redline248 said:
Anyone mind providing some snippets from this article?
Club officials believed elevated four-seamers would help him produce better overall results as he changed eye levels with his curveball, slider and two-seam, or sinking, fastball. Yet even then, Cole says he did not fully grasp how much better of a pitch his four-seamer was than his two-seamer, or which locations he needed to hit to generate the best performance. The Astros gave him that information, and Cole's former teammates in Pittsburgh have told him that the Pirates later made it available to players, as well.
"They don't have a Justin Verlander, though. And they didn't have Dallas Keuchel. And they didn't have Brian McCann," Cole says. "Those guys played just as big a role, if not a bigger role."
Verlander, a former Cy Young award winner, spoke with Cole about perceived velocity what fastball velocity looks like to the hitter, based on a pitcher's extension, where he releases the ball. According to Statcast, Cole has improved his average perceived velocity from 95.92 mph in his final season with the Pirates to 96.13 in 2018 and 96.45 in '19.
Keuchel, another former Cy winner, explained to Cole how to tunnel pitches as well as how to make hitters lose awareness of one side of the plate and get them to expand. Right-hander Charlie Morton advised Cole on the similar transition he made to more of a four-seam/curveball type with Houston. And McCann, whom Cole regards as "one of the better catchers of all time," articulated what he saw in Cole's stuff from behind the plate, sharing more of a hitter's perspective.
"We've really opened his eyes, I think," Verlander says. "Some of it's the analytics. But a lot of it was some of the stuff I had learned through my career and Dallas had learned. All the idiosyncratic baseball knowledge of how to pitch and use your strengths. Just talking to him about his strengths.
"That's one thing they do really well here they show you your strengths. As easy as that seems, it's not. Once you know your bread-and-butter, then you can really go down this deep path of how to use that to the best of your ability."
