SAN DIEGO -- Rockies star third baseman Nolan Arenado believes improvement starts in the mirror.
Arenado and the Rockies are coming off a deflating 2-5 homestand that saw them lose three of four to the Reds, who have the third-fewest wins in the Majors. There is plenty of blame to go around, and Arenado doesn't mind shouldering his share.
"I need to play better," said Arenado, who entered Friday tied with the White Sox's Todd Frazier and the Orioles' Mark Trumbo for the Majors' home run lead with 17. "I haven't been playing the way I would like to play. It's frustrating. As a team we're losing, and it kind of hurts because I feel I could be helping the team in more ways than I am right now. But everyone's got to play their part.
"Obviously, last series we didn't pitch really great. It's easy to point that out. But at the same time, I don't think we're developing the runs that we're capable of doing. Obviously, we can hit home runs, but there's more to hitting and there's more to winning than that."
The Reds and Rockies combined for 24 home runs, which was tied for second in Major League history in a series of four or fewer games. But Arenado acknowledged that the Rockies' situational hitting wasn't good enough to overcome the pitching struggles.
The Rockies addressed their situational struggles in Spring Training with special drills to manufacture opportunities for productive outs or executing plays. Arenado said improvement will come.
"It's part of baseball," he said. "We've still got four months. We have a lot of games yet. You can't be nitpicking in May. Obviously, we've got to win ballgames and it's not OK to lose a lot. We still have a lot of baseball left. We haven't clicked yet. We haven't been able to put anything together yet. We've had spurts of it. We've had games where we've done some good things. The next game, we kind of fell asleep."
On Tuesday, the Rockies tied a club record with seven home runs, and set records for extra-base hits with 14 and total bases with 46, in a 17-4 victory over the Reds. The next day, the Reds won, 7-2.
Arenado said the Rockies should be better.
"I think we're underachieving," Arenado said. "As a team we're not playing the way we should play. We're not pitching the way we should pitch with the pitching staff that we have, and we're not hitting."
Rockies manager Walt Weiss said "the beauty of it is, 24 hours we get to turn the page." Weiss would not say the Rockies have underachieved overall, but acknowledged that the 10-15 home record is an underachievement.