Hudson starts strong, gets little support

MIAMI -- Prior to the series opener on Tuesday, manager Bud Black was asked what it would take for the Rockies to finally hold a lead the entirety of a game. His response was simple: It will take at least two-thirds of the lineup to be really clicking on all cylinders at the same time.

“We just haven't had many guys going all at once,” Black said.

The trend continued on Wednesday night for the Rockies, whose 4-1 loss to the Marlins at loanDepot park set the record, per the Elias Sports Bureau, for the most consecutive games trailing at any point to start the season in MLB history.

• 2024 Colorado Rockies: 30 *active streak
• 1887 New York Metropolitans: 29
• 1910 St. Louis Browns: 28

That’s not a record any team wants to set. Colorado’s 7-23 mark through the first 30 games of the season is the worst start in franchise history, eclipsing the 2005 club (8-22).

Sure, there are guys who are finding solid success right now for Colorado. But, as Black pointed out, it’s just not sustained, and not throughout the lineup.

“A little bit of [the hitting is] contagious, but again, we got to lay off the breaking ball in the dirt,” Black said postgame. “Our chase rate is too high; Over the last couple weeks it's been coming down, which is a good thing -- we’re laying off some pitches -- but that’s got to be throughout the whole lineup, right?

“And the pitches that we do get to hit, there’s been a propensity to foul those off. So we’ve got to be ready to hit the fastball and to lay off the breaking ball. … We got to hit the hangers.”

The thing is -- every aspect of the game is so intensely interconnected in baseball. A pitcher can be shoving in front of a Gold Glove defense, but if he doesn’t have the offensive support, it doesn’t matter. Lack of run support highlights all of the mistakes -- even the most miniscule.

It was that way for Dakota Hudson on Wednesday. He cruised through four innings without allowing a run. In his 5 2/3 innings, he allowed two runs on five hits, two walks and one hit by pitch. He struck out two, but more importantly, he regained a feel for his slider, which had eluded him in his previous start.

“A little bit of an uptick in the delivery, a little bit better tempo -- if you notice the little quick step and a little bit more aggressiveness and momentum through his wind up, especially,” Black said. “He got the arm going a little bit. You know, here in Miami the ball was sinking, so I thought the fastball had good sink, the breaking ball had good depth to it. Number of ground balls, too, which is his game.”

“We were in the ballgame and I had a good pitch count late,” Hudson said. “So just got to clean it up as the game gets later and force Bud’s hand to give me the ball a little bit longer. … I felt like I had every pitch in the zone, able to kind of attack the zone well and let the defense work.”

So far this season, Rockies starters have received an average of 3.93 runs of support over nine innings, the seventh-lowest mark in MLB. The trend continued against the Marlins, as Hudson got just one run of support. His eight runs of support this year are tied for the fourth fewest among Major League starters with at least six starts.

That doesn’t make it easy for a starting pitcher, but it also highlights just how much Colorado’s offense is struggling to get runners in.

“We were right there in the game the whole time,” Hudson said. “Just a few swings away. … And I think it’s just a matter of time until our offense starts clicking.”

So, where do the Rockies go from here?

“We gotta keep fighting,” Black said. “I think both sides -- the offense and the pitching -- have to improve [for us] to get traction. … It isn't the defense that's hurting us, it's our lack of scoring runs and a little bit of erratic pitching. We gotta get that going.”