The best pitches of each Pittsburgh Pirates starter

Mar 4, 2015; Bradenton, FL, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) pitches during the first inning of a spring training baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at McKechnie Field. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Gerrit Cole came into the league with flames at his back, rearing back and bringing the fastball to the plate with authority, at points even topping out at 101mph.  For 2014, Cole went back to his bag of tricks and developed what I believe will be his best pitch in 2015:  his slider.  Let’s take a quick look at Cole’s data on the slider:

From this data we can see that 40% of the time pitchers will chase at a slider outside of the zone from Cole, 10% above the league average of 30%.  Conversely, batters make contact on those pitches at a 37.80% clip, well below the league average of 66%.  Not only do batters chase on this pitch, but they often don’t even make contact.  When they do make contact, it’s usually a grounder and only gets in the air once out of every four times it is hit.  Oh, and let’s not gloss over the fact that batters miss it an astonishing 17.8% of the time, above the league average of 9.5%

I am incredibly bullish on Gerrit Cole for the slider alone.  The fact that he can add such a dominant pitch that is shown to fool batters consistently in only his second year speaks volumes for the young future Ace.  This is just another testament to Ray Searage, Clint Hurdle, and others who have seen the ability in Cole to be much more than just a straight fastball thrower.

Our next pitcher signed the richest free agent contract in Pirates’ history.  Does he have the stuff to warrant that kind of money?

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