Officially, or according to documents to be filed with the relevant transportation authorities, the Cole Train was not taken out of service until it had chugged through most of five uphill innings Wednesday night, but before that there was enough evidence of mechanical issues that you had to wonder how it ever left the station at all.
It’s all fairly marvelous that Gerrit Cole’s first truly shaggy performance of the baseball season didn’t come until June 24, but there were a number of red flags — make that Reds flags — that might have indicated a bumpy ride even before Billy Hamilton walked on a 3-2 pitch to start the game.
The Reds were the only team to score three times against Cole all season, which they’d done both times they’d faced him. Additionally, of the 12 pitchers on Clint Hurdle’s staff before the addition Wednesday of Chris Volstad from Indianapolis, the highest career earned run average against Cincinnati belonged to ... Gerrit Cole, and it was 4.70. In fact, Cole had never beaten the Reds and, in fact, he still hasn’t.
And still, the Reds failed to score three runs against Cole for the third consecutive time.
That’s because they scored four.
In the first inning.
What that meant was that Pirates starting pitchers had thrown the team into a ditch at their earliest convenience for the third time in a row. Opponents have now scored 16 runs in the first innings of the past three games.
It didn’t have to be this way with Cole, who has won more games going back to September of last season than any pitcher in the majors, but three seriously unfortunate events somehow enabled that fateful four-run first. Hamilton's walk was the first of those, for it prevented Cole from coming within a river’s width of anything even resembling a rhythm. With Hamilton on first and Ivan DeJesus Jr. at the plate, before a batted ball had been put into play, Pirates catcher Chris Stewart already was visiting the mound to try to pull Cole’s concentration back toward the hitter. Cole was averaging one attempted pickoff throw for every two pitches at that point, and, after five pickoff attempts, Hamilton stole second anyway.
And third anyway.
Cincinnati cleanup hitter Todd Frazier, leading the majors in total bases, then sliced a two-out double in front of Gregory Polanco in right to make it 1-0.
“This is the major leagues; those other guys get paid over there,” Hurdle said after a 5-2 loss. “They drive nice cars.”
Right after Frazier took Cole’s nasty two-strike pitch to right, the second seriously unfortunate thing happened.
Jay Bruce stood in against Cole with a runner in scoring position and two out, the precise situation in which he was batting a flaccid .108, or 4 for 37, whichever you feel looks more atrocious. No one in the Reds lineup was a better candidate to make a much-needed out, but instead Bruce barrelled Cole’s 98 mph 4-seamer to left center for the double that made it 2-0.
After Stewart returned for a second visit to the mound, this time accompanied by pitching coach Ray Searage, Cole sent their collected advice aboard the next pitch toward Marlon Byrd, who deposited it in the hedges beyond the center-field fence, and there’s your third seriously unfortunate thing.
On a night when the Pirates would fall seven games behind the maddeningly victorious Cardinals, 6-1 winners in Miami, bad things weren’t happening exclusively to Gerrit Cole, who is now 11-3 after losing for the first time since May 15.
Clutch McCutchen, the Pirates’ best in critical offensive situations, took a called third strike with Starling Marte in scoring position to start the fourth, and, after Neil Walker grounded out, Josh Harrison struck out as well at a point in the game where Cincinnati’s lead could still have been very managably flipped.
Though the boxscore will show no evidence of any defensive gaffes, Pirates shortstop Jordy Mercer made a miserable play on a Bruce grounder in the fifth that should have ended the inning. Bruce drilled it to Mercer’s immediate left, but rather than keep his feet and field it without a lot of difficulty, Mercer went into some kind of manic please-get-me-on-SportsCenter spin/slide, and failed to come up with it. One pitch later, Byrd drove in his third run, and it was 5-1.
Because he’s 24 and because this is still just his second full season, we tend to think of Cole as a pup sometimes, but he’s been around this game long enough to know that a night like this was coming. Inevitably.
“He’s a human being,” Hurdle said.
He’s a train, but he’s human. We’re OK with that, right?
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter @genecollier.
First Published: June 25, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
