Gerrit Cole

Lore & Background

In the PNC Park dugout of 2013, there was a particular sound Cole made before his delivery—a low, almost inaudible grunt that the bullpen guys called 'the engine turning over.' Opposing hitters never heard it, of course. They just saw a lefty with a delivery that looked like it was assembled by a mad scientist, a screwball that broke so late and so violently that it seemed to change its mind mid-flight, and a four-seam fastball that regularly cleared the 100-mph mark. The nickname 'The Freak' wasn't marketing; it was a description. Scouts and broadcasters used it without irony because the numbers simply didn't compute for a human body.

For Pirates fans, Cole was the thread that connected the 2013 NLCS run to the 2014–2016 seasons when the team was genuinely competitive. He was the guy you pointed at and said, 'That's ours.' The 2013 postseason, where the young Bucs lost to St. Louis in five games, burned itself into the memory of a generation of fans who had been waiting a long time for the club to be dangerous again. Cole's performances in that series—fierce, occasionally wild, but undeniably electric—became the emotional anchor of that run.

Then came December 2017. The trade was done quietly, off-season, without the spectacle of a mid-year deal. Three minor-league arms for the best lefty in the building. Pirates fans processed it in the way they always process these things: a slow, dazed disbelief, followed by a long, bitter silence. The team had just been in the AL—no, the NL—thick of the race. And the arm that made it possible was now wearing pinstripes. The echo of that trade still reverberates in every offseason where the front office is questioned about what it's willing to keep and what it's willing to let go.

In Their Own Story

PNC Park, late September. The lights hum their low amber buzz over the outfield wall, and the crowd has thinned to the die-hards in the upper deck who never leave until the final out. Cole is on the mound in the sixth, and the count is 3-1 on a righty who's been hitting .340 against lefties all month. You can hear the crowd go quiet in the way it does when it knows something is about to happen—not a cheer, just a held breath, a thousand people synchronizing their lungs. Cole steps into the rubber, that off-kilter stride, the arm cocked back like a slingshot loaded past its limit. The screwball leaves his hand and the batter swings through the air where the ball *was*, not where it is. Strike three. The crowd exhales. Cole doesn't celebrate. He just adjusts his cap, looks out at the dark stands where the lights are flickering on in the parking lot, and walks back to the dugout with that same flat, almost bored expression. Like he just threw a pitch. Like it wasn't the one that made the whole city hold its breath.

Reader's Guide

2013–2017: The Freak in the Bucs' Rotation

The Pirates enter 2013 as a team that has been rebuilding for years, a roster of young, hungry players who have never been in a real race. The front office has assembled a core around a left-handed pitching staff, and the name that anchors it all is Gerrit Cole, a 23-year-old who has been throwing the ball so hard and so weirdly that the scouting reports read like physics papers. He debuts in April and immediately looks like a different species. By the time the regular season ends, the Pirates are in the NLCS, and Cole has been the emotional and mechanical engine of the run.

The 2013 postseason against St. Louis is where the memory crystallizes. Five games. The Pirates lose. But Cole's performances—fierce, sometimes erratic, always electric—become the story fans retell for years. He is the proof that the rebuild was real, that the team could be dangerous, that the next generation was arriving.

2014 through 2016 are the seasons where the Pirates are genuinely competitive, and Cole is the axis around which the rotation turns. He is not the only good pitcher, but he is the one the crowd roars for, the one whose screwball makes the opposing lineup look helpless. The team is close to the World Series, and the distance feels like a few more wins, a few more healthy innings from the young arms.

Then December 2017 arrives, and the axis is gone. The trade to the Yankees is the era's final, bitter note. The Pirates keep the minor-league arms. The fans keep the memory. And every time a new pitcher is signed or drafted, the question lingers: is this the next Freak? The answer, every time, is no. But the question itself is the legacy, the echo of a rotation that made Pittsburgh believe for a few golden years and then, quietly, let the best one walk.

Did You Know?

• Cole's screwball was so effective and unusual that it became a subject of biomechanical study; very few pitchers in MLB history have thrown it with comparable velocity and break.
• The 2017 trade that sent Cole to the Yankees was completed in December, during the offseason, making it one of the most quietly devastating transactions in Pirates history.
• Cole was part of the 2013 Pirates team that reached the National League Championship Series, the franchise's first deep postseason run in over a decade.
• He was drafted in the 7th round of the 2011 amateur draft, a pick that Pirates scouts and fans would later call one of the most valuable in the franchise's modern history.