NLDS Game Three: Even at home, the Rockies faded too quietly

[EasyAce]

By Yours Truly
https://fancredsports.com/Articles/even-at-home-the-rockies-faded-too-quietly



Scott Oberg probably wants to find a nice mountain cave in which to hide for the winter after Sunday afternoon. Someone should bring him provisions and a few hugs if he does. Few have incurred the nightmare Oberg lived in the top of the sixth Sunday afternoon.

In two fateful and fatal moments when the Rockies’ National League division series Game Three deficit was still a measly two, Oberg stepped into a singular circle of hell where few if any of baseball’s so-called goats have ever served sentences.

There’s nothing more humiliating than dropping a ball at the mound for a balk, then throwing a wild pitch, to turn a two-run deficit into a four-run hole and, in due course, the Rockies’ earlier-than-hoped for winter vacation.

But before you lock the door behind Oberg have mercy upon the poor guy and remind yourself that the Rockies were so sound asleep at the plate in Game Three and all set long it was a wonder they didn’t grow beards and nails before their slumber was ended as rudely as the Brewers ended it with a 6-0 final.

Rockies manager Bud Black acknowledged his hitters may have pressed a little two much in the first two games, and the only two runs the Rockies scored all set long came in the ninth in Game One. “That’s a combination, I think, of aggressiveness and anxiousness,” Black told a reporter. “Part of it might be the moment. But you know, it’s how you weigh that—I’m not sure.”

Black sent German Marquez to the mound against the Brewers’ Wade Miley Sunday afternoon. Maybe Black figured Miley was due for a relapse, after his season was rudely compromised by a March groin strain and a two-month absence with a right oblique strain. Marquez pitched well enough but Miley was just that much better even though neither pitcher went past the fifth, and it was Miley working with a 2-0 advantage.

You could even say the Brewers snuck their first run home, what with Christian Yelich scoring on a first inning forceout at second base. It was anything but sneaky, though, when Jesus Aguilar caught hold of a one-out hanging curve ball and hung it practically to the rear end of the left field bleachers in the fifth.

The sixth is the one that will live in Rockies infamy, alas. And it began reasonably enough when Oberg rid himself of Aguilar on a full count low outside strike call, on a day plate umpire Ted Barrett was being rather generous about giving both sides the low strikes. Mike Moustakas followed with a soft liner for a base hit and Erik Kratz—the Brewers’ edition of the old man down the road, making a postseason name for himself at age 38 after long years up and down from the Show, playing like anything but a backup catcher—ripped one off the base of the right field fence to set up first and third.

The Rockies pulled the infield in and Oberg struck out Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia swinging. Then Curtis Granderson, the old reliable veteran, pinch hit for Brewers reliever Corey Knabel. Granderson looked at a strike. Oberg took the return throw, set his right foot on the pitching rubber as he prepared to work again from the stretch, then decided he’d just pop the ball into his glove as he’d done a few dozen times before.

Except that he dropped the ball. It hit the mound with a thud almost equal to the Rockies’ fading hopes and Moustakas strolled home while Kratz strolled to third.

“I had to take a step away from the mound a little bit, regroup, clear my head a little bit,” Oberg told reporters after the game ended. “I still had a job to do and can’t let that affect me moving forward.”

“I wasn’t watching Scott at the time,” Black said. “I was engaging in a couple of other things. Then I saw the balk was called. And as you know, by rule you can’t contest a balk call. When it’s called, it’s called. But after the inning, [second base umpire] Alfonso [Marquez] told me that Scott was engaged on the rubber and the ball came out of his glove.”

Oberg had his heart and head in the right place, but somehow his slider missed the memo. Two pitches later, it  squirted through veteran backup catcher Tony Wolters and even Kratz, who runs like an earth mover with a broken treadle, could get home before anyone could even think of stopping him to try selling him a vacuum cleaner.

By the top of the ninth there was Wade Davis, usually the Rockies closer, and once one of the deadly firm of H-D-H with the 2015-16 Royals (with Kelvim Herrera and Greg Holland), now hoping only to contain the Brewers. So much for that idea. Arcia smashed a 3-1 pitch into the left field bleachers to start the inning and Keon Broxton, a mid-game substitution, hit one over the right field fence.

The Rockies awoke enough in the bottom to put the first two on against Brewers reliever Jeremy Jeffress with one out, Trevor Story sending a double in and out of Yelich’s glove and off the fence and Matt Holliday, perhaps enjoying his final major league hurrah, wrung out a full-count walk. Out came Jeffress, in came Josh Hader, and down on strikes went Carlos Gonzalez before Ian Desmond lofted a 1-0 fly to center fielder Lorenzo Cain to end it.

“We got to the dance,” Black said. “We fought, but we might not have played our best. But part of that is the opposition, how they played. We got outplayed.”

That was a polite way to put it, unfortunately. The Rockies scored two runs all series long and both came near the end of Game One. They left seven men on base and went 0-for-5 with men in scoring position Sunday. Even their long-reputed home field advantage with the high-altitude Coors Field did more favours to the Brewers than to themselves. And overall the Rockies could only bring a .146 team batting average to bear over the three games.

“You saw a lot of guys chasing bad pitches, including myself,” Gonzalez lamented after it was over. “We were anxious. But at the same time, they have a great staff there. Their bullpen did a tremendous job.”

And when one of the Rockies’ most reliable bullpenners lost his grip in two terrible moments, it became just a question of how soon that Brewers pen would finish the job, and the Rockies’ season.
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