I broke a dish today. It wasn’t the entire dish, mind you, but just the lid. Still, it’s a nice casserole dish that’s incomplete now. I received it as a gift, and I’ve always made sure take care with it. But I was a little careless pulling out a baking sheet next to the dish. The sheet caught the lid, yanking it out and to the floor, where broke into two pieces. Right now, super glue is trying to fasten the two pieces back together. We’ll see if it works. I’m not that optimistic.
It feels like the Rockies season being held together by an adhesive of indeterminate strength. The Rockies lost 5-3 against the Marlins Sunday afternoon and fell to 65-52. The loss completed the sweep at the hands of the Marlins, who improved to 56-60 on the season. Colorado has now lost four out of the five games they played since winning three in a row against the Mets and Phillies. After starting the season 24-10 in their first 34 road games, the Rockies have gone 6-21 in their last 27.
Nolan Arenado got hit in the hand with a pitch. He had to leave the game to go get X-rays, and the Rockies and their fans are going to be holding their breath until the results come back. Bad news could very well sink the Rockies season.
Nolan Arenado hit by a pitch, exits game early pic.twitter.com/nV6PmNZDXg
— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) August 13, 2017
Germán Márquez has been the Rockies’ best starting pitcher in 2017, but he wasn’t great on Sunday. Márquez’s command was off, which made his velocity much less effective. He gave up a couple runs in the second, but the Rockies got him the lead back in the top of the third. The hit that gave the Rockies the lead was a weak grounder through the middle of the infield, courtesy of Carlos González. It was the limpest of game highlights.
The Rockies relinquished the lead in the bottom half of the third, when Giancarlo Stanton homered to right field. Márquez didn’t make it out of the fifth inning and departed with the Rockies down 5-3.
The loss. The sweep. The ball that hit Arenado. The increasingly plausible third place finish in the Wild Card race. The broken dish. They all evoke feelings of distinct letdown and powerlessness. Even if the pieces seem to fit, it may not be possible to put it all back together. And it can all be traced back to the moment when both sturdy instruments and future certainties are revealed to be as brittle as bone.