Blogs

Mark Knudson’s Three Strikes Blog: Only a trade can get the Rockies bullpen help; Nuggets don’t get match up they needed, and Could new Pac 12 Commish help CU bring back baseball?

Strike One: There’s nothing quiet as demoralizing for a baseball team as losing a late inning lead. It happens to every team at some time or another, but it happens to bad teams a lot more often. Right now, the Colorado Rockies aren’t a very good baseball team, and the bullpen is a big reason why. Is there any reason to hope that can change this season – knowing that the club isn’t going to take on any big salaries?

Colorado currently has the worst bullpen ERA in MLB after falling to the equally bad Cincinnati Reds in a game Colorado led 6-1 after seven innings. Earlier in the series, the Rockies nearly blew a 10-0 lead before holding off the Reds 13-8. The latest loss dropped the Rockies to 15-26. Going into the season, it was no secret relief pitching was going to be a weakness, and nothing drove that point home more than the 7-6 loss at Coors Field. The bullpen ERA is an unsightly 5.84 and the WHIP – which includes walks AND hits per innings – is more than 1.60. That means almost two baserunners per inning.

Colorado’s starters have not been championship caliber, but certainly pitched well enough to win many more games. Jon Gray’s ERA is a tidy 2.93. More of the same and he should be a National League All-Star – before likely being traded at the end of July. No Rockies relievers are in that kind of conversation.

So what can interim General Manager Bill Schmidt do – if anything – to try to turn things around? Is there help at the ready from within?

Probably not yet. They say hitting is contagious…and so is relief pitching. So with the current eight man bullpen struggling so mightily, it will probably be someone who’s not yet in purple pinstripes that will be needed to start to turn things around. Manager Bud Black did turn to rookies Justin Lawrence and Jordan Sheffield in the series finale with the Reds, and even those two, who have shown great promise in non-game deciding appearances, fell victim to the bugaboos of walks and untimely hits and wild pitches. Putting them in when the game is on the line doesn’t look like great option at the moment. Veteran Mychal Givens has been ineffective, and closer Daniel Bard – the best story in baseball a season ago when he came back from a seven year hiatus to win National League Comeback Player of the Year honors – has scuffled in the role. Bard is not a long term solution to this short AND long term issue.

The Rockies minor league affiliates don’t appear to have the next Mariano Rivera at the ready, either.

In Albuquerque, the Rockies top affiliate is off to a 1-9 start and using older guys like Joe Harvey and Chris Rusin out of the bullpen. Not exactly hope for the future. Double A Hartford is off to a slightly better start, and young Tommy Doyle has recorded a save already. But Colorado rarely brings guys to Coors who haven’t pitched much at altitude (like in Albuquerque) so he’s not going to be the immediate answer, either.

Riley Pint was the fourth overall pick in the 2016 MLB draft, but his development has been slow, and he’s currently pitching middle relief in Class A Spokane. He’s off to a pretty good start in his first four appearances, but his emergence at Coors Field – if it ever comes – remains a long way off. The fact that Pint’s still in Class A illustrates how poor the Rockies player development – especially when it comes to pitching – has been over the past decade.

What all this means is that, sadly, it appears that if this Rockies team is going to get any help for the beleaguered bullpen, it will have to come as the result of a trade that sends Gray or Trevor Story to a contending team. The New York Yankees are the team most often being mentioned in a potential Story trade, which would likely result in young San Diego State product Alan Trejo taking over at shortstop for Colorado. IF…and that’s the big question…IF Schmidt can get a better return for Story than his predecessor did in the Nolan Arenado trade, then perhaps the Rockies could get a young pitcher like Yankee farmhands Luis Gil or Clarke Schmidt in return for Story. Gil is the one who profiles as a closer and could make the jump from New York’s double A affiliate directly to Colorado.

The only way Colorado is getting any real help for the bullpen this season is from someone who isn’t currently in the organization.

Strike Two: If there’s one thing we know about the Denver Nuggets, it’s that they’re at their best when most are doubting them, and when their backs are to the wall. We’ve seen it repeatedly when they’re dealing with a multitude of injuries (like they have been since Jamal Murray went out) and when they were down three games to one in a pair of play off series last fall. This outfit defines the “us against them” mentality.

On the flip side, the Nuggets simply haven’t been as good when they’ve been “favorites.” We’ve seen Denver teams at full strength lose to also rans like Washington and Orlando at home this season. They also struggled in play-off series two seasons ago when they were overwhelming favorites.

Which is why they should have embraced the chance to play the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers in the first round.

Even after head coach Michael Malone pledged that “All of our guys will play tonight…we don’t worry about who we’re playing after tonight” Denver went out and got blasted in the season finale at Portland. Malone was unhappy with the effort and performance of his starting five, stressing the need to play with more urgency and passion. That’s what the play-offs are going to be all about.

A lot of folks (and perhaps some of the Nuggets players?) had hoped the Denver would drop that game and thereby fall behind the Los Angeles Clippers in the Western Conference standings in order to avoid LeBron and Company in the first round. They got part of their wish. Problem was, the Clippers lost too, so the Nuggets maintained the three seed. And with Portland winning, they knocked the Lakers down to the seventh seed, meaning Denver will play Portland in the opening round and LeBron and Company will have to play red-hot Steph Curry and Golden State in the “play-in” mini-tournament.

Despite having the home court, it’s not the best first round opponent for Denver. The Trailblazers have won 11 of their last 13 regular season games, including the season finale beatdown.

Denver would have been better off playing LA. Not only because the Lakers are not the same team they were a year ago, with LeBron nursing a bad ankle and Anthony Davis back to battling more injuries. But also because the national media types – who’ve written Denver off since the moment Murray went down with a season ending knee injury – would give Denver no shot in the opening round despite having had the better regular season, the home court advantage and the league’s presumptive MVP in Nikola Jokic.

The Nuggets are at their best under these kinds of circumstances.

Remember, the last time Denver was the favorite going into a play-off series with Portland, they blew a 3-1 series lead and lost a series they should have won easily. The Blazers’ guards can give Denver fits with their stellar three point shooting, and with Denver still nursing injuries in the back court, that figures to be an uphill battle most of the time.

If you’re into sports betting, placing a wager on this being a seven-game series is probably a safe bet.

Strike Three: Just over a decade ago, when the University of Colorado made the decision to leave the unsettled Big 12 Conference for the promise of a more lucrative future in the Pac 12, a lot of us believed that it was just going to be a matter of time before CU was able to bring its long dormant baseball program out of mothballs.

CU dropped baseball in 1980. The late great Irv Brown ran the program for nine seasons, but it was his successor, Larry Schultz, who got the unexpected axe that summer. In fact, Schultz was at a summer collegiate game I was playing in at Scott Carpenter Field (I was playing for a Greeley team against Tony Gwynn, Joe Carter, Joe Maddon and the powerhouse Boulder Collegians) and he asked my father if I’d be interested in transferring to CU (whom I’d beaten during my sophomore season at Colorado State) when CSU dropped its program – which was the only rumor Schultz had heard (CSU didn’t drop baseball until 1992.) Imagine his shock and dismay when he got the news that the Buffaloes program – which had turned out MLB All-Star players like John Stearns and Jay Howell – was being cut so that new football coach Chuck Fairbanks could get his office renovated.

A lot of fans remain upset that baseball’s been missing from the CU athletic program for four decades now.

Many of us thought that the influx of capital from the Pac 12 would fix all that. But that influx has yet to happen, largely because former Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott could not deliver on his promise to make the Pac 12 TV network as big as it’s brethren in the Big 10, SEC and yes, even the new machination of the Big 12. After 10 seasons of lavish spending and failure to land his conference network on a national carrier – specifically Direct TV – Scott finally got fired and was recently replaced by former MGM Resorts executive George Kliavkoff.  

It was another outside the box hire by the conference, but one they hope will lead to a completion of some of the things Scott failed to get done – like a better TV deal and perhaps expansion (could they plan on revisiting the Texas and Oklahoma discussion?)

With NCAA conference baseball tournaments about to begin, and the College World Series on the horizon, the lack of a baseball program at Colorado – smack dab in the middle of a region that has proven to support baseball in a big way – is front and center once again. The question is, can Kliavkoff help CU generate enough money to pay off what’s left on all the recent capital facility improvements AND still find a way to bring back dormant sports like baseball, softball, wrestling and others?

Title IX remains in play of course, so we’re talking about at the very least enough revenue to equally fund a baseball program AND a softball program. That’s probably in the area of $10 million per year, with a very limited amount being generated back (at some schools, baseball can pay for itself, but that’s not likely to be the case at CU.)

That kind of additional income would be huge, not only for baseball, but for the athletic department as a whole.

The MGM has featured a lot of magic acts over the years. Let’s see what Kliavkoff has up his sleeve.

Related posts

41’s Inside Pitch: Youth aiding Rockies…more help available down on the farm?

Micah Kilpatrick

Rockies Roster doesn’t fit – Long or short term fixes available?

Micah Kilpatrick

41’s Inside Pitch: Opening Day observations with Manny Randhawa and Thomas Harding

Micah Kilpatrick