The Dbacks continue their offensive skid despite being in the most offensive friendly ballpark against a pitcher who hadn’t won at Coors in 2 years.
The Rockies started a pitcher tonight that came into the game 2-10 and hadn’t won a game at Coors Field since Aug 9 of 2022. He wound up pitching into the 7th inning against what was once the top offense in all of baseball and earning the win. Not exactly what you were expecting coming into this series against the last place team in the NL West. But here we are.
Jordan Montgomery actually pitched better than his line of 4.2 innings and 3 ERs would suggest. The first run that scored on him was due to a Texas-leaguer that was allowed to drop right behind Luis Guillorme and Christian Walker. It appeared like Walker never saw the ball, Guillorme did and looked clumsy chasing it down. Maybe not the defensive wizard he is being sold to us as?
Anyway, Monty went on to get a season high 17 whiffs. Didn’t even have to look that up to see if it was a season high. He also did it in surprising fashion throwing a ridiculous 49% curveballs which generated 14 whiffs itself. Definitely an encouraging outing from Monty compared to how he looked starting earlier this season where he got almost no swing and miss.
Despite all the whiffs, Lovullo pulled Monty after only 4.2 innings and went to none other than Scott Mcgough. It almost seemed like Mcgough learned to pitch in Reno as he was able to get out of a bases loaded jam, but then he promptly allowed 2 runs the following inning. Newsflash: Scott Mcgough is still not a major league quality pitcher and why he was brought into a 3-1 game when this team is fighting for a wildcard spot and before the Atlanta loss was final? Beyond me. Mantiply and Walston followed and that went about as well as you could expect.
The offense is the biggest slap in the face to Dbacks fans right now. They made very little hard contact in this game at all. Much is being made about the Dbacks having the top offense in baseball which was a pleasant surprise. However it appears as though the offense is going to do its best to fall back towards the middle of the pack all at once. It started with the lineup Torey ran out there. Multiple times in this game the Dbacks were able to get runners on base with 1 out, and the next 2 hitters due up? Luis Guillorme and Jose Herrera. And that went about how you would expect. Even more of a slap in the face to Dbacks fans was while Guillorme and Herrera were batting 8 and 9 leaving runners on base, Adrian del Castillo hit a 2 run home run in his first game back with Reno.
Joc Pederson went 0-4 with 2 ks and Luis Gonzalez is convinced he is trying to play through an injury his swings looked so bad. Torey was asked about Joc postgame and he just described it as standard ebbs and flows of the game but given this teams’ history with handling injuries I’m not convinced. Was this offense better when Josh Bell was in it?
Pavin Smith continues to be the only bright spot in this lineup as he narrowly missed an opposite field home run by 3 feet in the 2nd inning. He hit another double his next at bat as well. According to some excellent reporting during the game by Jody Jackson, she mentioned that he is feeling his swing much differently this season as he has allowed himself to swing more upward at the ball as opposed to the old school swinging down on the ball the past seasons. If this is the Pavin Smith we are going to get after the mechanical tweaks, he is going to have to play even when Lourdes comes back. I never thought I would be calling for Pavin to be in the lineup everyday, but combining a new swing trajectory with his plate discipline? This could be real.
Defensively, it was sloppy. Most notably Geno whiffed on a key double steal into 3rd base when the runner would’ve been out by a 3 feet. He also booted a ground ball later in the game that would’ve led to a double play.
Fortunately for all of our sakes, the Dbacks still have a 2 game cushion on a wild card spot as the Braves also lost tonight and with the Mets win the Dbacks are now tied with the Mets for the final 2 WC spots.
To me, it seems like this team is tired and was looking to this series to have some easy wins and get some rest. Unfortunately thats not how baseball works. The Colorado Rockies are still a Major League team and they are making the Dbacks look bad. With all of the rest the Dbacks are giving to their A lineup and their A relievers, they better win when they do play them otherwise there may be nothing left for them to rest for.
Feel free to vent in the comments if that helps, but remember we are all in this together as Dbacks fans and this team has overcome worse situations in the past.
Cheers!