NEW YORK — To understand how well Carlos Gonzalez is playing, don’t listen to him. Listen to those talking about him.
“I don’t ever remember seeing someone barrel so many balls up,” first baseman Todd Helton said. “Everything he hits is hard.”
The ball makes a different sound off Gonzalez’s bat. It’s loud, as if shot from a cannon.
Over the past 11 games, he’s gone 24-for-48 with eight home runs, leaving him on pace to finish with 36. Even though he wasn’t an all-star, a victim of too many outfielders and the inexplicable need for a utility player on the team, Gonzalez is in the MVP discussion.
“Just like with Ubaldo (Jimenez) for the first two months of this season, I don’t know what else I can say about this guy and what he’s done,” manager Jim Tracy said of Gonzalez, who is hitting .327 with 25 home runs and 77 RBIs.
Most impressive about Gonzalez is his improvement against left-handers. He hit just two home runs against them last season compared with 11 this year, the most by any left-hander against a lefty this season.
“I have never seen anything like it,” pitcher Jeff Francis said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Footnotes.
The Rockies arrive at Citi Field at a time when the Mets’ season is on the brink of collapse. In what was viewed as a make-or- break road trip through Atlanta and Philadelphia, the Mets went 2-4. A big reason? David Wright and Carlos Beltran combined went 5-for-45 with two RBIs. . . . Left fielder Jason Bay, who has homered in just four games this season, is out with concussion-like symptoms. . . . The Rockies haven’t won a road series against the Mets since 2002. Since then, they’ve gone 4-20, including 1-3 last season.
Troy E. Renck, The Denver Post
