TORONTO — Troubleshooting the Rockies’ early-season woes leads to a quick and simple conclusion: Three players expected to provide voltage to the offense have short-circuited.
As the Rockies head to Toronto for a weekend series with the Blue Jays…
• Kris Bryant is hitting .100 (4 for 40) with one home run and four RBIs.
• Brendan Rodgers has a .174 average (8 for 46) with no home runs. He has yet to drive in a run and has come up empty eight times with runners in scoring position.
• Nolan Jones is hitting .157 (8 for 51) and has 23 strikeouts in 47 plate appearances. That’s an untenable 40% strikeout rate.
“The worm will turn,” manager Bud Black has said more than once.
He’s probably right, but how deep in the ground will the Rockies be by the time the trio figures it out?
The Rockies’ 3-10 record is tied for their worst through 13 games in franchise history (also 2005, ’19 and ’21). The club, amid something of a youth movement, expected struggles from several players, but Bryant, Rodgers and Jones are being counted on to supply production in the middle of the order.
Bryant, the highest-paid player on the team, is making $28 million this season. He has struck out 15 times (31.9% rate). He opened the season with five straight hitless games, the longest such streak to begin a season in his career. He was in an 0-for-28 hitless funk dating back to last season before he got his first knock.
Bryant heard boos from usually forgiving Rockies fans during the home opener at Coors Field.
“This game dishes you a lot … not a lot of ups but way more downs,” Bryant said. “So just showing up and putting in the work, I know I’m giving it all I got, and at the end of the day, that allows me to put my head on the pillow and feel good about myself. I have three boys waiting to give me a hug right now, and that makes anything that this game dishes (out) pretty easy to handle.”
Black continues standing up for Bryant, insisting his track record — Bryant is a career .274 hitter with a .858 OPS and was the National League MVP with the Cubs in 2016 — is a better predictor for his worth than his woes in his two-plus seasons with Colorado.
“He’s got a lot of pride. He cares a lot,” Black said. “You know, professional athletes, in some ways, are conditioned to this. They get it. The good ones get it. The guys with perspective get it. And you keep fighting through all that. It’s part of what we do in this job. And we understand that. So I think he’ll be fine.”
Although Bryant sat out one game with what Black called “back stiffness,” both insist he is healthy. But right now, his swing looks anything but. He’s late on fastballs and swinging over balls down and away.
Rodgers, who won a Gold Glove at second base in 2022, is a notoriously slow starter. He’s a .119 career hitter in games in March and April but a .273 hitter in all other months combined. Still, Rodgers was pegged to bat cleanup coming out of spring training. In Colorado’s 5-3 loss to the Diamondbacks on Wednesday, Rodgers ripped an opposite-field double to right in the eighth, but in the sixth inning he grounded out, and his scream of frustration was clearly audible at the sparsely attended game at Coors Field.
Black said Rodgers is close to breaking out of his slump.
“He’s fouling off some pitches with some good swings in his last handful of games,” Black said. “He’s fouled them straight back, so his timing is just a little bit off. He’s maybe a hair late.
“We’ve got to get the timing down to where the foot is down, and the barrel gets to the ball. He’s got a pretty compact stroke, but right now he’s just a click off.”
Jones, coming off a breakout rookie season in which he slashed .297/.389/.542 with 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases, has been chasing bad pitches and watching strikes go by.
Black believes Jones is falling into the trap of pressing too hard, much like he did during spring training last year when he was trying to make the big-league roster after being traded from Cleveland.
“It’s very frustrating,” Jones said. “I think the only pressure I’m feeling is put there by myself. There are guys in this locker room who have picked me up every single day and I’m extremely grateful for that.”
Regarding Black’s worm-turning theory, Jones said: “Yeah. It’s baseball. There are waves. It goes good, it goes bad, and the next day it goes good again. We just have to keep pushing forward.
“There are a couple of us where, right now, it’s tough going; it’s frustrating. But we’re going to get going.”
Rockies pitching matchup
Rockies RHP Ryan Feltner (0-1, 3.27 ERA) at Blue Jays RHP Kevin Gausman (0-1, 9.53)
5:07 p.m. Friday (MDT), Rogers Center
TV: Rockies.TV (streaming); Comcast/Xfinity (channel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spectrum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depending on region).
Radio: 850 AM/94.1 FM
Feltner is coming off the best game of his career and one of the best games in recent memory by a Rockies starter. Last Saturday, he allowed one run on two hits and two walks while striking out 10 batters — with 18 swinging strikes — over six innings against Tampa Bay. Feltner struggled in his first start, giving up five runs (three earned) over five innings at Arizona.
Gausman, a graduate of Grandview High School, is off to a difficult start. He served up five earned runs on four hits and a pair of walks across just 1 1/3 innings in a 9-8 loss to the Yankees on Saturday night. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton homered as Gausman failed to strike anybody out in the shortest start of his Jays tenure. There is concern in Toronto because the right-hander’s fastball velocity is down, and he missed almost all of the Blue Jays’ exhibition games this spring, dealing with shoulder issues early in camp.
Pitching probables
Saturday: Rockies RHP Dakota Hudson (0-2, 2.38) at Blue Jays RHP Bowden Francis (0-2, 12.96), 1:07 p.m.
Sunday: Rockies LHP Kyle Freeland (0-2, 16.03) at Blue Jays RHP Jose Berrios (2-0, 1.45), 11:37 p.m.
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