SURPLUS OF STARTERS Iron arms
When Brault was traded to the Pirates as a player to be named later in the Travis Snider deal in 2015, he joined a stockpile of starting pitching prospects. He began the 2016 season in the Indianapolis rotation alongside Taillon, Glasnow, Williams and Kuhl. A year later, those four were on the Pirates opening-day roster.
The trick is to reframe your mindset, Brault said, and “you’ve got to be resilient.” He admitted he wasn’t right for a rotation spot during spring training, and so he made use of his starts at Indianapolis to adjust and improve. Despite the fixes, he was blocked, stuck in Indianapolis.
“It’s a weird dynamic to get around,” Brault said. “It’s just where we’re at. It’s a good problem for the organization. The truth is baseball has made it so there’s only so long it can hang around. Options run out. Right now, that’s what it’s going to be. Something is going to give.”
Cole remembers that feeling. Now nearing his 27th birthday Sept. 8, Cole has made 121 starts in his Major League career, already almost three times the number of starts he made in the minors.
But there was a time when the former first-overall pick was on pins and needles, anxious for his chance to break onto the Pirates roster and, ideally, into the rotation.
Back then, Cole still was fresh off a high-profile, highstakes college career at UCLA. In the minors, Cole said, he couldn’t wait for baseball games to “carry some weight” again.
“I just wanted to be up here so bad,” he said. “I didn’t really worry too much about performance. I was trying to focus on getting better, understanding that whenever there was an opportunity, it would happen. It’s important to keep that in perspective, because you’re so hungry. I was just really looking forward to pitching and to wins and losses actually mattering.”
Cole smiled, thought briefly and restated the last sentence.
“You know what I mean ‘mattering,’ ” he said. “It matters to them down there because you would much rather win than lose in the minor leagues. But winning, selling out all the time, being in a position to be in a postseason pennant-race type deal. That’s what I wanted.”
When Cole debuted in 2013, the rotation was steered by veterans A.J. Burnett and Francisco Liriano. Something Cole drew from them, as well as Edinson Volquez and J.A. Happ down the road, is their consistency. Cole is still young, so it’s that example, rather than words, he hopes to pass on to the young pitchers climbing and waiting patiently in the Pirates organization.
“I remember every time A.J. took the ball it was six, seven innings and a chance to win every time,” Cole said. “More often than not, he dazzled. … It was like no matter what, whether it was going to be an exceptionally good game or just an all-around good game, [the veterans] did their job every single time. I was just enamored by the consistency. That’s what I shoot for.”