Colorado Rockies: A look at their recent struggles show a problem

Even though the Colorado Rockies had a big win on Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are now six games back of both the NL West lead and the second NL Wild Card and whose playoff chances are virtually zero now, the Rockies have still have a 1.5 game deficit on the Dodgers (who lost on Friday) for the division and the Cardinals in the second Wild Card spot. In their last seven games (and for much of the season), the reason why they have struggled is because of one thing: their anemic offense.

The Rockies offense has been one of the worst in all of baseball. Despite the frequent phrase of the optimists saying that “you just know they’ll hit” since they play half of their games at Coors Field, the numbers say otherwise (88 OPS+, which is 5th worst in baseball).

If you have watched the Rockies on this extended road trip, you have definitely seen it in action too. In fact, you can just look at how many times we have done articles on the offensive struggles recently.

This has been due to a few things: the lack of players stepping up and delivering good at-bats, players who the Rockies have relied on in the past at the plate struggling mightily, injuries (e.g. Trevor Story), and (the biggest one of all) the front office not looking at the team objectively and seeing that acquiring a fourth catcher in Drew Butera was not the answer to help an abysmal offense.

On their current long road trip, they have played seven games and they have lost five of the seven (including three in their three games against the Dodgers). In this span, the Rockies pitching staff has pitched very well (3.79 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, .241 BA) but the Rockies offense has been awful, to put it mildly.

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Including their 6-2 win on Friday, on this road trip, the Rockies are averaging 2.1 runs per game with only one home run and 15 total runs with a slash line of .170/.240/.216. If you look at the first six games of their road trip, they hit .158/.230/.195 and averaged 1.5 runs per game.

In this span, Nolan Arenado is hitting .172/.172/.207 in this span and in his past 22 games in general, he’s hitting .205/.250/.386 with only 18 hits, 3 homers, and 12 RBI.

In his past 15 games, Carlos Gonzalez is hitting .125/.183/.196 with only seven hits and 3 RBI. On this road trip, he has only played in four games but he is 1-for-13 with a single and two walks.

DJ LeMahieu is hitting .143/.167/.214 on the roadtrip with two doubles and three RBI. In his past 22 games in general, he is hitting .250/.300/.446.

Final Thoughts

If it wasn’t obvious before, it should be obvious now that the Rockies made a colossal mistake in not getting help offensively in July or August. If the season were to end today, they would be at home watching ten other teams taking part in the playoffs.

This would be for a few different things but it would be one big thing that most people could see from a mile away: the anemic offense.