ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Gerrit Cole can tell you exactly what his fastball is going to do. Seventeen inches of rise. Ten inches of run. 96 mph.
That's the problem.
"You can count on seeing 17 inches of jump at 96 with 10 inches of run, and you're going to be in this strike zone 75% of the time," Cole told USA TODAY Sports on July 7 at Tropicana Field. "It can become a disadvantage, because it's so predictable."
He said his fastball has looked the same for 15 years. AL East teams have seen enough of it to know.
On Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Rays get another look at the New York Yankees ace. Cole starts Game 1 of the American League Division Series at a sold-out Trop against a lineup that struck out fewer times than any team in baseball.
He's 36 and pitching his first season after Tommy John surgery in March 2025. He went 10-9 with a 3.61 ERA in 22 starts. In back-to-back September starts against the Padres and Mets, he gave up seven home runs. The first three Padres he faced on Sept. 6 all homered.
Six days later, the Mets hit 14 balls hard off him, a career high. He got three swings and misses on 40 swings. Afterward he partly blamed baseball's new automated ball-strike challenge system, saying "chase and swing-and-miss across the board is down."
Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci checked. Through mid-September, hitters were chasing 32.9% of pitches outside the zone, up from 31.5% a year earlier. Swing-and-miss had dipped from 25.3% to 25.0%. And 53.6% of Cole's pitches against the Mets were in the strike zone.
Too many strikes, in other words, with a fastball hitters already know.
Cole saw it coming. Division teams that face him a lot read him early, he said. If his pitches land close together in the first inning, they figure he's on and go after him. So he started mixing up his targets.
He's been adjusting to the AL East for years. Tampa Bay and Baltimore, he said, started "performing better on well-located pitches." Toronto loaded its lineup with right-handed hitters against him. He answered with a cutter, built "specifically for the division."
When he's sharp, hitters believe him.
"I drill a spot, and they know I hit the spot, and they're more apprehensive to challenge against me so far than other people," Cole said.
The challenge system arrived this season. Each team starts with two challenges and keeps the ones it wins. Only the batter, pitcher or catcher can ask, and the ruling pops up on the video board within seconds. There were 10,557 challenges in the regular season, or 4.35 a game, and 54% of the calls got flipped.
Catchers were the best at it, winning 59% of their challenges. Hitters won 49%. Pitchers won 40%. Cole had challenged exactly one pitch when he spoke in July. Every other close call, he let go.
"I always just assumed it's a ball," he said.
On Cole's pitches, that call usually belongs to Austin Wells. Cole praised him Friday for keeping his defense steady through a rough year at the plate.
"He's been something we've leaned on as pitchers," Cole said.
Cole believes one perfect pitch can follow a lineup around all night. He described striking out a hitter to open a game on a fastball down and away. The hitter didn't buy it. By the time his teammates got back to the dugout, they'd figured out it caught the corner.
"Now there's uncertainty there with well-located pitches for the rest of the game," Cole said.
Even the misses help, he said. A slider half an inch off the plate still went where he aimed it, and the hitter knows that.
"He knows I threw it exactly where I wanted to, so I can still threaten that later," Cole said.
On Friday, he described them differently.
"Complete lineup from top to bottom, with power threats, on-base percentage threats, stolen base threats, contact threats," Cole said.
Tampa Bay hit .258, tied for the best average in the majors, and stole 164 bases. The Rays hit 54 fewer homers than the Yankees. Junior Caminero hit 42 of them by himself.
Cole's last start came against these Rays on Sept. 23. He allowed two runs on three hits in 5⅔ innings and struck out eight. Then he waited 10 days. He was lined up for Game 3 of the Wild Card Series, and the Yankees swept Boston in two.
"I don't feel any different personally," he said.
He likes this building, at least. The dome means the game always starts on time, which Cole appreciates after five doubleheaders this season.
"The environment is consistent," he said. "I think any pitcher kind of enjoys playing here in that regard."
He's opened a postseason series against Tampa Bay before. In the 2020 ALDS, he started Games 1 and 5. He came back on short rest for the finale, and the Rays won it 2-1 on Mike Brosseau's eighth-inning homer off Aroldis Chapman.
Six years and one elbow reconstruction later, he gets Game 1 again.
"And considering coming back from surgery, I mean, there's not much more I could ask for."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Yankees ace Gerrit Cole admits he can get 'predictable' vs Rays
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