Matt Herges is like a lot of other pitchers who’ve landed with the Rockies through the years. Long before calling Coors Field home, he called it certain other names. That, says Herges, makes this incredible run by the Rockies’ pitching staff even more incredible.
Sure, Coors Field isn’t the launching pad it once was, not even close, but it’s still a slice of heaven for hitters.
“This is Coors Field, elevation mile high,” Herges said. “You try to come up with an answer for how it could be happening.”
The answer, he says, lies in the Rockies’ clubhouse.
“I look around,” said Herges. “I look at the arms. I look at the makeups. I look at the stuff. I look at the consistency. It doesn’t surprise me.”
Here’s what Herges, not to mention everyone else in baseball, is talking about: Rockies pitchers have compiled a microscopic 2.07 earned run average in seven postseason games. Their starters have been superb (2.43) and their bullpen surreal (1.60).
It isn’t just October, though. When you strip away the hype, history and hysteria surrounding the Rockies’ 21-out-of-22-game winning streak, what you see is a team whose pitchers got hot at the same time. Fact: Rockies starters have allowed one earned run or fewer in half of the 22 games, and two or fewer in 14 of the 22.
So what’s the story?
The story of the Rockies’ pitching isn’t just about the Rockies’ pitching. It’s about rookies responding to a desperate call. It’s about a washed-up veteran – you just read a few of his comments – finding his fountain of youth in LoDo. It’s about throwing strikes and saving outs, thanks to the best team fielding percentage (.989) in baseball history.
Oh, and it’s about the humidor, too. What, you think all this would have happened if they still were playing altitude-ball at long-lost Coors Canaveral? Not a chance.
“It was huge in the history of our franchise to develop something that could help play a normal game, or at least close to a normal game,” said Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd. “I don’t think a lot of people have any grasp of really what it’s done to baseball in Colorado. It’s unfair to our players, too. They’re still judged from a national standpoint based on what it was before, and it’s not the same ballpark anymore.”
The humidor, says O’Dowd, “has changed the mind-set of our pitchers. I don’t think they’re afraid to attack the strike zone. They were before, and for good reason.”
The humidor, installed prior to the 2002 season, keeps baseballs closer to the manufacturer’s specifications. Before, when baseballs were stored in a closet, they would shrink in Denver’s dry air and become harder. The humidor hasn’t given Rockies pitchers an advantage so much as it has unburdened them of a disadvantage. In the process, it has fundamentally changed the way the game is played at Coors Field. The proof lies, among other places, in the number of walks allowed by the home team.
Colorado pitchers allowed 504 walks during the season, the third-fewest in the National League. Only San Diego (474) and Cincinnati (482) allowed fewer. By contrast, only once in franchise history have the Rockies yielded fewer than 504 walks – in 1994, when they allowed 448 in a season shortened by 45 games by a labor squabble.
So what would life be like for Rockies pitchers if the humidor hadn’t come along?
“Then we’d be pitching with Titleists out there,” said Rockies pitching coach Bob Apodaca. “That’s the biggest difference. It wasn’t a level playing field. Now we’re pitching with Rawlings. The ballpark is fair. It just allows us to have the same advantages or disadvantages as anybody in baseball.”
While the humidor lies at the beginning of the Rockies’ pitching success, several other factors have surfaced in the middle and the end. Attitude, for one thing.
“I heard the horror stories before I accepted the job,” said Apodaca, in his fifth season of giving sermons on the mound. “The most important thing we got across to them is ‘Who cares?”‘ said Apodaca. “This is your job. It doesn’t matter if you’re pitching at Death Valley or at Coors Field. You still have certain things to do.
“You still have to work the strike zone. … You still have to pitch inside. You still have to change speeds. … Millions of people go to work every day carrying a lunch pail and they deal with where they work. That was our attitude.”
The list of contributors to the Rockies’ pitching run begins with No. 1 starter Jeff Francis, he of the franchise-record 17 wins, and winds its way to the back of the bullpen, where closer Manny Corpas turned out the lights on the Phillies and Diamondbacks five times in the Rockies’ seven playoff wins.
By now, you know the other names. Herges, who had to beg to get a look-see in spring training, has been nails in middle relief. Brian Fuentes more often than not has owned the eighth inning. And rookies Ubaldo Jimenez and Franklin Morales provided a huge lift down the stretch for a starting staff decimated by injuries.
The starters’ ability to go deeper into games, says Fuentes, has had a residual effect on the bullpen, which is fresher in October than it was known to be in July or August in the pre-humidor days.
“It’s been huge,” Fuentes said. “Everything works to form when you’re able to go six innings and hand the ball over to your seventh-, eighth- and ninth-inning guys. We don’t expect it every night, but the starters are giving it to us.”
In turn, the bullpen is shutting down – OK, mowing down – opposing hitters in the late innings.
“They’ve done more than their job this year,” said Francis. “There have been times when we haven’t done our jobs. Before September, they were running ragged. They were running out there throwing more innings than the starters were. They picked us up and we picked them up, and right now we’re running on all cylinders.
“It seems like we’ve got the right guys at the right time.”
Jim Armstrong: 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com
