On Gerrit Cole’s 81st pitch tonight, he walked Buster Posey to load the bases with no outs in the sixth inning. Two pitches later, he was behind Brandon Belt 2-0 in the count, and it seemed like maybe the Pirates’ 4-2 lead wasn’t going to be quite enough. Cole hadn’t pitched poorly to that point, he simply wasn’t quite living up to the standard that his early-season work in 2015 has set. He struck out the side in the fourth inning and zipped through the fifth on eight pitches, but he needed 17 pitches in the first and the third and even though the two runs he allowed in the first inning were unearned, they were certainly enabled by a wild pitch from Cole and he did, of course, give up the run scoring double.
Gerrit Cole finished the start with 100 pitches. In his last 17 pitches, he recorded six outs; he came back to strike Belt out, he got Brandon Crawford to hit into a double play to end the sixth inning without a run scoring, he struck out Angel Pagan on four pitches to start the seventh (the strikeout pitch was a 95 mph two-seam fastball that bit like a wiffleball), got a groundout from Matt Duffy, and struck out Justin Maxwell to end the seventh. It took Cole 19 pitches to go from “decent start threatening to get out of hand” to “another dominant start by Gerrit Cole. His final line was 7 innings, five hits, two runs (both unearned), nine strikeouts, two walks. He is incredible to watch when he’s in the zone, as he was for the final 17 pitches tonight.
There are a couple things from this one worth mentioning other than Gerrit Cole. It very nearly was Andrew McCutchen’s night as much as Cole’s; he came up twice with the bases loaded, and hit two balls that looked like bases clearing doubles or triples, but was robbed twice by Angel Pagan and Hunter Pence. Pagan’s catch in particular was incredible. Instead of breaking the game open for the Pirates, the two balls were turned into sac flies that tied the game at two after the aforementioned Brandon Belt two-run double in the first. Luckily for the Pirates, Neil Walker came through with a two-run double after the second time McCutchen was robbed, and that made all the difference in the final score.
Also, Chris Stewart hit three doubles tonight. He came into the game with three doubles on the season. He only hit five doubles all year last year. Despite hitting three doubles, he didn’t drive in any runs or score any runs. Weird.
Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
