Trevor Story took a whack and never looked back in the ninth inning Sunday at Coors Field, hitting a half-moon home run to the trees beyond center field. He carried his bat 30 feet up the first-base line, but he never intended to turn around.
“I hit that ball really hard,” Story said. “I knew it had enough, but I didn’t know if the wind would mess with it.”
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At 108 mph off his bat, Story’s looper pushed through the wind and forced the Diamondbacks to walk off the field, giving the Rockies a 4-3 victory and a weekend series sweep of Arizona. His homer also dragged the Rockies out of baseball’s basement. At 18-29, they no longer have the worst record in MLB — a half-game ahead of the Diamondbacks, Orioles and Twins.
For the first time since April 10, the Rockies can avoid being called the worst team in the West. And they are still on shaky ground.
Less than a week ago, the Padres swept the Rockies out of San Diego, shutting them out twice in three days. In a three-game series against the division leaders, the Rockies eked out a single run — just the fourth time in club history, and the first time since 2012, they were held to one run in a three-game series.
The Rockies are 2-17 on the road, by far the worst road record in baseball. In their history, the Rockies have won more than half their road games in just three seasons, 2009, ’18 and ’19, reaching the postseason in each of those years. But their road record is trending for the worst winning percentage in their 29-year history. Even if they play above their past and win half their remaining games on the road this season, the Rockies will still finish 33-48 away from Coors.
“We have to win games on the road,” Story said. “We can’t just win them at home.”
Their road woes are wearing on the Rockies. As they packed up quickly on Sunday evening, then flew to New York to start a week-long East Coast road trip against the Mets and Pirates, they took with them a mysterious new plan to help their hitting.
According to Story and manager Bud Black, some kind of club-wide plan to help them adapt more quickly on a road trip will kick in Monday in Queens. Neither would explain the plan, saying only that they will hide it from view and keep the details private.
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Nearly two years ago, the Rockies, at Charlie Blackmon’s urging, installed a new system of pre-game preparation to help them cure the so-called “Coors Field hangover” — the difficult adjustment hitters face seeing breaking balls that break very little at elevation in Denver one day, then tracking the same pitch with inches more break the next at sea level.
“The hardest part for me about playing in Denver is, when you leave Denver, the ball acts differently out of the pitcher’s hand,” Blackmon said last year. “The only variable is the atmosphere. But unfortunately, that one little variable is the difference between me getting a hit and me striking out on the same pitch.”
Blackmon developed a plan for an extreme batting practice on the first day or two of the Rockies’ road trips, a way to force his eyes into quickly recognizing the new pitching environment. It showed enough positive results that the Rockies duplicated Blackmon’s methods throughout their farm system. The shortened season a year ago, though, delayed longer field testing of the process.
Then a year ago, right before a pandemic settled into Arizona and shut down spring training, Colorado hitting coach Dave Magadan began educating his players about the benefit of patience, of not swinging so aggressively outside the strike zone. At Coors Field, where even weak contact can lead to more hits and runs in the ocean-sized outfield, that aggression pays off. But when they travel, it hurts them more than it helps at home.
Since then, the Rockies have sharply cut down on their swing rate on the road, from 8.1 percent in 2019 (the ninth-most free-swinging team in the league) to just 6 percent (25th). At the same time, their expected slugging percentage swinging at pitches outside the zone also dropped.
If their new plan is a more focused effort of the same concepts, they aren’t saying. If it’s a new plan to confront some other facet of their struggles, the Rockies will need time to figure it out. A more talented roster would help, too. You can only do so much with an offense that ranks 20th in weighted on-base average (wOBA) and 30th in weighted runs created plus (wRC+).
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“We’re confronting this thing and trying to be creative in the ways we can figure this out and not have those big home-road splits,” Story said. “I won’t go into the details of what we’ll do, but everyone is on board.
“As a team, it doesn’t need to be said, but we need to be better,” he added. “We need to be better on the road. It’s just not acceptable the way we’ve been playing. So we’re trying to do whatever we can to fix that, whatever it may be, to figure it out.”
And some more Rockies potpourri:
• Kyle Freeland flew with the Rockies to New York and will start Tuesday against the Mets in his season debut. The 28-year-old lefty cruised through a two-game assignment with Triple-A Albuquerque in the final leg of his rehab from a slightly torn rotator cuff. Freeland’s insertion into the rotation will put left-handers on consecutive days, with lefty Austin Gomber going Monday and Germán Márquez following Wednesday.
• Freeland’s return will probably push Chi Chi González to the bullpen. As Colorado’s fifth starter, González filled in well, with the second-best park-adjusted ERA among Rockies, behind only Jon Gray, according to Baseball-Reference. Without a minor-league option available, the Rockies can’t simply send González to Triple A. So he will probably become a long reliever in their bullpen, standing by in case of another injury.
• But that means duplicate roles in the bullpen. Jhoulys Chacín is currently Colorado’s long arm, but he, too, is without minor-league options. The only pitcher in their ‘pen with the ability to move to Triple A is Lucas Gilbreath, but Gilbreath is also their only left-hander. The choice, it seems, will be to cut Chacín, send Gilbreath down, or find somebody injured enough for the 10-day IL.
• Peter Lambert, the Rockies’ 24-year-old former top pitching prospect who underwent Tommy John elbow surgery last July, has started throwing brief bullpen sessions as part of his injury rehab. He remains several months away from a return to competition.
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• Brendan Rodgers returned to the club from a hamstring injury to make his season debut Friday, but he found a log jam. After starting at second base, he was moved to the bench. Instead, Josh Fuentes started and doubled twice and Ryan McMahon moved from third to second. Fuentes has doubled in five consecutive home games, the second-longest streak in club history and the most since Michael Cuddyer in 2014. The juggling of playing time between Rodgers, Fuentes and Connor Joe will likely be a daily decision.
(Photo of Story: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)