As part of my ever-loving quest to see as many awesome pitching prospects as possible, I journeyed to Reading on Wednesday to see Gerrit Cole (y'all may remember him from such films as: The 2008 draft) do his thing for the Altoona Curve against the R-Phils. 

After three years at UCLA, the young man showed on Wednesday that he has all the makings of a top-flight starter, although that future may be a little farther off than Pirates fans would like. He showed a four-seamer that hit 98 multiple times, a very nice mid-80s slider and a two-seam fastball that he toyed with to try to coax grounders. 

His command was a little off on Wednesday, as evinced by his walk of pitcher Jonathan Pettibone, especially considering he got ahead of Pettibone at 0-2. He also got a little bit unlucky with some shaky defense behind him and the BABIP dragon coaxing Pettibone's soft grounder to third inside the line and past the third baseman. 

Still, the BABIP dragon could do nothing about Cody Asche shellacking a 95 mph fastball for a three-run homer in the fifth inning. Cole got the fastball in, but probably not quite in far enough. 

Here are all five of Cole's strikeouts from the evening, plus one of most vicious broken bats I've seen in quite some time. Please excuse the endless parade of people walking in front of me, as well as the unruly children and parents lending their audio to the proceedings.