Today was abominable.
After a questionable first inning which involved Jhoulys Chacin allowing a single to Melky Cabrera and a home run to Pablo Sandoval, things actually got worse.
Chacin threw 90 pitches, 47 strikes. He only allowed 4 hits, which was nice, but he also walked 5 guys and only struck out 3. Esmil Rogers threw 49 pitches, 29 for strikes, walking 2 and striking out 1. What made those particular performances even worse than the near-even strike-to-ball ratio was the fact that most of those strikes were on struck balls.
After the first 2 innings, it seemed Chacin's zone was pretty much shoebox-sized. This isn't meant to excuse his lousy pitching, but instead just pointing out how pitching badly gets you even worse chances for strike calls. I honestly think that Chacin walked more batters than he had called strikes.
This also had me wondering about Chacin and Ramon Hernandez today. Chacin was clearly all over the place, and unless I missed it, I didn't see a Hernandez/Chacin mound conference at all. Also, I couldn't tell where Hernandez was setting up for Chacin, but seriously, how many low-and-outside balls needed to be called before they stopped trying to get that outside corner?
The bright spot from the mound was Josh Roenicke's 2 innings of work. 2 punchouts, 1 hit, and 0 runs is a pretty excellent 2 innings.
Before we let everyone else off of the hook, Matt Reynolds was victimized by some atrocious defense as well, featuring errors by Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki. Reynolds didn't pitch extremely well, but he didn't pitch poorly enough for 3 runs to cross the plate.
Not that Reynolds' runs would have made any difference. Yet again, Barry Zito made the Rockies look like complete idiots, spinning the first ever Giants' Complete Game Shutout in Coors Field. I don't know what Faustian bargain that man has made, but whatever it is, he made the Rockies look like complete idiots. If you want to learn more about how absurd this Zito start was, check out the You Can't Predict Baseball Twitter Feed. They'll learn ya.
The bats were slightly - slightly - victims of a bit of that "oops, we hit it where they are" malady that occasionally strikes the Rockies. Some good defensive plays by the Giants stole some Rockies hits, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that would've made enough of a difference to overcome Chacin and friends' performances.
Seriously guys, you got to face one of the worst offenses in baseball, featuring a lineup with no Buster Posey, no Nate Schierholtz, and instead, a bunch of backups and guys named Brandon Crawford. These guys bat like a team of pitchers, and the Rockies just handed them the game.
There's not just one scapegoat here. Tulowitzki popped everything imaginable a mile high and most everyone else hit lazy fly balls and weak grounders.
It's hard enough to get attention to the Rockies that isn't all wacky and ironic. The Rockies are guaranteed like 5 sellouts a season: Opening Day, Fireworks Games, and I guess like Memorial day or something. It's just unacceptable to see the play we saw out there today on a day with a crowd as large as we had. Rather than leaving with a 'hey, these guys might not be so bad" taste in their mouths, the Denver populace is quite likely back to "lol the rokcies still suck".
Breaks my heart.
In POSITIVE news:
69-year-old Judith Reese, the Rockies' fan hit by a foul ball, was treated and released from Denver Health. She suffered a concussion
— Troy Renck, Rockies (@TroyRenck) April 10, 2012
Source: FanGraphs
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