Two experienced arms pave a path for youthful bullpen.
DENVER — Despite their historically brutal 4-24 record, the Colorado Rockies have decent stability in perhaps the most unstable positions in baseball, the bullpen.
With this disastrous beginning to the season, the Rox will take being average. The rotation and offense hover at bottom 15 in the league in nearly every statistic, but not the bullpen.
Rockies relief pitchers have a 4.00 ERA good for 17th in MLB. That’s a number better than the Brewers, Nationals and Athletics—teams they dropped a three-game series to.
Their left-on-base rate of 72.7% is better than league average at 13th. Again, that’s better than the Brewers, Nationals, Athletics AND Phillies (who swept the Rockies this season).
These numbers aren’t elite, but they should be serviceable enough for a team that plays in thin air to support a win.
A prevalent motif for Colorado is their young roster which regularly features at least seven of nine starters born after Coors Field opened. The expectation this season was to see players adapt to the next level while attempting to lose less than 100 games.
Naturally, there are going to be some growing pains with those players, especially in the bullpen where your name could be called at any given moment.
“Everybody’s on high alert all the time,” 24-year-old relief pitcher Zach Agnos said. “You really don’t know anything. So you always gotta stay ready.”
In his first Major League Season, there is too small of a sample size to gauge his readiness, but if Tyler Kinley and Jake Bird keep performing like they are now, arms like Agnos can learn what it looks like to pitch at the highest level on a team lacking in role models.
Bird, whose doubtful perception inflated after a video of him hitting Kris Bryant with a fastball on the first day of Spring Training went viral, is now the most productive arm in the bullpen.
As of April 29, his 17.2 IP produced a 1.02 ERA and a 0.9 fWAR which leads Rockies relief pitchers and 24 strikeouts that lead all MLB relief pitchers.
In a year where Colorado is starved for a guiding light, Bird’s simplistic approach to his outings might lead to the team’s answer—at least in the bullpen.
“The big two things are just finding way to stay present … [and] just getting your breath,” Bird said. “It’s not like super complex, although sometimes it can feel that way.”
Adapting this mindset for a major league relief pitcher must start in late February. Agnos picked up on this reality during the dog days of Spring Training where the days get hotter and the impatience grows.
“I walked up to [Jake Bird], was like, man, my arm feels like I’m 50,” Agnos said. “He goes, really? Mine feels like I’m 18.”
Tyler Kinley, who at 34 years old is the closest to 50 on the team, is also a reliable reliever for manager Bud Black this season.
Before a lapse on his April 26 outing against the Reds, he had not given up a run in his past five outings where he tossed 9.1 innings with 14 strike outs with three walks.
With an uptick of trust in those two arms, Black said we wants to establish more solidified roles for the bullpen. But, for that to happened, the Rox have to position themselves better.
“We got to get into some winning situations,” Kinley said. “I think it’s hard to have roles in the bullpen when we don’t have many leads.”
Colorado is bottom five in MLB for blown leads so far in a combination of competent bullpen outings and pitiful offense that can’t even give the team a lead to lose.
But, it’s never a bad or wasteful thing when your relievers pitch well. The main goal for this group is to find consistency in their game and continue to play well while they wait for the bats to catch up.
For now, at least the Rockies have one thing to hang their hat on.