Ever since splitting with longtime boyfriend Austin Butler at the beginning of the year, Vanessa Hudgens has been having a ball in her dating life.
Over the summer, the actress was briefly linked to New York Yankees stud Giancarlo Stanton. Now, though, she's being beau'd up with another baseball player.
On Nov. 22, Vanessa was photographed cuddling with Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Cole Tucker during a date in Los Angeles. Paparazzi photos show Vanessa, 31, and Cole, 24, holding hands and embracing following a romantic dinner.
After news of the date got out, Twitter had a heyday.
"Cole Tucker going on a date with Vanessa Hudgens is the greatest accomplishment of any Pirates player in 20 years," one Twitter user wrote.
Another said, "Every boy growing up in the early 2000s had dreams of dating Vanessa Hudgens. Cole Tucker is at that age where he was probably the same way. He's actually living it out now. GOAT."
Many made similar jokes about Cole "winning the offseason" or "hitting a home run."
Cole was drafted 24th overall in the 2014 Major League Baseball draft. One of his claims to fame is that he hit a game-winning home run in his first ever career hit. Since then, his statistics have been fairly pedestrian, which fans keyed in on in the Twitter responses.
"Cole Tucker going 0-5 but leaving the ballpark with Vanessa Hudgens," one person captioned a meme of the man laughing and getting in a car.
Vanessa seemed to give a nod to Cole on Instagram on Nov. 21 without naming him.
"Date night," she captioned a photo of herself holding a pink rose.
Surprisingly, just last week Vanessa said she wasn't looking for a relationship while speaking to "Entertainment Tonight."
"I just finished another movie yesterday and, you know, it's taken very seriously and to keep everyone safe there are precautions," she said. "And at times it feels extravagant, but it's what you have to do to keep everyone on the production safe, so yeah, definitely no dating for me."
Asked what she's looking for in a man, she said, "Your girl's open. I feel like at the end of the day, it's just about having similar fundamentals and wanting the same things. Like, I am not picky, really. Like, I know what I want and I'm like, if someone comes into the picture and can give me all those things, then great, it doesn't matter if they're in the public eye or not — if anything I prefer them not to be but we'll see, we'll see."