Colorado Rockies: Jon Gray has the stuff to carry team this postseason
The Colorado Rockies have been a surprise all season long, but everyone is expecting the Arizona Diamondbacks to advance past tonight’s Wild Card game. The Rockies have one hope at bucking that narrative, and his name is Jon Gray.
Even the most casual of baseball fans has likely heard Jon Gray’s name in passing. For those of you that are unfamiliar with him, he is the ace of the Colorado Rockies and he has the repertoire to shut down just about any opposing offense on any given night. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s likely because he’s still working on his consistency, being that 2017 was just his second full season in the bigs.
Gray missed a couple of months after injuring his foot pitching in San Francisco during just his third start of the season. He returned at the very end of June to face the Diamondbacks in Arizona and allowed two earned over six innings. He has started two more games against the D-Backs since, one at home and a second on the road, and has combined to allowed five runs in 12 innings while striking out 16. Those last two games came in September, after Arizona had added J.D. Martinez, so they are familiar with one another. Martinez took him deep in each of those games.
Over the past two months, Gray holds a 2.45 ERA over 66 1/3 innings, striking out a batter an inning in that span.
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While Gray may not be a household name, he is a bulldog, and the Colorado Rockies will go as far as he can carry them. In fact, Gray has the potential to be the Rockies version of 2014 Madison Bumgarner, who carried the Giants on his back to a World Series championship. Much like that ’14 Giants team, the Rockies won’t be the best team to enter this year’s playoffs, but with their offensive potential and a huge home field advantage at Coors, it’s not out of the question that they could go on a run. As we saw just a couple of years ago, all it takes is one hot pitcher to put a team on his back. Jon Gray could be that pitcher.
The Rockies had one of the best bullpens in baseball over the final month of the season, ranking just behind the Yankees and Indians in terms of fWAR, while ranking a little lower in terms of ERA because of the thin air they have at home. In either case, their bullpen should be better than Arizona’s, which could lead to an interesting facet of the game–with the home team needing to score early in this one-game format.
For the Rockies bats, Mark Reynolds (4), Trevor Story (4) and Carlos Gonzalez (5) have taken Greinke deep multiple times in their careers, but it’s under-the-radar acquisition Jonathan Lucroy that is 7-for-11 (.636) with a triple against the D-Backs ace.
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The Diamondbacks are expected to win this game, and they went 11-8 against Colorado during the regular season. But this is also a divisional game for both clubs, which means that they know each other pretty well and that this game could really go either way.
While Tuesday’s Wild Card game had lots of home runs and action, tonight’s may be more of a pitcher’s duel with Zack Greinke pitching in opposition of Gray and the Rockies. If Colorado can win this one, they’ll have as good a shot as anyone.