No way to trust Gray now when it matters
The heat of a playoff race is no place for a head case. Perhaps Rockies pitcher Jon Gray should do lunch with Paxton Lynch. They can choose the restaurant. I’ll pick up the tab. So long as it is 1,000 miles away from Denver.
In a 122 loss to Washington, the Rockies got thumped so hard they fell into a firstplace tie with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Did Gray choke?
“This was a matter of bad location. From the getgo, it looked as if Jon couldn’t make his pitches,” manager Bud Black said Saturday.
A 162game schedule is now reduced to nine pressurepacked innings for both teams on the final day of the regular season. If that high drama doesn’t settle things, Colorado and L.A. will meet Monday afternoon at Dodger Stadium in Game No. 163 to determine the National League West champion.
The champagne Rocktober high of only 24 hours earlier was burst with a sobering realization: Put Gray on the pitching rubber for a big game and it’s a burial mound.
With Colorado trying to hold off the Dodgers for the first division title in franchise history, Gray killed an eightgame winning streak in a performance so bad we’ll spare you the purple prose. Gray stunk so badly it smelled nearly identical to the tire fire he ignited in the playoffs a year ago.
How can Black possibly give Gray the baseball again anytime
soon, when the stakes are stacked high?
Yes, it’s too early to give up on the talent of Gray at age 26. But he can’t be trusted to take the mound for another start, if the Rockies play deep into October. What’s more, Colorado must seriously consider whether Gray, whose career record is 3225, might be better suited to duty as a reliever when the team reports to spring training in 2019.
Sunny by nature, Rockies fans possess the most forgiving hearts in the major leagues. But after Gray served up a tworun homer to Washington’s Trea Turner, staking the Nationals to a 50 lead with only one out in the top of the second inning, he got unmercifully booed in his home ballpark. It sounded eerily like the same anger that ran Lynch out of town as the Broncos quarterback.
As Colorado opened its final home stand of the regular season, veteran outfielder Carlos Gonzalez approached Gray and offered this advice: “Hey, you know what? This is just another game. If you don’t pitch well, you’re not going to get shot. Just relax.”
Gray’s stuff is electric. His brain, however, is not wired correctly for the bright lights of the big stage. It has nothing to do with pitching mechanics. It’s all about a breakdown in selfreliance. Gray can’t get out of his own way.
While competitiveness oozes from every pore of teammate Kyle Freeland, whose 17th victory clinched a postseason berth Friday, when Gray speaks about wanting the baseball in highleverage situations, it sounds as if he’s reading a prepared statement written by somebody else.
With the Dodgers and Rockies all tangled up with identical 9071 records, what does manager Bud Black do now? After being strongly tempted to go with righthander German Marquez for a Sunday start on short rest, Black decided against the bold move. He smartly has chosen to give to ball to Tyler Anderson.
While the rewards of winning the division are undeniably appealing, had the gamble on Marquez failed, Colorado would have started its postseason run with a starting rotation running on empty. The Rockies’ goal is to win the World Series, not the NL West.