WASHINGTON -- The Rockies have been experimenting with ways to attack the challenge of hitting away from Coors Field. It’s making a hitting monster of Hunter Goodman.
“We’ve been doing a good job trying to find ways to handle Coors hitting at elevation versus when we go on the road, and we’re on our way to figuring some stuff out,” said Goodman, who has knocked 11 of his 14 home runs this season on the road.
The Rockies lost to the Nationals 4-3 in 11 innings on Thursday on James Wood’s second homer of the game. It put an end to a spin through Atlanta and Washington during which the Rockies took four of seven games -- their first winning road trip since they went 4-2 against the Mets and Pirates from May 5-10, 2023.
Not only did the just-completed road trip include a season-best four-game win streak, but they won the last three games of the previous trip in a sweep at Miami.
No one is claiming answers to the home-road problem that has existed since the Rockies began play in 1993. But the Rockies are getting results from a change in pregame preparation since Warren Schaeffer took over as interim manager on May 11 and two hitting coaches were added from the Minors. Nic Wilson was promoted from Minor League hitting coordinator, and Jordan Pacheco was elevated from Triple-A Albuquerque.
It took most of May for the new batting practice to yield results. But the difference in this trip was stark:
First 34 road games:
• 195/.253/.314 slash line, 2.5 runs per game
Last seven road games:
• 263/.330/.498, 5.3 runs per game
The biggest change flies in the face of how teams traditionally approach batting practice. BP has forever been an exercise in building confidence, with balls thrown solidly and straight. But after struggling during games, the Rockies have reduced comfort-swinging.
“Ultimately, with practice in general, you’re trying to create an environment that’s more difficult than the game,” Wilson said. “Baseball is traditionally terrible at that.”
They still throw “hit me” pitches on the field. But now much of the work is done off the pitching machine in the indoor batting cage. The machine can be set to metrics of opposing pitchers. On the road, heavier baseballs are used and the machine is turned up to exaggerate the best characteristics of opposing pitchers.
“These are the best hitters in the world. If you give them a chance to see something a couple of times before they actually perform, hopefully in their mind it makes it a little bit easier,” Pacheco said.
Third baseman Ryan McMahon’s performance during Tuesday night’s 10-6 victory illustrated how the plan is supposed to work.
There are struggles like consecutive games in Atlanta on June 14-15, when Spencer Strider showed a leap in his velocity and Grant Holmes was pinpoint. Those hurlers combined for 28 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings – but the Rockies won the second of those games.
McMahon swatted an up-and-in, 94.5 mph sixth-inning fastball from Nats starter Michael Soroka and kept it fair for a double to right field in the sixth inning on Tuesday night. In the eighth, after a Goodman homer off Cole Henry, McMahon homered on Henry’s third straight fastball -- on the ninth pitch of that at-bat. It was inside, off the plate.
He had seen both those pitches, with nastier movement, before the game.
“If we’re going to see a guy who uses his curveball a lot, it’s a good one. And we’re getting used to sea level, [so] they’ll put an even nastier one in the cage so you feel overwhelmed in there,” McMahon said. “In the game it feels a little more underwhelming. They’ll have every pitch shape and make sure you’re ready to go.”
At Coors, the Rockies have Trajekt Arc, a machine that gives hitters a high-tech image of the opposing pitcher as practice balls are delivered. (Teams use them at home, but it’s not feasible to take the machine on the road.) To enhance what the batter feels, Pacheco plans on having that machine fire lighter baseballs, for the opposite effect of what happens on the road.
“I look back to when I played for Colorado, and I wanted to know why I was a little bit late when I got back to Albuquerque or to Colorado,” said Pacheco, a utility man with the Rockies 2011-14. “It’s because the ball will have a little more carry.”
Starting with Friday’s opener of a three-game series against the Diamondbacks and a six-game homestand, Goodman will look to also improve at Coors, where he slashes .270/.316/.437 versus .297/.338/.588 away from home.
“I want to be able to do those same things at home,” he said. “So it’s figuring out a routine for me that works.”