CHICAGO — At age 26, and with 65 starts on the back of his baseball card, Jon Gray remains a work in progress. But the hard-throwing right-hander looked closer to a finished product Tuesday night in the Rockies’ 3-1 win over the Cubs.
On a night when the wind was howling at Wrigley Field, threatening to turn the game into a home run derby, Gray found a way to shut down the Cubs for his second consecutive win.
“I definitely had to be aware of the wind, it was really blowing out,” Gray said, sporting the “Karate Kid” headband he wears when he works out. “My first pitch of the game got hit out, but that meant I had to be unpredictable and mix things up.”
On a night that began with a 17 mph wind and got worse from there, Gray was immediately punished. Anthony Rizzo drove Gray’s first pitch of the night — a 94 mph fastball — into the seats in left field. But then Gray settled in, getting out of the inning with two fly outs and a grounder to Nolan Arenado at third.
Deftly mixing his fastball, curveball and a recalibrated slider, Gray pitched an efficient seven innings, needing only 96 pitches. He allowed one run on three hits, struck out six and walked only one. He induced a bushel of groundballs early before striking out the Cubs later.
Asked if it was Gray’s best start of his roller coaster season, manager Bud Black answered: “On the road, against this club, with the way they are playing, with the wind blowing out at 25 mph, you could make a case for that, for sure.”
Over his last two starts, Gray is 2-0 with a 0.69 ERA vs. a 7.09 ERA in his first five starts.
Gray’s two bugaboos earlier this season — failure to consistently put batters away when he had two strikes on them, and opposing batters clobbering him the third time through the order — didn’t haunt him Tuesday night.
Opponents had been hitting Gray at a .484 clip (with a 1.271 OPS) that third time through, but only Kyle Schwarber’s triple in the seventh left a mark. But Gray stranded Schwarber by striking out Victor Caratini on a high fastball and getting Jason Heyward to pop out to Tony Wolters behind home plate.
Gray cranked up his groundball machine early. Utilizing primarily a four-seam fastball that showed a lot of movement, he set the Cubs down in order in the second and third on six consecutive groundball outs, five of them to second baseman Daniel Castro.
Gray found trouble in the fourth. Kris Bryant led off with a single and Ben Zobrist walked. But by deftly mixing his fastball, curve and slider, Gray got out of the mess with three more groundouts. That’s the inning the really impressed outfield Charlie Blackmon, who led off the game with one of Colorado’s three solo homers.
“He had a chance to let this one get away from him, with two runners on in the fourth and no outs,” Blackmon said. “And thatap the kind of thing where with one bad pitch, on a night like this, a guy bloops one into the bleachers. I mean that could have gotten away quickly, but tonight he friggin’ locked it down and made his pitches.”
Not long ago, the slider was Gray’s put-away pitch, but it’s been misbehaving much of this season. So Gray has worked overtime in his bullpen sessions, working on his grip and mechanics. It paid off in the fifth when he struck out the side, whiffing Heyward and Ian Happ with 89 mph sliders, before striking out Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks looking at a 95 mph heater.
“I think that slider is where we want it now,” pitching coach Steve Foster said. “Itap back to what it was in the past. Because Jon had kind of gotten away from it. But when that pitch is on, itap devastating.”
As for the two-strike glitches that have hurt Gray, they didn’t factor against the Cubs.
“I don’t care if itap the big leagues or the little leagues, when you get ahead with two strikes as a pitcher, you need to take advantage of that,” Foster said. “You have to take advantage of having that edge, and Jon hasn’t been doing that.”
But he did Tuesday night. And a little bit more.
Roster shuffle. The Rockies called up Castro from Triple-A Albuquerque on Monday and sent down struggling first baseman Ryan McMahon.
Castro, 25, was hitting a sizzling .407 through 23 games with the Isotopes this year — including a current 22-game hitting streak. He played second base and hit seventh in Tuesday nightap game, going 0-for-3.
Explaining his hot start at the plate in Triple-A, Castro said: “The biggest thing has been my consistency. The adjustments I’ve made, and with the way I’m moving my body, I’m able to recognize pitches much better.”
The Guaymas, Mexico, native saw action in 80 major-league games during the 2015 and 2016 seasons with Atlanta, hitting .217 with a .515 OPS.
Manager Bud Black said Castro was called up primarily to fill a need at second base, because DJ LeMahieu is on the 10-day disabled list with a strained right hamstring. LeMahieu is eligible to return to the lineup next Tuesday.
Black also hopes that Castro can help spark a sluggish offense this is coming off an April slump that was the worst month of hitting in franchise history.
“Daniel brings us, hopefully, a base hit here and there,” Black said. “He’s really swung the bat well at Albuquerque and he’s off to a great start. He’s a steady defender and knows how to play the game. He can bunt and hit-and-run. He’s a guy who goes about it the right way.”
McMahon, meanwhile, struggled in 50 at-bats, hitting .180 while striking out at a 36.7 percent clip.
“There are a couple of things that this move entailed,” Black said. “First, we wanted to get Ryan back to getting regular at-bats, and get his confidence level back to where he feels really good about his swing. There’s no doubt that what he was doing here with us — in and out of the lineups, with a few pinch hits — didn’t get him into the rhythm of the season.”
