The subtleties behind beating Houston Astros ace Gerrit Cole
By Bill Felber
Teams have to rely on precision tactics to defeat a pitcher like Houston Astros ace Gerrit Cole. Tampa Bay failed to implement most of them on Saturday.
How do you defeat a genuine ace?
The Tampa Bay Rays confronted that question Saturday night when they ran up against Gerrit Cole, Houston’s (other) 20-game winner. In 33 starts, Cole posted a league-leading 2,50 ERA this season, striking out a league-leading 326 opponents and limiting those opponents to two runs or fewer in 26 of his appearances.
Cole hasn’t been defeated since mid-May.
Defeating a pitcher working that consistently and that exceptionally requires some adjustments to a normal game plan. You can’t just go out there and try to mash with the Houston Astros; that’s the approach that got Cole to 20-5 in the first place.
And victory was especially critical to the Rays since they had already lost the first game of their best-of-five American League Division Series 6-0 to Cole’s running-mate, Justin Verlander. Indeed, Cole sent the Rays tumbling to within one game of elimination Saturday when he went seven and two-thirds innings of shutout ball in Houston’s 3-1 victory.
How can an underdog – and probably less-talented — team like the Rays even hope to compete against a pitcher of Cole’s dominance in a must-win game? To have a chance, that team has to employ certain strategic approaches that are not necessarily common in today’s game. Because it’s unlikely that Cole is going to give any opponent more than a handful of opportunities to make headway against him or his Astros, those approaches emphasize efficiency at the expense of the more standard “slash and burn” approach to offense that is generally popular in the modern game.
Assessing how well the Rays did in utilizing these strategies might provide an understanding of where they fell short against Cole.