Den­ver Post sports writer Patrick Saun­ders with the lat­est install­ment of his Rock­ies Mailbag.

Pose a Rock­ies — or MLB — relat­ed ques­tion for the Rock­ies Mailbag.

Patrick, thanks for all of your cov­er­age of the Rock­ies in such a weird year. You’ve done a great job adjust­ing to this year’s “nor­mal.”

My ques­tions fall on the sub­ject of the line­up and pitch­ing. It seems this year man­ag­er Bud Black has been more exper­i­men­tal with his line­ups. It just seems there hasn’t been a whole lot of con­sis­ten­cy with it oth­er than the select few (Char­lie Black­mon, Trevor Sto­ry and Nolan Are­na­do). I get the fact of rid­ing the hot bat and giv­ing some of the young guys oppor­tu­ni­ties to play their way in. Do you see a more con­sis­tent day-in, day-out line­up down the stretch run here or con­tin­ued mismatching?

Also, it seems the Rock­ies have only three reli­able relief pitch­ers in Yen­cy Almonte, Car­los Estevez and Daniel Bard. Do you agree with this and who is the next most trust­ed reliev­er for Black right now?

— Zack Wevik, Water­town, S.D.

Zack, those are two very good questions.

Let’s start with your line­up ques­tion. Black had every inten­tion of stick­ing with a stan­dard line­up this sea­son, and then mix­ing in role play­ers such as des­ig­nat­ed hit­ter Matt Kemp and util­i­ty play­er Gar­rett Hamp­son. But events forced Black’s hand and he’s had to mix and match.

Here’s what I mean:
• The Rock­ies expect­ed out­field­er David Dahl to be a dynam­ic lead­off hit­ter. But after a fast start, he slumped bad­ly and then got hurt. He could be back soon, but Dahl cer­tain­ly hasn’t pro­vid­ed the pro­duc­tion Col­orado expected.
• The Rock­ies thought that Ryan McMa­hon would be a pro­duc­tive run-pro­duc­er at the sixth spot in the order. Instead, he’s strug­gled and has been spend­ing a lot of time on the bench. McMa­hon has struck out 36% of the time (up from 29% last sea­son), is hit­ting just .214 with a .311 on-base percentage.
• After an off year in 2019, the Rock­ies expect­ed big things from vet­er­an first base­man Daniel Mur­phy, who bat­ted a dis­ap­point­ing .279 with a .328 on-base per­cent­age and .780 OPS last year. But the rebound hasn’t happened.

Enter­ing Tues­day night’s game at San Diego, Mur­phy was bat­ting .252 with a .288 OBP and a .648 OPS. Mur­phy has not had an extra-base hit in his last 22 ball­games. He’s 9‑for-58 (.155) over his last 18 games since Aug. 14 after bat­ting .358 (19-for-53) over 15 games to start the sea­son. He’s 2‑for-31 in his last 10 road games. I wish the Rock­ies had start­ed using Josh Fuentes, a much bet­ter field­er than Mur­phy, soon­er and more often.

Any­way, those three key play­ers have per­formed well below expec­ta­tions and that’s forced Black to mix and match. Some good has come of it, most espe­cial­ly the emer­gence of Raimel Tapia as a pro­duc­tive lead­off hitter.

Final­ly, let’s not for­get that Are­na­do is hav­ing a sub-par year at the plate, and that’s been a fac­tor, too.

The bot­tom line is this: Because of the short, 60-game sea­son, Black has had to jug­gle the line­up more than he antic­i­pat­ed and more than he want­ed to.

As for your ques­tion about the bullpen, I would say that Black has the most trust in Bard, Almonte and new­com­er Mychal Givens. They have good stuff and poise on the mound. Estevez had Black’s trust but that’s wan­ing, espe­cial­ly after he gave up the win­ning run to the Padres in a 1–0 loss Mon­day night. Estevez has good stuff but he also owns a 6.41 ERA with a .310 bat­ting aver­age against. His pitch loca­tion has been poor, at times.

On the Rock­ies’ TV broad­casts the strike zone has, annoy­ing­ly and awk­ward­ly, been named “the Sub­aru Strike Zone.” Will the broad­cast­ers soon tell us that “Tapia hits the “Bud­weis­er base­ball” sharply into “State Farm left field.” He rounds “Chrysler sec­ond base” and slides safe­ly into “Ama­zon third?”

— Ken Wil­son, Louisville

Ken, I hope it nev­er gets that far.

But actu­al­ly, in-game adver­tis­ing has always been part of base­ball broad­casts and always will be. Think about radio broad­casts. They are filled with quick adver­tise­ments, often between pitch­es. I used to tease Jer­ry Schem­mel all the time when he would have to do an on-air pitch for Safe­way. “Safe­way, it’s just better!”

It is, of course, all about mon­ey, for the good and for bad. Years ago, a sports edi­tor would have cringed at the thought of adver­tis­ing on the front page of the sports sec­tion, but it’s often there now.

I cer­tain­ly don’t blame Jeff Huson of AT&T Sport­sNet for say­ing “Sub­aru Strike Zone” so often. It’s my guess that he wish­es he didn’t have to do it, but it’s sim­ply part of his job. By the way, Huson doesn’t get paid for reach­ing his quo­ta of the “Sub­aru Strike Zone” or the “Sub­aru Super­Mo.” Is it annoy­ing? I’d say yes, but I kind of laugh it off. Per­haps it could be a drink­ing game? (With a D.D., of course)!

Also, I’d like to note that I under­stand when fans get upset when the TV crew is not super crit­i­cal of the Rock­ies when they’re play­ing poor­ly. But, again, the crew is paid to call games but also to rep­re­sent the team. Believe me, they know what’s going on when the Rock­ies aren’t play­ing well, but they also know they can’t be bru­tal­ly hon­est on the air.

I’ve noticed Black and some of the play­ers are wear­ing the mask less. Has MLB eased up on this?

— Joe, Denver

Joe, I’ve notice that, too. Major League Base­ball has not eased up on its pro­to­cols, and the Rock­ies have adhered to them pret­ty strin­gent­ly. But nor­mal habits are hard to break — not just with play­ers and man­agers, but all of us — and that’s why you see masks worn less than a month ago. It’s not inten­tion­al; it’s just force of habit and a mat­ter of comfort.

With a third of the sea­son to go, what are your keys for the Rock­ies to make the play­offs? I think we need more con­sis­tent bullpen arms and some bet­ter bats. Plus Are­na­do needs to be Are­na­do. He heat­ed up a cou­ple weeks back, but he’s been sub-par over the last week. What do you think?

— Nick, Seattle

Nick, I agree with every­thing you wrote.

The bullpen had a 6.75 ERA enter­ing Tues­day night’s game at San Diego. That won’t get it done. In fact, the 6.75 ERA stands as the worst in fran­chise his­to­ry — by far. The .302 bat­ting aver­age against is also the high­est. As a com­par­i­son, the bullpen for the 2007 World Series team had a 3.85 ERA, the best in fran­chise history.

Now, to be fair, we’re talk­ing about a small sam­ple size this sea­son. We are at the 41-game mark of a 60-game sea­son, so num­bers are going to be a lit­tle out of whack.

As for Are­na­do, on the whole, he’s strug­gled. He knows it and he’s car­ry­ing that weight on his shoul­ders. I recent­ly wrote a Sun­day sto­ry about his strug­gles and the pres­sure he’s under.

Patrick, when are the Rock­ies going to start Josh Fuentes and Gar­rett Hamp­son over Daniel Mur­phy and Ryan McMa­hon. There are just 20 games left and I feel like these two would give us a bet­ter shot at mak­ing a push for the postseason.

— Ross Peter­son, Denver

Ross, as I not­ed in a ques­tion above, Mur­phy has been a big dis­ap­point­ment. I agree with you that both Fuentes and Hamp­son give the Rock­ies a bet­ter chance to win when they are in the line­up. The pro­vide ener­gy and a spark. There are excep­tions, of course, espe­cial­ly when the oppos­ing pitch­er dic­tates a dif­fer­ent lineup.

I’ve liked Black for a long time, but I’m start­ing to get ner­vous about his propen­si­ty to lock in on one clos­er despite evi­dence that his cho­sen one is not up to the task of shut­ting down ninth-inning bat­ters. Specif­i­cal­ly, I am wor­ried that he is now han­dling Estevez like he did Wade Davis.

My opin­ion is that Estevez is not up to the task, as he shows more and more often in his relief pitch­ing (see Mon­day night’s San Diego ninth inning), as well as his grow­ing ERA.

It’s not fair to the team, the fans, and the orga­ni­za­tion to con­tin­u­ous­ly throw Estevez in cru­cial sit­u­a­tions when he is clear­ly not up to the job.

Davis and Estevez are fine peo­ple who deserve the best in life, but the issue at hand involves a very spe­cif­ic tal­ent that Davis’ body will no longer let him do anymore.

As for Estevez, per­haps he needs to lose 50 pounds to allow him to be more agile when throw­ing the ball in cru­cial situations.

In clos­ing, please don’t “devel­op closers” at the expense of wins/losses year after year.

— Mark Maison­neuve, Hope, N.J.

Mark, that’s a lot to chew on (and I actu­al­ly edit­ed your ques­tion down).

First, let me note that Daniel Bard, not Estevez, cur­rent­ly is Black’s choice for clos­er. Bard, who saved back-to-back games against the Dodgers over the week­end, was sim­ply not avail­able on Mon­day night. So Estevez was, in essence, the clos­er by default Mon­day night in San Diego when Black had few options giv­en how taxed the bullpen was.

As for Estevez need­ing to lose 50 pounds, I don’t think that’s the answer. He’s a big, pow­er­ful man and pret­ty ath­let­ic for such a big man (6‑foot‑6, 275 pounds). He’s got the fire­pow­er and the stuff to do that job, but he con­tin­ues to make mis­takes and he over­throws the ball sometimes.

Hel­lo Patrick, just out of curios­i­ty (OK, and lazi­ness since I could prob­a­bly dig this up myself) what per­cent­age of the Rock­ies’ home runs this sea­son have been solo shots? It seems like it would be at least 50% or higher.

Anoth­er top­ic I would pose to you, Mark Kis­zla, Sean Keel­er, et.al: Hav­ing been a sports reporter (for­give me, I was the TV type … not an “ink-stained wretch,” love it when that term is used), I won­der what it’s like hav­ing to inter­view ath­letes via Zoom and oth­er means. Actu­al­ly being there, in their pres­ence soon after the game has end­ed I would think you tend to get more vis­cer­al respons­es. On the oth­er hand, since my day and the long-over­due accep­tance of female sports reporters I know there haven’t been lock­er room inter­views for some time.

Long ques­tion short: have the COVID-caused dis­tance inter­views pre­sent­ed an addi­tion­al chal­lenge to your reporting?

Thank you Patrick!

— Bill, Monument

Bill, in regard to your first ques­tion, the Rock­ies have hit 30 homers this sea­son and 50 of them have been solo shots. So the answer is 60%.

League-wide: 1,589 home runs/919 solo shots: 57.8%
Rock­ies: 50 home runs/30 solo shots: 60%

In regard to your sec­ond ques­tion, yes, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the report­ing land­scape. The Zoom inter­views have actu­al­ly been much bet­ter than I antic­i­pat­ed and the Rock­ies media rela­tions staff has worked hard to get as many play­ers as possible.

Still, that can’t replace one-on-one inter­views, where there is more give and take and more con­ver­sa­tion. Plus, I don’t have to share their “stuff” with every­body else.

As for women in the lock­er room or club­house, that has not reduced inter­views with the play­ers. Dur­ing a nor­mal sea­son, there are often quite a few women work­ing in the club­house and the inter­views take place as usu­al. I can’t speak for female reporters, but it doesn’t seem to be a major issue anymore.

Den­ver Post sports writer Patrick Saun­ders with the lat­est install­ment of his Rock­ies Mailbag.

Pose a Rock­ies — or MLB — relat­ed ques­tion for the Rock­ies Mailbag.