Colorado Rockies: 5 Things The Team Must Do Before All-Star Break

Walt Weiss Must Trust His Pitchers More

If the starter doesn’t go deep into the game, the bullpen is brought into action sooner than hoped. When this occurs, we often see the reliever brought into the game to face just one hitter, sometimes two.

Weiss likes to play the matchup game, going with the percentages. Though this is honorable, there have been games where one reliever has been very effective in getting one or two outs, and then he is pulled to create a matchup with a particular hitter.

This has sometimes worked out fine, but there have been many times that this strategy has failed. And when it doesn’t work, another reliever is brought in and then very quickly you have blown through your bullpen within a couple of innings.

Weiss is a smart baseball man – he wouldn’t be a major league manager if he wasn’t. But continuing to ring the changes in the bullpen to create matchups is detrimental to the long-term health of the pen over the rest of the season.

We saw last season the bullpen was “gassed” by the end of May which resulted in players being brought up and down to keep fresh arms on the team.

The next three games is a tiny sample, but Weiss needs to give each reliever used the maximum opportunity to be effective when they are called in. If a certain guy gets you two easy outs, leave him in. If he can’t get anyone out and runs are scored as the result, then bring in somebody else.

Trust your pitchers. Let’s see what happens.

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