Christian Bergman will be making his first start of the year for the Colorado Rockies this Thursday, April 14th against the San Francisco Giants. The 27-year-old started this season coming out of the bullpen, and has pitched three innings thus far giving up four earned runs on six hits.

If Bergman has a quality start against the Giants, it eases the pressure off of the Rockies front office to rush Jon Gray back into the rotation coming off his injury. However, nothing is set in stone, as the bullpen could have a heavy workload from now until Thursday, and Bergman could be involved.

Rockies’ manager Walt Weiss added “Christian Bergman is slated for the 14th, but a lot of that depends on if we have to use him in the bullpen before then, in which case we’d have to change some things around, but there’s a Plan B there.”

This appears to be more of a spot start for Bergman with the Rockies currently riding a four-man rotation. However, this is nothing new to the right-hander as he made four spot starts throughout the season last year for the team.

Bergman posted a 4.74 ERA in 30 appearances in 2015, which is nothing special but it was a major improvement from his 5.93 ERA from 2014. The former UC-Irvine product showed major improvement with his control last year, but he had an extremely poor 4.9 K/9 rate. Combine the strikeout rate with his tendency to give up hits, and it’s understandable why he remains a long reliever for the Rockies as opposed to a starter.

The spot start also gives starter Jorge De La Rosa an additional rest after his abysmal game against the Padres on Saturday.