The standings don’t lie.
As they awake this morning, the Rockies are the worst team in the major leagues.
And the reason is obvious.
All you have to do is listen to the crowd at Coors Field.
What put the rock in Rocktober, when the home team ran wild, all the way to the World Series? The pounding crack of Colorado bats.
Now, when the Rockies swing, they miss, or ground out weakly to shortstop to kill a rally, or leave a baserunner stranded as a scoring opportunity dies.
And the crowd groans.
This team has lost its identity, with each blown opportunity in the clutch, as a Colorado hitter takes another slow walk to the dugout.
“When you’re not hitting in the clutch, you want to pick your teammate up, you want to get the job done and sometimes you press too much. Bad things happen when you do that,” Rockies first baseman Todd Helton said Monday, after a 6-5 loss to St. Louis.
With a record of 12-20, the Rockies stink.
They are battling so many different problems that maybe the luckiest guy on the squad is shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, whose leg injury now prevents him from actively participating in this teeth-gnashing exercise night after night.
The easy scapegoat for any scuffling team is the pitching staff.
You can blame the Colorado pitchers all you want. And hopeless pipe-dreamers can beg general manager Dan O’Dowd to make a deal for a stopper who can chew up innings and spit out hitters.
But guess what.
Cy Young ain’t walking through the Colorado clubhouse door.
Here’s the truth.
Jeff Francis might be endlessly crafty, but he does not have the stuff to be a true ace.
When Ubaldo Jimenez blows away slugger Albert Pujols and serves up a fat double to the opposing pitcher, as the 24-year-old Colorado right-hander did in the span of four maddening innings against St. Louis, it only shows that fits and spurts of growth from a young hurler can make a manager pull out his hair with both hands.
If O’Dowd could not make a big trade for a pitcher at the deadline last season, he’s asking to be fleeced by getting in the market out of desperation now. What’s the best help the Rockies could find on the mound in this dire situation? Think Josh Fogg of Cincinnati, not Joe Blanton of Oakland.
Catch the hint?
If the Rockies are going to prevent this spring of discontent from becoming a summer of endless dog days, only the bats can rescue them.
Know that feeling when you’re already 15 minutes late to an appointment and all you see ahead of you on Interstate 25 is an endless steam of cars spewing exhaust and going nowhere fast? That’s the frustration Colorado manager Clint Hurdle now must endure when there’s gridlock on the basepaths for his hitters.
“It’s kind of like when you get caught in a traffic jam. One guy starts honking. A lot of people start honking,” Hurdle said.
Third baseman Garrett Atkins, forever unappreciated by Colorado management, carried the batting order’s most dangerous stick during an April to forget. He leads the ballclub in almost every meaningful offensive category.
But on a Rockies team that entered the series against St. Louis hitting a depressing .215 with runners in scoring position and two outs on the board, even Atkins failed to come through with the game tied 4-4 in the seventh inning.
With teammates on first and second, Atkins ended the chance for a two-out rally by slapping a lazy bouncer to shortstop.
“I knew they were going to try to pitch me inside there. Those are the kinds of pitches I was hitting two weeks ago. I just didn’t get a good swing in that at-bat,” Atkins said.
The crowd groaned.
That’s the No. 1 sound of spring in Colorado.
All the big, booming momentum this team gained during Rocktober?
It has struck out.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
