Watching Gerrit Cole develop this season has really been an interesting experience. In Cole’s first eleven starts, he struck out 79 hitters over 71 innings and had eight or more strikeouts five times. He was really dominant in those starts, with a 1.90 ERA and a .590 OPS against and a 61:16 K:BB. Yesterday was the first time in the nine starts since those first 11 starts that he hit the eight strikeout barrier. He’s down to 51 strikeouts over 61 1/3 innings in that span, with a 2.64 ERA and a 51:12 K:BB with a .647 OPS against, mostly because hitters are showing a bit more power against him recently. Cole’s also topped 100 pitches in eight of those nine starts, after going over 100 just four times in his first 11.
It’s tempting to accuse the Pirates of over-working Cole and that being the reason for his lower strikeout numbers in the last few starts, but the Pirates think harder about player fatigue than just about anyone and they’re cautious to a fault with some players (look, for example, at how they’ve used Andrew McCutchen since the break, he’s had an off-day and a start at DH in ten games after having most of a week off; given the comments about him in that article and his earlier knee problems I’m almost certain he’s someone they’ve identified as fatigued, regardless of what his on-field production is), so I won’t do that. I actually thought Cole’s start against the Royals was one of his best of the year (which is why the defensive breakdown late in that game was so maddening) and he was excellent yesterday, so I don’t think that argument holds a ton of water.
More than anything, I guess I’m just interested in how effective and efficient Cole is in pretty much every start, regardless of the strikeouts. Recently he’s been landing in the 100-110 pitch range not because he’s struggling and throwing a ton of pitches, but because he’s regularly pitching into the eighth inning (three of his last four starts). This isn’t what most people expected from Cole, I don’t think, and it’s a bit of an extension of the non-obvious development path that I wrote about at the break. That being said, I’d love to see Cole go back to being flat-out dominant again, and these last two starts were pretty encouraging from that front, I think.
After the rumor from last Thursday that the Pirates were hard at work on a deal for a reliever, there hasn’t been much news at all on the Pirate Trade Deadline Front other than a few people hearing that they’re desperate to get rid of/upgrade upon Pedro Alvarez. I have a sneaking suspicion that those stories were an attempt by the team to motivate Alvarez through the media. Think about it like this: no matter how frustrated the Pirates are with Alvarez, they will not simply dump him on someone else without a replacement first baseman, and they pretty obviously will not simply upgrade first base by dumping Alvarez and getting a better player in return. The first base market is thin right now, unless the Pirates want to pay heavily in dollars or prospects. This is just a guess (I mean, I absolutely do think the Pirates would trade for a first baseman and dump Alvarez if given the opportunity, I’m just not sure that opportunity exists), but I suspect that they’re stuck with Alvarez for this year and they know it and all the talk about “giving him to anyone that will take him” is an attempt to wake him up in the way that the Pirates dumping Jason Grilli to Anaheim served as a wake-up call for Grilli.
It’s possible that the Pirates will simply be done for this deadline at this point. They’re relatively well-rounded for a playoff run, they have players coming back from the disabled list, and they’re far enough behind the Cardinals that it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than one or two trades to make up that difference. I do think that they need bullpen help, but I’m positive that they won’t be looking to overpay for the Craig Kimbrels of the world and I’d be surprised if they were willing to give up much of value for any reliever with any sort of name cache. The bullpen was a need last year, and they were content to patch it up with the likes of Holdzkom, LaFromboise, and Axford with mixed-but-relatively-strong results.
I sort of alluded to this in the piece that I forgot to hit publish on yesterday (it’s up now), but I do think the rotation is a stealth need for them. AJ Burnett hasn’t looked great lately and he had second half struggles due to injuries in both 2012 and 2014. Given the Pirates’ huge pitching issues for next year (Burnett is ostensibly retiring and Kingham, Cumpton, Taillon, and likely Sadler will all be out or not ready for at least the first part of the year), it wouldn’t surprise me to see them move for someone under contract for more than just this year. They sort of came out of the blue in 2012 to nab Wandy Rodriguez for a similar purpose, though I doubt they want to repeat that exact trade again. I’d keep an eye on Tyson Ross, though, if the Padres clean house. He throws hard, misses bats, gets a ton of ground balls, and is struggling this year mostly due to control issues. That looks a lot like a pitcher that has “Ray Searage/Jim Benedict Project” written all over him to me. He’d be pricey in terms of prospects and there’s obviously a price the Pirates shouldn’t pay (coughGlasnowcough), but if he’s on the market I think he’s well worth considering.
Of course, the Pirates have been awfully good at making trades out of the blue over the last few years, so it’s possible they’re working on something that none of us have anticipated yet. We’ll know for sure in a few days.
Image: Justin K. Aller, Getty
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