Colorado Rockies Drop Game Three To The Houston Astros

The Colorado Rockies are well on their way to a four-game sweep at the hands of the unpredictably excellent Astros. Some notes on the heroes and zeroes from last night’s loss.

Heroes

Defense. The defense wasn’t perfect last night and it got off to an abysmal start (see: Kyle Kendrick‘s highly misguided pickoff attempt which allowed George Springer to go from first to third). But it did a lot of things well, most especially Justin Miller‘s barehanded grab and put out in the 8th and Troy Tulowitzki‘s sweet throw from deep in the hole that was beautifully scooped by Rosario in the 9th. Rosario generally played great defense, remembering to keep his foot on the bag and everything all night long.

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Tulo. He wasn’t perfect either (see: strikeout to end the 8th inning), but he did collect a pair of hits and pushed his batting average up over .300. He looked, as he has of late, like a clean-up hitter again.

Cargo. Carlos Gonzalez drove in a pair of runs on a sacrifice fly and a home run positively crushed to right field in the 9th. Of course, the Rockies were still down by 4 after that, so it made exactly zero difference in the outcome, but it still happened. And it was good.

Boone Logan. It might be a bit of a stretch to call Logan a hero, but he did this: came in after John Axford failed to keep runs from scoring and didn’t allow any more. He walked the lefty he was brought in to face, but then managed to get the next batter, a righty, out. Normally the Rockies’ efforts to make Logan into a pitcher he was never destined to be fail miserably, but last night they did not.

Zeroes

Kyle Kendrick. Here are some numbers to make you sad: 34 pitches in the first inning. 3 walks and 1 strikeout. 2 home runs, one off the bat of recent call-up Carlos Correa, who is as good a power hitter as I’ve seen in a long time. All these things happened to Kendrick (or rather were caused by him) in the space of five innings, which is not nearly enough innings to constitute an acceptable start. Kendrick has shown signs that he can battle back from a tough first inning or two and finish a start well, but that is not what happened this time. Can’t do that to your bullpen during a huge stretch of games with no off-days. Can’t do that to your team when they’re counting on you to keep them in the game and giving you decent run support. Not cool, Kendrick.

Baserunning. It wouldn’t be a Rockies game without some TOOTBLANs, and there were some doozies. Charlie Blackmon thought he might steal second after singling in the 3rd, and he even appeared to succeed, but he couldn’t quite stay on the bag and the call was overturned. A number of other confusing things occurred in the course of this, and Walt Weiss was ejected after adding his own thoughts. All because of BASERUNNING! Even worse was Nolan Arenado singling in the 4th and then neglecting to notice that, despite a throw home, the second baseman had the ball before he could get there. It was barely a rundown, and Arenado lost.

Christian Friedrich/John Axford. Both gave up home runs in their short outings; neither did a darn thing to help the team win.

Umpires. Home plate ump Bob Davidson called a third strike on DJ LeMahieu that was about three feet off the plate. When umps are that incompetent, I no longer think any argument about keeping the “human element” in the game is valid.

Coors Field. In one of their between-innings contests, the good folks of Coors Field put three statements up on the screen and asked a fan to identify which was true. These are the three:

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1. Corey Dickerson was drafted by the Rockies in 2005.

2. Coors Field hosted the All-Star Game in 1999.

3. Charlie Blackmon went to Wichita State University.

If you’re like me, you’re puzzled by this list, in which all three statements are false. I wasn’t 100% sure when Dickerson was drafted, but ’05 felt way too long ago. It was. The All-Star Game was held in Denver in 1998. And Blackmon went to Georgia Tech. The “true” statement was #2. And when confronted by their Twitter followers, the Rockies insisted they were just trying to make sure we were paying attention. Oy vey.

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