At one of the winter meetings for the players union, I went to dinner with Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer. Max and I were convincing GC to stop throwing sinkers and forcing contact and instead telling him to try and strike people out with bigger velocity differences and 4 seam spinning stuff. He was like 'guys I don't think that would work' and Max and I were laughing at him going DUDE NOBODY WANTS 99 CHEST HIGH JUST TRY IT.

I had come off a year where I had struck out 200 guys and remember saying - dude there is no universe that exists in which I should have more strikeouts than you!

GC got traded to the astros a few years later and ended up getting into the spin rate/ carry thing and has been at another level since.