MIAMI — By the end of spring training, as the Cactus League wound down, the Rockies emerged around the game as a fashionable pick to win the National League West. Predictions float through the ether like thin fog, but this is no small suggestion.
The Rockies have never won their division. And they reached the playoffs in consecutive seasons just once. The Dodgers for six years have held an iron grip on the West. But the Rockies are coming off one of their best two-year stretches in club history — their 91 wins last year are second-most since 1993.
Advertisement
And when he walked into the dugout early Thursday afternoon at Marlins Park, Colorado manager Bud Black bounced around with a big grin.
“I have the same excitement I did when I was 10 years old in 1967 in the Western little league,” Black said. “It’s a different feeling in your stomach. We played the Rexall Red Sox. I went 1-for-3, played first base.”
C’mon, you don’t remember that.
“Sure, I remember,” he said. “Back when they played six games on a Saturday on Opening Day. I got the red strawberry snow cone after the game. And does anybody know, ‘Two, four, six, eight. Who do we appreciate? Rexall!’ It was great.”
If Black’s feelings for a new season skewed toward the sentimental in the early afternoon, by early evening at Marlins Park he was breaking down pitches like a September stretch run was right around the corner.
But a good rule of thumb in baseball, as Chris Iannetta explained Thursday, is that a month needs to pass before you can start to know a club’s identity, after enough time to see them win and lose, excel and struggle. By May, we can dissect the attitude of the Rockies, their record and their statistics.
In the meantime, after the Rockies cruised past the Marlins 6-3 in their first game, we learned plenty:
1. Kyle Freeland will fight you.
Freeland, the 25-year-old lefty and Denver native, had never pitched an Opening Day and never appeared in Miami and never started against the Marlins. He very quickly knocked off another task, throwing seven innings on just two hits and a run.
His assignment on Opening Day was earned over the entirety of 2018, after he finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting with a 17-7 record and a 2.85 ERA, also fourth-best in the NL, and after he shut down the Cubs in the NL wild card game over 6 2/3 shutout innings.
“My whole game is really attacking,” Freeland said. “Get weak contact, let the defense work. Today it paid off big time.”
Advertisement
Two key situations, though, put Freeland through an evaluation at Miami. The Marlins pinch-hit J.T. Riddle to lead-off the sixth inning. Freeland started him with a fastball up and in that just missed to fall behind 0-1. His curveball low and away in the next pitch was blasted over the right-field fence.
But when Miami’s lineup flipped to the top, Freeland counterpunched and hard. He struck out Lewis Brinson on five pitches and forced Brian Anderson and Starlin Castro to ground out quickly.
In the seventh, Miami put two runners on. Freeland dispelled them just as quickly, getting Miguel Rojas to ground out and Rosell Herrera to fly out harmlessly. Threat snuffed. He has now won nine games in a row, since last season.
“There is a fighter in there,” Black said. “And it’s in there every start. It’s actually in there between starts, too, which is awesome. But let’s not discount his stuff. He has a fastball that has carry, he’s starting to command it, he has a good slider, a developing changeup. His stuff is good and solid. He can get away with mistakes at time because of his stuff.
“But the fight in him is second-to-none, for me.”
2. The Dahl-McMahon combo needs a nickname.
David Dahl also started his first Opening Day and while he didn’t seek out advice, advice found him. He admitted to feeling “a little jumpy” during the wild-card game last October. But not Thursday.
“I talked to some of the veteran guys who’ve done this a long time,” Dahl said. “Charlie (Blackmon) pulled me aside and said, ‘Try to swing at 80 percent today. Try to calm everything down.’ Ian (Desmond) was like, ‘Don’t let all the outside stuff get to you.’ That’s the biggest thing. Just take it as the first game and try not to put pressure on myself.”
Dahl singled twice, doubled once, knocked in a run and scored twice himself. With Ryan McMahon, who singled in a run in the fourth, the Rockies have two former high prospects now holding prime positions in their lineup.
Advertisement
The Dodgers, for example, got a boost in recent seasons with young, talented players who were allowed to shine, even through struggles, including Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson and Enrique Hernández.
The Rockies are hoping for an equivalent boost from Dahl and McMahon.
3. Trevor Story is racing, with an early lead.
The fourth-year shortstop made his debut on Opening Day in 2016 with a two-homer game off Arizona ace Zack Greinke. He blasted another first-game homer Thursday, a 377-foot shot in the fifth that went 500 feet high, it seemed.
Story’s 37 homers a year ago put him second in the NL, one shot shy of Nolan Arenado, the league leader. They very well may race again. And newly signed first baseman Daniel Murphy, with his airball swing and high-contact skills, may challenge them too with a Coors Field boost.
The race is on.
4. The bottom half is key to a turnaround.
How often last season did the Rockies go 1-for-15 at the top of the order and win a game? Don’t look it up. The answer is: not a lot. They did Thursday, after Blackmon and Murphy each went 0-for-5 and Nolan Arenado singled in five at-bats.
Their five through eight hitters went 7-for-15 at the plate.
“You have to string hits together,” Black said. “We talk about that inside the walls of this room, about trying to be as relentless as possible in every at-bat.”
This was a considerable deficiency last year.
“It doesn’t always have to be Charlie, Murphy, Nolan, Story,” McMahon said. “Dahl, Des and myself can pick up that slack. You always want to come through, no matter what. If Charlie is 5-for-5, I’m still trying to come through in my at-bats. That’s how this team is built.”
The hangover from a feckless sweep to the Brewers in an NL division series October, when the Rockies had two total runs over three games, carried concern into spring. So even Iannetta’s two hits and an RBI felt like some kind of mirage. Colorado’s catchers last season combined to hit .207. The held the sixth-worst wRC+ in baseball. Their lack of offense was a drain.
Advertisement
“It was more of a timing issue when it happened that highlighted a rallying cry amongst some people,” Iannetta said, trying to dismiss the woes from a year ago.
5. Their outfield defense actually worked, for now.
An overhauled defensive alignment — with Dahl in left field, Desmond in center and Blackmon in right — looked kinda weird. No other player in Rockies history had started more Opening Days in center than Blackmon, before he was pushed to the corner. Desmond was shifted from first base to center. And last we saw Dahl, he was flubbing a ball in the Wrigley Field lights last fall.
Their defense had something to prove. Desmond tracked a long Garrett Cooper fly ball back to the warning track in the second and Blackmon ran to the wall in foul ground to set down Martin Prado in the ninth. For now, questions were tabled.
And in comparing this Rockies roster to their 25 over the past two seasons, look east. The Yankees traded for outfielder Mike Tauchman from Colorado last week. Even as a late addition, he was on New York’s Opening Day roster on Thursday. Tauchman would not have made the Rockies roster. He would have been something like their sixth outfielder, behind Raimel Tapia and Noel Cuevas, maybe even veteran Michael Saunders, who was released late in camp.
The Rockies, for a change, are deep enough to contend for a division to the end, if Thursday’s Opening Day is any indication.
(Photo: Rhona Wise / Getty Images)