Colorado Rockies pitching staff reaches new lows

The Colorado Rockies have fallen to 7-17 over their last 24 games, with a run differential of -47.

While the club is scoring about five runs a game, they allow nearly seven. That’s 165 runs in 24 games, 15 more than the second-worst team, the Royals. And over just the last nine games, the Rockies have allowed more than 10 runs five times, including in Thursday night’s home loss to the reigning champs.

Austin Gomber allowed nine runs on 10 hits over five innings before the bullpen let in another four. Gomber is now 12th in the league in hits allowed this season, which is terrible, but it’s not even the worst, second-worst or third-worst for the Rockies.

Colorado has three pitchers in the top six of baseball’s hits allowed. German Marquez, Kyle Freeland and Antonio Senzatela are those three pitchers, and each has ERAs near or above 5.00. By the way, the pitcher with the most hits allowed in MLB as of Friday morning is former Rockies starter, Jordan Lyles.

Colorado’s team ERA is second-worst in baseball, falling from sixth-worst last year. The steady drop-off has continued from 2018 when the Rockies had the 19th best staff by ERA in baseball—or they weren’t in the bottom third of the league.

In the last 22 games, Colorado has the fourth-worst strikeout rate in MLB. The bullpen has been bad but not awful, unlike the starters.

Either way, the Rockies are going through it right now, and they’ve dropped off to their low point of five games under .500. Some metrics suggest Colorado has been lucky, if anything, and should be losers of at least two more games, and projections agree that the team we’ve seen over the last 22 games is more in line than the one we saw over their first 27 where they went 16-11.

Fangraphs predicts Colorado will finish 71-91, with almost 30 fewer wins than the Dodgers, who they say will take the division. A win total of 71 would top what oddsmakers thought the Rockies would do this season but would be their worst season since 2015.

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