They say not to judge a pitcher by his debut.

They’re right, of course. But that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Last night, the Colorado Rockies’ top prospect, Jon Gray, made his Major League debut. Pitching in the friendly (sic) confines of Coors Field in the lowest-possible pressure situation that Rockies brass could dream up, Gray yielded three runs (two earned) over four innings of work in which he threw 77 pitches, 43 for strikes.

On the surface it looks like a mediocre result, but Gray threw a substantial number of those pitches (33) in the first inning, and it’s worth noting that if not for a throwing error by shortstop Jose Reyes, it would have been the only inning in which Gray surrendered a run as well.

Thus, it was mixed results for the Colorado Rockies’ most highly anticipated rookie debut in recent memory. But what now? The answer, unfortunately, is that we get to wait some more.

The Rockies chose to bring Gray up right now for a reason. With the trade of Troy Tulowitzki and a few tough losses to the Cardinals over the weekend, the last shred of hope for Colorado’s season (cue the “there was never a hope!” crowd) finally disappeared, leaving August and September for the franchise to treat their big league club like a two-month audition stage. There will be growing pains with Gray and that’s not what anyone wants to hear.

The reality is that the club’s movement a few years back to build a lineup to dominate Coors and shoot for .500 on the road came at a time when the rest of the league was realizing that baseball was moving into a pitcher’s era. Their steadfast devotion to “groundballs-only” pitchers came at a time when strikeouts were becoming more important than ever. All of this is to say that even if general manager Jeff Bridich has the team on the path to success, the long and arduous process back will start with very few road-ready travelers.

Gray has less than one year working in the minors on the emphases of Bridich, rather than Dan O’Dowd and Bill Geivett. What’s more, aside from the recently-acquired Jeff Hoffman, Gray is the only pitcher in the upper levels of the club’s minor league system that’s being heralded as anywhere close to big league readiness. And, speaking of Hoffman, we’ll probably be doing the same thing that we did with Gray last night a year from now when the centerpiece of the Tulo trade will likely make his own debut. Given the state of the Rockies pitching staff for the foreseeable future, it’s likely Hoffman’s debut will be in a game that’s equally as meaningless as was Gray’s.

Add all of that to Colorado’s new emphasis on obtaining high school players early in the draft (who take more developmental time), and it’s easy to see how the endless calls for patience might have worn a Rockies fan to the point of exasperation.

Of course, the most frustrating part about the Rockies is that we have no choice but to trust that Bridich has made enough changes from the ways of his predecessors to put the Rockies back into line with the rest of Major League Baseball.

Jon Gray’s debut was a bittersweet reminder of how long it could be before that question is answered.