Gerrit Cole pitching for his Yankees — and baseball — legacy

LOS ANGELES — As mega-powers collide this World Series, what is hard to find are significant advantages that the Yankees and Dodgers have over one another; what is easy to see is how many huge legacies are at play. 

A pretty good debate could be had on which Big Three you would take: Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton vs. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani. And which anonymous but deep bullpen you see having an upper hand with the closeness further accentuated by the Dodgers likely getting their key lefty, Alex Vesia, back and the Yankees adding southpaw Nestor Cortes. 

And it is not as if either organization can feel better prepped for the pressure of the World Series considering the championship-or-bust coastal superpower cauldrons both reside in. 

The biggest gap the Dodgers have is a tactical one; they play a cleaner game than the Yankees and notably are a terrific baserunning team compared to the worst-in-show Bronx Bumblers. 

The Yankees’ advantage, at least on paper, is having four starters with big stuff to face an opposing lineup and potentially protect their bullpen from overuse/overexposure compared to the Dodgers, who have three starters in a more dubious state and already know they will be throwing at least one bullpen game in the 120th World Series. 

But paper can be shredded relatively easily at this time of year. The Yankees are a short, ineffective start or two against the powerhouse Dodgers attack of ceding the edge. It is why no player is more positioned to impact this series and his own legacy than Gerrit Cole, who starts Game 1 against Jack Flaherty on Friday night. By pedigree, Cole is the best pitcher in this World Series; the one you can most imagine going seven strong innings. 

If he does that twice, the Yankees’ chances of winning a championship jumps considerably, and Cole’s standing in the game and Yankee history rises dramatically. 

“I would bet everything I have that he cares about that,” Yankees bench coach Brad Ausmus said.

There are so many legacies in play here. All of those big stars, notably Judge and Ohtani. The two managers, Aaron Boone and Dave Roberts, who are among the biggest regular-season winners in history and most criticized postseason skippers. Brian Cashman and Andrew Friedman. The two franchises. 

But Cole arguably has the most at stake. 

Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:

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• How slumping Yankee can help win World Series despite cold streak
• Heyman: The ‘short’ reason underdog Yankees will conquer Dodgers in World Series
• For Brian Cashman’s ‘consigliere,’ this World Series is a full-circle moment

This is where we are in the current history of the game. The three pitching lions of the era — Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — wheezed closer to the end this year. There are no true starting horses anymore. But the one most equipped to take the baton is Cole. Zack Wheeler just got too late a start on the healthy portion of his career. Corbin Burnes might still get there, but has to land in free agency with a team that gives him a lot more postseason reps. 

So for now, it is Cole, who carries that beacon forward of a starter not limited to two turns around a rotation in games and 150 innings in a season. 

And Cole came to the Yankees having grown up a Yankees fan. He knows why he was brought to the organization. 

The last time the Yankees won a championship in 2009, CC Sabathia honored what at that time was the largest pitching contract ever. He started five times that postseason, twice on three days of rest, with a 1.98 ERA. The Yanks won four of those games. The only loss was World Series Game 1, but Sabathia allowed the Phillies just two runs in seven innings. 

Where do the Yankees sign up for that from Cole on Friday night? The only other time that Cole started a World Series Game 1 was 2019 and his blessing this time is that he has Juan Soto on his team. Then as a National, Soto homered and hit a two-run double off Cole, who allowed five runs in seven innings before coming back in Game 5 to yield one run in seven innings. But Washington won the Series and Cole has remained without a championship. 

In this way, he conjured Mike Mussina even more. I already thought they shared so much in pitching style and intellect. The last time the Yankees started a World Series on the road, in 2001, Mussina started the opener and Arizona beat him up for five runs in three innings. Then, like Cole in ’19, Mussina shined at home in Game 5: eight innings, two runs in a Yankee victory to provide a three-games-to-two lead. But the Diamondbacks won the next two at home. 

A young Yankee fan named Gerrit Cole was at Game 6 and held up a sign that read, “Yankee fan. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.” He broke it out after this introductory press conference to display his fidelity to all things Yankees, notably returning championships. Mussina never got his and is a bit lost to Yankees history because of it. 

Cole last year won the AL Cy Young that kept eluding Mussina. But he has not been that pitcher this season as he missed two-plus months at the outset with an elbow nerve issue. He insists, “I feel I’m good to go. I’m in a good spot.” 

He needs to be. He is the Yankees’ biggest potential edge. He has a chance to turn the World Series, to get the title that Mussina never secured, the one that has eluded this franchise for 14 years, the one that uplifts his legacy in the game and its biggest organization.