In the first inning of the Jon Gray era, the pitcher of our hopes and dreams threw a 97 mph fastball before allowing himself to exhale with a nervous sigh as big as the Rockies.
“I told myself to ‘stay back. And settle the nerves.’ It was really difficult doing it pitch to pitch. But eventually I got there,” Gray said Tuesday.
In Colorado, we build our sports heroes larger than life. At 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds, Gray fits the part. By any standard measure, he’s bigger than a young John Elway. But what made Elway an NFL legend was far more than his obvious physical gifts. Rather than melt, Elway stood taller under the spotlight’s glare.
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“The X factor is how a guy responds to pressure and failure. Because it’s inevitable,” Rockies manager Walt Weiss said.
Although Gray can bring the heat to qualify as a bona fide power arm, when he tried to overpower Seattle hitters in the top of the first inning, it was not pretty. He chucked fastballs on 11 of 12 pitches to open the game but also worked himself into a jam that allowed the Mariners to dent him for two runs.
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The 97 mph reading on the radar gun appeared on a three-ball, no-strike count, when a Jedi master of the fireball such as Curt Schilling would’ve saved his nastiest stuff for that swing and a miss to close out an inning. At this point in his development, it was only when Gray allowed his heartbeat to slow enough to snap off wicked sliders that he began to resemble the pitching ace Colorado so desperately needs.
After four innings and a mere 77 deliveries to home plate, Gray was gone to the showers as the most-anticipated pitching debut in franchise history faded to black. For those chiseling history in granite at home, his statistical highlights included: five hits, three runs (two earned), two walks and four strikeouts in a game in which Gray did not figure in the decision of a 10-4 Colorado loss.
But maybe here’s the only number that really matters from Gray’s debut: On a balmy August evening, 34,376 fans bought tickets to Coors Field, and it wasn’t to watch the last-place Rockies.
Pardon the cynicism, but for a precious commodity the club has handled more carefully than a Fabergé egg, the rollout of Gray seemed almost as much like a marketing ploy as a baseball decision. While shortstop Troy Tulowitzki has moved on to a better place and won six of his seven games with Toronto, we don’t need no stinking pennant race in Colorado, do we? Not when we’ve got sunny summer days and Gray on the bump at night.
The Rockies steadfastly refused to rush the third overall pick of the 2013 draft to the majors, with the explanation that when Gray did arrive in Denver, management wanted him to assume the job of ace, rather than ease into the role of a back-of-the-rotation starter. I understand the patience part of the equation. But this shaky logic also seems to heap responsibility on Gray to show from the jump that a Colorado franchise guilty of messing up too many arms to count has finally gotten one right.
“What I think trumps all of that, though, is our baseball people truly felt like he wasn’t ready to take on this role, mentally and emotionally,” said Weiss, telling me why Gray didn’t pitch in LoDo sooner. “Physically, I don’t think there were any doubts. But on some of the finer points of running out there to the mound and pitching against major-league hitters, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t a kid who really experienced a lot as an amateur. He didn’t grow up pitching in big showcases. He was actually relatively uncelebrated as an amateur, until he got to college at Oklahoma, where he was the guy.”
At age 23, is Gray ready to be the man? On the same mound where Gray stood, we’ve watched the hope pinned on pitchers — whether they possessed the talent of Mike Hampton and Ubaldo Jimenez, or were plagued by the self-destructive apprehensions of Greg Reynolds and Jeremy Guthrie — deflate like a balloon with a slow leak.
The broad shoulders of Gray were built to carry the weight of a downtrodden baseball city’s expectations. But it’s the ego that gets broken by Coors Field.
When throwing a slider at 5,280 feet above sea level, failure is inevitable.
It’s how Gray deals with those failures that will determine if he can make us all believe a major-league baseball team can again dream of success in Colorado.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
