Sunday Rockpile: So... the Rockies bullpen... uhm... yeah...

I’m pretty sure that St. Louis has passed the Rockies for sixth now that I look at it again. We better get back ahead of the Redbirds.

That would make me very excited, though I’d not be as excited to restock the Padres with prospects.

usual chunky (in a good way, like ice cream or peanut butter)

How about peanut butter ice cream?

We here at PR have always known that any production we get out of it boils down to a lot of chance at best. The problem is that ijn this situation whenever one of our starters doesn’t have it (Cook last night), our chances of losing a game drop significantly.

Several of our bullpen tools are declining at a rapid rate.
- Flores has been deteriorating for a while.
- Daley has been deteriorating since his return.
- Peralta has started to deteriorate with two bad outings in a row.
- Embree seems to have leveled off in the range of suckitude.
- Rincon has been okay in most of his outings, but still feels like a disaster waiting to happen.

That leaves Fogg, who is arguably overperforming and whose performance can only suffer from being left on the bench for so long, and Street, who has been everything we could ask for in a close rin terms of durability, performance, and attitude.

So, the good news first: Ryan Speier and Manny Corpas, who even when off are arguably better than some of these guys, are on the way to health. The first problem is that none of these guys are lefties. I feel that addressing Embree and Flores is the first thing that needs doing. Embree’s been like this most of the season, and isn’t getting better. Flores’ great start still doesn’t inspire much confidence, unlike Daley and Peralta who at this point I still hold hope for returning to decency.

Speier and Corpas are likely going to have to replace Rincon and Daley (or Peralta, depending on if he’s recovering or not come activation time). Assuming they’re on when they’re back, even a little (which, judging from Corpas’ first half and Speier’s delivery issues, is admittedly not at all a guarantee), it will already be an improvement on the right handed side of things. We hope.

We still have lefties to worry about. The Embree signing, as far as I’;m concerned, is a lost cause now and should be abandoned with due haste as soon as a viable option appears. That could be through a trade, but with salary already tight, that may be easier said than done.

Taking a glance through the minors, however, leads to more tough news.

We could presumably go with another set of minor league emergency depth moves and hope they stay good longer than Flores did, with Ben Julianel or Damian Moss. Both have decent ERAs at CSP, but WHIPs that border on uncomfortability. Obviously, neither of these options is all that appealing, as they’re projecting to be more of the same Flores. The best we could hope for is an improvement over Embree here, really.

More of the same shortage at AA Tulsa, and calling up any of these guys for emergencies is a worse idea than calling up the AAA options.

So, difficult to trade, no minor league depth. What do we do? I think, with us still in contention and the other options looking bleak, we may have to consider giviing Franklin Morales a try in the bullpen for the rest of the season. I have never before supported the conversion of a potentially effective starter to the bullpen (even temporarily), but desperate times call for measures like this. Ideally, I think this move would be made quickly to get Embree off the roster, and we’d live with Flores until better opportunities arise.

I never want to see Randy Flores throw another pitch for the Rockies. Holy crap is he terrible.

My pipe dream bullpen looks a little something like Fogg-Corpas-Peralta-Hawkins-Grabow-Street, with either Deduno or Morales called up as a wild-card power arm.

What can I say? I love exploding colorful things. Especially when I get to watch them explode over the scoreboard of a darkened stadium while lying in the outfield grass. So absolutely NO complaints from me.

The game itself, to be honest, only got horrible in the last two innings, and the bottom of the eighth was fun. And since it was my first Rockies game of the season, I really can’t pretend I didn’t have a good time. It sucks to lose, but hey, it was baseball.

Also, July 4th and it’s still very chilly in the evening? Gotta love Colorado weather…

Marquis made the All Star team.

I’m fairly happy with this.

Wonder who lost out for that one.