Until the last week or so, we at BSN Denver won’t be bringing you full game recaps of Colorado Rockies spring training as that would almost certainly be an insufferable waste of your time. If you want to know all the gritty details of the box score, you can always click right here.
Otherwise, we will try to boil down each game into a handful of interesting tidbits so we can get back to reporting on the stories inside and surrounding each game.
Versus the Los Angeles Dodgers:
1. Kyle Freeland just didn’t have his command today. He walked two batters and hit another one, which is very unlike him, then he left a fastball right in the middle of the plate for a three-run home run and departed the game before concluding his two innings. There is plenty of spring left to play, and at this point pretty much all performance good and bad can be explained away by small sample sizes, spring rust, guys working on specific aspects of their game, and even nerves for a lot of young guys seeing MLB competition for the first time. Either way, if we are judging solely based on performance so far, Freeland is in fourth place in the race for fifth starter behind German Marquez, Jeff Hoffman, and Chris Rusin.
2. The Rockies hurt themselves with some poor defense in the game including the first examples of Ian Desmond looking inexperienced at first base. In the third, a wide throw from Desmond turned a potential 3-6-3 double play into a no-out error, though no harm was done thanks to defensive heroics from Nolan Arenado. That particular kind of double play is already tricky to turn because of the angles involved and it’s the kind of thing Desmond will need to get used to but is also unlikely to be a common problem. His failure to to dig a ball out of the dirt later in the game is more indicative of the kind of thing the Rockies will greatly be hoping to see Desmond improve upon this spring. He has shown excellent lateral movement and good footwork at first base, but to be the defensive upgrade the Rockies were hoping for when signing him, Desmond is going to need to prove he can make the tough digs at first.
Though, for additional context, the Rockies committed five errors in a very sloppy game on what was an unusually rainy day in February in Scottsdale, Arizona.
*There has been some discrepancy about the errors. Originally assigned to LeMahieu the throwing error in the fifth was given to Desmond on the MLB.com box score, which also shows four errors for the Rockies while the 850 KOA broadcast announced five.
3. Jordan Lyles faced nine hitters in the fifth inning. It was an ugly frame defensively with throwing errors by DJ LeMahieu — though again Desmond might have been able to dig it out and was betrayed by a lack of experience at the position — and Lyles himself with a throwing error of his own. He also gave up two home runs in the inning and walked a batter as the Dodgers put five runs on the board. It’s early yet, but this does some damage to his bid to make the 25-man roster in one of the few available bullpen slots. Jason Motte, Chad Qualls, Miguel Castro, and Scott Oberg are all in the hunt with Lyles for the same two spots.
4. Gerardo Parra drew a pair of walks, bringing his spring total to three. He drew nine all of last season.
5. Arenado and Charlie Blackmon each drove in their third run of the spring in their third game. DJ LeMahieu, last season’s NL Batting Champion, is hitting .500 so far in the spring.
