DENVER -- Bud Black has heard it all before. The Trade Deadline chatter, that is.
Black has been in professional baseball for 44 years. He’s been a player, a coach and a manager for multiple organizations. Now in his sixth season managing the Rockies, he knows how things typically go this time of year.
“I realized later that during some of those years I was a player, I was part of those conversations as a Trade Deadline guy,” Black said prior to the Rockies’ 2-1 loss to the White Sox at Coors Field on Tuesday night. “And if you look back at my 15 years as a player, I was never traded at the Deadline. So all this talk, it’s talk.”
That it is, at least for the Rockies on the field.
“From our end, [this week is no different],” Black said when asked about whether the days leading up to the Aug. 2 Deadline bring any added pressure for the club to put itself in a better position in the Wild Card standings.
“Now, are [General Manager] Billy [Schmidt] and [assistant GM] Zack [Rosenthal] and our front office fielding calls on a couple of our players? Sure. We’ve got some players who are desirable. … But this isn’t like a one-way street all the time.”
And therein lies the question the club’s front office must ponder in the coming days: Will the Rockies look to trade the “desirable” players Black mentioned -- slugging first baseman C.J. Cron and closer Daniel Bard come to mind -- or try to make a postseason push with the availability of a third Wild Card in each league despite falling to 10 games under .500 with Tuesday’s loss?
The Rockies’ strength entering this season was supposed to be their starting pitching. But the rotation was inconsistent in the first half. Newly-added right-hander Chad Kuhl was a pleasant surprise with how well he pitched early on, but he’s struggled lately. Left-hander Austin Gomber’s season has been a series of ups and downs. Antonio Senzatela has battled injury and inconsistency as well.
And the pillars of the rotation -- Germán Márquez and Kyle Freeland -- have had their own peaks and valleys. When they’re both on at the same time, they can be a devastating one-two punch against opposing lineups. That’s what happened Monday and Tuesday, with Freeland throwing seven scoreless frames in Milwaukee, followed by Márquez yielding just one run over six innings Tuesday.
That combination is tantalizing when it’s right. But the Rockies just haven’t managed to get everything right at the same time. Tuesday’s loss was a microcosm of the entire season in that sense: Márquez was strong, but the lineup couldn’t solve Chicago’s starter, Michael Kopech. Had it not been for Ryan McMahon’s opposite-field homer off White Sox closer Liam Hendriks in the ninth, Colorado would have been shut out for the sixth time this season.
With the Rockies at 44-54 and the Deadline looming, the front office will have to consider whether the potential for this starting rotation -- along with the return of Kris Bryant from the injured list to join Cron and Brendan Rodgers in the middle of the lineup (Bryant is hitting .325 with five homers since coming off the IL on June 27) -- is enough to warrant a continued quest for the postseason with the current group.
Márquez pitched well despite traffic on the bases in every inning, giving up a run when Garrett Hampson was unable to cleanly field a potential inning-ending double-play ball in the fourth. The right-hander can see a path for the Rockies to make things interesting down the stretch. But as Black said after the game, the starters will have to be good “to a man.”
“I think the starting pitching, we’re in a good spot right now,” Márquez said. “The second half, we’re going to do [really well].”
Is there enough time to make it happen for this group in 2022? Or will the organization look to the longer-term future as the calendar flips to August? The answer may be heavily influenced by what happens the rest of this week, with another game against the White Sox on Wednesday, followed by four against the Dodgers.
With all of that hanging in the balance, the Rockies in the clubhouse know what their immediate task is.
“I don’t think it [adds any more pressure] directly on us,” McMahon said. “I think it’s tougher on Schmiddy and the boys upstairs.
“Our job is to win baseball games.”