Gerrit Cole became one of the most sought-after free agent pitchers in the history of the last offseason after a dominant year with Houston.

But even though the first half of 2019 was very good, that was what Cole did in the second half of the year which established the lefty player as the main target of the game on the market.

After going 9-5 with 3.09 ERA and 1,020 WHIP in 19 starts before the All-Star Game, Cole failed in the second half, ending with 11-0 with 1.70 ERA and 0.723 WHIP during his last 14 outings in the regular season.

The 2020 season will not look like anyone’s anticipated, if it is even played, and players will not have the normal six months of the regular season to prove their worth. Instead, it will be a 60-game, nine-week sprint where a slow start won’t be easy to get rid of.

The Yankees and Mets are entering this shortened season, abbreviated first by the COVID-19 pandemic then labor disputes, with high hopes and having players who seem fit to get started quickly and others who usually build momentum during a full season – Luxury that won’t they have this year.

Although the differences in Cole’s statistics last year are striking, it’s not surprising Yankees’s new aces are usually very good for most of this year, but he will now be assigned to have a large contract weight and a new environment to deal with.

On the other side of town, Robinson Cano is usually consistent from start to finish, but that didn’t happen in his first difficult season with the Mets, when he only had .646 OPS in the first half before rebounding with an OPS of 0.880 in the second round.

Those ugly first few months might be linked to a new environment, but Cano and the Mets will not be able to start a wobbly start from the gates in 2020 from the second baseman.

Even Jacob deGrom, the back-to-back winner of the NL Cy Young Awards, took about a month to find its form a year ago before it became almost unbeatable during the latter part of the season. In his first Cy Young season, deGrom had no such problems, but the lefty player finished last April with a 4.85 ERA after three matches were immediately below standard.

Marcus Stroman, solid throughout 2019 when he was traded from Toronto to the Mets, had 4.14 ERAs during his career in the first round, a figure which dropped to 3.33 in the second round.

Steven Matz started with a rough start last year, as did Jeurys Familia in the bullpen. Matz was significantly better at the end of the year and Familia showed signs of improvement in the second half, too.

In The Bronx, Judge Harun is traditionally stronger at the beginning, often because of an injury at the end of the year. How he recovered from the broken ribs he faced in spring training will affect his production.

In Yankees’ rotation, JA. Happ has a 4.35 ERA career before the All-Star break. This dropped to 3.60 in the second half – and this is the trend he showed in the previous two seasons. Happ had many reasons to try to change the narrative, because he could become a free agent for this offseason.

With all the other factors that will affect this wild year, it’s impossible to predict whether the previous trend will last. The players are around two weeks from Opening Day when spring training closes, and they will now get around three weeks to get ready again – and that is only if everything goes well.