HOUSTON -- The scariest thing about Gerrit Cole is not his fastball (or its velocity), which is saying something, seeing as the video ribbon at Minute Maid Park spent the eighth inning in Game 2 of the American League Division Series flashing three digits. It is not his slider, either, or his dastardly curveball, which bites with the mercilessness of a mosquito in these parts, or even his Houdini changeup.
"His biggest strength," Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch said, "is his mind."
Hinch basked in the afterglow Saturday of Cole's latest tour de force, a 15-strikeout humbling of the Tampa Bay Rays in their 3-1 victory that staked the Astros to a two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-five series in the MLB playoffs.