Carlos Gonzalez lay in front of his locker Sunday afternoon, hair disheveled and an exhausted but angry expression on his face.
There was no music in the Rockies’ clubhouse, baseball’s way of signaling disappointment. There was no chatter among the few teammates who were lingering about. The player who had hit his 16th home run, leaving him on pace for the finest Rockies season in a decade, was staring at his cellphone in disbelief.
The Rockies have lost 35 times this season, including 10-8 on Sunday to cap an interleague series sweep by the Los Angeles Angels at Coors Field, but never like this.
The starting pitching has been abysmal — and that didn’t change Sunday — but even when a hitter squared up a ball perfectly it produced an ugly splatter.
Rather than trigger a dramatic ninth-inning rally, Gonzalez found himself at the epicenter of a controversy for not running after a bizarre 1-6-3 double play short-circuited the Rockies’ comeback.
“That’s the way things are going right now. It’s (expletive),” Gonzalez said. “(Angels pitcher Scott Downs) caught the ball. It was a catch. I watched the replay. I saw him catch it. I shut it down because I thought I was out. I was looking toward first base when (plate umpire Greg Gibson) called no catch. I turned around and his hands were down.”
What followed was confusion, a tantrum and a familiar conclusion. Colorado remained winless in interleague play (0-6), horrible on Sunday (8-27 the last two seasons) and left to wonder who will pull the rip cord on this latest downward spiral.
The play in question went down like this: With the Rockies trailing by two runs in the ninth, Marco Scutaro singled off Downs, a reliever. Gonzalez followed with a missile at the left-hander’s head. Downs reached up and appeared to catch the ball before losing it as he transferred it to his throwing hand. Gibson ruled otherwise, walking in front of the plate and signaling no catch, leaving Gonzalez an easy mark. The Rockies outfielder had turned toward the dugout. The result was an awkward double play.
Downs said he never had the ball. Rockies manager Jim Tracy was convinced he did, screaming to Gibson that it was a catch before receiving his first ejection of the season as the paid crowd of 37,722 booed.
“I felt like he caught it,” Tracy said, his voice hoarse from his unsuccessful argument.
The call reshaped the inning dramatically. At the very least, there would have been one man on and one out. Instead there was no one on base and no chance. The call, while hardly to blame for the defeat, stung more since the Rockies’ only recourse against poor starting pitching (14.89 ERA during the five-game losing streak) has been their ability to land haymakers offensively. That’s how they erased a five-run deficit in the second inning, with CarGo and Tyler Colvin homering.
The Rockies hit five home runs Saturday and lost. They had 13 hits Sunday and lost again. Nobody is pointing fingers, but it’s obvious that the rotation is undermining any chance of this team reaching even mediocrity.
“This is tough to take. It really is,” Tracy said. “But for us to stay true to the way we left spring training, we are going to go out there and whatever circumstances show up, we have to defeat them. We can’t let this demoralize us, where we just start showing up. That’s when I would walk into the clubhouse. But there’s no reason to, other than to encourage them.”
