So far, the story of the Rockies’ season is actually two stories.
Injuries, for one. In the end, Jorge De La Rosa’s season-ending elbow injury may be too difficult to overcome. And who knew in early April that something so seemingly minor as a torn cuticle would impact Ubaldo Jimenez so much for so long?
Trouble is, nobody else cares if you’re banged up, especially the Giants, who’ve had major injury issues of their own, what with Buster Posey gone for the season, Jonathan San- chez on the disabled list and Pablo Sandoval searching for his swing after missing almost seven weeks.
The fact that the Giants have been able to stay in first place in the midst of such an injury crisis speaks of two things: their top-shelf starting pitching and the mediocre nature of the National League West.
That brings us to the second story of the Rockies’ season: wasted opportunities. They’ve given away games. They’ve hit when they didn’t pitch and pitched when they didn’t hit. The bullpen has had some hiccups, and the rotation, sans De La Rosa and the steady Aaron Cook of old, is leaking oil.
You want to talk wasted opportunities? How about this stat out of deep left field: The Rockies have lost the last eight games in which Ty Wigginton has homered. He hit two in two of those games, including Sunday at Yankee Stadium, but the Rockies couldn’t pull either one out.
In the aftermath of De La Rosa’s injury and all those wasted opportunities, what you have is your basic mediocre team. The Rockies win some, they lose some. They have their good games and their bad games. May turns to June, and June soon will turn to July.
Talk about spinning your wheels. Since May 10, when the Rockies stood four games over .500 at 19-15, they haven’t been more than four games over .500 or four games under .500. They haven’t won more than four in a row, and haven’t lost more than four in a row.
That’s more than six weeks of treading water. You can’t bury them, given some of their late runs in years past and the Giants’ injury situation. But the time has come to ask the question: Does this year’s version of the Rockies have a run in it?
Not with Cook and Juan Nicasio at the bottom of the rotation, it doesn’t. And while we’re on the subject, yes, he’s had a lot of bad luck, but Jason Hammel is 4-7.
The Rockies need help. Now. But it’s more than that. They need a jolt, one that can only come from outside the organization. If I’m Dan O’Dowd, I don’t wait until the trading deadline to make something happen.
