How the Rockies should handle slumps while sprinting through a marathon sport

We are 19 games into a 60 game season and while the Colorado Rockies have gotten out to about as good a start as anyone could have hoped for, every single negative is going to be magnified because every mistake is that much more costly.

As such, it is only right that we hold the microscope up to every underperforming player and every questionable call from the manager and front office.

But one simple truth also remains: The fact that the schedule is dramatically different than ever before does not change the nature of the game of baseball.

Slumps happen. Bad games happen. Terrible games happen.

It is trickier now than ever to discern the difference between weathering the storm before the inevitable turnaround and being left as the one team running a marathon while everyone else sprints past you.

So let’s take a look at the currently underperforming members of the Rockies roster and see whether it is wise for the club to stick by them in hopes of great things to come or if it might already be time to seek an alternative course of action.

David Dahl

Dahl is arguably the most perplexing player on this list. He has simply never struggled with the bat like this at any time in his career. That is likely adding to the length of his slump, never having really had to work out of one like this before.

That said, his resume, approach, and ability shown at the MLB level also give the most confidence that he will be a productive hitter for the Rockies this season. Remember, this is the guy who began his MLB career with a 17-game hitting streak and he was named to the All-Star Game a year ago for a reason. Those skills are not gone at 26-years-old and the career .290 hitter (112 wRC+) will find his way back to his feet.

He may be in a deeper ditch than anyone at the moment, having gone 0-for-his-last-14 including seven strikeouts. But that this is easily the worst offensive stretch of his career is also the good news. He will come out of this, and once he does, a lot of pitchers are going to pay for it.

Dahl’s issues at the plate appear to be mostly mental now as he is just ahead of off-speed and just behind the fastball. It is similar to how Nolan Arenado opened the year as well and we expect a similar style recovery from one of the best pure hitters on the team.

Ryan McMahon

McMahon has less of a sturdy background to rely on. The writing was on the wall a year ago for a huge breakout when he excelled in the second half, hitting the ball hard at a rate putting him among the elite names in baseball like Christian Yelich.

He’s still hitting the ball hard when he makes contact, about 43 percent of the time, and has even been hitting the ball in the air more, lowering his groundball rate by about five percent. The issue, of course, has been the strikeouts.

This is clearly the result of a change in approach from pitchers. Early in his career, the book on McMahon was to jam him high and inside with fastballs that his naturally loopy swing had difficulty covering once he reached the highest level. It took some time, and a few trips back and forth to the minors, but Mac eventually made the necessary adjustments and found himself getting to that pitch with regularity.

That led to a rookie campaign wherein he blasted 24 home runs and put us all on notice.

Now, he’s seeing more sliders (18 percent vs. 13 percent early in his career) especially in hitter’s counts. Pitchers aren’t “giving in” with the fastball and McMahon is chasing, having not yet made the adjustment to either lay off that junk or sit back on it and wait for the mistake.

While there isn’t as much evidence as with Dahl, these peripherals suggest McMahon is once again a small change away from locking in. There has always been swing-and-miss that comes with his power stroke but he won’t K 40 percent of the time this season, which is where he currently sits.

The story of his early career also shows why you can’t just hand his job to another young player (like Brendan Rodgers) and expect that guy to fix the problem. McMahon has shown the ability to figure his way out of slumps before and as long as the team is staying above .500 the positives of allowing him to work through it outweigh the potential negatives of burying him and potentially throwing another player into a no-win situation.

Sam Hilliard

The least shocking of all these early-season woes at the plate should come from rookie Sam Hilliard.

His 2019 September was as exciting as they come but it was always going to be an uphill battle to parlay that into a smoothly successful 2020 campaign.

This is why he was likely to start out the year in Triple-A under normal circumstances. He is still a bit raw and it is showing now that pitchers have a little bit of a book on him. We should expect Sam to take a bit of time to settle into this level and it’s certainly tough to do with sporadic playing time.

Because Colorado has so many outfielders, Hilliard will need to pick it up soon if he wants to avoid losing even more playing time. It’s a tough task, but he may end up one of the victims of the sprint.

Raimel Tapia

Herein lies the good news for everybody. While we wouldn’t say that Tapia lit the world on fire with his series against the Diamondbacks, he did enter it hitting under .200 and exit it hitting over .300.

It’s a reminder of how quickly things can turn around and how getting the feeling back in your bones of solid bat-on-ball contact can put a long slump behind you. In a matter of just a few at-bats, Tapia went from “maybe there is no room for him” to “he has to be in the lineup until further notice.”

This can happen for any of the guys above which could, at any time, have a massive positive impact on the Rockies offense.

But the biggest reason for belief in all of these players to produce is that they have before and that baseball is a funny beast. Charlie Blackmon and Daniel Murphy will cool off. And I know that for roughly the same reason that I know some of these guys will heat up.

Each one will need a day or two off here and there, but the Rockies need all these guys.

The onus therefore is on manager Bud Black and the front office to pull the right strings at the right time. Like with Tapia, they need to recognize when a guy doesn’t have him going and give others a shot. But also like with Tapia they cannot bury players and need to give them opportunities to show they are about to be the next hot hand that need the same kind of treatment Garrett Hampson and Matt Kemp have earned in the early going.

If they can get this balance just right, it will sustain this club in contention for all of 2020.