How the Rockies Can Help Their Pitching: Start Hitting!

In the pre-season and first couple months of the season the Rockies and the local press has raved about the Rockies and their hitting.  However, much of it is a mirage.

The Rockies have just ended a 3 week stretch in which they have scored a total of 57 runs in 19 games or just under 3 per game.  Only the Giants have been worse in the entire MLB.   Up until June 16th, the Rockies had scored a league leading (and 2nd in the MLB overall) 352 runs.

Today, the Rockies find themselves with 409 runs scored and 409 runs scored against.   And the conventional wisdom is that the Pitching is letting them down, as there is lot of talk about the Rockies acquiring another starter, reliever, live arm etc.   But look at the distribution of the games, and you'll find that the pitching has really been doing the job this season.  Let's face it, no Rockies team is going to throw a ton of shutouts in a season or even 1 or 2 run games.  It requires a balance of keeping the Rockies in the game and the offense scoring 5, 6, or 7 runs in a game.

Never was this more evident than in the past 3 weeks.  Yes the Rockies pitching gave up 100 runs during the 19 games, but some of that is caused by the pressure of not having runs scored behind them.  Of the 57 runs scored by the Rockies, they scored 31 of them in 4 games.  in the other 15 they only scored 26 runs, well under 2 runs per game.   In fact in 11 of those games they scored 2 runs or less.  Scoring 3 twice and 4 twice.  Granted the pitching gave up 6 or more runs 7 times in that stretch, but losing 11-1 or 11-4 is not much different than losing 1-0 or 5-4.  The Rockies did win 1 game 2-1, and lost another 8-10.  They also won all 3 games that the Pitchers gave up 1 run, lost all 3 games in which the pitchers gave up 2 or 3 runs, and lost 5 of 6 games where the pitching only gave up 5 runs.

Eventually the hitting will come out and play again--hopefully before the Rockies are buried.  But the current Rockies problems with the pitching  doesn't lie as much with the pitching as it does with the hitting to help ease the pressure of needing to throw shut-outs or low run games.  It's just not going to happen that way.