Nats score in eighth, send Rockies to another Sunday loss
The Colorado Rockies lost their 16th straight Sunday game, falling 3-2 to the Washington Nationals and splitting their four-game series.
Left fielder Eric Young Jr., who had done fine on routine plays, was finally exposed in the eighth inning when he had a more challenging chance. He froze momentarily on a drive hit by Danny Espinosa, went back and made a futile jump and the ball went over Young’s head for a leadoff double. Espinosa moved to third on Ryan Zimmerman’s grounder to shortstop, and after Matt Belisle intentionally walked Michael Morse, Jayson Werth singled to score Espinosa.
Aaron Cook allowed four hits and two runs in 6 2/3 innings and got 12 outs on ground balls. The runs came in the second when he walked Werth to lead off the inning, and Jonny Gomes followed with a two-run homer. Cook left trailing 2-0, but the Rockies scored two runs in the seventh, one of them tainted, off John Lannan.
Pinch hitter Jonathan Herrera opened the inning with a walk, and Young singled. After the runners moved up on Dexter Fowler‘s sacrifice, Tyler Clippard relieved Lannan. Clippard got Carlos Gonzalez to hit a grounder to Michael Morse. He bobbled the ball and was charged with an error, because Clippard didn’t cover first in time. Herrera scored on that play, and after Troy Tulowitzki struck out, Ty Wigginton singled.
The Rockies got a runner on second with one out in the eighth against Todd Coffey, but Herrera flied to center and Young grounded to shortstop. Closer Drew Storen retired the side in order in the ninth for his 29th save.
Other highlights:
_ The Rockies went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position. All of their nine hits were singles. Last Sunday, when the Rockies lost 8-3 at San Diego, they had 10 hits, all singles.
_ The Rockies went 2-5 on their homestand against the Phillies and Nationals. The Rockies are 16-20 in one-run games and 5-9 at home where their overall record is 28-31. The Rockies are 0-51 when trailing after eight complete innings and 0-25 at home.
_ Josh Roenicke made his Rockies debut in the ninth. He gave up a one-out single to Laynce Nix but got Rick Ankiel to ground out and struck out Espinosa.
_ Matt Reynolds relieved Cook with a runner on third and struck out Rick Ankiel to end the seventh. Reynolds has inherited 40 runners this season and allowed just five to score. He has stranded the past 10 runners he has inherited.
If 85 wins gets the division – we only need to go 32-15 down the stretch.
Giants are 2-8 and in their last 10 and 11-12 and since the all star break and somehow we have lost a game, in the standings, since July 12.
Amazing
I’m not seeing much more than 75 wins, which would require going 22-25, roughly the same rate we’ve won to date. Given the pitching mess, that seems to be optimistic. Throw in a winless road trip or two and getting to 70 will be tough.
Marc,
During the post-game show, you and Jeff touched on Tracy electing not to bunt with Nelson up with men on 1st & 2nd w/ no outs. An obvious bunting situation. Has anyone in the Denver media that covers the team on a regular basis asked Tracy as to what his overall philosophy on when to employ the bunt play? It just seems that over the course of the season (and this goes back to last season as well), the Rox could have won a few more games if they would just bunt when the situation called for it.
Tracy seems to be seriously opposed to any type of “small ball”
Well, not ALL small ball. He did have Ellis try to bunt Alfonzo over. Alfonzo. The speed demon. He was out at second, you will recall. It turned out Ellis stole second so it didn’t hurt us, but Alfonzo?
Cook pitched an okay game, but he didn’t get a whole lot of offensive support. Simply cannot believe the struggles on Sundays.
Ok it was a nice sunny hot afternoon to watch #16. Personally, I think the Rockies got lucky to make it a 3-2 game. Could have just as easily been a 3-0 final.
Aaron Cook? Better than I expected.
EYjr? Like I said in the Blake Street Bombers thread this morning, EY is not an outfielder and never will be. Sorry Pooter, I know EY is your guy.
I’m not sure why there seems to be this focus on bunting. I understand the concept BUT here is the problem as I see it. It still requires getting a base hit to drive in the runners in scoring position. Why did we need more bunting today? We went 2 for 11 with rsip. We had the bases loaded with only 1 out? How did that work out for us?
It appears the news is spreading fast. When the pressure is on, throw high stuff to Tulo.
The Rockies are now only .002 pct from being in 4th place. Talk about serious underachievers.
75-87 in 2011, what a crushing dis-appointment, adios DoD, and thanks for giving us that phenom Greg Reynolds
EY has been a disaster waiting to happen. It happened.
There’s a popular theory now that fielding skill is fielding skills, whatever position a player may happen to be switched to. The basic skills — reaction time to a batted ball, first step, “good hands,” footwork, arm strength, arm accuracy — don’t change when a player changes positions. And I think that’s what we’re seeing with EY. You could stick Jonny Herrera in centerfield tomorrow and I’m quite confident he’d do a good job because those defensive skills are there regardless of experience at a given position. But EY is the opposite. You try to hide him in LF where some of the problems (footwork around the bag) don’t apply, and you hope for the best. But he’s just not a natural in the field and all the experience in the world at a given position won’t cure that.
Now the larger question is why on earth a weak hitter like EY would be playing a corner position at which some power/productivity is expected. I have no answer to that one. Even if he became an average leftfielder he’ll never hit enough to play leftfield on anything other than an emergency basis. He’s not the short-term stopgap now, he’s not a possible solution for 2012, he’s got no business being out there now that CarGo is back.
And as someone pointed out, Tracy did break his “no catcher plays the day game after a night game.” He broke it after Alfonso hit his grand slam. Iannetta could hit 2 grand slams and he’d still sit.
Raysfan..stop going on Sundays will ya ;)
Cisco and Agbayani- you echo exactly what I have been saying for weeks not (last year actually). As I posted last week, if EY2 was hitting the ball like Ryan Braun or even close, we could move him to the outfield and put up with his twirling,spining dance moves in the field. But he is no Braun or even close…. .230 and below don’t cut it.
Spliting with the Nationals shows our true state of the team right now. We need the best lineup including coaching moves at the right time.
Still my team but the spankings are starting to sting now.
“Raysfan..stop going on Sundays will ya ;)”
I think you know what I did with my tickets for this past week. :>)
Tulo does seem to make the last out of the game a lot of times.
I’m having trouble finding the stats to see if that is a statistically significant figure. But I see Tulo is hitting .303 in the 9th inning, so I think some of us must be hyper-sensitive to times when he does not come through.
He’s hitting .200 in “Late & Close” games (with a good .324 OBP) according to baseballreference, but I don’t know how that’s defined.
It means the game is on the line, a little ahead, or a little behind…..
Late & Close are PA in the 7th or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck.
I’m not sure what those stats mean, but if I have first pick at short, I’ll take Tulo. You can have anybody else.
I don’t think anyone is asking for Tulo not to play, but it sure would be nice to see him not make the final out. I will bet if we go back and check the records he will have at least 10 of the final outs in our losses this year. I would expect those outs to come from guys like Spilborghs, Stewart, etc. As bad as Iannetta’s batting average is, I would rather have him up with 2 outs in the 9th than Tulo.
Thanks Trip. Bill, I think all it means is that Tulo’s BA falls off late in games and in close games, which suggests he is not a great last hope in a 1-run loss. But I don’t think it’s a big deal for 2 reasons:
1) He still has a good OBP in those situations,
2) The BA figure is weighted down by poor 8th inning stats, which I think has to be a statistical fluke.
Thus on paper Tulo is just fine late and close. He still may do poor things in some of those situations, like overswing, or go for the first pitch, or chase. But on the average he is not as bad as some of us (myself included) have been saying.
Prog, I can’t find those stats (last out in a loss). I’d love to see those records too.
Prog, you’d rather have Iannetta up with the game on the line than Tulo? Those stats we keep talking about that you seem to draw on to downgrade Tulo “Late and Close”/”7th-9th Inning” are just as bad for Iannetta. And I’d like to point out that Tulo is now hitting .380 with a 1.196 OPS with 2 outs and RISP. (Incidentally, Iannetta’s numbers in that situation are really good too – although in a tiny sample size and still not at Tulo’s level.) Anyways, we can all cherry-pick the stats we like best, or ignore stats altogether and just go with our eye/gut (which I’m fine with, by the way). And I get that we all want our stars to be stars, to be the hero at the end of the game, etc. And especially if they’re getting paid to be a star, we hold them to a higher standard. I get all that. But to say that you’d rather have Iannetta up with the game on the line than Tulo makes it seem like you’re starting with your prefered conclusion and then force-fitting the reality from there. In any event, if fans across the league were to read that comment, you’d have crap-loads of fan-bases screaming at you to go ahead and take thier 8th-hole hitting catcher in exchange for that power-hitting, gold glove shortstop you don’t seem to care for. Regardless of game situation.
You pinch hit Seth Smith in the 7th and then don’t put him in right field and Cargo in left. Then EY chokes on a line drive that Cargo would have made look routine. Why wasn’t EY pulled for defensive purposes? Unless Smith was injured it was not Tracy’s best managerial move of the season of the season.
I can understand not putting Smith in the game because you usually put the defensive sub in after you take the lead. And the way Smith has been playing defense lately he is no great shakes either although no doubt better than EY. However I still think you leave Cargo in right because that is usually a more important defensive position than left.
Of course JT marches to the beat of a different drummer so who knows what he thinks.
By the way does anybody know what the record is for consecutive Sunday losses? I haven’t seen it published but the Rockies must be close if they haven’t already set the record. They keep records on virtually everything so the folks at Elias must have this somewhere in their archives.
Analyze that stat! If the game is “late and close” who is on the mound for the other team? It is the other teams’ best pitchers. That means that Tulo is hitting .200 against some of the best closers and set up men in the game. While I am sure that if you asked Troy he would want to improve that part of his game, I think it is being a little overly critical to bemoan his late inning performance. Personally, I am happy to have Tulo make the last out because it means the Rockies had their best hitter at the plate with the game on the line. In this difficult sport, there is not much else you can ask for…
Frustrating frustrating. The dots appear, but never get connected. Tulo is on a great run since the AS Break, but CarGo is hurt. EYJR injects speed into the line-up but his +/- kills us (new rule, if EYJR is on the field after the 7th inning, JT has to forfeit the days’s salary). Get good pitching (I am wondering if Cookie is going to be part of the team next year afterall, just to take pressure off the kids and with DLR not being ready ti June), but no run support.
I remain positive about this team in general. You have two top level players to build around. We have the possibility of a talented pitching 5 27 and under. In Nelson, Blackmon and Dex can improve from their current levels, that is the making of a solid team. We have to fix 3B. We have to get our late relief fixed. Things are there, this is not as Paige said, a disaster for the upcoming period. But they have to step-up and be more serious, as DOD pointed out.
It is the approach at the plate. This team is mentally weak. Which means that someone has got to step-up and make the environment tougher. The Sunday losing streak to me is a sign of this mental weakness. Not sure how you fix that? Hire Larry Bowa?
As far as Tulo making the last out goes, I think we all remember he made the last out in both Games 3 & 4 of the 2009 NLDS. Maybe we are subconsciously reliving that pain every time he does it this season.
If the Rockies had just won half of the 16 straight Sunday games they’ve lost, they would be right in the race. So many problems with this team, where do you start to fix it? Now they are just 2 games out of last place.
interesting comments regarding Tulo making the last out of games. One of those moments where you are either hero or goat. Someone hit it on the head that in 9th inning, you are facing their best and if we all know that someone considered a very good hitter is only successful 3+ x out of 10.
I would have Tulo up in the ninth inning every game regardless of the outcome. His defense and leadership are way over the top. For those who make up stats (ie successful at bats–game on line– on every Wed night game)….better to figure out why teams don’t win ballgames in the first 7 innings…not the last one. That is where games are lost or won.
Kick the Reds! Bench Pooter!
If games are won in the first 7 innings, why not start the game with Mariano Rivera and finish it with AJ Burnett?
I understand the point that runs are important at any time of the game, but 9th inning performance with the game on the line is what made Derek Jeter what Troy Tulowitzki dreamt of becoming.
Remember that 2 week stretch in 2007 when Tulo hit I think it was 3 lead changing HRs in the bottom of the 8th or top of 9th and then Brian Fuentes came in and blew all 3 of them? Pretty sure Tulo wishes those were hit in the bottom of the 9th where there would be no opportunity for the other team to score.
I haven’t invested the time to refute the stats that say Tulo is doing great in the ninth, but I just haven’t seen it with my eyes. Maybe they happened in the first month of the season when we were winning, I don’t know, but all I remember right now is that he’s been making the last out in what seems to be every other loss.