Rockies 10 Best Moments: Arenado Deja Vu

We continue our countdown of the Colorado Rockies Top 10 moments of 2017 with some fancy bat work by Nolan Arenado and… Jon Gray? The former should be no surprise to anyone who has seen a baseball game in the last five years but the latter could be, though not to anyone who closely followed the Rockies season.

The “big hit” can come in all shapes and sizes. Baseball is unique in that clutch moments don’t always have to take place at the ends of games. That was true for Gray’s ridiculous round-tripper in early July. While he put up a final stretch to his season worthy of putting his name into the “elite” category, none came with any true standout moment. Ironic that for a pitcher we believe has a legitimate chance at a Cy Young, his crowning moment of 2017 came in the batter’s box.

For the seventh entry on our list, however, there’s no reason to get overly clever and try to be unpredictable; It’s Nolan Arenado winning a game with an epic hit because that’s what he does.

Honorable Mention: Jon’s Big Blast, July 5

There’s not a ton of hardcore baseball analysis to be had here. This was just a big, strong kid swinging hard at a big-league fastball and getting every stitch of it.

More often than not, baseball is a game of intricacies and execution of fine concepts. But every once in a while it’s a dude smashing a ball with a stick and watching if fly a very, very long way. In the bottom of the second inning in a July matchup against the Red’s Scott Feldman, Gray did just that.

Jon Gray’s first career home run, it went 467 feet pic.twitter.com/wSIl10E4bf

— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) July 6, 2017

It became a source of good-natured ire among the position players that Gray’s shot heard ’round the state remained the longest home run for any Rockie on the season for most of the year. Longer than any hit by Nolan Arenado or Trevor Story or Carlos Gonzalez or Charlie Blackmon, though the latter would finally overtake the club’s distance king late in the year.

The sophomore pitcher even had the wherewithal, or perhaps swagger, to give a little Sammy-Sosa-esque hop out of the batter’s box. He told BSN Denver after the game that he knew he clipped it but was still surprised to find out the ball traveled 467 feet.

It was the first, and to this point still the only, home run in Gray’s career. It was the longest by any pitcher in the StatCast era (2015) and it was a sudden shock to just about everyone who witnessed it, including Gray.

And everything about it was memorable; his mighty hack, the hop, the way the ball ricocheted with violence off the bleachers in centerfield, disappearing into the trees and fountains, never to be seen again. The groundskeeper the players affectionately call “Tiny” says he spent hours looking for that thing.

The ball may be gone, but the memory of this crazy moment may never fade.

No. 7: He Did It Again, June 20

Deja vu… all over again.

Don’t let this one get lost in the shadow of its more famous and 24-hour-older brother. Nolan Arenado’s penchant for late-game heroics is about to become a theme for this list.

Before the 2017 season began, BSN Denver wrote about how Arenado was defying the stat-based arguments that there is no such thing as clutch. By season’s end, his teammates were lining up to tell us about how confident they felt with him at the plate, another year of stellar run production in the books. And moments like this are why.

One day after a more famous game-winner, Arenado hit his second triple in as many games… and he is not a fast man. But, remarkably, that wasn’t the notable thing about his three-bagger. Instead, it was that it sealed a victory over a division rival in consecutive games.

After battling with Arizona’s Zack Greinke and taking a 2-0 lead, the Rockies bullpen faltered as the Diamondbacks tied the game with a pair of eighth-inning home runs. But Charlie Blackmon and DJ LeMahieu led off their half of the inning by getting aboard, as they so often did, setting the stage once again for Arenado the deliver the game.

Doing something he did more in 2017 than at any other point in his career, Arenado waited back and drove the ball hard to the opposite field. It looked for a moment like the ball might leave the yard but the high wall in right soon made it clear that it would stay in play. It didn’t matter much as Blackmon and Lemahieu hustled around the bases to score with ease.

In hindsight, this moment stings a bit for Rockies fans. Winning is never a bad thing but this was the second time in a row their superstar had masked some of the problems going on in the bullpen. Those problems and a myriad of others became apparent over an infamous eight-game losing streak that immediately followed this game. It’s nice when one man can carry a team for a moment, but never good when they stop trying to walk on their own and he gets worn down.

Ballplayers will all tell you that a key to the game is to never get too low… or too high. This might have been a rare occurrence of the latter. One can’t help but wonder what the 48 hours of emotional rollercoaster did for the short-term endurance of the team. In many ways, the rough stretch that ensued was one Colorado spent much of the year trying to finally overcome.

Still, regardless of what happened after, this was one of those moments that had tenured and hardened baseball minds standing beside themselves in amazement. There was just no way—no way—that somebody could be that good when it matters most.

He is.