Gerrit Cole up to AAA, more promotions imminent

The Pirates have promoted top prospect and 2011 #1 overall pick Gerrit Cole to Triple-A Indy. The move came late last night and seemed somewhat unexpected, although upon further examination it makes plenty of sense. Cole won’t be joining the Pirates this year, but a number of Indianapolis arms will. The Indians are headed to the playoffs, and will have their roster purged a bit once September begins and the Pirates can bring up anyone on the 40-man roster. Neal Huntington and Clint Hurdle have made some remarks in the last few weeks along the lines of not wanting to sabotage Indy’s playoff chances by taking all their best players–the Pirates pretty much NEED to do just that, so giving the Indians Cole will help them out quite a bit. It also has just as much (probably more, actually) to do with Cole himself. He’s done reasonably well in Altoona (2.90 ERA, 60 K’s and 23 BB’s in 59 innings) and this will allow him to extend his season a bit and faced some tougher and more experienced c...