If Marquez doesn’t pitch like an ace, Rockies will fold their cards

If German Marquez doesn’t quickly figure it out — if he doesn’t become the team’s ace — the Rockies have no chance of making the postseason.

The Colorado rotation, sketchy enough with a major league-worst 5.80 ERA, hasn’t been getting any help lately from Marquez. The 24-year-old signed a five-year, $43 million contract extension with the Rockies on April 2, and after being solid early on this season, he’s now stuck in a rut.

In eight starts since June 1, Marquez has an 8.26 ERA with 10 home runs allowed. He is getting ripped to the tune of a .321 opponent batting average. He hasn’t had a quality start in almost a

month, when he spun eight innings of two-run ball in a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 21. His problems came to a head Monday when he was rocked for 11 runs in 2M innings by San Francisco. It was the worst start of Marquez’s career. The 11 earned runs were the most allowed by a starter to a National League West opponent in franchise history. With Colorado’s postseason chances already looking questionable in a crowded wild-card race, Colorado simply can’t have duds from its No. 1 arm.

Granted, the right-hander’s workload has been heavy. Marquez leads the National League in games started (21), innings pitched (130) and batters faced (552). And it would be unfair to discount the state of the game in 2019, with the majors on a historic home run pace and “juiced” baseballs not doing anything to help the team’s poor pitching trend. That combination of factors has made regular starts at Coors Field much, much more challenging than even a year ago.

Only Jon Gray (3.24 ERA in eight starts) has been decent at home, while Antonio Senzatela (6.80 in eight), Marquez (7.07 in 11), Peter Lambert (9.17 in four) and Kyle Freeland (9.55 in seven) have all been, in a word, bad pitching in LoDo. Gray is in a solid place mentally after his 2018 season derailed and is the only starter who has consistently given the team a chance to win each time he takes the ball.

The Rockies also can’t afford to be patient with the lagging back end of their rotation, which features a struggling rookie, Lambert, and a work in progress in Freeland, who was recalled from the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes last Saturday and pitched poorly. That could mean another big-league chance for Chi Chi Gonzalez, who was optioned back to Albuquerque late Monday night after a strong start against the Giants.

So which Marquez will Colorado get in the next two months? Will he be the guy who has shown he’s capable of being one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, as demonstrated by a onehit shutout in San Francisco on April 14? Or will he be an ace in name only? Any chance of the Rockies hanging in the wild-card race hinges upon the answer.