White, offense struggles as Rockies drop D-Backs opener
Alex White struggled with his command in his second Colorado Rockies start, walking six and receiving little help from his offense in a 5-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
White allowed a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first to Ryan Roberts. He walked three more hitters in the inning, but got of trouble with no further damage, aided in part by Chris Iannetta picking off Aaron Hill at first base after the first of White’s three walks. Over the next four innings, White allowed just one more hit and walked two while regularly pitching behind in the count. After five innings, White had walked five but allowed just two hits and struck out three.
Things fell apart for White and the Rockies in the sixth inning. Down 1-0, White allowed a leadoff single to Hill, hit Justin Upton, gave up an RBI single to Miguel Montero and an RBI double to Paul Goldschmidt before recording the first out of the inning. Two more runs scored in the inning on singles by John McDonald and pitcher Daniel Hudson, putting the Rockies in a 5-0 hole. White was done after six, having allowed five earned runs on seven hits and six walks.
Hudson dealt with traffic early in the game, allowing three hits and three walks in the first four innings but no runs. After the fourth, the Rockies did not produce a runner off Hudson or the Diamondbacks bullpen until the ninth inning. A Ty Wigginton single and three hit batsmen — Troy Tulowitzki, Kevin Kouzmanoff Iannetta — forced in the Rockies’ only run. The Rockies were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and produced just four hits, none of them by Carlos Gonzalez, whose 15-game hitting streak came to an end.
You know who Alex White has looked like in his first two outings? JASON HAMMEL!!!!!!
In Justin Verlander’s first two major league starts he had an era of 7.15…. not to say that White has that kind of upside… but give this kid a break. You can’t expect him to come in and single-handedly replace Ubaldo.
Remember when we first traded Holliday to the A’s. Everyone was livid about that trade at first (myself included) that was only heightened by the fact that CarGo struggled when he was initially called up… now that trade looks pretty dang good.
Baseball is all about patience with young players. Trying to figure out what they can do in their first few games, or even first few months will only make you look foolish.
Well said, Anonymous.
Maybe Ubaldo looks more like Jason Hammel. That’s a bad thing.
Hopefully this outing by White will make Cleveland fans feel better about the trade. They were pretty upset after Jimenez did so poorly on the road and we had 2 in AA that were taking perfect/no hitters into the 7th.
White had a bad first inning and a disaster in the 6th. In between aside from walks (which is strange in his past). So I am going to dwell on the positives on a 23 year old who is well thought of and has a lot to learn still about pitching in the bigs.
Yes, White looked a bit like Hammel last night, the difference is Hammel is almost 30 and has been in the bigs for several seasons. If the Rox had hit at all last night (like they did in his last start) they could have still won that game. The results will hopefully come. Anonymous, while pitching and hitting are different arts, I think your CarGo analogy is an important one to remind us of when we want to lable kids with high profiles too quickly.
That’s what he’s up here for. To learn to pitch. Pooter is down on him, but up on EY Jr. There are many, many cases of pitchers and position players who took years to develop. If I’m not mistaken Mike Schmidt hit under .200 in his younger years. I believe both Brooks Robinson and Harmon Killebrew spent 2 or 3 years going back and forth between the minors and the big club. They turned out ok.
You can’t judge a player by a handful of games. Rockies are out of the playoff picture so they should play the youngsters. As long as the struggles don’t completely wash away their confidence, the young guys should play. From what I know of White these struggles won’t hurt his confidence.