Clips for 7-12-10

MEDIA CLIPS –May 10, 2017 Remade Reynolds thriving with Rockies Slugger has improved his contact rate, retained power By Thomas Harding / MLB.com | @harding_at_mlb | May 9th, 2017 DENVER -- Rockies first baseman Mark Reynolds' opposite-way home run off the Cubs' Dylan Floro during Tuesday's 10-4 victory landed in the home bullpen Tuesday at Coors Field, and it fired up the way-back machine. That long ball gave Reynolds homers in four straight games heading into Tuesday's nightcap of a doubleheader against the Cubs, matching his career-best -- Aug. 6-9, 2012, with the D-backs. That streak ended in an 8-1 loss in the second game to the Cubs, as Reynolds went 0-for-1 with three walks. Just don't go thinking Reynolds is the same player now that he was then. This is the third year of the new Reynolds, who began reinventing himself when he joined the Cardinals in 2015 and found a mentor in the team's hitting coach, John Mabry. "Cliff's Notes? The easiest answer is keeping the barrel in the zone longer," Reynolds said. The old power is back. Reynolds, who eclipsed 30 homers three times and had 21 or more 2008-14, already has 12 this year. But he struck out a Major League-record 233 times in 2009, and led his league in that category 2008-11. 1 In 2015 with Mabry and the Cardinals, Reynolds hit .230 with 13 homers, but managed a .315 on-base percentage, which was his highest in three years. Last year with the Rockies brought a career-best .356 OBP. Through 33 games, he has a .402 OBP and a .333 batting average. With the D-backs (2007-10), Orioles (2011-13), Indians (2013), Yankees (2013), and Brewers (2014), power paid well, with salaries from from $5.3 million to $7.5 million from 2011-13. "I don't think there was pressure [to hit home runs]," he said. "It was more I had success doing it and I wanted to keep doing it. And I had job security." The salary dropped to $2 million with the Brewers as the industry saw him as a part-time starter. In '13, realizing that he could no longer depend on 600 at-bats to let him take advantage of pitchers' mistakes, he signed with the Cardinals and reached out to Mabry, a standout pinch-hitter for 14 seasons with eight teams. "It's not like we did drills to do it, to change stuff," Reynolds said. "It was more of a mindset." Mabry, who played for the Rockies in 2007, credits a willing student. "There's no secret sauce," Mabry said. "It was just him rolling up his sleeves and doing the work that he wanted to do to get better." With the Cards and with the Rockies last year, close-to-regular opportunity arose, but Reynolds kept the off-the-bench approach. Last season, he finished with 14 home runs in 118 games. When no team offered a starting opportunity last winter, Reynolds took a Minor League contract from the Rockies, turned it into $1.5 million job, and took over first base when Ian Desmond suffered a broken left hand during Spring Training. Last year, Reynolds made contact (fair or foul) with a career-high 71.24 percent of his swings, after not exceeding 68.28 percent any previous year. This year he has improved to 72.9 percent. Contact is much harder. According to Statcast™, Reynolds has barreled (hit hard, according to exit speed and launch angle) 11.2 percent of balls in play, up 6 percent from last year and 8.4 percent from 2015. 2 "I wasn't bad, but I had a lot more holes than I did now," Reynolds said. "If you go back and watch video of my younger days versus now, I could only get to certain pitches back then. "But I'm not saying that I have everything figured out. It just so happens that when I barrel it, it's going in the air." 3 Marquez looks for success at Coors Field By Owen Perkins / Special to MLB.com | 9:08 AM ET The Cubs and Rockies will be rooting for cooperative weather Wednesday for the series finale of their three-game set, which features two pitchers with a nine-run differential in their career ERAs at Coors Field. Chicago's Kyle Hendricks has pitched well in Colorado, going 1-0 with a 3.44 ERA in three starts spanning 18 1/3 innings. He's struck out 10 while walking only three. "You try to do more and less happens," Hendricks says of the Coors Field factor. "You try to throw your curveball harder, it's going to break less. You almost have to do less to make things happen here. Don't press when things aren't going your way. I've had games out here where my sinker comes in dead straight. You just have to roll with that and try and spot up. Hopefully, you can back off a little bit and find that movement with all your pitches." Rockies rookie German Marquez could use a few pointers on pitching in his home field. He's 0-2 with a 11.70 ERA in two starts at home this this season, and 1-2 with a 6.55 ERA over five career appearances, four starts, at home. Things to know about this game • In three starts this season, Marquez has thrown his four-seam fastball roughly 65 percent of the time, fifth most among starters with at least 250 total pitches. Teammate Antonio Senzatela tops that list at 77 percent. The difference so far is that while opponents are slugging .356 in at-bats ending with Senzatela's four-seamer, they are slugging .511 off Marquez's with a pair of homers. • Carlos Gonzalez is 5-for-14 (.357) with two doubles, a homer, and three RBIs against Hendricks. • The only Cub Marquez has faced in his career is Jon Jay, who is 1-for-2 (.500) with a double against the right-hander. 4 Rox ride 6-run 3rd to breezy G1 win over Cubs By Thomas Harding and Owen Perkins / MLB.com | May 9th, 2017 DENVER -- Ryan Hanigan's two-out bloop single in the third inning signaled Tuesday afternoon would be that kind of day for the Rockies -- and for Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta. The Rockies bested Arrieta for nine runs (five earned) in 3 2/3 innings of a 10-4 victory in the opener of a split doubleheader at Coors Field. Hanigan's single, which eluded the glove of sliding left fielder Kyle Schwarber, was part of a six-run third that included Charlie Blackmon's triple and DJ LeMahieu's double, and saw the Rockies take 10 turns at the plate. The National League West-leading Rockies matched their season high with 15 hits while winning their fifth in the last six games and seventh in the last 10. Hanigan, a veteran who joined the Rockies last week from Triple-A Albuquerque, acknowledged the role of luck. "I didn't get it like I wanted to, but, hey, I'll take it any day," Hanigan said. "Soon as I hit it, I thought it was an out." Hanigan noted that Schwarber was disadvantaged because he had to play deep -- a necessary evil for most outfielders at Coors. But the field wasn't the whole story. "They hit some balls really well, others they dropped it in front [of the outfielder]," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. "You have to play such a big outfield here, it's so large. They just have good at-bats. They're really good offensively." About the best that be could said for Arrieta (4-2), who yielded nine hits, was it wasn't as bad as his last Coors start, when he gave up 13 hits and nine earned runs on Aug. 6, 2014. "They've got one of the better offenses in all of baseball, especially at Coors Field," Arrieta said. "They hit for a significantly higher average here. That's just a testament to their ability to play to their home park and have a good approach. I wanted to come into this game and establish strikes with all my pitches. I did it pretty well -- almost too well with too many hittable pitches, really." Mark Reynolds went 3-for-4 and clubbed his 12th home run -- just two fewer than he managed last year in 118 games. Meanwhile, "The Little Prince," Antonio Senzatela (5-1), a rookie right-hander, held the Cubs to two runs and five hits, struck out four and walked three in six innings. 5 MOMENTS THAT MATTERED Ascending: After the Rockies' six-run third, Senzatela found himself facing loaded bases and no outs in the fourth. Lefty Chris Rusin was already warming up. But Senzatela forced an Albert Almora Jr. pop to second base, got one out and nearly two on Schwarber's RBI grounder, and worked Kris Bryant into a fly to right to escape the jam having allowed just one run. Rusin didn't enter until the seventh. Senzatela managed a less-than-ideal 57.6 percent strike rate, but his final two innings were his best. "Learning this fellow and knowing what our Minor League people say about the intangibles of competitiveness -- when in the game he has to step it up, when he has to make a pitch, when he has to throw a little harder or land a curveball, he sort of gets it," Rockies manager Bud Black said.

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