Collette Calls: Breaking Down the Gerrit Cole Trade

Cole himself had been rumored to be on the block for weeks now with the Yankees very close at one time. There were reports they wanted Gleyber Torres and other reports saying the Yankees would offer Clint Frazier. Rather than go for the quality prospect, Pittsburgh went the quantity route and added four players to their roster while giving up a pitcher they had zero hopes of re-signing after the 2019 season. Meanwhile, the Astros traded from their deep organizational depth to add another frontline starter to what is already a strong, yet high-risk, rotation.

The change in location should be good for Cole. For one, it allows him to avoid the machinations of pitching in the National League where his exit in the game could come prematurely based on his spot in the order coming up. Second, he is going to enjoy the increased run support that was not nearly as frequent in Pittsburgh. Third, while there were some decent pieces in the Pittsburgh bullpen, the Astros have a much deeper pen. The combination of all three factors should allow Cole to fall into a few more wins as he garnered just 12 wins out of 20 quality starts in 2017.

Cole's major league body of work comes over five seasons, of which two were full seasons. 2015 was clearly the highlight as he looked the part of a pitcher drafted 1.1 across the board. Since then, we have been left wanting more from him due to injuries in 2016 and him developing a surprising case of gopheritis last year that came from a park ranked 23rd in park factors for home runs. The move to Minute Maid Park is one that takes him to a home park that was neutral for home runs last year, but it is unlikely that Cole will resemble the same pitcher he was in Pittsburgh. After all, it was not that long ago the Houston front office rebuilt a former Pirate hurler.

When the Astros signed Charlie Morton just last year, they wanted him to do a couple of things. They encouraged him to use more curves and cutters, and to keep throwing with the increased velocity he showed in April of 2016 before he was injured while batting.
He did both things and had his best year as a pro. They did the same thing with Collin McHugh when they acquired him from the scrap heap in Colorado to maximize the usage of his high-spin curveball. This applies to Cole because spin rate could help fix him as well.

Jeff Zimmerman and others have done work to show the correlation between fastball velocity and fastball spin rate, but Jeff also put together this lovely chart that shows the swinging strike rate for each intersection of those two measures:

Last season, Cole averaged 96 mph on his four-seam fastball and a 2,165 spin rate. Minimum 500 pitches, Cole's average fastball velocity ranked 28th out of 196 qualified pitchers but his average spin rate on the pitch was 148th out of that same list of pitchers. Minimum 300 pitches, Cole's curveball ranked 36th out of 85 pitchers in average velocity (80 mph) and 24th with an average spin rate of 2666. The league wide average for curveball velocity was 78 mph and was 2,489 for spin rate. I'm not saying Cole should be throwing his curveball a majority of the time, but he should certainly be using it more than 10-12 percent of the time as he has in recent years. By the way, if you really want to have some run looking at all pitch types, you should play with Andrew Perpetua's work he recently posted on Tableau. Perpetua's data shows that pitches with as much velocity and spin as Cole's curveball generate a 14 percent swing and miss rate while pitches with his fastball velocity and spin generate just under a 9 percent swing and miss rate.

Zimmerman has also found that pitchers that throw a high-spin curveball after a low-spin fastball have swinging strike rates of 16 percent, which would be double the swing and miss rate his fastball is getting on its own. Given that the Astros have taken the spin data to make decent pitchers a little better, it's scary to think what they can do with a solid pitcher such as Cole. More curveballs, coupled with more strategic use of his fastball to set up the curve, should lead to more strikeouts and help offset the loss of the free strikeouts from facing the pitcher spot at least twice a game.

He is not the only player in this deal whose fantasy fortunes are impacted because Joe Musgrove, Colin Moran, and Michael Feliz suddenly become fantasy viable in more than just deep single league formats. Let's start with Musgrove because he moves from the bullpen to the rotation.

Musgrove filled both roles last year with very different results. He made 15 starts with Houston before he lost his spot in the rotation just after the All-Star Break and then looked like a different guy finishing out the season in relief.

If we reference the earlier chart from Zimmerman, Musgrove's 93 mph heater with a spin rate of 2,350 would be getting near eight percent swing and miss rates, but even as a starter, his swinging strike rate by month was ten percent each month. As his fastball got up to 95-96, he continued to exceed the expected outcomes on his four-seamer as he struck out 13 percent, 9 percent, and 16 percent as he finished the season primarily a fastball/slider guy.

The Pirates appear to be giving him another chance in the rotation, but it remains to be seen how that works out. Musgrove's stuff was not quite as appealing in the rotation, although I really liked what I saw of him in early July, particularly in this game against the Braves on July 5:

• Groundout
• Groundout
• Single (Gurriel never found the bag)
• Groundout
• Swinging strikeout
• E2
• Groundout
• Flyout
• Strikeout swinging
• Strikeout looking
• Groundout
• Groundout
• Lineout
• Strikeout swinging
• 3-pitch strikeout swinging
• 3-pitch strikeout swinging
• Single
• Double
• Single
• Home run
• Lineout
• Flyball
• Groundout

He was absolutely rolling and was one pitch away from an immaculate inning in the fifth inning before four straight batted balls turned into four runs. Musgrove should enjoy facing his counterparts to get the extra strikeouts in the NL and it is hard to imagine that 19 percent home run to flyball ratio he had as a starter follows him to the more pitcher-friendly PNC Park. An immediate area of improvement would be for Pittsburgh to make Musgrove a two-times-through-the-order pitcher. He allowed 20 of his 53 earned runs as a starter when facing batters for a third time:

Moran has spent the past two seasons in Triple-A playing both sides of the diamond. He owns a .279/.346/.438 slash line over 849 plate appearances, but his numbers in 2017, .301/.369/.532, looked better thanks to some changes in his launch angle. One would assume Moran is the favorite to win the third base job in Pittsburgh this season, but David Freese has one more year on his current deal and is coming off two strong seasons of OBP work and above average work in the field. Josh Bell is not going anywhere, so one of Moran or Freese is going to have to work in a reserve role. Early on, that could be the kid but Pittsburgh could also trade Freese away this winter as he has a very cheap $4.7M deal and that number includes buying out his 2019 team option. Third base has a lot of depth to it this year, so even if Moran gets the job out of camp, he is still going to be one of the later grabs in the deeper mixed leagues.

Feliz has worked 121 innings in his major league career and has struck out 33 percent of the batters he has faced. He has also walked 10 percent of others and has thrown 13 wild pitches and allowed 20 home runs in that time. It's a live arm, but his pitch command can come and go, but he makes for an interesting keeper league investment if he can find the command. Daniel Hudson is in the final year of his deal and although Felipe Rivero just signed a four-year extension, that does not ensure he will be around the entire time. Rivero's extension allows the club to control the reliever's cost through his arbitration years, but nothing is exactly nailed down in Pittsburgh and if a contending team wants to buy in on the guaranteed deal, Rivero could be moved.

Overall, Cole and the Astros are still the big winners in the trade, but we fantasy players win because three other players now have more defined roles in 2018 and each adds a form of upside for the season that could turn into profit given their current market values.