SAN DIEGO — With their top target landed, the onus falls on the Yankees to make the most of their record-setting expenditure.

For the last thing anyone in The Bronx wants is for Gerrit Cole to be too much, too late.

The Baby Bombers’ championship window opened unofficially in the fall of 2017, and their bona fide ace just got here, courtesy of a mammoth, nine-year, $324 million contract bestowed to Cole here at the winter meetings. We are talking about a 103-win club that just added, arguably, the game’s best pitcher, so no one would contend this to be anything besides a great baseball development in addition to a signal by Hal Steinbrenner that, when he wants to, he can emulate his old man.


Just to be safe, though? It would behoove everyone, most of all Cole, to get that championship out of the way sooner than later.

After all, when the Yankees committed $161 million over seven years to CC Sabathia during the 2008 winter meetings, the big lefty immediately teamed up with some big-name newcomers and holdovers to produce the club’s first World Series title since 2000. That 2009 crown serves as the franchise’s last visit to the Fall Classic, yet Sabathia spent another decade in the pinstripes as royalty thanks to that initial go-round.

Sabathia just retired, and Didi Gregorius just closed a great five-year run to join Joe Girardi’s Phillies. Dellin Betances, also a free agent, appears likely to go elsewhere thanks to the Cole signing leaving little in the till. That’s three recently productive, currently beloved players gone from this core.

Moreover, 2020 presents walk years for Cole’s rotation mates James Paxton and Masahiro Tanaka and a chance for Zack Britton to opt out if the Yankees don’t exercise a team option for 2022. Those junctures could prompt more tricky decision points.

And grading on the Yankees’ tough scale, while they have made many excellent choices and acquisitions since winning it all in 2009, they remain haunted by some of their biggest calls breaking bad. Consider that Cole marks their fourth nine-figure investment since Sabathia. Tanaka has proven an unqualified success. Jacoby Ellsbury became such a bust that the Yankees are now trying to not pay him in 2020 after releasing him. Giancarlo Stanton sure is trending ugly early.

“Elite players get paid, typically,” Brian Cashman said, and the word “players” is critical to that sentiment. Ellsbury and Stanton both had established themselves as elite talents, not elite players, when they joined the Yankees; they were too inconsistent and too injury-prone. Cole, after switching from the mess of the Pirates to the brilliance of the Astros, quickly showcased the elite bona fides he had hinted at both earlier in Pittsburgh and as an amateur.

The Yankees of course popped him first as an amateur, in 2008, only to see him pass on so much as negotiating. Right after their inspiring ALCS loss to the Astros in 2017, when they elevated their reputation, they displayed only some enthusiasm for acquiring Cole from the Pirates in a trade and fell short to their rivals in Houston, a transaction that reverberated through the next two seasons.

Not the only one, though. The Yankees passed on Justin Verlander in August 2017, seeing him go from the Tigers to the Astros and rediscover himself before Cole did the same shortly after. They didn’t come close to matching the Nationals’ offer for free agent Patrick Corbin, a lifelong Yankees fan, a year ago, and Corbin now owns a ring.


When Cashman finally met Cole last week in Southern California, the Yankees’ general manager told the pitcher, “You are my white whale.” Captain Cashman caught his white whale and weakened the Astros in the process, making the Yankees strong favorites to at least qualify for the World Series next season.

We know how random, how cruel, October can be. Cole in pinstripes guarantees nothing. Cole in pinstripes falling short, though? That guarantees more of the same first-world questions and scrutiny that have hovered over this first-world franchise for a decade.

Ref;nypost.com