Josh Donaldson settled the score with Gerrit Cole upon arriving in the Bronx

In 2022, Josh Donaldson was traded to the Yankees. The team saw him as a solution at third base… except he was never able to deliver.

He was solid defensively… and that's about it. His time in the Bronx was a disaster.

It's worth noting, however, that at the time, there was a big story surrounding Donaldson's arrival with the Yankees. A few months before the trade, the veteran had made comments in the media about Gerrit Cole, indirectly accusing him of using sticky substances.

This was back when the infamous Spider Tack was the hot topic in the baseball world.

And Donaldson, on the Get It Done League podcast (which he co-hosts with Russell Martin and Arash Madani), recently reflected on his first interaction with Cole when he became his teammate. He noted that the two guys went to lock themselves in an office with Aaron Boone and chatted for an hour.

They got some serious stuff off their chests… and were able to move on.

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Donaldson didn't want to go into detail about what was said that day, but he seems to imply that he mostly let Cole get it off his chest. He was the new guy, after all… and he was the one who had made the comments publicly.

And the Bringer of Rain also added that he reassured Cole that he would help him defensively. He added during the podcast that being so bad at the plate and never getting on base helped him keep his legs fresh on defense, hehe.

It's interesting to note that Russell Martin, who has played with both guys over the course of his career (he played with Cole on the Pirates and with Donaldson in Toronto), stayed pretty quiet while Donaldson was telling all this. He just laughed without adding much.

He was perhaps in a bit of a delicate position.

We'll probably never know what was said that day, but it's interesting to see how the two guys had to handle it all. And even though you might think they still don't like each other very much, they at least managed to tolerate each other during Donaldson's (short) stint in the Bronx.

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