Someone can never go wrong criticizing the DMV; nobody has a soft spot in their hearts for the folks that make everyone wait in line for hours to get a driver license. Even in a politically correct world, that group is nearly 100 percent safe to publicly criticize.
The Rockies are almost in the same category, as there are few defenders of the boys in purple pinstripes nowadays. And when it comes to their perpetually beleaguered pitching staff, that’s even more accurate.
So when Carlos Gonzalez recently teed off on his team’s hurlers, blaming them for the team’s recent slide and cellar-dwelling position in the standings, nobody blamed the All-Star outfielder. After all, CarGo had a point; Colorado’s pitching staff has been atrocious. So his words to Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post resonated with disgruntled fans all along the Front Range.
“It’s not a secret,” the slugger told Kiszla last week, on the heels of the team losing its third-straight series. “Everybody knows that if we don’t pitch, we’re not going to win games.”
And for the most part, the Rockies haven’t done much pitching this season. At the moment, they currently rank dead last in the big leagues when it comes to team ERA; their collective 4.87 is almost 10 percent higher than the second-worst team in Major League Baseball, the Brewers.
Their opening day starter is now 2-9, with a whopping 5.95 ERA that is due in large part to the MLB-leading 18 home runs he’s surrendered thus far. But Kyle Kendrick is far from the only gas can on the bump for the Rockies; Scott Oberg has given up eight bombs in 2015, the most of any relief pitcher in baseball.
In part, the Rockies struggles are due to injuries, as an already thin staff has been decimated by six pitchers landing on the disabled list. But Rafael Betancourt, Brooks Brown, Tyler Chatwood, Jordan Lyles, Adam Ottavino and Kenny Roberts weren’t going to save this bunch.
To chalk up the Rockies struggles to yet another disastrous season on the mound, however, would be providing a free pass to everyone else involved. And that’s why Gonzalez’s comments were so galling.
The fact of the matter is that CarGo has been a major part of the problem. On a team built for offense, not pitching, it’s an absolute killer when one of the best bats in the lineup doesn’t show up until June. And there’s no way around the fact that Gonzalez was a virtual no-show during the first two months of the season.
CarGo was hitting .200 at the end of April, with two home runs and six RBI. He picked it up a bit in May, posting a .235 average, with two more homers and seven driven in. And thus far in June, he’s been better, swinging at a .278 clip, with six home runs and 14 runs batted in.
But it’s too little late, as CarGo’s cumulative season has been subpar. All told, it adds up to a guy hitting .237, with 10 home runs and 27 RBI. That’s not exactly the numbers expected of an All-Star outfielder.
Furthermore, that’s not the type of production expected of a guy earning $16 million this season. Given the way the Rockies are structured in terms of salaries, with most of the dollars being tied up in a few “stars,” they simply can’t afford to have a player earning 1/6 of the team’s total payroll missing in action to start the season.
When that happens, there aren’t any other big-time players around to pick up the slack; instead, that responsibility falls to a cast of guys earning essentially the league minimum to provide the Rockies with an offensive spark. Not surprisingly, it hasn’t happened nearly enough. And the results have been a team that is maddeningly inconsistent on the field.
But the blame goes well beyond the pitching staff.
Gonzalez should be angry with the front office; they’re the ones who decided to invest roughly 50 percent of the team’s total payroll in three players – Troy Tulowitzki ($20 million), CarGo ($16 million) and Jorge De La Rosa ($12.5 million).
He should be mad at Kyle Kendrick and Boone Logan, the fourth and fifth highest paid players on the Rockies roster; for $11 million combined, they’ve netted the Rockies a 2-11 record while surrendering 67 runs in roughly 106 innings.
And he should be mad at himself; he’s the one who is being counted on to carry the team, yet failed to answer the bell. The $16 million outfielder is much more to blame than the cast of pitchers earning $500,000 per season.
That’s why his comments were so out of place. It’s like the guy who works at the DMV ripping the DMV for being inefficient, while he’s standing outside on his regularly schedule smoke break.
Carlos Gonzalez is a great player, and he has a valid point about the Rockies pitching woes. But for now, he should lead by example, which means taking care of his own business instead of pointing the finger of blame at everyone else.
