Quick hits
–The Rockies longest winning streak of the season is three games, when they won the second and third games of the season at Arizona and then beat Philadelphia in the home opener.
–Ian Stewart’s grand slam was the second of his career. He also hit one in his ninth big-league at-bat, Aug. 21, 2007 against Pittsburgh. Stewart’s two home run game was his second of his career. He also did it June 13, 2008 against the Chicago White Sox at US Cellular Park.
–SS Troy Tulowitzki had his fourth consecutive multi-hit game. He has hit .391 as the No. 2 hitter in the lineup during the current homestand.
–The Rockies five-run fifth equaled their biggest inning of the season. They have done it three other times.
–With Stewart’s two home runs and one each from Todd Helton and Brad Hawpe, the Rockies had their first four-home run game of the season. They had three in a game four times.
–Rockies pitchers lead the NL with a 2.65 earned-run average in May.
Stewart gained 98 points of OPS tonight.
Tulo’s on-base pct and slugging pct are now very close to his rookie year numbers despite the lower batting average.
The test will be if the Rockies can break loose of their “one step forward, two steps back” start to the season. Hurdle’s job depends on it.
It’s nice to see Tulo keep rolling and that the injury that took him out of Sunday’s game is not serious.
Arizona is 1-4 under Hinch.
For the Rockies, it comes down to being 1-8 in close games. With a more normal record in those games, the Rockies are a game or two over .500 and in a better position to compete. (And don’t let the early season “game or two over .500″ fool you; that’s a lot. 17-14 = .548 = 89 wins over 162 games, same as in 2007.)
It would be panic to look at a month’s worth of one-run games and can the manager. We like to Monday morning QB such games, but there is just a tremendous amount of luck involved. Even the Rockies are a good example of that as it took not just a slow start by the bullpen, or a slow start by several key players, but also a general lack of timely hitting by all players.
Two NL pitchers with qualifying innings (1 IP per team’s game played) have yet to give up a HR this year:
Ubaldo Jimenez (40 IP) and Houston’s Thursday starter, Wandy Rodriguez (45 IP).
Meanwhile, Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer, Brett Myers, and Bronson Arroyo have given up 10 so far.
Mike I totally disagree with you when you say there is a tremendous amount of luck involved in close games. I think there is a little luck involved but not a tremendous amount. The Rox have been extremely poor so far at doing the “little things” to win close games. I don’t think it’s bad luck when a hitter strikes out with less than two outs and a runner on third. Now it is bad luck when a guy smokes a ball and hits it right at the shortstop for a 6-4-3 double play when there were runners at 1st and 3rd with 1 out. But it’s been more of the strikeout scenario as opposed to the double play scenario with the Rox this year. Bad luck might cost you a game or two but it’s not the driving force of a 1-8 record in one run games.
Well, what do I mean by “tremendous”? I wouldn’t know how to quantify it, but I don’t mean that one-losses are solely bad luck. I have no doubt that observable failings like bullpen problems contributed. You are going to lose close games when your two closers are pitching poorly.
But the Rockies have lost these games through the alignment of a large number of bad play from untimely hitting to bad pitching to (likely) bad managing. And by “untimely hitting,” I don’t mean K’s or GIDP’s with runners on 3rd and less than 2-out (”3rd lt 2o”), but rather, just going down quietly in close games.
Yet their run differential is positive–by that important measure, the team is having a good or at least decent season. Did the entire team suddenly come down with unclutchitis? Or is there some effect of “chance” at play when all these things bad happen at key moments when otherwise, things are going well (again, the run differential)?
Actually, going through the 8 losses, I see that in 3 games, Tulo failed in a “3rd lt 2o” situation in the 7th inning or later. So you could either blame the bulk of it on him, or see that again as “chance” that he picked such a horrible time to be lousy, since *presumably* he’s not going to fail in those situations so miserably all season long. As you’ll see below, as frustrating as it was to blow these great scoring chances, the Rockies made other mistakes that allowed these failures to be decisive.
I looked at the game logs from the 7th on…I guess you can point to a blown play earlier, but I don’t have an automated way of searching gamelogs and I already spent enough time on the subject. Plus, 3 innings should allow one time to make up for a bad play earlier in the game.
I found 3 games where the Rockies failed with a runner on 3rd and less than two out:
4/17, 4-3 LA, road (Tulo K, bases full, 1 out in 8th)
4/28, 4-3 Padres, home (Atkins inning-ending GIDP w/1st and 3rd *after* Rockies rally to 3-2 lead; Tulo inning-ending GIDP w/bases full in 8th)
5/5, 2-1 Padres, road (behind 1-0 in the 7th, Tulo GIDP w/1-out 1st-and-3rd. Rockies rally for tie in 8th, Daley loses bottom of 10th)
The 4/17 and 4/28 losses can also be chalked up to bullpen failures. In the 4/17 game, Belisle and company coughted up 4 in the 7th. In the 4/28 game, Embree surrendered the lead in the 8th and Corpas lost it in the 9th.
And in the 5/5 game, the Rockies had 3 more innings to score. They did the inning after Tulo’s GIDP (Iannetta game-tying solo HR), but they went down quietly in the 9th and 10th. Then Daley had his tough extra inning loss after escaping Embree’s jam in the bottom of the 9th.
Of the other 5 games, I see them this way:
4/24 6-5 loss to LA at home: Bullpen. Street/Grilli give up 2 in the 8th, the Rockies rally for 2 to tie in the bottom half of the inning, then Corpas gives up a leadoff double in the 9th that leads to a run.
“Tough losses” where the team lost due to no egregious failing:
4/6/09 9-8 Arizona, road (Margin is Grilli solo HR in 7th; you could blame this on the pen, but relievers give up runs sometimes)
4/25/09 6-5 Dodgers, home (Rockies get single baserunner in 6th through 9th)
5/1/09, 3-2 Giants, road (Rockies rally for 2 in 8th to make it 3-2; go down quietly in 9th)
And one you could probably chalk up to Hurdle:
The infamous Iannetta bunt-into-GIDP, struggling-Corpas-in-bottom-of-10th game:
5/3/09, 1-0 Giants, road
Wow Mike, you have way too much time on your hands! LOL. Those are all interesting things to note. But without complicating things and overanalyzing things, when the Rox lose I want to blame it on them. They could’ve done things different to change the outcome. I don’t want to just say, it was bad luck or a bad call or whatever. I’m the same way when I play, which I play a lot of sports. If/when I lose, it is always my fault. I always feel I could’ve done something differently to change the outcome.
Leave your response!
Recent Comments
More at Inside The Rockies
More around the Web
Newsroom
Reference Room
Blogroll
Archives