By surrendering two runs on two hits during Saturday’s seventh inning — while recording no outs and being pegged with the loss in a 6-5 setback to Cincinnati — Rockies reliever ‘s struggles continue to haunt Colorado.
“His control and command is just a little bit off,” manager Bud Black said. “The stuff is reading out fine as far as velocities, as far as movement to his breaking pitches — it’s just the location.”
In May alone, Rusin has yielded runs in six of this seven appearances while racking up a 10.80 ERA. His fWAR is -0.3, worst among all Colorado pitchers, while opposing batters are making contact with 87.7 percent of his pitches in the zone.
Rusin, who was sidelined briefly with a right intercostal muscle strain that landed him on the 10-day disabled list April 23, said he had never been in a slump this bad since breaking into the majors with the Chicago Cubs in 2012.
“It’s some grinding right now, and all I can do is keep pounding the strike zone and have confidence in my stuff,” Rusin said. “Eventually, I’ll break out of this bad streak that I’m on.”
Most specifically, however, Rusin said he must focus on leveraging better sinker and cutter command in order to work ahead of hitters and deploy his changeup more frequently.
It’s a pitch he’s recently tinkered with the finger pressure on, and believes it can help turn around the fortunes of his season.
Rusin has only thrown his changeup 14.5 percent of the time, down significantly from last season (26.9 percent) and the lowest rate for the pitch since the left-hander signed with Colorado in 2015.
“I just haven’t been able to find my changeup at all this year,” Rusin said. “I’ve been working on it every day, and it’s slowly getting better. I feel like I fixed it a couple days ago — I just haven’t had a chance to use it in a game yet.”
