Rockies Hit the Skids in Arizona

Rockies 1, Diamondbacks 6

Well guys, sometimes life happens, and if you’re a blogger, “life” is anything that makes you unable to post your highly anticipated recap of the day. Although, seeing as how the Rockies lost 10-0 on Tuesday and Jeremy Guthrie allowed 7 runs in 3 1/3 innings. Do we really want to relive that disaster? Let’s not.

Turning instead to yesterday’s game, we see at least this improvement: the Rockies’ offense, so hot last week, managed not to get shut out. That’s something of a miracle, though, when you consider that they only recorded 3 hits. That’s just what I was afraid of after everything went so well last week. Eventually they were bound to come down to earth and start getting dominated again. To be fair, at least this time around it was Ian Kennedy and Wade Miley, not Old-Man-Who-Hasn’t-Thrown-A-Shut-Out-In-7-Years and Some-Fill-In-From-Triple-A.

Miley, 7-2 with a 2.53 ERA, is having a fantastic rookie season for the D-backs, and the Rockies aren’t the only team he’s owned. Still, I wish they’d made him throw more than 102 pitches in 8 innings, and I wish they had gotten on base at least three times as often. It was a pretty lackluster night from some guys who can’t afford complacency right now.

And then we have Josh Outman, the Rockies’ starter, who was quite good against the Dodgers last weekend. He was on a little bit longer leash this time, but unfortunately he did not handle this extra freedom very well. In 3 innings he allowed 5 runs and only struck out 1. His third inning was also his worst: a walk and 3 doubles led to 3 runs scoring. In each case he got behind in the count. Outman’s got a good fastball, but it’s really not fast enough to be his outpitch. He kept getting himself into situations where he had to throw it though, and then this sort of line is what you see happen.

The bullpen has gotten a ton of work this season. At 194 2/3 innings, it has put in more time than every team but the Royals. That’s not a good thing, because it means the starters are giving us no depth to work with. Luckily for us, we have a good bullpen, and they keep coming out and doing their job, day after day. Josh Roenicke pitched the 4th aand 5th yesterday, surrendering no runs and allowing 2 baserunners. Adam Ottavino finally gave up another run, on a solo shot to Paul Goldschimdt in the 7th, but his ERA is still 1.29. Rex Brothers took the rest of the 7th and set the D-backs down in order. And Rafael Betancourt allowed 1 hit in a scoreless 8th. The Rockies will be sellers in just a month or so here; should they trade away the entire bullpen, wholesale, to a team that needs it more? Such a move wouldn’t shock me at this point.

At least this D-backs series is over and now we head home. Of course, it’s to face the Angels, so maybe that’s not a good thing after all.

The Rockies will take a travel day and then face the Angels in an interleague series at Coors starting Friday.