Colorado Rockies: Bud Black on momentum and no fans in the stands

The Colorado Rockies can’t have fans at games in 2020 due to the pandemic. Fans can either help or hurt a team depending on how they’re playing, but Bud Black says he is trying to not to think about that.

The Colorado Rockies have lost three games in a row and four out of their last five, meaning the team is in their first skid of the 2020 campaign. The pitching staff has faltered, as they have allowed more than a dozen hits in four of those five games and their staff ERA has ballooned from 2.84 to 3.99.

When players are doing well (or doing poorly), they can help boost (or put down) teams in key situations. However, due to the pandemic, that has disappeared.

In the ninth inning of Saturday’s loss, for example, with two outs and the tying run at the plate in Trevor Story, who was 3-for-4 on the evening, a crowd of 40,000+ people could have potentially gotten to the nerves of the pitcher, Rafael Montero, or helped Story. But that didn’t happen because nobody was there.

After the game, Rockies manager Bud Black spoke with the media, including Rox Pile, and he was asked about the fan presence for key situations like that. Here’s what he had to say.

"“I don’t think about it, because the reality is it’s (having fans in stadiums) not happening so I don’t go there,” said Black. “We know what’s in front of us. The players on both sides know, and all baseball knows how we’re playing this, so I don’t think about that at all … You know, obviously, the entertainment value of a game with, you know, filled packed houses is awesome.“You know, players are entertainers. I think they’d like playing on stage. They like showing their talents. They can feed off the crowd. That’s both the visiting team and the home team. You know, that works both ways. I think the home team obviously can be uplifted by the fans and a visiting team can act as the villain, but the reality is there’s no fans so I personally don’t focus on it and I think that that our group is playing the game hard and playing with focus and intensity so it doesn’t really have an impact on how we go about it.”"

In other words, the fan presence can a huge thing for teams to gain that momentum (or lose it) but since having fans in stadiums is “not happening” in 2020, at least by what Bud Black thinks, it’s something that the Rockies and the other teams have to deal with, whether they like it or not.

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Even with their current skid, the San Diego Padres are in a worse skid (they’ve lost four in a row) so the Rockies would still make the playoffs. The lack of fans in the playoffs, when games are almost always sold out, will be a huge thing to see how teams handle it.

How will a World Series celebration be when you played 102 less regular-season games and not a single fan was in attendance of it. Will it be at a neutral site stadium so fans won’t even be able to peek through the gates to see their favorite team?

If the Toronto Blue Jays make it in the playoffs, they will have their home games in a different country, since they can’t play games in Toronto. If it’s at their “home” stadium and they get to and win the World Series, they would be accomplishing that feat in a Triple-A stadium.

But for now, the Rockies aren’t focusing on it and trying to get back on track to salvage a game of the series. They will try at 1:10 p.m. (Mountain) when Colorado’s Jon Gray takes the mound against left-hander Kolby Allard.