In an overall sense, the Colorado Rockies have made huge strides this season. Even if they do end up losing 100 games for the fourth straight season (there’s about a 50-50 chance as things stand), it’s not difficult to see how much better they’ve gotten in several facets of the game. They’re the most improved team in Major League Baseball – and by a wide margin.
But if they do hit the century mark once again, there will be one culprit.
It’s not the offense, which has improved immensely. They’ve become a fun lineup to watch. And the defense has been solid for the most part, as well. There are really good athletes out there chasing down balls that dropped for hits last season.
As for the pitching? Umm…well, not so much.
It’s easy to fall back on the lack of top-end talent on the Colorado pitching staff. That’s not in dispute. But what still needs to be examined – and where a drastic change needs to be made – is in the dugout.
The Rockies badly need a veteran presence as a pitching coach. The Alon Leichman experiment is a failure, and he needs to be replaced before next season.
It turns out that hiring a first-time pitching coach with an analytics background – and zero playing experience in American professional baseball – just didn’t work. I know; we’re all shocked.
Earlier in the season, Manager Warren Schaeffer put the brakes on having Leichman call pitches from the dugout. That was a dumb idea to begin with, and it was proven out. But the 36-year-old’s shortcomings as a big-league coach in terms of having never “been there, done that” have shown up in other ways. The clubhouse has unhappy veterans – like recently released Michael Lorenzen – and nervous young guys – like struggling Gabriel Hughes – on the staff that need a calming, steady hand to turn to. Since Schaeffer himself is still very young and inexperienced by big-league coaching standards, it would have made total sense to give him a pitching coach who was just the opposite, rather than a guy with a laptop.
Since this is just Year One of the rebuild, it’s not too late to change course for the better.
President of baseball operations Paul DiPodesta and company did – and still do – have plenty of guys to choose from. There are a slew of big-league, veteran pitchers who have turned into pitching coaches – and are up to date on analytics, as well. They could provide the number-crunching skills of Leichman while having actual playing experience and game-earned wisdom to fall back on. Heck, former Rockies pitcher Jerry DiPoto has proven that those guys can even turn into major-league general managers.
For instance, local coach Jason Hirsh should have already gotten a call from the Rockies. They know where to find him.
It really could be that simple.
As for the remaining five-plus weeks of this season: Releasing Lorenzen was probably overdue. It wasn’t working for the team, or for him. His stuff is fine, but as he continued to struggle, there was absolutely no one on the Rockies coaching staff he could turn to for help. He’ll go elsewhere and do better. And now that former top draft pick Hughes has thrown almost 40 big-league innings, has an ERA north of 6.60 and remains winless thus far, maybe the front office will look at both situations and start to examine their own role in these (and several other Rockies pitchers) struggles, too.
DePodesta proved a long time ago that analytics do have a place in modern baseball. But failing to pair all this additional info with the benefits of playing experience is like throwing a 0-2 pitch right down the middle. Make that mistake often enough, and it’s nearly impossible to come back from.
