Recap: Rockies 11, A’s 9
Turning point: The Rockies led 11-2 in the sixth but had to call on closer Huston Street when the A’s opened the ninth with four straight hits off Juan Rincon to cut the lead to 11-8 with no outs and a runner on third. Street got Jack Hannahan to pop out, walked Jack Cust, retired Bobby Crosby on a sacrifice fly and struck out Rajai Davis to end the game and earn his 18th save.
At the plate: Brad Hawpe hit the 100th homer of his career, a two-run shot in the first. …Ian Stewart led off the second with his team-leading 14th home run. …Clint Barmes, who went 3-for-5, homered in the third and scored and moved back to the second spot in the lineup after batting ninth the previous two games. …Seth Smith’s homer in the fourth gave the Rockies four homers in four innings. …Todd Helton singled home two runs in the four-run sixth and hit the 491st double of his career in the eighth. …The A’s scored two runs through six innings before adding seven in the final three innings.
On the mound: Jorge De La Rosa finished June with a 4-1 record as he gave up five hits and two runs in six innings. ..Matt Daley gave up a run in the seventh, and Alan Embree and Rincon combined to give up seven hits and six runs in one inning. Rincon retired the two batters he faced in the eighth and stranded two of Embree’s runners but gave up three doubles and a single to start the ninth. …Trevor Cahill gave up eight hits, including four homers, and seven runs in 3 2/3 innings.
Numbers game: .371 average (13-for-35) by left-handed hitters against left-hander Embree. He gave up singles to Hannahan and Cust, the two left-handed hitters he faced in the eighth.
my god we need help in the bullpen.
Agbayani: from the Atkins thread, yes, I believe Tracy double-switched and pulled Atkins out the DH role. Embree took Helton’s spot in the lineup, and Hawpe in the 4-hole had made last out the previous inning.
Also, one potential suitor for Atkins might no longer be in the market: the Cardinals traded reliever Chris Perez for Mark DeRosa.
It can’t be understated how damaging it is to need your closer after leading 11-2.
Juan Rincon simply cannot be with this team when they arrive in LA tomorrow night. Embree is the year’s Luis Vizcaino.
They might have to consider sticking Morales or Greg Smith out there for awhile, because tonight proved this team cannot contend with the current structure in the ‘pen. The starters and Huston Street will be on empty by August.
Thanks, Mike, for clarifying that Atkins DH to 1B move.
Yeah, nice win, but this bullpen is falling apart fast. If the Rockies have a lead late in the game tomorrow, who do we go to? Street’s probably not available thanks to the Embree/Rincon blowup today. Randy Flores? Flores and Peralta, mix and match to get through the 9th? Josh Fogg for heaven’s sake?
Speier may offer a bit of help if he’s healthy, but he’s a situational righty, not the kind of guy you want to pitch whole innings late in close games. I see nobody else on the farm remotely capable of filling in. Some kind of waiver pickup at a minimum is necessary. And yes, Rincon has to go. (If you listen very carefully, you can just about hear a little voice in the distance crying out “shoulda kept Grilli” — yeah, it’s a bad stat, but since joining Texas he has a 2.46 ERA …)
Just to drive that point home: in what universe is Juan Rincon supposed to be better than Jason Grilli? Planet HGH? Steroidzuela?
Correction to my “nobody’s remotely ready on the farm” comment:
Morales 6 IP (but 95 pitches), 7 H, 4 K, 1 BB, 1 run allowed. So our best bet right now: call up Morales and use him in the pen. Or have him start and move Hammel or de la Rosa to the pen.
Speier: 1 IP, 0, 0, 0. Can’t be worse than who we’ve been throwing out there now.
Belisle: 2 IP, 1 H, 3 K, 0 BB. Also a better bet going forward than Juan Rincon. Then again, who isn’t?
Heck, call up all 3 now and send Rincon, Daley, and Flores packing!
How about we make it a circus and get rid of all the players we want to boo….the ship is not sinking…
Agbayani:
How would you justify moving DLR or Hammel to the bullpen for Morales?
Definitely need some help in the pen, if there is no help in the farm system this may force the Rockies hand a little bit early with the limited bullpen arms available on the market. Maybe a Mahay,Juan Cruz, Beimel, or Pena. With the Rockies streaking right now you don’t want to rock the boat too much but eventually the load is going to wear on Street as the only reliable arm in the pen.
No more quick hits? I loved those things.
The bullpen is certainly a problem at this point of the season. Let’s hope that Cook pitches a complete game this afternoon.
Having said that, I think that Morales should stay where he is until he can work out his issues and become an effective starting pitcher. Once he can be a dependable starter, then DLR can be moved to the bullpen, which may ultimately be a better spot for him.
Embree and Rincon certainly looked terrible last night. It’s too bad that in the off season O’Dowd didn’t shell out the money for Jeremy Affeldt, who I think is having a good season for the Giants. I think that it’s time for Dealing Dan to find a reliever or a starter from some team. It seems that we have a lot of decent players that the Rockies would be willing to trade for the right starter or reliever, such as Torrealba, Baker, Atkins, Quintanilla, Spillborgs, as well as every position player at AAA except for Eric Young (I wonder if any of the AAA players, such as Murton and Matt Miller, have any trade value). Wouldn’t one or more of these guys bring us a reliever who is more reliable than Rincon or a starter who is more reliable than DLR? I wouldn’t want to mortgage the future of the team for a stopgap player but it seems that trading any of the players listed above would not be mortgaging the future.
Why does everyone bag on DLR and think he’d be better off in the bullpen? He’s a #5 pitcher, and despite his oddly emotional moundburst against TB, has a pretty decent June ERA, and give him a couple more runs earlier in the year, he’d be a .500 pitcher.
Not that I think he’s the savior or anything, and trust me, he makes me nervous when he pitches, but the bottom line is I’m becoming more confident that he can give us 6 innings of decent work, which is all I expect from the 5 spot. If we had someone ready to assume the #5, it would be different. Morales is just starting to show signs of his old self, and a couple more quality starts would be good before we jump on his bandwagon.
Dave: I suspect people see DLR’s stuff and his inconsistency from inning to inning, and figure if he’s not going to turn the corner and become a steady starter, perhaps it’s better to see how strong a reliever he can be given how the pen has been going.
Actually, I’d rather see Morales up here in the pen. I don’t see any problem with doing that. It limits the wear and tear on his seemingly-fragile arm, and right now I think it’s clear that de la Rosa would be a better starter than Morales.
But it doesn’t seem that the Rockies management is willing to do that. And de la Rosa has the potential to be very effective immediately — in high leverage situations, particularly against lefties — right now. So that’s the only reason I suggest moving DLR to the pen.
Otherwise, Dave, I agree with you. Both Hammel and DLR have been perfectly o.k. as 4th/5th starters. So this club needs some bullpen help however they want to do it, whether it’s bringing up new guys to fill out the pen or moving someone like DLR to the pen.
Given DLR’s struggles the second or third time through the order I think that he could be a great 6th or 7th inning guy out of the pen. Too many time this year DLR struggles in the 4th or 5th inning after being perfect through the first 3. I think that DLR could be very successful out of the pen. I would not mind seeing Fogg or even Eaton get a chance to try the fifth spot in the roation and give the Rockies DLR and his electric stuff for one or two innings late in a ball game.
Re: Dave’s point about Hammel and de la Rosa being perfectly effective starters.
He’s right. I checked the FIP (fielding independent pitching) numbers to try to take out the luck factor (at least a bit). Here’s how the Rox starters rank:
Ubaldo 3.32 (quietly having the kind of season we hoped for; note also that his groundball rate has stayed up there at 53%, so last year’s emergence as that rare find — the groundballer with strikeout stuff — seems to be real)
Hammel 3.73 (big development: BB rate about half of what it was in Tampa)
De La Rosa 3.91 (with > 1 K/9)
Marquis 4.38 (and his groundball rate is up at 57% — higher than its been since his Braves days)
Cook 4.80 (58% GB rate, right around his norm)
So that’s a really good starting staff, when Aaron Cook has been your 5th most effective pitcher and he’s really been pretty decent.
Meanwhile, check out Embree: K rate is down in the 4.0 range, about half of what it was last year. One change: Embree’s a 2-pitch guy. Typically he’s thrown about 3/4 fastballs, 1/4 sliders. This years it’s 2/3 to 1/3. Since he’s still averaging 92 with the fastball, I’m guessing he turns it around.
And Matt Daley? The BABIP is up to normal range (.301), and the ERA is too. Overall, he’s still got a very nice 3.25 FIP ERA, so I think he’s likely to be useful, but (I’m guessing here) given his delivery he’s going to be far less effective against lefties. Kind of a Ryan Speier type, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do with two of them.
Oh, and meanwhile Aneury Rodriguez (traded for Hammel) hasn’t exactly impressed at AA Montgomery: 4-8, 6.27, 58K, 39BB in 70 innings.
I’m the first to admit when I was wrong, so although time will tell (and Rodriguez could still develop into a front-end starter), so far O’Dowd’s judgment is looking pretty good here …
I don’t mind Morales in the pen, either. That way, you can start slow, bringing him in to low leverage situations, and gauge the consistency of his mechanics, his health, and his comfort level.
Happy 60th Birthday to Don Baylor.
That one slipped by me until I read about it in another city’s paper.
When Corpus gets off the DL we will have to see how he performs, it looked like he was starting to put it back together and he could be a major lift to the back end of the pen if he returns to anything near his 07 form. Also Flores has performed well and could fill the hole that Embree has left the team with. Overall the team is finding ways to win ball games and at the end of the day that is all you can ask for.
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