It’s official: Coors Field is a pitcher’s park
| July 7, 2009 | 1:00 PM
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One of my colleagues here at the RMI, promised, guaranteed and swore before the season that Jason Marquis would finish the season with an ERA over 6.00 at Coors Field. To date, he has a 3.72 ERA in eight home starts and a 3.50 ERA in nine road games — just about even. Maybe his second half will be so disastrous that the prediction will come true. Having lived through the dismantling of Mike Hampton in Coors Field, we won’t discount that possibility. But it seems safe to say at the moment that Marquis, at least temporarily, has proven most of his doubters wrong. (Other than ESPN’s Keith Law, who argued the other day that Marquis wasn’t worthy of his All-Star selection because of his performance in the previous three years.)
To quote my colleague: “The Marquis season is really remarkable. It sets back Sabermetrics at least five years.”
Pitching a shutout in Dodger Stadium, which Marquis did last week, is hardly anything to brag about even for someone like Marquis, who led the league in earned runs and home runs allowed in 2006 and hasn’t had an ERA below 4.00 since 2004. But to follow that start with eight shutout innings at Coors Field is noteworthy. He had to pitch out of two bases-loaded jams to do so, but even those tight situations go to prove a point beyond reasonable doubt. Specifically: The assumptions the national media and sabermetricians continue to make about Coors Field and the offense it allegedly produces, are absurb. Coors Field now plays like the stadium it is: spacious and open, the sort of place where if you have fast outfielders, a good defense and someone who knows how to pitch, you allow fewer hits. This is not the place where pitchers are put out to pasture or where they have to toil until, like Jason Jennings, they can escape to more money and less pressure. It’s not a place where fly balls routinely turn into cheap home runs. Coors Field is a place where pitchers who have guts and aren’t easily intimidated can thrive.
Like Jason Marquis. And, for that matter, Ubaldo Jimenez, Aaron Cook and Jason Hammel, four Rockies starting pitchers with ERAs under 4.00 this season.
Journals, Sports, Steve Foster
aaron cook, colorado rockies, coors field, jason hammel, jason marquis, mike hampton, sabermetricians, ubaldo jimenez
