Colorado Rockies: Is Germán Márquez tipping pitches? The stats suggest he is

These kinds of conversations on the on deck circle usually only consist one type of subject matter and it’s usually summarized by “Here’s what the pitcher’s doing” or “his pitches are moving like this” or something along those lines.

With how Astudillo reacts, it’s telling me that Rojas likely said something along the lines of “X means fastball, X means offspeed” and then something else that gives Astudillo that strange reaction.

Why was that conversation important for Germán Márquez and the Rockies?

After the Rojas’ homer, we see Jacob Stallings hit a single off of Márquez in the very next at-bat. This puts a runner on, but not in scoring position, which is where Márquez is his worst and where I believe he’s tipping his pitches the most. Astudillo is the next batter and hits the first pitch, a 93 MPH sinker, out for a home run to left field.

In the fourth inning, we have a similar result happen. Márquez walks Jesus Aguilar and the next batter, Jesús Sánchez, hits another home run off a 1-1 sinker. Márquez would go on to give up two more runs that inning, aided by fielding errors, and then have a clean fifth inning to finish his night.

So knowing all this, it begs the question: What is Márquez doing when runners are on to tip his pitches?

And I don’t have that answer, but I think I’ve found a correlation that lines up with the splits we’ve seen earlier.