"We have a shortstop catching": Rockies athleticism is off the charts

DENVER – Athleticism in baseball isn’t as fundamentally important as it is in other sports, but when you have all the skill and technique stuff covered, having a ballclub full of fantastic athletes can make all the difference in the world. And for the 2017 Colorado Rockies, it has.

For all the hype surrounding the clutch hitting, the vastly improved bullpen, and the cavalcade of young arms who daily reinvent the notion of pitching in a Rockies uniform, it has been the incredible defensive play across the board that has been the most consistent — and arguably most important — characteristic of this first-place team.

In a conversation with reliever Adam Ottavino, we asked about this idea of certain parts of the team “picking up” others, specifically noting the bullpen carried the team for months and is now getting “bailed out” by the offense. For the most part, he wasn’t having it. “It’s just a couple of games. The bullpen is still throwing great.

All year,” he says. “Hitters have been clutch, Nolan especially the last couple of games. And that’s been our team; clutch hitting, good pitching, good defense.”

But when it comes to the back and forth of a 162 game season, Ottavino — and pretty much everyone else in the clubhouse we talked to — insists on thinking of every game as an individual event. “Yes. Exactly,” he says of that mindset. “Every game. It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday or what we’ve got coming up. Each game is different.”

And that appears to be a working approach. “We’ve won games 10-8, we’ve won games 1-0. We’ve come from behind, we’ve held leads. We’ve done a bit of everything but the constant has been our defense for sure. ” He went on to add the pitching and clutch hitting have been there all season, but it’s easy to see what he means with this defense.

Manager Bud Black, while recognizing the insane level of athleticism, says it all begins with the basics. “It starts with guys who are fundamentally good defenders. Gold Glover at third. Trevor is an above-average shortstop. CarGo has great instincts. Mark Reynolds and Ian Desmond if they are at first. Ian was a shortstop, Reynolds was a college shortstop, that speaks for itself. The infield defense has been really, really good. And they work at it, we saw that in spring training. It’s something you can improve upon as a player.”

That point about Desmond and Reynolds is something that has been discussed since Desmond was signed and “versatility” became the word of the offseason. What that word really meant, though, was not necessarily that one player could play a ton of positions, but rather that no matter who the Rockies put on the field — or where they put them — they are so stacked with quality athletes that their defensive floor is incredibly high.

“Statistically, I would say this is the best defensive team I’ve played on,” Desmond told BSN Denver. “It’s crazy, man. We want the ball hit to us. We all are looking for outs. I think it’s good that the pitchers trust us and that they are putting the ball over the plate so that we can make plays.”

But, we point out, it isn’t just the statistics that show the team is playing near-mistake-free baseball. We began to list the guys on this team who might easily have gone pro in other sports given their natural gifts. Charlie Blackmon as a receiver in the NFL, Trevor Story as a running back, DJ LeMahieu as a point guard in the NBA, and the alternate universe where Carlos Gonzalez and Cristiano Ronaldo have switched jobs.

Desmond follows up the idea that Nolan Arenado might have been a scary linebacker with the declaration,”We’ve got a shortstop catching,” referring to Tony Wolters who gives the Rockies above-average-to-elite level athletes at all nine positions on the field.

Yes, even the pitchers field their positions well and can outrun most of their counterparts. “That’s true,” Desmond says. “Those guys get it done.”

“And that’s a credit to the management, the team upstairs,” he continued. “They set on a mission to get athletes and that’s what they’ve done. They did a great job constructing that. I think that was kind of a goal of theirs and you’re seeing the result of it. ”

The results of it are a team that sits at 47-27 despite extremely limited contributions from their three best pitchers a season ago and a lineup that still has never been full strength. Like Ottavino said, the hitting has been timely and the pitching even more so, but the defense — the defense has been otherworldly.