Colorado Rockies: 5 Things We Learned From Friday’s Game in Atlanta

The All-Star break is finally over, after seeing CarGo and Nolan over the break it was good to see the whole team back on the diamond. The Colorado Rockies started the second half of the season in Atlanta for their last series at Turner Field. They started off right beating the Braves by a score of 11-2 behind another solid outing from Jorge De La Rosa, some good offense including a Ryan Raburn grand slam. Here are some takeaways from the Rockies win:

1. Rockies take advantage of Lucas Harrell‘s mistakes. The Colorado Rockies were able to turn Friday into a very, very, rough start for Atlanta starting pitcher Lucas Harrell. He only managed 3.2 innings as the Rockies chased him with 7 runs (5 earned).

The Rockies capitalized on lack of control from Harrell as two of the three walks he allowed were able to score. The Rockies also scored two unearned runs when Harrell fielded a swinging bunt from Trevor Story and threw it past Freddie Freeman allowing Nolan Arenado and Carlos Gonzalez to come home.

2. Arenado and CarGo continuing their all-star seasons. We had talked about Arenado maybe fighting some fatigue going into the break and it appears that the rest did him good. Arenado

went 2-for-3 with 2 walks, 3 runs and a RBI, his 71st of the season.  Gonzalez also had three hits, a walk and a RBI, the result of a very solid two out at- bat in the first inning.

3. Jorge De La Rosa continues to pitch well. Jorge was able to rack up another quality start Friday earning his sixth win of the season. He pitched into the seventh inning when he was lifted in favor of Adam Ottavino after giving up an infield single to the lead-off hitter, Jace Peterson.

Jorge’s ERA in his last 5 starts is 3.09 and since returning to the rotation in mid-June De La Rosa has a quality start in 5 of 6 games. The only non-quality start was his first game back against the Yankees where he pitched 5 innings of shut-out baseball but was removed early because he was not stretched out.

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It will be interesting to see how the Rockies handle De La Rosa at the deadline as he could help a team with a playoff push, whether Jeff Bridich thinks that could be the case is unknown.

4. Adam Ottavio progresses to more “meaningful” innings. Walt Weiss said in an interview today that “I may start giving him more meaningful innings, higher-leverage situations.” Friday, Adam was inserted into the game in the seventh inning with a 7-2 lead. He walked the first man and then got Adonis Garcia to ground into a fielder’s choice, on an impressive play by Arenado (typical).

Ottavino was then taken out for Boone Logan who got Freddie Freeman to ground into a double play to end the inning. It will be interesting to see how Walt handles Ottavino and if he will eventually resume his role as closer or be a set up man to Carlos Estevez.

5. The Braves aren’t very good. At the start of the game, especially, the Braves looked bad. The Rockies scored 2 runs on an error in the 4th inning, and Arenado was able to get on base after a dropped third strike as well as hustling his way to first for an infield base hit. The interesting part about the infield base hit was it was on a slow grounder to the left side, where the Braves had shifted three guys to.

The Braves had 2 errors, one passed ball, two wild pitches (with a nice audio clip from AJ Pierzynski) and walked 7 Rockies, just ugly. Mostly, it is refreshing as a Rockies fan to realize we are much better off than some teams and be on the “our team is better” side of the fence.

Next: Colorado Rockies: 3 More Hypothetical Trades

The Rockies and Braves are at again at Turner Field tomorrow at 5:10pm ET. Chad Bettis will face off with Mike Foltynewicz. The Rockies will try to continue to establish themselves as contenders with a relatively easy schedule out of break.