Gerrit Cole "primed for big season"

Earlier today I saw an article from a scouting website that said that Gerrit Cole was "primed to have a big season". The article included an interview with Cole, which I am almost positive the entire article was based off of. I would know more about it, but it was one of those stupid sites where you have to have a paid membership just to read their stuff and nobody's really going to do that.

One of my biggest beefs with sports articles is that they actually take what an athlete says as meaningful. Gerrit Cole says he's in the best shape of his life and he feels like he's going to strike out a million batters this year? Get hyped, Pittsburgh! Imagine a professional athlete having self confidence and not wanting to exude a lack of trust in themselves to the media and all their fans, insanity.

At this point, I'm not even sure why they bother interviewing players, at least in terms of asking about how they're feeling or how they expect to perform. You get the same exact answer every time. Andrew McCutchen thinks he can win MVP this year, and if you're going by interviews alone, so does Clint Barmes.

The fact is that Gerrit Cole has one of the best arms in the league and to me he's the number one reason to be excited to watch the Pirates this year. He's not fully developed yet, he still has some work to do in terms of not relying so heavily on his upper 90's fastball, but watching him improve as last year went on was just an indicator of what he might turn in to as early as this year. Show me the numbers, show me the highlights, but leave the player's commentary out of it.