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DENVER – Upon the conclusion of his last appearance, Colorado Rockies starting pitcher German Márquez had more RBI than Jose Ramirez, Paul Goldschmidt, Brandon Belt, and defending NL MVP Christian Yelich in the month of May.
It should come as no surprise that the 2018 Silver Slugger can handle the stick a bit, but what Márquez has done over the last month has not been tantamount to the typical “hitting pitcher” who occasionally runs into a pitch more than his contemporaries. He is just putting together legitimately solid at-bats from beginning to end.
Take, for example, his most recent outing.
In a battle with the Baltimore Orioles, the crowd and his teammates erupted when he unleashed a three-run triple, going up high to get a well-located fastball and blasting it the other way high off the wall in right-center field.
“I thought it was gone,” he said after the game. So did most people in attendance. “But I had to run to third base and that was fun.”
The reasons why so many were so confident that he might have just left the yard can be seen in all the little moments that led to the big one.
We could begin with the fact that he had already executed two near-perfect sac bunts in the game, one of which plated a run. But we can go back even further and see that Márquez, like some of his teammates, might actually just be a decent hitter coming out of an early-season slump.
In four games in May, Márquez has gone 4-for-9 (.444) with one double, one triple and nine RBI.
That last mark is a franchise record for a month by a pitcher and the most by any pitcher in any franchise in any month since the St. Louis Cardinals’ Rick Wise had nine RBI in August 1973.
He is the first Rockies pitcher with a four-game hitting streak since Jorge De La Rosa had a four-game streak, Aug. 5-27, 2016.
He is the first Rockies pitcher in franchise history with multiple three or more RBI games, both of which have come this month.
His nine RBI are tied for the fourth-most by a pitcher in a single season in franchise history, the most since Jason Jennings recorded 11 RBI in 2002.
And that’s just through May.
“Help the team,” he says plainly.
Fellow pitcher Jon Gray is in awe of his teammates’ prowess.
“It’s pretty incredible because I can’t explain how it works,” he told BSN Denver. “He has unbelievable hand-eye coordination and he just trusts it. He handles the bat all the way around. You can’t pitch him like a pitcher.”
Ian Desmond puts it another way. “He’s a value,” he says of Marquez at the plate. “It’s nice to have someone who cares about hitting, who practices hits, puts in the work and is able to do what he practices.”
It beckons another famous NL pitcher known for wicked stuff on the mound and solid batwork at the plate.
“He reminds me a lot of (Max) Scherzer,” Desmond recalls of his old teammate in Washington.
“You would go down in the middle of a game he wasn’t starting and he would be hitting in the cages, getting his work in. Because that’s how you win games. It’s winning baseball to go up there with a desire to help the team win whether it’s getting bunts down or even stealing bases – and I’m sure Marquez would try if you let him.”
It’s gotten to the point where he has been so consistent with the bat that his teammates are beginning to wonder how he makes it look so easy.
“We were just talking on the bench and couldn’t remember the last time he made contact with the ball and it wasn’t on the barrel,” Desmond said.
He is absolutely the envy of the rest of the pitching staff.
“I’d like to,” Gray says of one day matching his production, “I’m struggling with breaking balls but I’m working on it,” he laughs.
Of course, it is still far more important that German Marquez pitch well than that he hit well.
He quite famously set his sights on the National League Cy Young award prior to the season.
But it looks like he may well be on his way to earning another piece of hardware and instilling that he shall forever be known as El Batedor de Plata.
The Silver Slugger.
