I've been accumulating share-worthy Gerrit Cole links for a couple of days now, so let's get that out of the way along with a few newsworthy stories.
At FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan took a look at one of Cole's innings and his pitch placement vs. where Russell Martin set up for him. It's interesting, and his point about command vs. control is an important one to remember and monitor with Cole going forward.
Also at FanGraphs, Wendy Thrum looks at the attendance for Cole's debut and how the change compares to the debuts of other big pitching prospects. The answer is that it looks pretty favorable, though it's awfully hard to judge these things.
In the category of news, both Nick Kingham and Gregory Polanco are headed to Altoona. Kingham has put himself into some prospect discussions this year with his great start in Bradenton. Polanco, meanwhile, is making "the jump" this year. After his breakout year last year, he hit .312/.364/.472 in 54 games with Bradenton. He doesn't strike out a ton, his power surge from last year looks real, and he's valuting up prospect lists. Keith Law had him in his mid-season top 25 a few weeks ago, and Jason Parks said this week that he's in his top 25 as well. And now he's a 21-year old in Double-A. If you're not excited about Polanco yet, I think that you probably should be.
