DENVER – I’ve never fully understood why people go bungee jumping.
Voluntarily falling from high places, strapping yourself onto twisty-turny speed machines, or jumping over long distances on foot or in vehicle—y’know, for fun—has simply never appealed to me, though it clearly does to quite a few people.
Similar in function, in fact, likely located in a neighboring section of the brain, is the “reliever” drive.
What kind of person must it take to assume a job that brings little glory except when stakes, and responsibilities, are at their absolute highest? Who wants to walk the proverbial tight-rope-with-no-net? If you succeed, you made it to the other side; accomplishing what was supposed to be inevitable. Well done.
If you fail? You crash hard.
And then, and believe it or not we are just now getting to the hard part, you have to scrape yourself off the ground, climb that ladder, and try again.
Take, for example, the career of a reliever that every single member of the current Colorado Rockies bullpen could learn something from; Brian Fuentes.
If you were a Rockies fan before this decade, you are familiar with that name but it likely evokes a myriad of responses throughout different segments of the fanbase. Because the crashes are always more memorable than the time the guy simply walked the rope to the other side, many will recall his most pronounced failures.
Yet others will remember exactly why he was recently named as one of the 25 greatest players in history as part of the 25-year anniversary celebrations.
Like most of us, when the Rockies first put together their 2018 bullpen, he thought they were going to be something special. “When they picked up Davis and Shaw…I was just like, ‘they’re going for it.”
Fuentes knows what it’s like to experience the highest highs and the lowest lows in this job though.
Debuting for the Mariners in 2001, he pitched just 11.2 innings with a 4.63 before moving to Colorado the following year to put up a similar 4.73 ERA over 26.2 innings of work.
Something clicked in 2003 when he was able to pitch 75.1 innings with a 2.75 ERA.
In 2004, he ran into the first major setback of his career, falling down to 44.2 IP with a 5.64 ERA. The numbers to this point are eerily similar to what Chris Rusin has done in his tenure with the Rockies.
Rusin will certainly hope that pattern continues as Fuentes settled into a very nice stretch in his career after that posting ERAs of 2.91, 3.44, 3.08, 2.72, 3.93, 2.81, and 3.70 before a 7.20 in 2012 forced him into retirement.
But even inside those oftentimes great numbers, especially considering how many of those were put up while pitching half his games at Coors Field, Fuentes knows that everything can turn on a dime for better or worse at any moment.
Nowhere was this more apparent than his 2007 campaign that saw him, at one point, average over two strikeouts an inning for over 30 innings.
“It’s funny how sometimes that happens,” he says. “Sometimes it just about raring back and letting it go.”
But later that same year, he lost the touch, blowing four saves in quick succession and losing his job to Manny Corpas.
Fuentes had been the team’s most reliable reliever (and once their only All-Star) in the prior years and would even resume that mantle in 2008. But in the most successful season in Colorado Rockies history, he stepped aside to figure himself out and eventually became a nerve-wracking but dynamite set-up man down the stretch.
Surely, there is a lesson to be learned there for every baseball player, but certainly the current iteration of the Rockies bullpen. And maybe one for the fans as well.
In the span of just a few months, Fuentes looked like the best reliever in the game and one of the worst. Adam Ottavino knows a little something about that.
“He’s pretty filthy,” says Fuentes of Colorado’s hottest pitcher. “I watch snippets of baseball It’s fun watching him pitch, man. He’s destroying people.
And if there was ever anyone who would refuse to give up on guys like Bryan Shaw, Rusin, and the rest, it would be Fuentes.
He chose not to offer an specific advice, stating rather what he felt worked for himself. “Every time you go out there, you expect to get guys out,” he says. “Even when you struggle, you don’t expect it to happen. Just rear back and let it go.”
It wasn’t always pretty. It was never easy. But the man was just rightly named as one of the 25 best Rockies of all time not because he dominated every single outing any single year. But he knew as well as anyone how to weather the storm. Whether it be by his words or example, the Rockies can learn a lot from Brian Fuentes.
