NEW YORK — A huddled mass of Rockies convened on the mound in the fifth inning Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. Their manager and a trainer and every infielder leaned in. In the middle stood rookie right-hander Jon Gray, the weight of worry on his shoulders.
Effectively wild is one thing. But Gray’s four innings against New York looked like something else. He yanked a fastball through the batter’s box to walk Brett Gardner on five pitches. And he flattened a curveball that pelted Carlos Beltran in the arm.
Something was wrong. The Rockies pulled Gray with no delay, with what the team is calling arm fatigue. He will be re-evaluated Thursday.
“It’s been that way for a couple weeks,” Gray said. “It’s just now getting to a serious point.”
Already down an ace after Tyler Chatwood wrenched his back pitching in Miami during the weekend, the Rockies return home Thursday with even more concern for a suddenly hobbled pitching staff. Combined with lefty Chris Rusin, who’s on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation, the Rockies could be without their three best ERAs just when the schedule gets tricky.
In their next 13 games, the Rockies will face the surging Arizona Diamondbacks, Troy Tulowitzki and the Toronto Blue Jays, the potent Los Angeles Dodgers and the division-leading San Francisco Giants.
“His arm felt heavy,” Colorado manager Walt Weiss said of Gray. “He didn’t look good from the get-go. Fastball command wasn’t there. There are always concerns when you have to take a pitcher out of the game for physical reasons.”
On Wednesday, the Rockies were primed for a season sweep in an interleague series agaisnt the Yankees. After scoring 27 runs in three games, two at Coors Field, the Rockies put up eight more after Nick Hundley hit a three-run homer in the fourth and Ryan Raburn hit a two-run shot in the fifth.
Gray, who gave up a grand slam to Chase Headley in the second, was working with an 8-4 lead. Including the home run, he gave up just three hits in his four innings. But his fastball flailed, and he walked six. Gray leads the club in strikeouts with 82, and he has walked just 24. This wasn’t effectively wild. Just wild.
“I’ve never had great control, but this, I didn’t know where this was going,” Gray said. “I wanted to leave it all out there and grind through it, but it wasn’t working.”
Gray and the Rockies dodged that dreaded “dead arm” term, used by some to describe a pitcher whose arm suddenly loses its strength. But Gray said he has felt this before.
“It feels a little weak,” he said. “It’s really tough to pitch without a fastball. When you can’t use a fastball, you have to beat everybody with three other pitches.”
Gray topped out his fastball at 95 mph, but just 40 of his 80 pitches went for strikes. In 17 innings over his past three starts, he struck out 14 and walked seven, well below his season 3.8-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
“I’ve had pretty bad command the last three times out, but today was, you can’t do too much with that at all,” Gray said. “I don’t feel any pain. It’s just the timing is messed up. It’s not as strong as it was.”
After Colorado called up Gray in August last season, the club kept him under tight limits, stopping him after he threw 155 innings between Triple-A and the majors. This season, he has surpassed his big-league total from last year. But Weiss last week said that “the chains are off” Gray, with no more caps.
“He’s come a long way in a short time,” Weiss said. “Last year, there were some limits attached to him as far as innings. But from that point to now, tremendous growth. Mentally, emotionally, just familiarity with being a starting pitcher at the major-league level.”
Gray’s next scheduled start, if he’s available, is Monday — just in time to face Tulowitzki and the Blue Jays at Coors Field. He said there was only one route he knows to get through the arm fatigue he felt in the past.
“Just kept throwing, and it got better,” he said.
