Ex-Rockies pitcher has notable criticism of team

Aug 4, 2017; Denver, CO, USA; General view of the hat and glove of Colorado Rockies shortstop Pat Valaika (4) (not pictured) during the seventh inning against the Philadelphia Phillies at Coors Field. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

A former Colorado Rockies pitcher delivered some scathing criticism of the team after he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Rockies made the relatively minor move of trading reliever Nick Mears to Milwaukee on Sunday, but Mears caused a bit of a stir with some of his comments upon joining the Brewers. He suggested that he had been tipping his pitches for months but the Rockies either never noticed or never bothered to correct it.

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An interesting introduction to the Brewers’ new reliever Nick Mears, who discovered before the All-Star break that he had been tipping pitches for months. photo.twitter.com/JsJGcOcBpf

— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) July 28, 2024

“I’ve definitely had a few implosion innings, but it doesn’t help that I’ve been tipping pitches for a month and a half and never been briefed. Hitting is tough no matter how you look at it, but it gets a little easier when you have a sense of whether it’s a fastball or an offspeed pitch.”

Mears said he made a move before the All-Star break to address the problem. Perhaps even more damning was his claim that he hadn’t even heard of the problem from anyone at the Rockies.

“A player once told one of my friends at the Rockies,” Mears said. “He came up to me and said something like, ‘Hey, this is what you’re doing. You should probably change it.'”

Mears made it clear that it was ultimately his fault for tipping the pitches and took responsibility for not noticing the problem himself. However, this is what coaching staffs are basically for, and it’s rather shocking to think that no one on the team said anything about it.

Mears has a 5.56 ERA in 45.1 innings out of the Colorado bullpen this season. Interestingly, since he surrendered two runs in two-thirds of an inning on July 2, he has struck out 10 batters in 6.2 innings, allowing three hits and one run. The sample size is too small to draw confident conclusions, but maybe he’s really figured something out in that time.

Colorado already has a reputation as a tough place for pitchers due to the high elevation of Coors Field. It doesn’t help their reputation if there’s a perception that they’re not picking up on issues with their own players that coaches should be picking up on. But then again, maybe the team’s coaching staff just has other priorities sometimes.