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Gerrit Cole Dodges Question About His Future In Pittsburgh

BRADENTON (93-7 The Fan) – Gerrit Cole has publicly complained about his salary, but he's done talking about it.

In fact, it sounds like he's done talking about his standing with the Pirates, period.

The Pirates pitcher joined Colin Dunlap, Josh Miller, and Jim Colony on "The Fan Morning Show" in their tent at McKechnie Field on Friday, and he was more than happy to do so, under one condition - Cole did not want to address his salary dispute with the Pirates.

In an article by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Rob Biertemfpel published on Saturday, Cole and his agent, Scott Boras, had indicated they were upset over the Pirates' decision not to significantly raise Cole's salary after his outstanding performance in 2015. Cole and Boras have since decided to put the issue to rest.

Today, Cole would not agree to be interviewed on the show unless he was assured that he would not be asked about his salary.

That being said, Dunlap felt that it was important to have Cole address whether or not he, like Andrew McCutchen, would ideally like to have things work out with the Pirates and be here for the rest of his career.

But, Cole had no interest in addressing the matter.

Here is the exchange that occurred between the two of them:

Dunlap: "[We] had Cutch on not long ago, and he spoke about this sense of peace that he has in this organization. How happy are you here, and can you see yourself long-term here?"

Cole: "You know, I think Cutch is in a great position to come out, and get on a roll this year. He's fresh and healthy. He's feeling good, you know, and I think that's the utmost goal of everybody, is just to try to get out of the gate clean."

That was it. Cole had nothing more to say on the situation, and the interview moved on to other topics.

Later on in the show, Dunlap explained why they did not press the matter, and provided some context.

"Gerrit Cole, to me personally, and then through the [Pirates'] PR staff, said no questions about the comments the other day about the pay scale, and about how much he was being paid. He said, I'll do the interview, but I don't want to talk about that. That's behind me."

"So, we asked him, straight up - Andrew McCutchen wants to be here for a long time, do you see yourself being a Pirate for a long time? And he pretty much avoided that question. And that's when you get your message. Look, there's no need to go down the road of contracts with him. It is what it is. He doesn't want to talk about it. So I thought it was more than fair to ask that question. Even though he said I don't want to talk contract, I asked him that question, and he didn't want to answer it. And that's as far as it went."

Dunlap and his co-hosts also added that they were impressed by how enthusiastically Cole answered their other questions, and that Cole was "very gracious, nice, and wonderful" when the interview ended and didn't seem upset over the line of questioning.

The Fan Morning Show's full interview with Cole can be heard here:

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