Stuff Goes Wrong in Rockies’ Loss to Reds

Rockies 3, Reds 10

How on earth do the Rockies win when the match-up is Christian Friedrich vs. Johnny Cueto and lose when it’s Jeremy Guthrie vs. Mike Leake? We are past the point where predictions can be accurately made.

Guthrie is on the trading block as mid-season approaches, and rightly so. I certainly didn’t expect brilliance out of him, but I expected better than we got, especially since we lost Jason Hammel AND Matt Lindstrom for him. I’m not going to pretend like I had any interest in holding onto Hammel; he was failing in Colorado, and there was no way to know he was going to be as successful in Baltimore as he’s been. He probably wouldn’t have been this successful had he stayed with the Rockies. But together with Lindstrom, the O’s came out on top in that trade for sure.

I think Guthrie drove the final nail into his own coffin last night because this was his first bad road start and it was pretty bad. He’s only to blame for 2 of the 6 runs that crossed the plate on his watch, but that’s because a throwing error by Jordan Pacheco in the 1st inning allowed the lead-off man on. Guthrie retired the next two batters, meaning that anybody who scored after that would not count against him. While that’s true, it’s also true that Guthrie then gave up an RBI double, a walk, and a 3-run home run to Brandon Phillips. Nobody to blame for that but him. Another RBI double and a Jay Bruce solo home run put the Rockies in the hole 6-2 long before Guthrie departed the game at the beginning of the 6th.

And who should replace him but Esmil Rogers? Here’s my theory on Esmil at this point: Jim Tracy cannot possibly be putting him in because he expects him to help us, so he does it because he is quite certain we’re going to lose the game and he doesn’t want to burn a good bullpen arm that he might be able to use tomorrow if we’re playing better. That’s a sad position to put a player in, not to mention a team who no doubt knows exactly what’s going on. Of course, Rogers did go on to have a 1-2-3 6th inning, but he followed that up with a lousy 7th in which he didn’t retire a single batter. Two walks, a wild pitch, and an RBI single later and Tracy finally pulled him.

Replacement Matt Reynolds started off well, getting Bruce to fly out and Joey Votto to test the arm of Michael Cuddyer by trying to score. Cuddy’s arm won. But then Reynolds walked Chris Heisey and Ryan Ludwick homered, so by then this game was over.

Where was the offense in all this? Leaving men on base as usual. The Rockies recorded 10 hits, just two fewer than the Reds, so there is absolutely no reason at all why they should only have scored 3 runs. They stranded at least one man in every single inning except two, both of which featured two strikeouts. Perhaps the most egregious offense was in the 3rd when Todd Helton walked with 2 outs. He advanced to 2nd on a wild pitch. Then Cuddy reached on an error and Helton thought he could go all the way home. Helton, a station-to-station runner if ever there was one, was out by a mile. Whether Rich Dauer sent him or he sent himself is unclear, but outs at home plate are never ever okay, unless it’s a force and you’ve got no choice but to run.

Oy. This team. I would predict a crushing defeat at the hands of Mat Latos today, but the way they’re playing right now, they’ll score 7 runs and chase him away in the 3rd inning.

The rubber match features Latos vs. Jamie Moyer and kicks off at 11:10 MDT today.