ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Has a major-league team ever been eliminated from the playoffs before the home-opener?
Asking for a friend of the RocKKKKKKKKKKKKKKies, who struck out 14 times during a 4-0 loss to Tampa Bay.
Not to sink your boat buoyed with all the hopes of a fresh baseball season. But this trip to Florida, where the Rockies have dropped four straight, is beginning to take on the feel of that three-hour tour Gilligan sang about.
There was a very strange postgame vibe in the visitors’ clubhouse at Tropicana Field, which was full of million-dollar smiles and bro hugs anywhere within three feet of young pitcher German Marquez, who enjoyed a very good Tuesday, when he agreed to a contract extension worth a reported $43 million.
But the rest of the locker room was as dead as the Rockies’ bats, which have scratched out only four runs during the past 36 innings. “We’ve got to start swinging the bats,” manager Bud Black said.
In third baseman Nolan Arenado, as well as top-of-the-rotation starters Kyle Freeland and Marquez, the Rockies’ long-term future looks bright. But there’s a growing, nagging feeling that maybe team management put a little too much trust in the straight-line growth of its talented young core, without properly re-fortifying the roster following the first back-to-back playoff appearances in franchise history.
Those of you who remember the thrill of Rocktober might be able to relate to my cold sweat flashback to 2008, when management got a little too comfortable with the 25 men on the roster after a run to the World Series, and slipped to 74-88 before bouncing back to 92-victory glory a season later. Or maybe itap just unnecessary worry and Florida humidity playing havoc on my reasoning ability in the same way it has turned Colorado bats into a stack of soggy potato chips.
But I’m certain of this: Freeland was dejected, after a choppy first inning in which he momentarily lost command of his pitches and surrendered three runs gaving Colorado absolutely no shot to beat Tampa Bay starter Blake Snell, whose nickname of “Snellzilla” is lame but whose stuff is so filthy.
“It was not a good tone to set coming off these past three losses,” Freeland said.
Back in the day, when baseball was more pine tar and less analytics, stopper was the term for a team’s best starting pitcher. He was more than an ace. He could stop a losing streak by himself. Think Steve Carlton or Whitey Ford, the kind of lefty with shutdown stuff and a bulldog disposition that caused a manager like Earl Weaver to say: “Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.”
I can’t promise you Freeland will ever join Carlton or Ford in Cooperstown (although I wouldn’t completely rule it out). But this much we know to be true: Freeland is the kind of give-me-the-ball throwback that does the grand tradition of the stopper proud.
Black sees that grit in his No. 1 starter. “If you’re on a little losing streak and you’ve got a guy out there (on the mound) thatap your guy,” Black said, “a lot of times that guy wins.”
The Rockies are reeling. They can’t hit. Yes, I realize baseball is a game of failure and patience, which demands the stubborn patience to not let the thump-thump-thump of strikeouts pounding a catcher’s mitt break the confidence of a slumping batter early in a 162-game season.
“I’m not concerned one bit,” Ian Desmond said. “We have a great offense.”
There’s no way, however, to draw a smiley face on Colorado’s .208 team batting average.
Freeland has the emotional make-up and the physical talent to be an old-school stopper.
It worth noting, however, the Rockies never suffered more than a five-game losing streak a year ago. They can match that dubious mark in the final game of their season-opening swoon in sunny Florida. And I fear this won’t be the last skid Freeland will be asked to halt in 2019.
