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Barnett: Has the Old Gerrit Cole Returned?

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Until Tuesday night, it had been difficult to predict exactly what type of pitcher Gerrit Cole was going to be this season.  He was pure magic in 2015, but in 2016, injuries and inconsistency had him, at times, hardly resembling the burgeoning superstar we had seen just a year before.

Nevertheless, rather than provide insight and optimism this offseason that he was back and poised to build off the 2015 campaign,  Cole seemed more inclined to emphasize his desire to simply stay healthy this year.  It was a modest and essential goal, but hardly the tantalizing words Pirates’ fans wanted to hear.

In Cole’s 2017 debut, he cruised through the first four innings efficiently and effectively, retiring twelve of the first thirteen hitters on a mere fifty pitches.  Unfortunately, that is where the Cole train derailed as he coughed up five runs the following inning despite having put away the first two batters.  The next few starts went smoother than the one in Fenway, but his movement was still not what it once was, leaving much room for skepticism and doubt.

Yet, Cole convinced me on Tuesday that we might not be seeing the 2015 or 2016 Gerrit Cole, but an even better one.  In fact, Joe Maddon himself, couldn’t help but echo the thought, saying: “Cole could not have pitched better…You’ve got to give that guy credit. I know he’s good and I’ve always said that, but I’ve not seen him that good. We had to pitch that well tonight to beat him. He was outstanding, both pitchers were.”

Sure, the Bucs’ anemic offense squandered the game, but that shouldn’t obscure the brilliance he exhibited in dominating the Cubs.  So let us spend some time exploring how Cole might have taken a step forward this season.

A Healthy Gerrit Cole

For starters, this Gerrit Cole is healthy, which is something we really could never say last season.  It may seem like a frivolous place to start, but there’s a reason it was at the top of his list for the 2017 season.  After all, he struggled with injuries for almost the entire year in 2016, beginning with a rib issue as early as Spring Training.  The regular season saw him land on the disabled list with a strained triceps once and an additional two times with elbow soreness, which would eventually cut his season short.  When able to pitch, he was mildly effective, but his ability to keep hitters off-balance was ultimately hindered by limited movement and trouble locating pitches.

Consequently, there was genuine concern in seeing him come out flat against the Red Sox on Opening Day this year because the pitch movement was worse than anything he displayed last season; in fact, the movement numbers were so drastic that it called into question the calibration of the tracking system at Fenway that day. Regardless, the results weren’t desirable either, but gradually, the movement improved and so did the results, suggesting Cole was truly healthy and poised for a strong season.

Gerrit Cole didn’t have a healthy season in 2016. (Photo Credit: David Hague)

“He’s healthy this year,” said Chris Stewart, and as a result, “His fastball location is better, he’s able to get it to where he needs to, and then he plays his slider off that. It comes out of the same slot, so I don’t think the hitters pick it up as well. … Strength wasn’t there last year, so he was fighting himself every day just to get to his arm strong. This year, he’s able to me more consistent.”

Of course, full health alone doesn’t mean he’ll best the 2.60 ERA/3.15 xFIP he posted two seasons ago, especially considering only Noah Syndergaard achieved that feat last season, but Cole could finally solidify his place among the league’s elite starting pitchers this season if he remains at full health.

An Evolving Arsenal

Alright, it’s fine and dandy that he is healthy, but that’s not the only thing different about Cole.  Simply put, it seems the use of his arsenal is evolving.  Take a look at his usage breakdown this season compared to his career numbers:

Anyways, most of the other fastball heavy starters don’t have the ability to dial it up the way that Cole can, so he’s typically been able to thrive by showing a wide range of velocity on his fastball and by using the slider to wipe out opposing hitters.  That just wasn’t the case last season, which is a topic we will get to shortly.Gerrit Cole has always been fastball heavy, throwing the heater a whopping two-thirds of the time since entering the league in 2013, and while his numbers aren’t the absurd Bartolo Colon-type of distribution, there’s not many successful starting pitchers relying on the fastball at a more prevalent rate.  To be quite honest, on the list of starters utilizing the fastball over 60 percent, there are a lot more Robbie Rays and Jared Cosarts than there are Gerrit Coles.

This season Cole has relied on the fastball frequently  as well, but he ranks only 30th in the league in terms of usage, and I might add that no one with higher velocity is throwing it more than he is.  Still, the significant change is that he’s tossing the fastball roughly 8 percent less in favor of the changeup and a slight spike in the slider. The slider spike is encouraging in and of itself, but it’s particularly notable that the changeup jumped to 13.4 percent usage because he’s only thrown it 3-5 percent over the past two seasons.  Also, Cole has never even thrown 7 percent or more changeups in back to back games; yet, in four of the first five games this year, he has utilized it at least 14 percent of the time.

Perhaps, it’s too early to render a verdict about pitch usage, but he appears to be going for a more well-rounded attack than we’ve ever seen from him, making him a potentially more devastating arm for the Pirates moving forward.

Why the Change in Approach?

Fastball Issues

Early in Cole’s career, it wasn’t a crazy notion for him to throw the fastball so often since it both reached triple digits and killed in the minors.  (Actually, we saw Tyler Glasnow chuck his fastball, albeit with less control, for similar reasons in his debut year.)  Nonetheless, the more a pitcher depends on the fastball the more he is pressured to vary the velocity and execute his location if he wants to keep hitters off-balance because you can only blow past them for so long as a starter if those two things aren’t done effectively.

Another wrinkle for Cole’s fastball mix is that he’s able to be less predictable by offering the four-seamer and two-seamer.  In speaking to Alan Saunders, Cole elaborated on the importance of this.

“I think it’s a weapon,” Cole said. “Anybody can pitch upstairs if they know how to do it, but especially power pitchers have success doing that. More often that not, I feel like I’m trying to get the ball down, but we do challenge guys early in the count, sometimes — and late in the count — just to keep the mix and keep guys off-balance. You just avoid being predictable.”

Despite that ability, something shifted in 2016 and Cole seemingly became somewhat more predictable and hittable. He just couldn’t seem to recapture the movement on his fastballs; they were still breaking in on hitters effectively, but they continued to have less and less vertical break. As a result, Cole saw the fastball’s Fangraphs Pitch Value go from rivaling that of Clayton Kershaws in 2015 to being worse than Jeff Locke’s in 2016, and that precipitous drop in value was only exacerbated by Cole’s struggle with his slider.

The Slider Regained Effectiveness

In his dominant season in 2015, it was the slider/fastball combo that devastated hitters. The slider was chased outside of zone almost half of the time and opposing batters whiffed on it at a 20 percent rate.  It may not have possessed elite vertical or horizontal movement, but it was respectable, proceeding out of the same arm slot as the fastball. But just as the fastball movement changed, so also the slider movement took a big step backwards as you can see in the charts below:

The first chart displays the vertical movement on Cole’s slider by game from 2015-present. Obviously, the movement on the far left (2015) is vastly superior to the levels it reaches as you progress down the line because there is decreasing break on the pitches. Other than the absurd 5 inches of movement in one game against Boston, the slider is getting more downward break in 2017  than late last season, but it hasn’t reached the levels of 2015.

The second chart shows the horizontal movement of the slider over the same time frame. As far as the horizontal movement is concerned, there has also been a progressive decrease over the last two years, so that the slider no long breaks away from right-handed batters as drastically.

The decreasing movement showed in the results as batters posted a .275 batting average in 2016 after hanging around Mendoza line for Cole’s entire career. It’s not a terrible number, nor is the 100 wRC+ the slider allowed, but they were both a far cry from what they once were.

This season the movement hasn’t fully returned, but Cole has had success with the pitch that he attributes to his return to health.

“I feel like I’m back to being myself this year,” said Cole. “I’m assuming everything is probably better than it was last year. It’s a weapon that I lean on. It’s a pitch that you have to be in really good shape to throw, especially if you’re going to be throwing a good amount of it. Definitely, there were other factors last year, but I feel it’s just kind of back to normal.”

Even with the similar movement, the whiff rate is back and he’s inducing an insane 75 percent groundball rate on the pitch. While that rate will come down to earth, he continues to use the slider with confidence and proficiency that was lacking less season.  It certainly evidences that as he’s even begun using the pitch to wipe-out hitters again, almost as often as he used the fastball.

An Improved Changeup

Yesterday, I remembered a soundbite from a CBS Sports piece published this Spring in which former Pirate Mike Lavalliere was quoted as saying something along the lines of Cole possessing the “best changeup on the staff.”  It was strange, at the time I first read it, because Cole has never exhibited that. In 2014 and 2016, opposing batter put up robust 187 wRC+’s and 220 wRC+’s respectively against Cole’s changeup. Perhaps, Lavalliere was on to something because it’s been a stellar pitch for Cole this season.

Yet, this changeup doesn’t resemble Cole’s usual changeup, and the biggest difference with this 2017 changeup is that the horizontal movement runs in on a hitter more like the two-seamer than the four-seamer.  Cole has said that he hasn’t altered the changeup grip this year; although, he is apparently altering something to cause such different movement on the pitch.

In addition to the movement, he’s upped the velocity by one tick from 2016, but that’s a couple ticks faster than previous years, giving him a changeup that sits anywhere between 85.7 and 91.

It’s hard to argue with the elevated usage when the pitch has played so effectively off of his fastball, Opposing batters have managed just one base hit off the pitch with an incredible -56 wRC+.  Even if it’s not getting whiffs like a Felipe Rivero changeup, hitters have failed to produce solid contact, fouling off over 40 percent of Cole’s changeups.

Final Thoughts

We didn’t delve into the curveball, but Cole has moved almost exclusively to the knuckle curve according to Fangraphs.  It has struggled at times this year but remained useful against the Cubs on Tuesday.  If he can regain last season’s value out of the pitch, Cole could wind up with a dangerous five pitch arsenal bolstered by an excellent changeup.

Granted, it’s still early, and plenty could change as the season progresses, so it’s fine if you feel the need to sober expectations.  As far as I’m concerned, this season grows less dismal when I realize we’ve at least seen a glimpse of Cole taking the next step from being a fastball-slider pitcher to a more complete and upper echelon arm. And considering Cole has a stunning 2.17 ERA on the season if the terrible third of an inning against Boston is removed, it’s not hard to wonder and hope that a fully healthy Gerrit Cole has turned a corner.

Alan Saunders contributed to this article.

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