Sanchez Underwhelms in Rockies Loss to Diamondbacks

Rockies 3, Diamondbacks 6

Well, the Jonathan Sanchez era has begun, and so far it’s picking up pretty much right where the Jeremy Guthrie era left off. I keep saying that there’s nothing to lose in this situation because he can’t really be any worse than Guthrie was. And he wasn’t, but I’m still finding it hard to be excited about that.

Sanchez really doesn’t look like his Giant self; maybe Brian Sabean knew something the rest of us didn’t when he dealt him. In any case, Sanchez’s fastball is struggling to touch 90 mph and it doesn’t have a lot of movement. He mixed in plenty of changeups and sliders, but had trouble throwing those for strikes. In other words, I didn’t see much that encouraged me. I would like to express confidence in the ability of our coaching staff to help Sanchez fix what’s wrong, but we all know how well that’s worked out this year.

In the 4th, already down 1-0, Sanchez walked the first two men he faced and then gave up a single to Miguel Montero. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Montero has apparently been taking notes from Rockies’ baserunners, because he decided to make his single a double even though the other runners had chosen not to advance. Whoops. I say unluckily, though, because if Montero had stayed on 1st, Sanchez would have been forced to pitch to Ryan Roberts after Chris Young‘s popout. What Roberts would have done I can’t say, but I can say that the next batter, PITCHER Ian Kennedy, tripled and cleared the bases. Do I even need to tell you that that was his first career triple?

In the midst of all this, it didn’t help that the Rockies were struggling to score runs. They only managed 7 baserunners in the whole game, and only 3 of those scored. Two were Carlos Gonzalez and Josh Rutledge, both of whom homered, Rutledge for the first time in the bigs. The other was Rutledge again, who led off the 8th with a double and was singled home by Dexter Fowler. That was the only hit with a runner in scoring position.

Also, can we please rescue Rutledge from the bottom of the order? He’s hitting .368. It seems like every clutch hit in every game comes from him, if it doesn’t come from Jordan Pacheco. I’d like to see him moved up to 6th at least. Maybe even 5th when Tyler Colvin isn’t playing. Give the kid a chance!

Drew Pomeranz was originally slated to go for the Rockies today, but he’s experiencing some soreness, so it will likely be Edwar Cabrera instead. Because that worked so well the last time we tried it.