How the Tampa Bay Rays enabled Gerrit Cole

Nearly half of the Tampa Bay Rays outs against Gerrit Cole were pitches outside the strike zone. More than half of their swings should have been balls.

Just as they did a few games ago, the Tampa Bay Rays allowed Gerrit Cole to beat them outside the strike zone Thursday night.

The first rule of beating the other guy’s ace is: Don’t help him.

Batters generally hit about .200 points lower when swinging at pitches off the plate than they do when cutting at strikes.

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In their 6-1 defeat at Cole’s hands in the decisive fifth game of the American League Division Series,  the Rays gave Cole all the help he needed. As a result, they batted .077 against Cole.

Nearly half of the 24 outs Cole recorded on the Rays in that fifth game came on pitches that were not in the strike zone. On 29 of the 56 occasions Thursday when a Rays batter took a swing, he was biting at a pitch that would not have been called a strike.

Rays batters also had trouble figuring out Cole when they didn’t swing the bat. The 27 batters Cole faced took 19 first pitches, a dozen of which were called strikes. Those called strikes threw the hitter in a hole. Three of the Rays batters then compounded their problem by swinging at a second pitch that was not in the strike zone.

The pattern was set early. The game’s second batter, Tommy Pham, took two strikes over the plate – one on a fastball, one on a slider – then whiffed on a high heater. After Ji-Man Choi walked, cleanup hitter Travis d’Arnaud also fanned on a high four-seamer.

After Astros hitters lit up Rays starter Tyler Glasnow for four first-inning runs, Eric Sogard hit a first-pitch home run to make the score 4-1. Choi opened a small window of opportunity in the fourth, leading off with the Rays’ second and last hit off Cole. But d’Arnaud went down on a high four-seamer, and Sogard fanned on a slider in the dirt.

Cole allowed only one baserunner after that, walking d’Arnaud to lead off the seventh.

Cole has an exceptional slider, and there were those Thursday who believed it was so good that it was impossible for Rays batters to read its break. Perhaps…but it wasn’t just one pitch that flustered the Tampa Bay hitters. Fifteen of the 28 bad pitches Rays offered at were fastballs, and while eight were sliders an additional half dozen were changeups or knuckle curves.

Tampa Bay Rays hitters were anxious against every type of Cole delivery.

When opponents expand the strike zone against a pitcher as precise and powerful as Cole, they’re providing help he doesn’t require.