Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports
At one point Roy Oswalt represented a flier worth taking for a surprisingly successful team, a chance for the Colorado Rockies to hit the lottery and add a solid veteran starting pitcher for a 2013 playoff run. Now the team just has to figure out if Oswalt has anything left at all and if they should even consider bringing him back at the end of this season or to start next season.
In that context, Oswalt will test his left hamstring in a rehab start for the Grand Junction Rockies tonight.
.@royoswalt44net will make a rehab start for the @GJRockies tonight in Grand Junction. Game will be shown live on @MiLB.com at 7:05pm MT.
— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) September 3, 2013
The utter failures of the #5 starters for the Rockies has become the telling statistic of the season. As Troy Renck of the Denver Post has documented a number of times, any starters not named Jhoulys Chacin, Jorge De La Rosa, Tyler Chatwood, and Juan Nicasio have a combined 1-17 record this season. Oof.
So the Rockies obviously don’t have a lot of options for the back of the rotation, and we ask the same question we asked when Oswalt made his Rockies debut earlier this season:
Why not?