German Marquez has become the King of Colorado Rockies pitching

They say history has a way of repeating itself.

And on a hot summer Tuesday night at Coors Field, echoes from the past – ghosts from bygone eras – wandered the hallowed grounds of the baseball diamond ready to etch a new name into the history books; German Marquez.

Like a waking dream, this moments felt eerily familiar to Marquez. De ja vu, all over again.

Except this was different. This dance with destiny brought him just inches away from the greatest non-postseason moment in Rockies history.

He had been here before. A look at the box scores for an April start in San Francisco against the Giants in 2019 would lead you to believe that what Marquez did against the Pirates in the dawning days of June 2021 was more or less the same.

One hit. Complete Game Shutout. Incredible performance. Not quite history.

In fact, right after that outing two years ago, we pondered whether or not we had just witnessed the single greatest pitching performance by any Rockie ever.

And now Marquez himself has us revisiting that conversation.

There are a lot of different ways to measure out what we consider to be the “best” individual outings.

So, let’s create an entirely unscientific rubric to help us compare and contrast using the following five categories:

1. Dominance

2. Efficiency

3. Quality of Opponent

4. Environment

5. Historical Significance

It’s Not Worth Winning If You Can’t Win Big?

In our first category, dominance, Marquez technically had the better game by the bay a few years ago.

In that contest, he struck out nine Giants, and did not walk a batter. In his most recent outing, he struck out only five and walked one. In both games, oddly enough, he hit a batter.

Therefore, his Game Score, a stat developed by Bill James specifically to measure dominance was 94 in 2019 and 89 in 2021.

The best Game Score in franchise history belongs to Jon Gray when he struck out 16 San Diego Padres in September of 2016. He did allow four singles in that game but he also didn’t walk or hit anyone, giving him a Game Score of 95.

It might seem counterintuitive that a guy who surrendered four hits should have the better score than the guy who flirted with a no-hitter and came just inches from completing it, but when you step back and look at it, Gray allowed only one more base runner in that game than Marquez has in his gems and also, y’know, struck out 16 dudes.

On pure objective dominance, Gray may indeed still have him beat.

Where Marquez runs away from the pack, however, is in our next category; Efficiency.

A Pitch Saved Is A Pitch Earned

While this historically significant games can be extremely fun for fans, they can also be extremely stressful for managers.

As much as they want this one night to be special, they’ve got the entire rest of the schedule and the entire rest of the roster to consider. Modern baseball has taught us that quality of pitches drop off and likelihood of injury goes up the further over 100 pitches a starter throws.

Gray needed 113 to get through the Pads. Ubaldo Jimenez, who of course threw the only no-hitter in franchise history, needed 128 pitches to accomplish that feat. For those wondering, his six walks and seven strike outs led to a Game Score of 88.

Against the Giants, Marquez was pretty damn good with a total pitch count of 105 but he was positively immaculate against the Pirates.

He tossed what the industry has dubbed a “Maddux” in honor of Greg Maddux who became famous for throwing complete game shutouts in under 100 offerings. Marquez cleared with room to spare at 92 pitches thrown.

Know Thy Enemy

Our third category, Quality of Opponent, is a tricky one.

Every MLB team has quality hitters on it and seeking to undercut the accomplishment of any no-hitter or perfect game based on who it came against is profoundly silly.

That said, when we are splitting hairs, it’s hard not to note that Marquez got the better of a Pirates team that is in the cellar of the National League and has been for some time.

There were a couple of hot hitters in there, especially Bryan Reynolds and Adam Frazier, but Jimenez clearly had the bigger uphill battle in front of him back in 2010 facing the likes of Chipper Jones, Brian McCann, Troy Glaus, Martin Prado, and Melky Cabrera.

Similarly, you’d be looking for a while to find to many names that the average baseball fan knows from that Padres lineup that Gray nominated or the White Sox lineup that Kyle Freeland nearly no-hit in 2017.

Learn To Mind Your Surroundings

So…how many points is Coors Field worth?

National and even some local media, and a whole bunch of advanced stats, will lead you to believe that anyone who steps into the box at the altitude in Denver becomes a better hitter. And it’s true that balls in play have a much better chance of going for a hit here than they do anywhere else.

But Marquez also proved that a jam-shot two-hopper to the shortstop pretty much plays exactly the same no matter where you are.

It might be tempting to look at the box score and conclude that Marquez didn’t truly dominate the Pirates, maybe even that he got a bit lucky on all those ball in play.

Anyone who watched the game, though, will tell you that apart from an extraordinary leaping catch by shortstop Trevor Story in the eighth, Marquez barely needed his defense for anything beyond taking care of the routine. Mundane even.

Getting weak contact all game, Marquez made Coors Field a non-factor in a way that literally hundreds of pitchers who have come before him have failed to do.

Only the nearly mythical Hideo Nomo, who was nearly unhittable in 1995 and 1996, has managed to tame the beast, still barely holding onto the claim of being the sole person on the planet who has thrown a no-hitter in Denver.

That’s what Marquez was after. That’s what a sinking liner to right from Ka’ai Tom ruined.

A Rockie has never done it. Only a Dodger has.

Marquez also isn’t just a Rockie, he’s quickly climbing all the franchise leaderboards. As noted, he had already flirted with this exact achievement once before, and even in the game he threw prior to this one in Seattle, he was perfect for seven out of eight innings.

But at home… it would have meant everything.

Doomed To Repeat It

There’s a reason we signify no-hitters and not one-hitters. There are a lot more guys who’ve managed the latter. Going nine innings without giving up a hit is something unique. That’s why you still have to tip your cap to Jimenez and his day in Atlanta.

It’s funny, right? One guy threw a no-no, the other guy didn’t. I could have started with that, I guess, and saved you some time.

But imagine for just a moment what would have happened if Tom’s liner had held up just a bit longer and Charlie Blackmon had been able to haul it in.

They’d still be standing and cheering at 20th and Blake.

While the history that Jimenez achieved rightfully placed his name in the record books along with some all-time greats, Marquez nearly blew it out of the water.

To do it in this place, that so many have turned into a joke…

To do it in this year, that in so many ways has become a chore…

To do it at this time, when the Rockies are searching for identity and their next star…

To do it in front of the people who know how great you are, even when most of the baseball world doesn’t…

It would have been the most amazing singular moment in the history of the Colorado Rockies that didn’t take place in the calendar year 2007.

But alas, we will have to wait until that magical day does arrive. And who knows? It may be sooner than you think and it may even be Marquez himself who finishes the job next time.

What is perhaps most encouraging for Rockies fans, still feeling the emotional letdown of the big moment that slipped through their fingers, is that of these great individual performances we have to look back on, so many of them have been provided by Marquez, Gray, and Freeland.

Surely, they’ve got more where that came from.

Someday, someone donning the home colors, maybe one of these guys, will make history on the home turf, and we will all be able to say that we have literally never seen anything like it before in our lives.