came to New York to win games like this.