Being no-hit through six has a way of embarrassing a team. Giving up your first hit on an infield single and the two runs that finally beat you, 2-1, both coming off of sacrifice fly’s? I’ll see your no-hit and raise you a win.
EYj came in to pinch hit for Matt Reynolds and again made the most of his calling in Rockies land. He was hit by a pitch to make it to first, went first to third on a very simple single to left and then came home on a shallow fly to right. His run home is one that only he could have made and scored on and it was all the team needed to win 2-1.
Nicasio pitched very well, going 6 2/3, one run on nine hits with five strikeouts and one walk. Esmil Rogers also dominated in the 8th striking out the side (Tabota, McCutchen and Walker). Betancourt was also very good to get the save with a strike-out, ground out and fly out to end the game.
The team did have a difficult time hitting again for the second game in a row. This Pirates team is known for having the third lowest ERA in the majors, but it still seemed like they weren’t making good swings and were only three innings away from being no-hit.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
The line-up for Game Two:
Scutaro
Fowler
Gonzalez
Tulowitzki
Helton
Cuddyer
Hernandez
Herrera
Chacin
IN GAME CHAT (just click play to chat during game)
[snaplet id="3591" width="660" height="700"]
Chat is live for game two…
Pooter is beginning to look like the smartest person on this site.
thumbs up for you!
I had my doubts at the beginning of the year about EYJ being on the roster, but I have to admit he has found his niche and plays his role brilliantly.
Man this would have been a great day to call in sick… unfortunately I’ll have to catch pieces when I can. Thanks for the update/run down JD!
GO ROCKIES!
Chacin looks shaky having to throw 25 pitches and putting two on in the first inning. I think we are going need at least six runs and Zach Putnam for the 4th or 5th inning thru 7th.
Stop hitting grounders to our friend Barmes! Seems like 80% of the outs are groundouts to Barmes.
Time to bring in Putnam; Chacin can’t finish off batters with two strikes on them.
I’m really peeved for not bringing in Putnam after the first double in the fifth inning. We had a free available arm.
WOW!!! Cargo needs some new sun glasses!!! If he makes those catches it is 0-0 instead of 5-0!!!! God knows we can’t have EYJ start a game because his defense is HORRIBLE!!!!
Say hello to yet another member of the “shoulda traded him when he had some value” club, Mr. Jhoulys Chacin. The problem is O’Dowd usually knows when these guys are starting to slide and HE DOES NOTHING (except run his mouth about work ethic or distractions). Always tries to get them to turn the corner and instead watches them drive off the cliff instead.
Next time when you don’t like a guy’s worth ethic or training habits or twitter accounts, trade the guy before announcing it to the world thereby shitting on whatever trade value he may have left.
I predict in 8 months time we’ll be lucky to get a B level prospect for him.
Wow, a bit premature to be giving up in Chacin isn’t it? By all rights he should have been out of the 5th inn without any runs coming in if Cargo doesn’t lose those two balls in the sun.
I gave up on Chacin 2 years ago. The guy has occasional stuff at best, but is way too inconsistent and I see no progress in him being any less inconsistent. A right handed Franklin Morales.
Rockies and the Rockies media trying to convince the fans that he’s an ace in the making is almost as bad as the hype surrounding Ian Stewart for 6 years.
At least Chacin didn’t walk anybody in that big inning. His usual pattern is 4 straight walks and then the big hit. I don’t know if that’s any consolation
Uncalled for, viscious comment.
The way the Rockies swung the bats in this series, they were lucky to escape with 1 win.
My thoughts exactly.
At least we went 3-3 on this road trip. Still playing. 500 ball in April with four games left.
Pooter,
Your new avatar
http://hosted.stats.com/mlb/photos/201204251523553813038-p3.jpeg
Ninja!
Pretty disappointed in the offense today, especially Scutaro when he grounded into a force out with bases loaded. Our best chance to make a difference in that game. I like his passion and his defense (usually) but even though he has some impressive, professional at bats, they aren’t that productive. But we are at .500 and in second place in our division. Look at the Angels (last in theirs) and the Red Sox! When the Orioles are leading their division, it’s an upside-down world.
This years Jose Lopez. At some point we have to stop saying “boy he really hits the ball well” as a justification for a .200 BA.
9 hits in 57 ABs In this doubleheader. That’s a .158 average. Against Cy Young candidates James McDonald and Charlie Morton. Throw in some more Little League defense and that wily old Clint Hurdle took 2 of 3 from us.
At least we get a really good pitcher, Santana, this weekend. Maybe we’ll score 17 off him.
Oops, I forgot…that game is on Sunday.
As for Chacin: I’m mildly concerned. I didn’t see the game, but I’m guessing the velocity is still off 2-3 mph from last year? Unexplained velocity losses (if sustained…this could just be an early season thing) are almost always a really bad sign. Ubaldo was off about 3 mph last year, and even worse — right into average MLB velocity range — so far this year. A shell of his former self. And I don’t think it has anything to do with offseason training regimens or gutsiness or any of that. I think it has everything to do with heavy workloads over a few years and lots of mileage on these arms. O’Dowd and Tulo can’t humiliate these guys into throwing harder again. I hope Chacin proves me wrong, but I’m kinda worried.
I just don’t know why the organization doesn’t start making our young pitches work on a consistant change-up.My god,J.Moyer certainly has shown what a weapon it can be.When things start to go sideways and the other team is all amped up,instead of throwing harder its the perfect weapon to use on over eager hitters!
Minors: Parker Frazier, 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 4 K, 13/2 GB/FB. Now at a 2.52 ERA. He’s stepping up as a true prospect. Arenado has come back down to earth, but even so his 949 OPS is looking good with Chris Nelson still hitless on the road.
LeMahieu: 3 hits, now at .333. Pacheco: 3 hits, now at .459. Somewhere in there is our new third baseman/third basemen.
Anyone else mystified by this slow-motion, almost like time-is-out way Cargo is playing balls that have gotten behind him?
And a third, kind’ve boneheaded, head’s-not-in-the-game play by Scutaro. Does he miss those mid-game Budweisers back in the clubhouse?
You know, as I’ve been watching CarGo play I thought the same thing – like he is doing everything really slowly…then I started to think that maybe he is either worried or being pressured to not play the all out – dive for every ball type of play he has in years past because that only gets him injured…i can understand when it is a ball past him and for sure a double he just goes slow at it because fast or slow the guy is getting to second, but there were a few balls that dropped in front of him this season that the old CarGo would have dove and caught, where the new CarGo is letting them one bounce…i miss the crazy dives, but don’t miss him out for weeks with injuries…
I do think in key games or big situations he will come through with massive Sports Center types of plays, but not for ho-hum games…
Yes I think you’re right. It just looks strange, + I worry about unnecessary seconds lost + also just the natural flow of play for the guy. Kind of a weird deal.
I got sidetracked to Maryland yesterday morning and didn’t make it to the stadium until the 7th-inning stretch in Game 1. Nice end to that game but the second game was tough to sit through.
The field is oriented entirely different than Coors Field, so that the afternoon sun is directly in the leftfielder’s eyes. Even the usher pointed out to me that it is usually not a problem at their stadium because they almost never have games going on at 5:30 PM, which is around when the disaster struck. I will not fault Cargo on those two balls, especially since home plate was in shadows at the time and it was obviously a tough vantage point to be in. I’ll chalk it up to just one of those things, sometimes bad, that make baseball so interesting and different. I do agree with Jeem that Cargo does appear to be totally unagressive on ball hit over him. Remember all those diving catches last year in April? Where is that guy?
Chacin must have been rattled by those two balls that each would have been the third out. He sure fell apart after that. And too bad Brothers had to give us a solid inning in mop-up duty when we could have used that performance the night before.
By the way, I did get to say hello to JT’s mother and chatted with his cousin after the game. I also met and talked briefly with a guy in a Rockies sweatshirt between games and asked him if he was from Denver. He said no, that he was from California and was there because his grandson plays for the Rockies. I asked who and he replied “Tulo”. We had a nice brief conversation after that. I enjoyed it!
That’s interesting about the orientation of the park Bob. I thought there was some rule that all baseball parks had to be oriented pretty much the same way (hence the origin of the term southpaw). Now I realize that at Coors a lefty is actually a westpaw, and that there is more variation than I thought. I see a research project in my future….
Actually, at Coors Field a lefty is an eastpaw. Remember that the sun sets in the northwest in the summer, right in Todd’s eyes.
The easiest way to see all the orientation of the ballparks is to use Google Earth and zoom in on each city. Not hard to see the stadiums! You can see that PNC park is very nearly 90 degrees off the orientation of Coors Field and a lefty is indeed a southpaw. Philly is almost the same as Coors, while in Cincy a lefty would be a southwestpaw. I’ll leave the rest up to you!
Right. Eastpaw is what I meant to say.
That is exactly how I was going to approach it. Maybe create a web page with an overview map of the city showing the ballpark’s location and then a zoomed in image of the park.
I was looking at several this morning. Home plate is usually in a south or westerly direction, presumably so the batter never has to look into the sun. In some cases (New Yankee Stadium) where they had plenty of room, they put home plate west, giving you the true southpaw. The others seem to be rotated within 90 degrees or so, often constrained by geographic features or city blocks. PNC has a more extreme rotation facing LF due west as you pointed out.
Check out Detroit where the pitcher is really a westpaw as the field is laid out almost opposite Coors Field. They better not have any noon games there!
Interesting discussion you guys on the orientation. I am an architect, + of course the orientation of buildings is a MAJOR decision which is in turn affected by existing conditions + all sorts of environmental conditions. Then for a ballpark the effect of orientation on play adds another dimension, + as Bob notes, it’s also very temporal, so what happened to Cargo only occurs at (what was it?) 5:30 pm in the spring. Lots of things to think about + that probably wasn’t much of a consideration.
But what I’m really wondering is did the Pirates’ LF pick-up on the conditions + say hey guys if you can get it in the air to left it’s going to be hard to see? Guess I can check the Pittsburgh papers.
So the fact that the game on Monday was snow/rained out was the real curse…had it not be cancelled then we would have played Monday and only the morning game Wednesday, with no need for the 2nd game that we lost because of the sun!
CURSE YOU YELLOW GLOBE!!!!
Gollum! Gollum!