The Colorado Rockies’ rotation has not been the most kind to Mile High fans in 2016, and Rockies’ MLB.com writer Thomas Harding attributes Walt Weiss‘ pitching struggles to overuse and not getting the job done.
“They do have some issues in the bullpen, and frankly, the issue right now is they’re just being used too much,” Harding told Gil Whiteley on Mile High Sports Radio. “Until they get that straight and it all comes down to the starting pitchers doing their job, this team’s going to be very up and down.”
Chad Bettis is unfortunately a prime example of this up-and-down performance. When Bettis is on his game, it’s impossible to make contact with a pitch. But when he’s not, he throws poorly-located, bad strikes.
One of the silver linings in the Rockies’ rotation, though, has been Jon Gray, who’s fanned 39 batters in just 45 innings of work. He was a big strikeout pitcher in his days at the University of Oklahoma, but his delivery wasn’t always sound. This unpredictability has carried over into the majors and left Gray searching for his identity as a starting pitcher: Is he still a strikeout hurler, or something different?
Gray was drafted in the 2013 amateur draft as a guy who would come in and stop a bad stretch, and while he has lived up to that at times this year, like Bettis, he remains somewhat inconsistent.
A bright light for Colorado, however, has come at the expense of Jorge De La Rosa. After seeing his ERA go above eleven, the Rockies put De La Rosa in the bullpen, where he’s found his niche. In his first bullpen outing in seven years, he threw two scoreless innings in Saturday’s 10-5 home loss to the Giants.
“I think this release stint can really help him because you don’t see all the time that he’s taken on the mound between pitches, and all the thinking that goes on, and all of the other stuff that gets in the way of pitching,” Harding said.
Colorado is in the midst of a four-game series with the lowly Cincinnati Reds, and this is a more than perfect time for the Rockies’ pitching to get rolling if they want their first NL West crown.
For more from Harding on the Rockies’ pitching situation, click on the podcast below…
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