Colorado Rockies: German Marquez has rough outing against the Dodgers

Thus far on the spring, the Colorado Rockies starting pitchers have struggled a bit in spring training. One of them is German Marquez as yesterday, he was tagged for eight runs in Colorado’s 13-7 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Prior to his outing on Monday, Rockies starting pitcher German Marquez had pitched very well, as he had an ERA of 1.80 in five innings. However, he was rocked in 2 2/3 innings of work against the Los Angeles Dodgers as he allowed 9 hits and 8 runs (all earned).

With that outing, his spring training ERA ballooned to 10.57. It also dropped the Rockies to a 6-10 record.

In his outing on Monday, Marquez was working on his changeup, which he had been working a lot on this offseason.

“I worked really hard on the changeup,” Marquez said. “I need to be able to use that pitch in a game. When I got here, my changeup was located well. Every bullpen, every outing, it’s getting better” (h/t Thomas Harding of MLB.com).

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On Monday, though, he said that his main problem was his fastball.

“From the beginning, I felt like my fastball was a little up, and I was being quick [in the delivery] from the front,” Marquez said (h/t, again, to Thomas Harding).

Rockies manager Bud Black also had some thoughts on Marquez’s outing. He quickly noted that it was spring training. He also noted that his pitch location was “terrible” (h/t Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post).

Black also added that Marquez’s “delivery looked good and the breaking ball to (strike out Cody Bellinger in the first inning) was really good,” Black said. “But the fastball was up and the pitch to [Matt] Kemp was a hanger, [and] he hung a lot of pitches today” (h/t Saunders).

Final Thoughts

As Black noted, it’s spring training. Often, the team’s that do the worst in spring end up doing pretty well.  Check out the past three seasons standings in Spring Training and there really isn’t any correlation.

One example of a team, though, that did very well in the regular season after a poor Spring Training was the 2016 Chicago Cubs. They had the second to worst record in the Cactus League in 2016 and, of course, won the World Series.

Next: Rockies PSA: It's still spring training

In other words, to the fans that are panicking out there, read the PSA above. There isn’t a need to panic.