Eight-game losing streaks happen in baseball. In fact, the Colorado Rockies have more eight-game losing streaks in their history than playoff appearances. Before you ask, yes they’ve done both in the same year too, 2007.
It’s not the time to panic or hop off the bandwagon on a club that’s on pace to win 94 games after exactly one-half of a season but this eight-game stretch makes one evaluate and raise some questions that weren’t being talked about a week ago as well as point some fingers.
Let’s start here: the Rockies are not catching the Dodgers. It was unlikely before and now even more so. On the flip side, the Rockies have a 6.5 game lead in the wildcard and, according to Fangraphs, a 50 percent better shot at finding a way into the playoffs than whoever the second team in the NL Central is. Essentially, the Rockies were so good for 73 games that they could be extremely bad for about two weeks and still have some breathing room.
The Rockies are playing for a spot in the wildcard game, and that’s fine.
The problem is this nasty losing streak and ‘those same old Rockies’ have started to show in ways.
Never have the Rockies had a worse run differential over a stretch of games as they’ve had over this losing streak. Poor pitching, atrocious hitting, particularly in the clutch, and some injuries have steered this ship into rough waters.
Teams go through things like this but this cannot continue if the Rockies are to play in a Wildcard game.
More concerning than the play has been the rash of injuries causing much shuffling of the roster.
With Jon Gray listed to open up the second half on Friday, the staff gets a much-needed boost but this past bit has exposed their lack of present depth.
With Tyler Anderson‘s injury, the Rockies have had to push starters from starting into the bullpen and back-and-forth which created a horrible positive feedback loop that led to poor starts which in turn depleted the bullpen forcing the Rockies to use more starters in relief.
If another guy were to have been injured in the past week the Rockies would’ve been screwed. Shane Carle and Zach Jemiola are the only other starters on the 40-man roster and Carle has been in the Isotopes bullpen much of the year while Jemiola has been injured for over a month. The Rockies would’ve either had to make a 40-man move calling up the struggling Harrison Musgrave or promoted Jordan Lyles into the rotation to spot start.
That right there showcases just how injured the Rockies have been playing alongside some obvious fatigue in the bullpen which required Alexi Amarista to get loose on a day the team carried nine relievers.
In the lineup, Colorado is playing without it’s starting right, left and fourth outfielder. This has pushed organizational depth up to the major leagues in the form of Mike Tauchman. Tauchman could be solid one day and his continued improvements in the minors are very positive yet he’s still not affecting the game the way even a slumping Carlos Gonzalez does.
The scariest part of this stretch was when DJ LeMahieu came up hobbling on Tuesday with a groin injury. He’s day-to-day now but an injury to the 2016 batting champ resulting in any DL time would force some major roster movement for the Rockies who currently have eight players (including minor leaguers on the 40-man) on their DL. Aside from catchers, the only position player on the 40-man roster not in the big leagues is Jordan Patterson. Any injury for an extended period would likely spell the call up of the white-hot Ryan McMahon who plays all over the diamond.
Yet all this shows is the Rockies’ hand is starting to be forced due to injuries, especially the one to David Dahl.
The Rockies have a weekend set against their likeliest playoff foe, the division rival D-Backs. If LeMahieu were to be placed on the disabled list, the team could have four rookies in their lineup and four in the rotation, a more familiar feel for the 2016 team than the 2017 incarnation.
All of this is to say that if the Rockies can get healthy or start playing well again, which both should happen, they’ll be fine. But if this is the start of what is to come in the dog days, the Rockies are screwed. You do not want to see what is behind Tauchman or McMahon if you think this team is postseason bound.
At the end of the day, this is probably rock bottom because the pitching has been worse for six of the eight days than it had been all season to this point coupled with an offense that has forgotten how to hit for power or drive in baserunners. In fact, just mathematically speaking things will work themselves out and the Rockies will most likely roll once more.
