I suppose this is Gerrit Cole at less than his best in 2015. Really, he wasn’t much different than he’s been in any of his other starts, other than that his control was poor enough that he put five Braves on base for free (three via walks and two via HBPs). The bad control stirred up some bad blood with the Braves, who apparently thought that Cole was throwing at them to retaliate for Starling Marte’s first inning HBP. That all seemed awfully misguided to me, as Marte gets hit by tons of pitches and Cole was pretty clearly at least a little out of sorts on the mound.
Of course, that all of that stuff barely mattered. Even without his best control, the Braves could barely hit Cole. He held them to six hits over his seven innings, and he bore down with the bases loaded twice — both in the third (when he had to get two outs with the bases loaded) and the sixth. Two of his six strikeouts came in those big bases loaded situations, and so even though Cole wasn’t quite at his best today, he was still good enough to shut the Braves out for seven innings.
The Pirates couldn’t do much with Alex Wood or with the pitchers that replaced him after he was tossed for arguing balls and strikes, but they got enough off of Wood in the fifth when Cole drew a walk (this was the source of the argument that got Wood tossed after the inning), then singles from Harrison and Mercer to load the bases, then RBI hits from Starling Marte and Jung Ho Kang.
The bigger picture here, of course, is that the Pirates finished out a 10-game road trip to San Diego, San Francisco, and Atlanta with a 7-3 record, which is a heck of a way to follow up six straight home wins. Of course, they needed a 7-3 road trip here, because the Cardinals are also 7-3 in their last ten. There’s no time to slow down now, I guess.
Mike Zarrilli, Getty Images
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