The subtleties behind beating Houston Astros ace Gerrit Cole
By Bill Felber
Beating Houston Astros Ace Gerrit Cole
Run up his pitch count
If the Rays were facing the real Gerrit Cole and not a one-night cheap imitation, the next best point of attack was to try to exhaust him. That involved running up his pitch count as quickly as possible on the theory that Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch would not permit one of his aces to risk potential injury or fatigue by staying in the game more than 100 pitches or thereabouts.
It’s a major challenge for two reasons. By modern standards, Cole has a relatively high pitch threshold…he’s thrown 112 pitches as recently as late August, and he works efficiently, never walking more than three batters all season.
That 20-pitch first inning – encompassing about one-fifth of a normal modern start – was a good basis to hope that the Rays might be able to get into Houston’s softer bullpen at a relatively early moment. But the plan than required waiting Cole out more.
And that was something the Rays appeared constitutionally unable to bring themselves to do. As early as the second inning, all three Rays batters – Avisail Garcia, Brandon Lowe, and Travis d’Arnaud – swung at first strikes that missed the strike zone. Cole escaped the inning on just 10 pitches.
As the game wore on, Tampa Bay did a better job of trying to make Cole work. From the third inning through Cole’s removal with two out in the eighth, he faced 19 batters, 12 of whom took the first pitch, eight for a ball.
Long-term, of course, the problem with this strategy is that it requires the pitcher’s cooperation in missing the strike zone. That’s not Cole’s thing. He would eventually deliver a season-high 118 pitches, but 70 percent would be strikes, allowing him to last those seven and two-thirds innings.
By the time he left, the Astros led 3-0. Grade: D.