Rockies pitching. Second best in the Major Leagues. What? Look at our DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Something-or-other) according to ESPN. Yeah, that surprised me too, but we're just a couple of ticks behind the Mets right now for best in all of baseball. This stat is meant to take away all of the statistical noise and just measure pitching as if everybody played on a neutral field, with a neutral defense behind them. Chicago White Sox? They're bums! Red Sox? Yankees? I wouldn't trade our entire staff for theirs right now. :0
Alright, so it's a good thing our pitchers are so much on top of things, because if we had to rely on our offense to carry things, we'd be in a world of hurt. I was really on the website to try and investigate why when the Rockies have twenty-one more hits than our current opponents, the same total amount of baserunners, and thirty more extra base hits, why we would score seventeen fewer runs on the season. It turns out that the problem might be deeper than Clint Hurdles MLB leading 36 sacrifice outs. Maybe Clint has us bunt so much because he knows how much the team hurls chunks when it comes to hitting with runners on base period.
Okay, let's look at the numbers. Right now, the Rockies are second in the NL in OPS when the bases are empty. The Padres are dead last. Okay, so it still makes little sense that we should be outscored so much. Let's put a runner on, though, and see what happens. ARROWED!!!
Wow, we go from second straight to the bottom of the standings. How can a team go from being so good at the plate to so bad with such a little adjustment? Do our hitters just not pick the ball up out of the stretch? Is Hurdle's constant prodding to advance the runners making the team forget how to hit? It's not like we're just totally unlucky in these situations either. Go to page two and look at our sacrifice flies in runner on situations, we're the only team in the NL still in single digits. This says the team's not even hitting the ball out of the infield that often even when they are allowed to swing away. We get a homerun once every 57.6 AB's in these situations, meaning we've gone weeks at a time without seeing multiple run HR's. Management has to do something to loosen up our bats with runners on, as our pitching won't keep up this pace forever.