One of the more curious aspects of the Rockies awful start that gets overlooked with more prominent issues elsewhere has been the troubling disappearance of reliable breaking pitches from Jorge De La Rosa. When he was successful with the Rockies at the end of 2008, the mix of his pitches was near 30% curveballs and sliders, but thus far in 2009, he's been hovering around the 20% level. Now De La Rosa has certainly either been unlucky or perhaps burdened with a poor defense this season as his FIP is nearly a full two runs lower than what his current ERA is, but perhaps the mix of pitches he's throwing is also coming into play.
De La Rosa's last three starts haven't been pretty, we'd like to see a rebound tonight against a tough opponent.