Gerrit Cole had the second best K-BB% in baseball last year, in my opinion the single most valuable pitching stat. Only five pitchers, one in the AL, threw more innings than Cole, combining per-inning effectiveness with a 200-inning workload. If it weren’t for those damn home runs, Cole would likely have found himself a Cy Young finalist once again, after finishing fourth and second in his first two seasons in the Bronx.
Instead, those home runs count. Gerrit gave up 33 of them, the most in the game — 15 or 45 percent of them coming with men on.