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The Colorado Rockies played perhaps one of their best complete games all season last night, defeating the San Francisco Giants on the road by the score of 2-0. As I mentioned on Twitter, they dominated in all three facets — offense, defense, and pitching. Oh, and it was on ESPN, too, (not ESPN2) so there’s something.
Rare to see the Rockies piece together a complete team win like that; all 3 facets (offense, defense, pitching). Also fun to play spoiler.
— Andrew Dill (@PurpleRocktober) September 29, 2016
Tyler Chatwood was the winning pitcher for the Rockies, tossing eight scoreless innings, giving up just three hits and two walks while striking out nine Giants — lowering his ERA to 3.87 in his final start of the season. Not a bad way to go out while prolonging the Giants’ from potentially clinching a Wild-Card spot.
Getting back to Chatwood, he has been phenomenal on the road all season long. In fact, he leads the entirety of Major League Baseball in road ERA (min. 80 IP), posting an 8-1 record accompanied by a 1.69 ERA in 80 innings of work away from home.
On the other hand, Chatwood is a completely different story at Coors Field, and well, it’s not even close. Pitching at Coors will always be a task to pitchers alike, yet there are a select few that can do so. For Chatwood, Coors was a disaster, posting a 4-8 record while finishing with an ERA of 6.12 — worst in the MLB alongside Arizona Diamondbacks’ Archie Bradley.
We have seen this story before regarding a Rockies’ pitcher. Just take a look back to the 2012 season of Jhoulys Chacin. Chacin, like Chatwood, was pretty good on the road, posting a 1-3 record with an ERA of 2.72. However, as the story goes on, the home results were porous, finishing the season with record of 2-2, including an ERA of 6.34.
Chatwood experienced success at Coors in 2013, but for the sake of debate, let’s assume he (or someone, at least) continues to have these struggles.
Some pitchers just can’t figure out Coors, as mentioned earlier in the column. However, if we are going to get adventurous with this, why not introduce a six-man, platoon rotation for the Rockies?
Yes, you heard that correctly. A six-man, platoon rotation. Might sound crazy but it just might work. You will have four starting pitchers, pitching on normal rest, followed by two starters splitting the home and road duties. Now, there will be a lot of angst against this idea, mainly questioning how the players will stay in rhythm during such a feat. Simulated games and/or side sessions in-between starts should help.
So, if we were to construct the six-man, platoon rotation, we would need a starter who fairs well on the road (Tyler Chatwood) and one who fairs well at home.
A perfect fit for that? Veteran southpaw Jorge De La Rosa. As Bryan Kilpatrick of Purple Row mentioned last night via Twitter, Rockies’ re-signing De La Rosa to platoon with Chatwood would be an interesting combination.
If you’ve followed the Rockies’ long enough, the idea of pitching De La Rosa at home is almost a lock. In his career, De La Rosa possesses a 62-29 record at the not-so-friendly confines. As far as the road stands, he is 39-55. But as you know, De La Rosa is 35-years-old, nearing the end of his career, and it’s uncertain if he is willing to return, or in that case, if the Rockies’ want to retain him with all of the young arms emerging.
In order for the Rockies’ to do that, the team must re-sign the veteran who is scheduled to become a free agent after this season. If that doesn’t work out in terms of numbers, the team could always elect to go with a young arm right away to limit innings.
It’s tough to ask young Tyler Anderson to pitch exclusively at Coors Field, but he has De La Rosa-like splits so far in his young career. The point is that there actually could be all kinds of options with the surprising glut of pitching the Rockies have, while still recognizing that it may need to be deployed in a unique fashion.
