Gerrit Cole’s struggles are real but not spectacular

Today, Gerrit Cole takes the mound. The last three times he’s done that, it has not turned out so well.

Pittsburgh Pirates starter Gerrit Cole has seen a complete 180 over the past two weeks compared to his previous starts.

He rattled off eight consecutive quality starts from April 9 through May 17, and despite a poor win-loss record thanks to comically bad run support, it seemed as though he had regained his old form and reaffirmed his status as an ace.

But then came the previously mentioned 180. In his last three outings, he’s gone only 14.2 innings, allowed 16 runs, with eight balls leave the park.

Everyone has a theory for his struggles.

It might just be as simple as he just had some bad matchups. SunTrust Park has quickly become a home run hitter’s southern oasis, and the Mets might just have Cole’s number. It’s possible. If Cole comes out Thursday and tosses six or seven strong innings, all this worrying might be for nothing.

One of the most popular rumblings on Twitter is that he is hurt, as he was last year. That could be a possible answer, and the fact his average fourseam fastball velocity is down a fraction of a tick in his last three starts may be “proof” (95.7 MPH, 96.1 MPH, 95.1 MPH compared to an average of 96.1 on the year). Cole’s a competitor, but I’d be shocked if either he or the organization would let him try to pitch through pain in June, especially if Neal Huntington decides to shop him at the deadline.

Speaking of Huntington, he has his own theories. “The home runs have been a challenge, and that’s a sign of a lot of comfortable at-bats against him,” Huntington said in his weekly talk show Sunday, as transcribed by our own Jason Rollison. “We are going to get him back to using all four quadrants of the plate.”

That sounds like an easy fix, but the heatmaps for his last three starts does not look too different from his season output.

I’ll be going into heatmaps more later in this post, don’t worry. Overall, Cole is moving the ball well, but that is not the case for all of his pitches.

A bad mix

But this is a problem not just seen in his location; it’s also his selection. Here is Cole’s pitch breakdown for his first nine starts compared to his last three:

Cole’s slider usage has held held steady and he is going to the changeup a hair more, but that is hardly surprising since they have been his two best pitches, according to Pitchf/x values. The big difference is he is throwing his knuckle-curve and two-seamer more and his four-seamer less.

During his three game skid, he threw the curve 40 times and the sinking fastball 44. Out of those 84 pitches, there have been 10 called strikes, three swinging strikes and 21 balls in play. Of those 21 balls in play, batters went 8-21 with three homers, a double and a triple.

The knuckle-curve is a pitch Cole needs to throw just for the sake of giving batters a different look velocity wise, but it has not been kind to him. Only 5.7% of his knuckle-curves have been a swing and a miss (compared to roughly 10% for all his pitches a whole), and Pitchf/x values it at -0.9 runs.

Pitchf/x says Cole mixed regular curveballs with his knuckle-curves in 2016. The two pitches combined to be worth 2.7 runs. Baseball Savant says he has not had both in his repertoire since 2015, a year where his curve was less than stellar. The variety may help or hurt, but what is definitely hurting is Coles location this year. Curveballs need to buried. He is not doing that. Pittsburgh Pirates Ray Searage might want to consider working with Cole to tinker with his pitch mix.

Red in the middle is never a good sign.

The two-seamer is only getting a whiff 4.7% of the times it’s thrown and is worth -2.1 runs. He also is having a bit of a location problem…

…and it’s a problem that becomes a lot worse when you look at a pitch like this. This came before the recent slump, but his problems with the two-seamer extended beyond a three game stretch. Cervelli wanted the ball in, and it sails on him to become a 106.5 MPH line drive.

Pitchers miss their target sometimes. Actually, this miss it a lot of the time, at least by a little. That’s baseball. But that location Cervelli called for on a pitch with sink is almost a surefire groundball if it is executed well. It wasn’t and it turned into a run.

Then again, good location often times is not even enough. This two-seamer to Brandon Phillips is right on the inside corner. It just comes in a little too flat, and Phillips barrels it up.

This ties back to what Huntington said about batters being comfortable and him not pitching to the four quadrants of the plate. Cole is attacking one corner. Once Phillips recognized it was a two-seamer, he put all his might into a Herculean swing to pull it. It worked.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have had the most success with their pitchers when they focus on their strengths rather than trying to correct weaknesses. It applies both to reclamation projects or number one overall draft picks.

Cole seems to have gotten away from that lately. Assuming these last few starts are not a fluke, he’s healthy and using the four quadrants, trimming down on some of his less productive pitches may be the way to get him back on track.