Going Gaga for Gerrit

If you knew of me before I started here at Fangraphs, it was probably because of the Starting Pitcher Guide that I release yearly. I have joined forces with Doug Thorburn in recent years, too. He is a pitching mechanics guru who lives and breathes baseball. He’s also an avid fantasy gamer so it was a perfect marriage.

We released the 2015 version this past weekend and you can get it at thespguide.com now. Eno was kind enough to allow me the chance to share a sample with y’all so you can see what we are all about. Doug and I have decided on Gerrit Cole as the profile to share. This year we tackled 380 pitchers across the 30 organizations and wrote up 412 pages and 154,735 words about them. That is an average of about 400 words per player. Of course, some got many more and others aren’t in need of that many just yet. By the way, my writing stops at the mechanics report card and then it shifts to Doug’s work! 

Without further ado, our thoughts on Cole:

—

GERRIT COLE (AGE 24 SEASON) – I was gaga for Gerrit last year. I was popping him right around the end of the top 100, which was in line with his ADP. It didn’t exactly go as planned thanks to a pair of DL stints that held him to just 22 starts, and he wasn’t the stud I thought he could be when he did pitch. Despite the underwhelming output relative to expectations, he still didn’t kill any teams as a seventh-eighth round pick. Additionally, my lust for him hasn’t waned one bit, although the same appears to be true for the fantasy community at large with a mid-winter ADP of 90^th overall. At least the high end isn’t as aggressive so far this year. Cole peaked at 50^th overall last season, but has only registered as high as 71^st so far this season.

Cole improved his strikeout rate to a healthy 24.2 percent, but it still feels low when considering his raw stuff. Maybe expectations are simply out of line, especially given Cole’s team. The Pirates, for those unaware, preach an efficient, groundball-heavy approach centered on the sinker. The question becomes: is it a matter of development and approach or is it the Pirates’ game plan that leaves his strikeouts lacking? Cole throws a fastball (sinker or four-seamer) two-thirds of the time and his 51.5 percent groundball rate on it is 13^th in the league. His 17.2 percent strikeout rate and .724 OPS with the pitch are also better than average, but not at the level you would expect from someone averaging nearly 97 MPH with his fastball.

Fastballs rarely generate big strikeout totals, especially the sinking kind, so the heavy usage is likely holding Cole back from contending for the league’s strikeout title. Cole only used his secondary stuff a third of the time, but it generated a 38 percent strikeout rate – 10^th in baseball and just a half percentage point behind the coolest person alive, Corey Kluber! Kluber, for those curious, matched Cole’s 17.4 percent strikeout rate with his fastball, but only used it 52 percent of the time. Cole’s groundball rate with the secondary stuff was still strong at 51.4 percent, so it doesn’t seem like lowering his fastball use and opting for more of his secondary stuff would greatly alter the outcomes that Pirates’ pitching coach Ray Searage desires.

It looks like the game plan is holding him back from a massive strikeout rate more than anything else. However, he still has the talent to be elite even with the 2-to-1 fastball-to-secondary breakdown. Look at his final eight starts after returning from the second injury:

Sure, the 3.44 ERA doesn’t look elite, but he had a 2.39 FIP and 2.75 xFIP during that run. The driving force was an absurd curveball. It held batters to a .291 OPS with a 57 percent strikeout rate, which was downright Kluberian (.241, 59% for the season). Now, I have invoked Kluber’s name here twice, but I’m not going where you might think. Cole can’t be the next Kluber, because he is already way too well-known. It may seem crazy now, but Kluber was available as the 61^st pitcher off the board around pick 225 last year (unless you played in a league with me).

Cole does, however, have the talent to rise up and have a Cy Young-worthy season. Of course, he can do that with the 24.2 percent strikeout rate we saw last year. If he is going to get up into the super-elite – because let me remind everyone again, that 24.2 percent is nowhere near bad or even average, it’s just below what it seems like his stuff can generate – strikeout rates, he will either need to start using his secondary stuff more often, or his curveball (I guess it could be the slider, too, but the curve has been the nastiest of his secondary pitches to date) will have to take that leap into Kluber, Kershaw, or McHugh territory, as all three had a 50+ percent strikeout rate with theirs while finishing first, second, and fourth in OPS (Gio Gonzalez was third and tallied a 49% K rate).

There is some increased risk with the injuries from 2014, but you are buying both the obscene potential and a legitimate performance floor that keeps his likelihood of crushing your team low. Even if he only repeated his 2014 and you took him at 90^th overall, it wouldn’t break your season by any stretch. It would be a bummer, but not a catastrophe. Embrace that risk for the chance at season-changing upside.

OVERALL MECHANICS GRADE: A-

• Balance: 65
• Momentum: 50
• Torque: 70
• Posture: 65
• Repetition: 60

Cole may not have met the lofty expectations that were heaped upon his shoulders in his second MLB season, but he improved some of the weaker links in his kinetic chain to cross the threshold into the rarefied air of A-grade mechanics. His momentum used to fall into the 40 zone, and though it remains the weakest subject on his report card, Cole developed some extra speed last season while maintaining a direct line to the plate, with a fluid transition through the lift and stride phases.

The elite-level torque involves a healthy combo of big upper-body load and a delayed trigger to get separation with the hips, fueling velocity that has been clocked in the triple digits yet appears effortless to the human eye. His walk rate bounced up a bit, but his mechanical repetition was nearly as strong as before, and he can drop the “minus” sign from his GPA if Cole can reclaim past levels of repetition.

—

Like what you saw? Head over to thespguide.com to purchase the guide!