New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole was so confused about how to get Boston Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers out after he allowed two home runs to the slugger on Friday that he opened up suggestions to the media.
It turns out, the question of how to get Devers out is a valid one, based on the numbers.
Attacking the 25-year-old star in the zone will prove to be costly, and not advised.
“Devers owns the strike zone like few others in (Major League Baseball),” MLB.com’s Thomas Harrigan wrote Saturday. “He’s offered at 78.5% of the pitches he’s seen in the zone this season, one of the highest zone-swing rates in MLB. The results are eye-popping. Six out of every 10 batted balls (60%) he’s produced on pitches in the zone have been hard-hit, MLB’s 11th highest in-zone hard-hit rate (min. 100 batted balls).”
Devers is hitting .364 on in-zone pitches, seventh in the entire league.
The good news? You can get him to chase outside the zone. The bad news? Devers will hit those balls just as hard.
“Devers doesn’t only let it rip against pitches in the zone, he also has one of MLB’s highest chase rates at 37.3%,” Harrigan said. “But while big league hitters as a whole have a .157 average and .218 slugging percentage on out-of-zone pitches this season, Devers is mashing these pitches, too. The 25-year-old’s MLB-best slugging percentage in at-bats ending on out-of-zone pitches is 234 points higher than the MLB average.”
There’s got to be a pitch he can’t hit right? Not so fast.
Four-seamer: 33 hits, .308 BA, .645 SLG
Sinker: 15 hits, .366 BA, .561 SLG
Cutter: 9 hits, .450 BA, 1.100 SLG
Slider: 15 hits, .306 BA, .490 SLG
Curveball: 10 hits, .323 BA, .484 SLG
Changeup: 22 hits, .333 BA, .545 SLG
Splitter: 2 hits, .200 BA, .300 SLG
He’s only had 10 at-bats ending in splitters, meaning the only pitch he’s moderately struggled with is an outlier.
Devers is one of the hardest outs in all of baseball and it’s understandable why Cole has struggled so much against him. His analysis of Devers might be the one thing Cole and his rival Red Sox fanbase can agree on.
