Power pitching still beats power hitting
manager Jeff “Doc” Bridich told me in February was a real threat to win the National League West and compete for a berth in the World Series?
As the Rockies stumbled to the all-star break with six straight losses, they not only fell 14K games behind the divisionleading Los Angeles Dodgers, but slipped behind both Arizona and San Diego in the standings. With a 44-45 record, Colorado has more frequently played bad baseball than good, and appears to be precisely the type of scuffling team for which wild-car berths were invented, for the purpose of teasing us all with false hope.
In the past, we have applauded Bridich for wagering big bucks on the Colorado bullpen, even when some of those gambles have crapped out. We salute him for being the architect of the first teams in franchise history to earn playoff berths in back-to-back seasons, even if the payoff has been one solitary victory in those two trips to the postseason.
But now the Rockies teeter on irrelevance for the remainder of 2019, especial- ly with the Broncos opening training camp next week. Every eye in town will be focused on whether quarterback Joe Flacco can revitalize his NFL career, while only the deepest shade of purple die-hards will care if Rockies pitcher Kyle Freeland can rediscover his mojo.
So is it fair to ask: Did Doc Bridich mess up this thing?
Well, it seems apparent Bridich committed one of the more common errors in professional sports. It’s natural, and always frustrating, when a front office places too much faith in its young talent.
While outfield David Dahl has blossomed into an all-star outfielder, the regression of Freeland, plus the lack of any substantial contributions from either Ryan McMahon or Brendan Rodgers, has produced cringes from everyone that appreciated LeMahieu as not only a former batting champ, but also a glue guy in the Colorado clubhouse.
While Bridich believes any newspaper hack has no better shot at grasping the intricacies of building a baseball team than conducting successful brain surgery, I don’t have to be a cattle farmer to know a tough steak when I chew it.
So I’ll stand back and let you chew on this: There have been great free-agent signings in the Colorado’s relatively brief major-league history: Andres Galarraga, Larry Walker, Ellis Burks. If everybody can hit in our thin air, why has Bridich stunk at attracting big bats to Denver?
Count the combined $94 million Bridich shelled out for the services of Ian Desmond and Daniel Murphy any way you want, and cut them both some slack for injuries they’ve endured, but that’s a whole lot of money for two players that advanced analytics suggest have performed at replacement level.
The biggest reason the Rockies have scuffled?
Bridich might be the smartest guy in the room, but he outsmarted himself when putting together this 25-man roster.
C H ICAGO» Francisco Lindor and the Cleveland Indians, looking up at Nelson Cruz and the surprising Minnesota Twins. Matt Chapman and the Oakland Athletics, trying to run down Jose Altuve and the Houston Astros. Max Scherzer and the Washington Nationals, chasing Ronald Acuña Jr. and the Atlanta Braves.
Baseball ramps up again this weekend, and a handful of contenders have a lot of work to do.
Five of the majors’ six divisions feature deficits of at least 5½ games as play resumes after the All-Star Game, in which the American League beat the National League 4-3 on Tuesday night. Life is pretty good for two iconic franchises, with Cody Bellinger and the Los Angeles Dodgers in control of the NL West again and Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees looking down on the rest of the AL East despite a rash of injuries.
“This team is capable of some great things,” Yankees pitcher James Paxton said. “You’ve got some really talented players here, guys with a lot of drive, great leadership. We’re set up really well to make a good run the second half here as well.”
The one exception at the moment is the crazy NL Central, where the Chicago Cubs have a 4½-game advantage — over last-place Cincinnati. Yup, that’s right, it’s just 4½ games from top to bottom, with Christian Yelich and Milwaukee a half-game back of Javier Baez and the inconsistent Cubbies.
“Nobody really wants to run
CLEVELAN D» Perhaps someone sneaked into the bowels of Progressive Field on Tuesday night and replaced the regular, turbocharged 2019 baseballs with century-old versions from the Dead Ball Era. How else to explain — in the midst of the biggest home run binge in the history of the sport, one year after the most homers ever hit in an All-Star Game and one night after the most electrifying performance in the history of the Home Run Derby — the relatively pedestrian showing in this year’s Midsummer Classic?
There is one other possible explanation, of course, and it is the one, conspiracy theories aside, that will have to suffice: There are great pitchers scattered across this game (shellshocked as they may be by the nightly home run binges), and on Tuesday night they shone brightest.
An impressive collection of nine American League pitchers threw power at power Tuesday
YORK, PA . » “Robot umpires” have arrived.
The independent Atlantic League became the first American professional baseball league to let a computer call balls and strikes Wednesday night at its All-Star Game. Plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an earpiece that was connected to an iPhone in his pocket and relayed the call upon receiving it from a TrackMan computer system that uses Doppler radar.
He crouched in his normal position behind the catcher and signaled balls and strikes.
“Until we can trust this system 100 percent, I still have to go back there with the intention of getting a pitch correct because if the system fails, it away with it,” Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong said. “That gives us confidence as a group to think that we can run away with it.”
It sets up for some very tough decisions ahead of the trade deadline after trade waivers were eliminated in the offseason, meaning no player can be traded after July 31 through the end of the regular season. Players who clear outright waivers can still be claimed and will be eligible for the postseason if they are in the organization before Sept. 1.
Buying or selling will be one tricky call for several teams, all the way to the final days of July. The hard deadline also could affect the prices for some of the top players on the market, possibilities night and came out on top, combining for a 4-3 victory that saw just one homer hit per side — below the record-setting average of 2.74 per game that has defined the Year of the Homer. The victory was the seventh in a row by the AL, its 14th in the past 17 and 19th in the past 23 All-Star Games. like San Francisco pitchers Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith, Toronto righthander Marcus Stroman and Detroit lefty Matthew Boyd.
“I know something could happen, but I don’t take a peek at what people are saying,” Smith said. “There’s so much out there, and you don’t know what’s true.”
Cleveland could inject some drama into the AL Central as soon as this weekend, when Minnesota comes to town for a three-game series. The Indians hit the all-star break with the majors’ longest active win streak at six in a row, improving to 21-6 since June 1 and moving within 5½ games of the division-leading Twins.
“In the beginning it seemed
No one on either side left the yard Tuesday night until the sixth inning, when Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon’s fly to right-center off Oakland A’s reliever Liam Hendriks sneaked just over the wall. An inning later, Texas Rangers slugger Joey Gallo answered with a solo shot to right off Milwaukee’s Brandon Woodruff, a no-doubter that landed a dozen or so rows deep.
In the absence of supreme power, offense came mostly from the more traditional means of singles and doubles. Houston’s Michael Brantley contributed an RBI double for the AL, and Minnesota’s Jorge Polanco had an RBI infield single. The NL drew within a run in the eighth when Pete Alonso — the winner of Monday night’s dramatic Home Run Derby — singled off the glove of New York Yankees shortstop Gleyber Torres with the bases loaded, bringing home a pair of runs.
That brought into play the possibility of a third straight extra-inning affair, which this year, for the first time, would have triggered one of MLB’s new timesaving measures for exhibitions — with each halfinning beyond the ninth beginning with a runner on second base.
But Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman closed the door, preventing the experiment.