Eighteen games from the halfway mark of the baseball season, how many bunt hits do you suppose it takes to lead the National League?
Ten? Fifteen?
The answer is five. Where have you gone, Pete Rose?
The Rockies aren’t big on bunting. They play in a big park, aspire to big hits and take big, beautiful swings. They have fleet players such as Dexter Fowler and Eric Young Jr. for whom the bunt is a foreign language.
And so it was that Carlos Gonzalez, installed lately as the leadoff hitter in an attempt to kick-start a moribund offense, stepped to the plate with one out in the fifth inning of a 1-0 game Friday night at Coors Field and dropped a bunt down the third-base line.
Shocked as everyone else, the Dodgers’ Casey Blake raced in, picked it up and made a wild throw to first. Gonzalez legged it to second on the error. The offense thus ignited, the Rocks proceeded to plate five runs on seven hits in the inning — all singles — and ride Jhoulys Chacin’s three-hit pitching to their fourth win in five games.
Well, they rode until the ninth, when the absence of strategic thinking in the modern game reared its ugly head again. More on that in a minute.
What CarGo did in the fifth is what used to be known in baseball as making something happen. What the Rocks generally do each inning is send three men to the plate, each of whom swings as hard as he can in hopes of hitting the ball a long way.
“I’m supposed to be the guy who gets on base now,” Gonzalez said. “As soon as I got to third base, Casey Blake told me that he wasn’t expecting that bunt. I’m the kind of player who doesn’t do that very often, but whenever the situation is in front of me and the game is still close, especially early in the game, I’m going to take my chances and put myself in a good position and put the team in a good position.”
Gonzalez moved into a tie with Jonathan Herrera for the club lead in bunt base hits. With three.
“He saw they were somewhat shifted towards the pull side, and Casey Blake shifted more towards the 5-6 hole and back as far as he was,” manager Jim Tracy said. “And Chris Nelson gets a base hit and here you go. That’s the five-run inning right there, and the bunt is what started it.”
If CarGo’s play was old-school, the unnecessary close call in the ninth was all too new-school. Leading 6-0 heading into the ninth, Tracy removed Todd Helton from the game as part of a double-switch that inserted Herrera, who had pinch-hit in the eighth, at second, moved Nelson from second to third and Ty Wigginton from third to first.
For a single defensive half-inning, who would you rather have at first, Helton or Wigginton? I understand saving Helton wear and tear, but we’re talking one half-inning, and Helton is scheduled to get the day off today anyway.
With Chacin gone after eight shutout innings and 112 pitches, Matt Belisle sandwiched two outs around a Matt Kemp home run and a James Loney single. No big deal. The lead was 6-1 and Dioner Navarro grounded to third.
Ballgame. Right?
Uh, no. Nelson’s throw to first was in the dirt, the kind of play Helton has made look routine for 15 years. Wigginton couldn’t handle it. So the inning went on. And on.
Ultimately, closer Huston Street was required to save a 6-5 win with the tying run on base. So I asked Tracy why he removed Helton.
“Well, because of the fact that as much as we’ve been grinding on him, and the fact of feeling like at 6-0 you’re in a very, very good place, and Todd also a guy that’s going to get a day off (today). We’ve been pushing that pretty well and I just wanted to get him out of there. I don’t feel personally that’s the reason why they ended up back in the game at 6-5.”
You don’t think he has a better chance than Wigginton to make the play on Nelson’s throw?
“Yeah, he does, he does, but we removed him from the game,” Tracy said.
Here’s what I think happened: Helton was the last batter in the eighth. Pulling your last batter in a double-switch is a National League manager’s reflex. In this case, it didn’t make any sense because the Rocks weren’t coming to bat again so it didn’t matter where the pitcher was inserted in the order.
On the bright side, as CarGo demonstrated, old-school thinking is making a comeback. The Rocks need more of it.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
