Colorado Rockies news and links for Wednesday, May 7, 2025
If Gus Lobel, Clint Eastwood’s character in the 2012 film Trouble with the Curve, were to examine the Colorado Rockies, he would likely note their struggles with the breaking ball.
However, upon further look, he would discover that the Rockies are also struggling against the fastball, thus setting up a sequel titled “Trouble with the Curve 2: Trouble with the Fastball.”
The fastball is the premier pitch in baseball. While the evolution of the game has seen some of the nastiest breaking pitches in the history of baseball come to fruition, the fastball is still the foundational pitch upon which everything else is predicated. For pitchers, if you can’t locate the fastball, life gets a lot more difficult.
For hitters, it’s the same thing. It’s well known that most hitters are going to struggle on breaking pitches; that is the purpose of that type of pitch, but the ability to catch up to a fastball at a league-average rate helps find success at the plate.
Unfortunately, that is just not something the Rockies are doing.
Entering the start of the Detroit Tigers series on Tuesday, the Rockies are slashing .222/.311/.360 against fastballs (includes four-seam, sinkers, and cutters). They rank 29th in average, 30th in on-base percentage, and 28th in slugging. The team’s 130 hits are the fewest in baseball, and they have also put the fewest balls in play (431). Additionally, they have the highest strikeout rate against fastballs (23.8%) as well as the highest whiff rate (24.2%).
By contrast, the current league average slash is .258/.345/.420 with an 18.1 K%.
So, the Rockies simply get overmatched by the fastball, which compounds the struggles they are already having against breaking balls. With that in mind, let’s dive in a little deeper.
Among the current qualified Rockies, only Kyle Farmer is hitting over .300 against fastballs, while the next closest is Mickey Moniak with a .277 AVG. Only five total players currently have a batting average over .250 against fastballs.
Meanwhile, strikeouts have been plentiful. Rookie catcher Braxton Fulford leads the club with a 60% strikeout rate, followed by Zac Veen’s 50%, and Jacob Stallings leads the current roster with a 38.2% rate. Seven players have a K% over 30, which lends itself to the Rockies’ major league-leading 344 strikeouts.
Mookie Betts once said, “Fastball middle-middle. You can’t miss that pitch.” And that is something the Rockies simply aren’t doing very well.
With a slash line of .202/.202/.371 on fastballs over the middle of the plate, the team sits second to last in the league, just ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals, while seeing the eighth fewest pitches in that zone. The 15.5% whiff rate they sport does rank the second highest in all of baseball behind the Toronto Blue Jays.
Ezequiel Tovar, Brenton Doyle, and Moniak have found success on those middle-middle pitches, but players like Ryan McMahon and Hunter Goodman have struggled mightily despite seeing the most pitches on that part of the plate.
It fluctuates from player to player, but the general trend that Statcast shows is that the Rockies are not capitalizing on the fastball over the plate. Things get worse in terms of strikeouts and whiffs, both of which are the highest in baseball, when fastballs are elevated.
The eye test for the issues seems to be that the Rockies are having a hard time picking up the fastball and getting their timing down. It seems more often than not the Rockies are puzzled at the plate, trying to react to pitches without any sort of plan in place. We have heard at times from manager Bud Black that the team is expecting one thing from a pitcher and having to adjust to something completely different.
As a unit, the team is around league average in average swing length and bat speed against fastballs, but the results just aren’t coming, especially for players like McMahon.
If the Rockies can start squaring up fastballs more often, it may go a long way in helping them overcome their current offensive woes. Big league hitters being capable to taking competitive swings against a fastball means taking advantage of early mistakes, much like opposing hitters have done against Rockies pitchers.
There are current examples like Farmer and Jordan Beck’s progress after returning from Triple-A. But the rest of the team has to do more, otherwise the hitting unit will continue to flounder in misery and mediocrity.
Because Clint Eastwood isn’t going to save them.
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On the Farm
Triple-A: Albuquerque Isotopes 6, Oklahoma City Comets 2
Six runs in the final two innings ensured a comeback victory for the Isotopes on Tuesday. San Hilliard’s RBI double in the eighth got the Isotopes on the board, and he would score on Yanquiel Fernandez’s sac fly to tie the game. Austin Nola would later deliver a two-run single to make it a 4-2 ball game. Ryan Ritter would then deliver a two-run homer in the top of the ninth finish out the scoring. Albuquerque had 10 hits on the day, with Ritter, Hilliard, and Zac Veen with two hits apiece. Anthony Molina threw five innings, allowing one run with four walks and five strikeouts.
Double-A: Hartford Yard Goats @ New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Postponed)
High-A: Spokane Indians 9, Vancouver Canadians 2
Aidan Longwell provided plenty of fireworks with his first multi-homer game of his professional career. Longwell had three hits and drove in four on the night, with a solo home run in the third inning and a two-run shot in the sixth. Konner Eaton started on the mound and allowed two runs on five hits over five innings before giving way to a bullpen that threw four hitless innings with two strikeouts.
Low-A: Fresno Grizzlies 7, Modesto Nuts 3
Bryan Mena delivered a quality start for Fresno, allowing three runs over 6 1⁄3 innings, tallying three strikeouts against two walks. The Grizzlies provided plenty of offense with 12 hits on the day, led by Yeiker Reyes’ three hits. Robert Calaz had a two-hit day, driving in three runs, including two on a single in the fifth as part of a four-run inning by the Grizzlies.
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Thanks to Hurdle, McMahon adding purpose back to swing | MLB.com
It’s been a rough go of it for McMahon, but he showed some signs of life in San Francisco thanks to some extra work he’s getting with hitting coach Clint Hurdle.
“The Denver Post” asked Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs to have the ZiPS computer run a new simulation for the Rockies’ season and the odds of them breaking the loss record set by the White Sox have doubled.
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