Astros-Rays Breakdown: Gerrit Cole Dominates

          

  

     The success of a 107-win team that features some of the best talent across all parts of the diamond ultimately came down to the success of one player: Gerrit Cole.

            In two starts in the ALDS, Cole went 2-0 and pitched 15.2 innings, struck out 25 batters allowed only six hits and held batters to a .118/.167/.196 slash line. That my friends, is domination.

            Against pitchers not named Gerrit Cole, the Rays actually faired kind of well. They got to Ryan Pressly for two runs on four hits in 2/3 innings of work. They scored 10 runs on 12 hits, including six extra base hits and four home runs, in game three. They struck for 13 hits in a 4-1 win game four. I would classify that as good hitting. But then came Cole in game five.

            Cole pitched eight innings in game five, struck out 10 batters and allowed only two hits. He threw 74 strikes on 107 pitches, a 69% strike ratio, and according to baseball-reference.com, Cole forced 52 swings and misses combined in his two ALDS appearances. I hope this stresses how much Cole dominated the Rays in this series.

            The Astros also held Austin Meadows and Avisail Garcia, the Rays’ top two hitters, to a combined 8-for-36 (.222 average) with only two extra base hits despite four RBIs between the two. The two hitters that propelled the Rays lineup for most of the season kind of fell flat during the postseason. It isn’t the worse production, especially for the amount of runs they created, but when considering the entirety of the team’s offense, I don’t like the overall production from the Rays.

In six games and 195 at-bats, the Rays hit to a slash line of .231/.298/.431. That’s especially troubling when knowing Willy Adames batted .385 in 13 at-bats with two home runs and one double and three runs. The Rays had pockets of offensive production, but it was a generally scarce showing. Most of that probably comes from the dominance of Gerrit Cole as I explained at the top of the article, because the team did hit pretty well when not facing Cole. But these don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The Rays’ hitting stunk against Cole and they faced Cole often. He was the main reason why the Astros won the ALDS.