This road trip to Miami has served as a gut check for the Rockies. They lost their best pitcher, Tyler Chatwood, to injury on Saturday, and after a 3-0 defeat on Sunday, Colorado has lost the first three games of the four-game series.
That fourth game will be played on Monday night, and the team hopes they can salvage a win and not fall too far behind the Dodgers and Giants in the NL West.
“They feel down there they are just incapable on generating any offense,” said Ed Henderson, Rockies insider and MLB scout, who joined Sean Walsh on the Weekend Drive on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7. “They just haven’t been able to do anything, I think they have had one good inning of offense down there in the three game series.”
This is an issue the Rockies haven’t had to face much this season. Their offense has been on a tear, putting them sixth in the MLB with a .268 team batting average. In the series, though, the Rockies have only had 11 hits so far, and in one of the games, they managed just one hit. The pitching staff has not been stellar, either, as they surrendered 17 runs in three games, with nine of those coming in the game on Saturday.
This might be an altitude-change problem for the Rockies. Coors Field sits at the highest altitude of any stadium in the MLB and Marlins Park is one of the lowest, only 15 feet above sea level. The elevation change can affect many different aspects of the game. For one, the ball does not fly as far in the humid air of Florida, which can change the way an offense is run.
“That ballpark there is just not one that is conducive to the kind of offense that the Rockies have,” said Henderson. “They just seem to struggle constantly in Miami.”
In the last 16 meetings between the two, the Rockies have gone 5-11. Thankfully, this is the last time the Rockies will go to Miami this season, but the Marlins will come to the thin air of the Mile High City in August, when the Rockies can look to give them a taste of their own home-field advantage.
Check the rest of the conversation where Ed Henderson discusses the Rockies’ latest injuries and the José Reyes situation …
Catch the Weekend Drive with Sean Walsh Saturday and Sunday from 2p-4p on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7 or stream live any time for the best local coverage of Colorado sports from Denver’s biggest sports talk lineup.
