ST. LOUIS — In the game of “Can you top this?” among rookie pitchers in this NL Division Series, last whacks are reserved for Gerrit Cole.
But the Pirates right-hander won’t have to copy Michael Wacha and flirt with a no-hitter in his start Wednesday against the Cardinals in Game 5 of the NLDS to emerge triumphant. Just a victory allowing the Pirates to survive and advance would be enough.
“It’s just going to come down to executing a handful of pitches, and being able to hit the spot or execute the pitch when I need to,” said Cole, who will be opposed by Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright in a winner-take-all at Busch Stadium for a berth in the NL Championship Series against the Dodgers.
If there were any questions about the 23-year-old Cole’s mettle, they were answered in Game 2, when he allowed one run over six innings with five strikeouts and one walk. The Pirates may need Cole to at least duplicate that performance to have any chance of winning their first playoff series since 1979.
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle had the option of pitching A.J. Burnett in his regular turn, but bumped the veteran right-hander because of his brutal performance in Game 1 — seven runs allowed over two-plus innings — and the fact he had Cole ready on full rest.
“[Cole] uses his eyes very well and he uses his ears very well,” Hurdle said. “The competitive edge that he takes on the mound is visible. The emotion that he pitches with, that’s special and that can be significant. The flat out skill set, the no fear. He respects everything; he fears nothing.”
The rookie Wacha had the same approach Monday, when he took a no-hitter into the eighth inning at PNC Park before Pedro Alvarez homered with one out. Wacha ended up with the 2-1 victory, allowing the Cardinals to even the series and have a shot at reaching the NLCS for a third straight year. Wainwright was masterful in Game 1 for the Cardinals, allowing one run over seven innings.
For Wainwright, who has pitched for two World Series winners, the pressure of a winner-take-all game will be nothing new. The right-hander recalled facing the Mets in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS at Shea Stadium as maybe a defining moment of his career. Wainwright entered from the bullpen in the ninth with the Cardinals up 3-1 and put the first two batters he faced on base.
“I was hearing every fan in the stands, everybody who was booing me and cussing me, I could hear it perfectly plain as day right next to my ear, and there was a bunch of them,” Wainwright said.
“And then after those first two guys reached base, I stepped back off the mound and gathered my thoughts and just as [Jason] Isringhausen told me to do so many times, just breathed. I just controlled my breathing. I got back into my focus level, and then I was able to get outs. So that’s the lesson that I learned in that big moment that I’ve taken forward.”
The last of those outs was Wainwright’s now Cardinals teammate, Carlos Beltran, who took a near-perfect curveball for strike three.
Cole, a former first-round draft pick by the Yankees who opted for UCLA, was summoned from Triple-A in June to bolster the rotation after Wandy Rodriguez and James McDonald were injured, and has been everything the Pirates could have wanted. In 19 starts for the Pirates he was 10-7 with a 3.22 ERA.
“All of a sudden I felt like we were in September, and all of a sudden I had gotten a lot better and the games started to get more intense and the race started to go down to the wire there,” Cole said. “I just realized that I had been taking the same approach since I did when I came up, one start at a time and just take care of business in between those starts that I got on the mound.”