Back to Bad Interleague Play: Rockies Lose Again

Rockies 1, Tigers 4

That winning streak didn’t last long. The real Rockies showed up at Comerica Park today, bad defense, bad pitching, and bad offense. What a mess.

From the pitching standpoint, Christian Friedrich should have given up a lot more runs than he did. The fact that only 2 earned runs scored on his 5-inning watch is nothing short of a miracle. He threw 98 pitches in those innings and 50 of them were balls. 5 walks and a hit batsman, and a run walked in. It disturbs me when I see his command suffer that much on the road, because it isn’t supposed to. The theory about Friedrich is that once he can adjust his breaking pitches to altitude, he’ll be all set, but troubles like this in the muggy midwest are foreboding

Then there was that one unearned run he gave up, which was also partially his fault. If you haven’t seen the video, you can check it out over at the Hub. If your eyes do not bleed while watching this, you are a stronger human than I. In the event that you are unable to see it for yourself, here’s the short version: Miguel Cabrera grounds to Friedrich. It knocks off Frierich’s glove, he recovers, overthrows 1st base. Ball sits forlornly on outfield dirt until Wilin Rosario retrieves it (with an impressive, look-how-awesome-I-am slide). Friedrich dutifully covers 3rd, where Cabrera might have been tagged out had Rosario hit Friedrich’s glove instead of somewhere over his shoulder. Only person who does nothing wrong is Jordan Pacheco, who covers home and snags Friedrich’s throw, which is too late to get Cabrera. This is what’s known as a Little League home run. Or, thank heavens there was nobody on base when that happened just now. Doo-doo-doodle-oodle-doo-doo-doo-doo …

That was obviously the play of the game, because it represented so much of what’s wrong with this team and this season. I love Rosario, but the crummy fielding has just got to stop. Send the man to a catching clinic, please, and don’t let him out until he promises never to do anything like that again. Oh, and while you’re at it, tell him to stop swinging for the fences every single time he comes to the plate. I get it, there’s two men on base and 1 out, this is your chance. But do you know what’s going to happen if you swing at 3 straight pitches? At least 2 of them will be breaking balls outside the zone, and you will look like a fool. Believe it.

I don’t feel like talking about anybody else. Except maybe Carlos Gonzalez who had 3 hits and only scored once because only Michael Cuddyer could get him over. And even that was lucky, because Cargo was on 3rd thanks to a throwing error. Speaking of Cuddy, he made a terrific throw to get Delmon Young trying to stretch a single into a double that made up for his error on Thursday at Coors. That definitely saved Friedrich another run. Not that it matters. He still took the loss, and so did the Rockies.

The rubber match happens tomorrow, with Jeremy Guthrie pitching AGAIN. Doesn’t it seem like he’s on the mound every three days?