Was this Mother Nature’s idea of a cruel joke? She stopped the rain drenching Denver long enough to force the Rockies to play twice Wednesday.
Yes, Colorado lost two times to Arizona, dropping both ends of a doubleheader. Did you really have to ask?
The rock-bottom Rockies are a Little League team dressed up in big-league uniforms. Or so it seems. Let us count the ways this ballclub has become an embarrassment to a grand old game and a great city.
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The good folks of Denver, which loves sports like few other towns in America, have finally taken to heart that infamous piece of advice of Rockies owner Dick Monfort: “If the product and experience are that bad, don’t come!”
Coors Field might be the saddest place on Earth. At least in the sports world.
As ominous bolts of lightning flashed behind a giant scoreboard displaying nothing but bad news, Monfort was surrounded by 40,000 empty seats as he watched his team fall into last place.
Think the paying customers are sending you a message, Mr. Monfort?
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There’s no reason for fans disgruntled with Rockies ownership to organize a boycott. This team might not be able to throw strikes or score runs, but it has mastered the art of rolling up the sidewalks early in LoDo.
After being shoved into the National League West basement by the Diamondbacks, Colorado has lost seven consecutive times, by a combined score of 65-25.
During a 13-7 drubbing by Arizona in the first game of the doubleheader, Rockies starting pitcher Tyler Matzek did the near impossible, and threw what might be the most inept performance I have ever witnessed on the mound at Coors Field, where ERAs go to die. In the first inning, he loaded the bases in an amazingly economical 13 pitches. By the time Matzek was mercifully yanked by manager Walt Weiss in the third inning, Matzek had managed to throw only 20 strikes in 58 pitches, the lowest strike percentage in a major-league game since 2000.
Under threatening skies of the second game, won 5-1 by Arizona, the crowd was so small that every attempt to heckle of the umpire sounded like a personal insult and the rendition of the “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch sounded like a bad night in a karaoke bar. For much of the game, Monfort sat alone in the first row behind the home team’s dugout, and there were maybe 1,200 fans in the ballpark when Colorado hitters went down without a fight in the bottom of the ninth.
The Rockies have become so lifeless that even when Weiss gets ejected by the umpire he goes almost without a fight.
After arguing balls and strikes with home-plate umpire Bill Miller during the third inning of Game 2, Weiss got tossed. But before retiring for the evening, the Colorado manager did his slow Eeyore “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms” trudge onto the field to say farewell to Miller with little more than a whimper.
“We had some differences in the strike zone,” Weiss said.
Weiss is not Lou Piniella, a manager who would go crazy on the ump and kick up a storm of protest merely to till the infield dirt. If Weiss gets ejected, there’s serious frustration with a sorry situation that has no easy answers.
“There’s no magic pill,” Weiss said.
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After enduring a miserable display of baseball that began shortly after 1 p.m. and did not end until almost seven hours later, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki sat in the dugout and stared long and hard at the Colorado’s field of recurring nightmares.
“I care,” Tulowitzki said as the clock in the Rockies clubhouse passed 8 o’clock. “I can be in this clubhouse until midnight, which I probably will be. So what’s 10 minutes out there (in the dugout) to let it soak in a little bit? I care.”
No reliable pitching. No timely hitting. No reason for hope on the horizon. Only dark clouds everywhere.
Only an act of God can save the Rockies now.
The only way we’re going to be spared from bad baseball is if it rains for 40 days and 40 nights.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
Slip slidin’ away
Colorado dropped a doubleheader Wednesday to Arizona and now has a seven-game losing streak:
April 28: 12-5 at Arizona
D-backs score three runs in three separate innings.
April 29: 9-1 at Arizona
Josh Collmenter pitches eight solid innings.
May 1: 14-3 at San Diego
Rockies commit four errors; Padres with eight-run eighth.
May 2: 4-2 at San Diego
Rockies go 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
May 3: 8-6 at San Diego
Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon both homer twice … in another loss.
May 6: 13-7 to Arizona, Game 1
Aaron Hill has a career-high four RBIs as D-backs jump out to 9-0 lead after four innings.
May 6: 5-1 to Arizona, Game 2
Jordan Lyles goes seven innings, a rarity for a Rockies starter, but it’s not enough.
