Anyway, let's go to the KWA Comsboro hotline and bring on Thomas Harding of
MLB dot com. Thomas, how you doing today? I feel good,
I feel clean that I'm enjoying this earthquake talk. I'm not doing well.
You have never lived on an earthquake, no, but I lived in Memphis
for eleven years. I worked at the paper there before coming out here,
what twenty five years ago to cover the Rockies, and there was some guy
I don't know if he was a scientist or a huckster or what, but
he was predicting that Memphis was going to have the earthquake of the century because
it's it's not far from Jonesboro, it's right on a fault line. I
mean, it got to the point to where it became a joke. We
had t shirts. It's not my fault, but the earthquake never came,
thank goodness. I just remember being in buildings and they said, oh,
this is earth this is earthquake safe, and I would always ask, how
did you test it? Oh my goodness. Yeah, we probably have to
swap stories about Memphis some time. I used to get out there when I
live I lived just to the east of little rock in a small town out
there, used to get the MEMPHISI at the time, get down at Alfred's,
you know, and then a couple of joints down there saw aw Green
playing, you know, out there on the streets. So good. Yeah,
we'll have to swap the stories about that sometimes about this bit, yes,
but let's talk about the story of the day right now. And that's
the Colorado Rockies winning the home opener in dramatic fashion. Ryan McMahon nearly throws
the game away and then comes back and totally redeems himself with the Grand Slam.
Bat's kind of waking up a little bit. It looks like over the
last couple of games for Nolan Jones and they desperately need that. Is this
Rockies team as bad as the record has been thus far, or is the
last two games more indication of where they can go? Well, if you
look at Kyle Freeland has a twenty seven era, I'm going to say that
he's not that bad. Exactly where this team falls. You see that starting
pitching struggle a bit, And actually today I thought that Austin Gombert he ran
up a huge pitch count, forty pitches in the first inning, but ended
up getting through four innings just down two to one. The pitching has to
stabilize for this team to be good. Also, defensively, there have been
a number of mistakes. You don't expect that from this Rocky's team when you
look at the identities of the guys all around the field. So there are
some things that say that make you understand that this team probably will struggle quite
a bit to season, but not as badly as the beginning of the season.
So if you're Bud Black after the team kind of seem like they squad
of the league and we're able to win the game score in ten runs,
what is kind of your message to your team at this point? Known as
though this was the first time Colorado fans actually got a chance to see their
team at home. Well, baseball being such a day to day sport,
there isn't really a big overarching message here. Obviously you're happy that you get
to win, but you have another game to marn another the next day,
and you keep going that way. So I think the important thing And it's
funny. I talked to Ryan McMahon this morning and he was saying, in
his younger years, he may have been freaking out a little bit by the
one and six start, but you can't do that in this game, and
it's hard not to do it, but you can do it. You've just
got to simply keep sending your pitchers out there. Basic pitching principles. You're
going to play defense, you need to play defense, and just string together.
They ad bets like they have done over this game and one inning in
the Chicago so you hope it does build on things you but there isn't really
a huge overarching message because it's right there in front of you and they have
what one hundred and fifty four more games to play, you know. Pete
Fairbanks was not happy with the consistency of the base balls coming in during the
bottom of the ninth inning, made it a point to talk about that.
I don't know if you caught any of that. What can you tell us
about that? Is that the legitimate complaint there or is that just somebody makeing
excuses. I think we will hear more of this because the last two seasons
the schedule has changed where every team in the American League will play in the
National League Park every other year, So this was an experience and course field
that he can forget that he wants to forget. And I know that a
lot of times when something goes wrong, pictures will say, hey, there's
an issue with the baseball. Well, with the Rockies went through this back
in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty where a lot of their pitchers were struggling,
But it wasn't the baseball, of course, field they just felt that the
ball was different. So there is something that you can say. But here's
the question. If Pete Fairbanks goes back to the Mount tomorrow with the chance
to close out a game, is this going to be in the back of
his mind. That's what the Rockies pitchers deal with here all the time.
Maybe a cheap home run will happen or something a ball will land in the
spacious outfield, and they've got to get back on the Mount and pitch.
And if they let that get to them, whether it's whether it's just what
happens here or the thought that maybe there's some skullduggery, either of those things.
If that's in your head, it is very hard to pitch. I'll
be interested to see what Pete Fairbanks does for the rest of the series.
Well, Tom is that's very interesting because before you came on, Ben and
I was having a conversation about the Rockies pitching and how can they elevate their
their bullpen and a lot of pictures I mean, and speaking of the whole
Pete Fairbraings thing, this may player a role into it moving down the line
where pitchers don't want to come here. So how is it that Dick Montfort
and Bud Black they're able to attract more quality pitchers to the city of Denver.
Well, I don't think there is a way to attract quality pitchers to
the city of Denver unless they're coming off injury, like the Coda Hudson.
I mean, he's first free and can signing in a while. What you
have to do is you have to build that through your minor league system.
And if you go back and look at the trades that the general manager,
Bill Schmid has made, I think every trade but one, the one that
got Nolan Jones, has brought in pitching. So they're going to attack this
problem with numbers, figuring if you have as many starting pitchers as you can
collect, you'll have five of them to get you through a major league season,
and maybe some of them will turn out to be standouts, and they
can and they can win some games for you. So that's the way they
do it here. Because if you go out on the free agent market,
I'll tell you what happens back years ago, Mike Hampton and Denny Nagels saying
pretty big contracts with the Rockies. If you and if you go back and
you look at what they should have brought on the free agent market, it
was the Rockies are not paying one year at top dollar more. If you
figure the lady you get into the contract, you're not as effective, but
yet you're paying top boller for one more year. So the Rockies were pretty
much out of that market. What they're going to have to do is maybe
trade for pitching, like with like Hermont Marcus, where they traded Corey Dickerson
to Tampa Bay and got him in here at the start of his career.
That is the best way to do it. One thing I suggested in the
last hour from from my layman's perspective, was, if we're going to fix
pitching here, why not go out and attempt to acquire ground ball pitchers,
you know, and that's not something that the Rockies traditionally have done. I
mean, you had, you know, you had Freeland and Gobber, who
are both in the forties in terms of how how often they produce ground bowl
groub ball outs in the league. But guys like the Giants have gone out
and got guys like Logan Webb and Alex Cobb who are a tops at it.
Why wouldn't that Why wouldn't you do that and have that be an advantage
here? Actually, if you look at the starting pitchers for many years,
like guys like Freeland and Marcus and guys like that, they usually are in
the top seven to sixteen in the league in ground ball rate. I mean,
you know, obviously you have some extreme ground ball pitchers, and if
you look at the history of the Rockies, Aaron Cook, Baldovo, Menez
to a certain degree, although he was a strikeout guy, Jeff Francis,
they have a lot of ground ball pitchers. Actually, the staff, you
know, you're pitching the contact, you're trying to get either ground ball or
weak contact. But if you look at at the end of the season,
you'll see a lot of Rockies pitchers in the top fifteen to twenty in ground
ball rate. So that is one way to do it. I know that
one of the criticisms is actually they don't have large strikeout guys and they never
have, not since Baldomanz and a few other guys, although Marquez is one
of them. They don't have a lot of high strikeout guys. But usually
those are guys that are proven strikeout guys, and when free agency comes and
they get the Mega contract, they go to a team where they can still
pitch, and a lot of them are not going to come to the Rockies,
especially if they think they're going to get another Mega contract at the end
of their career. Well, when Chris Bryan came to Denver, he was
viewed as being one of those sluggers, but it hasn't really turned out that
way. Do you think that today's game probably is one of those games that
kind of get Chris Bryan back on track. The home run did help.
He did strike out next to Eatings and heard the booze of the fans,
And it's not something you hear a lot of in Denver, in Denver sports,
and even with the Rockies, the team that struggled so much, you
don't hear the fans getting on someone. But I think Chris Bryant is strong
enough. I mean, the guy played in Chicago, he played for a
World Series champion, and all kinds of different things in a big market here,
So I think that I don't think that the fan reaction is going to
bother him. The question is can he just get the timing going. I
found in spring training his swing was in a pretty good place. I don't
know exactly what the numbers are because you don't pay attention to him, but
at times he was hitting the ball in the air. He had a few
home runs, he git a few balls to the warning track. It just
seems like he's not seen the ball well out of the pitcher's hand to start
the seasons. The question is is this the first eight games of the season
just an eight game bad stretch that everybody's going to have, or is something
else going on. I think that there'll be more focused because it's the first
eight games of the season. But if Chris Brian is professional that he knows
that he is, then he should be able to turn this around as long
as he stays healthy. YE know, Brian hasn't lived up to the contract
I think that they signed him to. I think he would be the first
one to admit that Ryan McMahon's been on a blistering pace so far this season,
but traditionally bat's a a lot lighter than what he's been hitting out of
the gate. Out of this Rockies team has to step up in order for
this team to be competitive. Well, I think Chris Bryant has to be
something close to what he was in Chicago, where maybe not the maybe not
a forty home run guy, but if he gets around thirty home runs,
that makes a difference. Ryan McMahon, the way he's hitting right now is
if you look at his career, he's had catches like this. If he
can do it for a longer period of time and limit the slumps, I
think he can hit thirty home runs in the season. Brendan Rodgers has not
really gotten going either, and they believe that he's going to be a guy
who can drive in some runs, hit some doubles, maybe in the twenty
twenty five home run range, but also drive in a lot of runs.
So there are guys that should be able to step up. You've seen it
in part of their histories. They're just going to have to do it consistently.
Well. One of the things that you know we were talking about was
the pitching and the bats not waking up early in the early part of the
season for the Rockies. But there's another thing that was occurring with routine defensive
plays. What do you think is the reason that we've seen the Rockies make
so many defensive mistakes early on in the season. Well, if you look
at the left fielder Nolan Jones, he set some records as far as being
a rookie throwing people out on the basis, but he really put a lot
of effort into being a better all around outfielder, tracking balls, fielding balls,
and I think he pressed to begin the season. The play today that
gave the Rays there one run lead, McMahon bounces one over the first base,
But it was a tough play there. That's one Bryant has to be
able to make. And after the game he made no excuses. He felt
that, hey, hop, one hop, throw right into his glove.
He should have been able to catch that. I have seen some uncharacteristic bad
defense that if you go back to last season, they led the free World
and errors in April and from May on they were one of the best defensive
teams in baseball. It was a secret because they didn't pitch well and they
lost a lot of games, but they were one of the best defensive teams
in baseball, So it may be just getting into the season. Well,
see what happens from there. Tomorrow you've got Tyler Alexander versus Ryan Feldner,
both teams. The Rockies win, they get a chance both teams to put
them to three and six? Is Tampa the team that Colorado needs to be
playing right now in order to kind of get right well? Tampa is a
perennial contender in the American League East, and I'm expecting them to be that
team. I mean what I've watched today Offensively, they filed off a lot
of pitches. They did strike out a lot, but they fouled off a
lot of pitches. They really made the starting pitcher at Austin Gomber work And
if they keep hitting like that, they're going to be a good team in
the American League East Division. So I don't look at this team even though
the record is three and six. I don't look at this team as a
bad baseball team because you'll probably see them in the playoff hunt and we've seen
them in the playoffs quite a bit in recent years. They have to win
because they have to win. But it's hard to look at something nine games
of the season and say, hey, that's a bad team. You have
to beat them. Well fair enough, Thomas. We're gonna have to get
together talk about Memphis at some point. It's always good to hear your voice.
Look forward to having you on again soon. Hey, thanks for having
me. Guys. Absolutely take care Thomas Harding MLB dot Com Rockies insider always
get a chance to Always good to get a chance to talk to him.
As the Rockies get the ten to seven home opener win and get their second
win of the seasons against the Tampa Bay Rays,