Over five seasons as ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates Tahir Whitehead Jersey , Gerrit Cole threw one of the game’s hardest, heaviest fastballs, and he threw it often. The pitch helped him make millions of dollars. It put him in contention for major awards. Hitters swung through it again and again, and Cole seemed content not to mess with a good thing.
But when Cole was traded to the Houston Astros this offseason, a funny thing happened. He became more frugal with his fastball and ended up more overpowering than ever.
Cole has joined some of the game’s best pitchers – including Cleveland’s Corey Kluber and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw – in benefiting from a puzzling baseball paradox: In an era when pitchers are throwing harder than ever, they’re maximizing success by using fewer fastballs.
Pitchers – even ones with blazing fastballs like Luis Severino and Chris Archer – are using more offspeed than ever recorded, and while many aces think the downturn is a trend, some believe baseball could be entering a new age dominated not by 100 mph heaters, but by a steady stream of breaking balls and changeups.
So why is the hardest-throwing generation of pitchers ever going the way of the junk-baller?
Depends who you ask, but one culprit stands out to Cole, Kluber and Kershaw: baseball’s swing-changing batters.
”You can call it launch angle, or you can call it the upper cuts,” Cole said. ”There are a lot of swings that are dictating breaking balls.”
Cole’s move away from a fastball-first approach is striking given the reputation of his hardest pitch. He topped out at 99 mph as an ace at UCLA, and his fastball was the headliner on a resume that earned him an $8 million signing bonus as the first overall draft pick in 2011 by Pittsburgh. Under the guidance of Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage, Cole pounded the bottom of the strike zone with that heater, and for years DeVante Parker Jersey , it worked. He was an All-Star and finished fourth in NL Cy Young Award voting in 2015, and was considered among the game’s most overpowering starting pitchers.
Then baseball’s flyball revolution took flight – a movement of hitters using upper-cut swings designed to crush exactly the kinds of sinking fastballs Cole was delivering. After never allowing more than 11 home runs in a season, Cole was tagged for 31 last year.
So it was time to change things up.
From 2013-17, Cole threw his fastball 65 percent of the time – well above the league average. But this year, he’s cut that fastball rate by about 10 points, replacing those heaters with sliders and curveballs. The new look is working. Cole is 8-1 with a 2.59 ERA through 15 starts and leads the American League with 138 strikeouts.
”I think you’re just continually trying to mess timing up, especially when guys are trying to slug,” Cole said. ”When they’re trying to hit it out of the park every time, you have an easier time changing speeds.”
Kluber and Kershaw have made similar adjustments in the past couple years. Both Cy Young winners rank among the league leaders in fewest fastballs thrown this season.
”Guys are geared up to swing for a fastball,” Kluber said. ”I guess it’s almost rare now to see somebody actually, like, go the other way with the breaking ball.”
Kluber has set a career low with a fastball rate of 41.8 percent this season. Same for Kershaw, who has dropped from a 72-percent fastball clip in 2010 all the way to 42.8 percent in an injury-hampered 2018.
”The hitters tell you what you need to do,” Kershaw said. ”And for me, I guess it’s been throwing a lot more breaking balls.”
Cole, Kluber and Kershaw suspect the tide will turn back A.J. Derby Jersey , perhaps soon, once hitters recalibrate to the number of four-seam fastballs pitchers are throwing up in the strike zone.
But Trevor Bauer, Kluber’s analytically-minded teammate in Cleveland, thinks the offspeed uptick is only going to spread.
Two years ago, Bauer and Indians closer Cody Allen watched as 6-foot-8 Yankees fireballer Dellin Betances carved up Cleveland’s hitters with a fastball that averaged 98 mph. Allen – no slouch himself with a fastball around 94 mph – told Bauer that if he could throw hard like Betances, he wouldn’t even bother with a breaking ball.
”No,” Bauer recalled telling Allen. ”He should never throw a fastball.”
Bauer’s theory is that the threat of a 100 mph fastball might be more dangerous to hitters than the fastballs themselves.
”As guys throw harder, guys have less and less time to hit that offering,” Bauer said. ”So they have to speed up in order to catch up to it, which, that makes the breaking ball more effective.”
Hitters are left picking between two nasty poisons – risk being behind on triple-digit fastballs, or jeopardize taking ugly swings on breaking pitches as they dart out of the strike zone.
Veteran slugger Todd Frazier was with the Yankees last year when New York’s hard-throwing bullpen led by Betances, Aroldis Chapman and Chad Green overpowered hitters while also posting the lowest fastball rate in the majors.
”I have to set my feet for 98 mph, and understand I might get 84-88 mph slider,” said Frazier, now with the New York Mets. ”It makes it tougher on you.”
And yet Keith Tandy Jersey , Frazier and his fellow hitters aren’t close to jumping off their fastball-first approach.
”The baseline of hitting is the fastball,” Mets teammate Jay Bruce said. ”You have to stay on the fastball. For me personally, that’s what my timing of th Third time was the charm for James Harden.
The Houston Rockets star was voted the NBA’s Most Valuable Player after twice being runner-up, beating out four-time winner LeBron James and Anthony Davis of the Pelicans at the NBA Awards.
Harden joined Michael Jordan as the only players to average at least 20 points, eight assists, five rebounds and 1.7 steals in a season.
He led the league in scoring, 3-pointers and 50-point games with four while helping the Rockets to an NBA-leading 65 wins.
James didn’t attend the show in Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport amid frenzied speculation about his future. He has until Friday to tell the Cavaliers if he will pick up his $35.6 million option for next season or opt for free agency.
Harden, who is from Los Angeles, led his mother on stage before he accepted the trophy from Commissioner Adam Silver.
Dwane Casey won the NBA’s Coach of the Year award for his work with his former team, the Toronto Raptors. He was fired last month and has since become coach of the Detroit Pistons.
Casey led the Raptors to the No. 1 seed in the East for the first time in franchise history. Toronto won a team-record 59 games. Casey coached the East in the All-Star Game for the first time.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) – Oscar Robertson commends the off-court activism of today’s NBA players, although the Hall of Famer wonders why more white athletes aren’t speaking out, too.
Robertson received the Lifetime Achievement Award from presenters Charles Barkley and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the NBA Awards.
Robertson is the career leader in triple-doubles and was the first player to average one for a season. His antitrust case against the NBA also ushered in free agency for players, which Robertson said was his most important assist.
The 79-year-old former guard who starred at Crispus Attucks High in Indianapolis and in college at Cincinnati before going to the NBA said it’s time for players to speak out about politics and education, among other issues.
”But the only thing that really bothers me is where are the white athletes when this is happening?” he said backstage. ”This is not a black athlete problem. You see injustice in the world. It’s all around you.”
COLLEGE BASEBALL
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Game 1 of the College World Series finals between Arkansas and Oregon State was postponed until Tuesday night because of rain – just the latest in a line of delays caused by the weather this year.
”In my 16 years of being involved with this championship Chris Jones Jersey , this has been the most challenging College World Series as it relates to inclement weather,” NCAA director of championships and alliances Randy Buhr said.
Rain fell most of the day, and officials announced late in the afternoon that the game would be delayed. The decision to postpone came 90 minutes after the scheduled first pitch.
Arkansas (47-19) will start Blaine Knight (13-0) against Luke Heimlich (16-2) of Oregon State (53-11-1) on Tuesday.
COLLEGE SPORTS
CHICAGO (AP) – A federal appeals court has backed an NCAA rule requiring most football players who transfer schools to sit out a year.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a lower-court finding that NCAA transfer rules don’t violate U.S. antitrust laws.
Monday’s decision was in a lawsuit brought by a former punter for Northern Illinois University, Peter Deppe. The ruling focuses on a requirement that most Division I football players who transfer to another school must sit out a year.
Deppe’s lawyers argued the Indianapolis-based NCAA enforces the rule primarily to ensure transfers don’t hurt the quality of the football and thereby cut into lucrative revenues. They say that makes it an unreasonable restraint on trade.
But the 7th Circuit rejected that. Its unanimous opinion accepted the NCAA’s concern that easy player transfers would undermine ”the amateur character of college athletics.”
A statement from the NCAA welcomed the ruling, saying it was consistent with prior court rulings that recognize ”the NCAA’s ability to preserve college sports.”
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – UConn President Susan Herbst told Kevin Ollie she was upholding his firing because the former men’s basketball coach had a pattern of breaking NCAA rules and committed serious violations, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The school released the June 19 letter from Herbst to Ollie on Monday in response to open records requests from the AP and other news organizations.
Ollie has asserted that the violations which led to his firing in March were minimal and isolated.
Herbst denies that idea in the letter, writing that ”eventually even a series of `isolated’ or `de mimimis’ violations can become a pattern of non-compliance, which is what occurred in the Men’s Basketball program under your leadership.”
TENNIS
LONDON (AP) – Rafael Nadal is back at No. 1 in the ATP rankings, retaking the top spot from Roger Federer after just one week.
Monday’s new order is the sixth change of the year at No. 1, the most since there were eight in 1999.
The record is 10 switches at No. 1 in 1983.
Federer still is expected to be seeded No. 1 for Wimbledon, where he won his record eighth championship a year ago. The grass-court Grand Slam tournament’s seedings are scheduled to be announced Wednesday. Play begins next week.
Nadal holds a 50-point edge over Federer in the rankings and will hold onto No. 1 for at least the next three weeks.
