Rockies young pitching staff using spring training as a laboratory

It has been said a thousand times this March and yet it still bears repeating. Spring training stats are meaningless. Well…mostly.

But the specific reasons why this is true can be difficult to understand if not entirely counterintuitive. Surely, nobody specifically tries to fail, and surely success is better right? That’s true but even at their very best, baseball players will fail more than they succeed. So, when they are trying new things, it can get a little crazy.

For Colorado Rockies fans who have been hearing all offseason that the fate of their club is tied so directly to the quality of their pitching staff, there have been some scary moments this spring. Every member of the staff has been hit hard in multiple outings. They aren’t getting bloop-singled to death or running into bad luck but giving up some long, no-doubt home runs.

But again, that all needs to be put in proper context.

Manager Bud Black took some time after German Marquez gave up three runs in the first inning against the Los Angeles Angels to explain how this dynamic is at work with his young staff and why these growing pains will make the team better in the long run.

“We’re looking for the quick adjustment and the quick learn from your mistakes,” says Black. “With him specifically, his last start, there are some things we identified that he tried to do and it didn’t work.”

But the Rockies skipper hesitates to use a common word that might suggest a bit too much randomness.

“Not so much experimental,” he explains, “But there’s some pitch sequencing and pitch location that we want him to work on, and he couldn’t do it. That’s part of the reason he got hit. But he tried some things we know that he needs to do and he couldn’t execute them. Hopefully, we’ll see now, he’s had a bullpen session, he has a heightened awareness of, ‘Hey, I tried to do this last week and it didn’t work so I’ve got to see if I can do a little better this week, this start.'”

He does admit that the unique environment of spring training does allow for a kind of laboratory approach and in so doing used my new favorite word. “I don’t oversimplicate,” he says. “Usually we have the catcher involved in this too. Whether it’s a certain side of the plate a pitcher needs to work on. He’s really good on one side of the plate, ‘Hey, today, we’ve got to work on this side of the plate, because that’s a little bit of your flaw. So let’s do that today.'”

The guy expected to be the Rockies ace this season, Jon Gray, has told BSN Denver on multiple occasions the single most important factor in throwing a good pitch is for him to have confidence in it. But this is the time of year for throwing pitches you have almost no confidence in. Yet.

Of course, there are plenty of things that can go wrong with a starting pitching staff no matter how talented and deep. Just look at last year’s New York Mets. There are no guarantees in this game and the growing pains are by no means firmly in the past for the Rockies rotation.

However, the crooked numbers on the opposing scoreboards are not signs that this group pitched above their heads a year ago or that the league has adjusted to their repertoires. They are the inevitable consequences of testing your limits against the very best in the world.

By the middle of the summer, Rockies fans are likely to be glad of these ugly spring box scores while enjoying the absolute best pitching on a daily basis in the history of the franchise.