In our opening discussions about Gerrit Cole, I did my best to talk him down a bit on Cole's stock. Any idiot who follows baseball knows that the guy has stuff that you just don't see very often, but fantasy baseball is a "what can you do for me right now" sport, so potential doesn't always factor in. My best plan of attack to lowering Cole's stock in Steve's mind was to go straight his pitch selection. Here's what pitches Cole threw last year:
Cole has one of the best fastballs in the league, nobody would dispute that. But you don't see many pitchers that get away with throwing one pitch anywhere near 80% of the time like Cole did last year, and for good reason. I'm no Joe Kerrigan here, but I'm saying that if a big league hitter sees a really good pitch enough, he'll figure out a way to hit it pretty hard. That doesn't bode well for Cole.
The good news is that the Pirates have a history with making their young pitchers throw a ton of fastballs. Their first few years in the minors are very tightly focused on throwing the fastball for strikes. There's good reason for that, and there's no evidence that it doesn't work. It wasn't a surprise that Cole avoided his offspeed pitches last year, and there is no way that we'll see him continue in that trend as he matures. He will absolutely throw more sliders and changeups as he progresses, which will probably be a very good thing for him considering how effective those pitchs can be, potentially. He put up great numbers with his slider and changeup last year, which was probably highly influenced by the fact that they were so rarely coming at hitters. There was solid evidence at the end of the year that Cole could mix it up and be very successful in the process.
Cole had one of his best starts of the season on September 19th against the Padres when he struck out 12 batters in six innings, allowing four hits and a lone run. Here's the pitch distribution for that start:
| Pitch | Percentage |
| 4-Seam Fastball | 41% |
| 2-Seam Fastball | 19% |
| Changeup | 9% |
| Slider | 13% |
| Curveball | 17% |
In that start, he threw about 60% fastballs, which is much closer to where the average big league starter is at. That was Gerrit's highest strikeout performance of the year, which certainly isn't a coincidence.
The question for 2014 becomes if Gerrit Cole can learn to mix his pitches and stay ahead of big league hitters. The fastball alone can keep him in the majors for years, but if he's going to meet the ace potential we've all heard about, he's going to need to fully develop the change and one of the breaking pitches. It will be interesting to see what pitch selection Cole and his counterparts go with early on in the year and how it progresses. I'll be keeping a close eye on that right here on the newly risen from death mceffect.(blogspot.)com.
Still working on the banner and stuff btw.