Rockies right-hander Germán Márquez will require Tommy John surgery, he tells reporters, including Danielle Allentuck of the Denver Gazette.
Needless to say, it’s a very unfortunate piece of news for both the pitcher and the team. Márquez has been the club’s best pitcher in recent years, posting a 4.41 ERA in 1,016 career innings. Given that he plays his home games at the hitter haven of Coors Field, it’s fair to assume that ERA doesn’t truly reflect his skill level. His 4.02 FIP and 3.96 SIERA perhaps offer a better indication of the level of production he’s had thus far.
This year, he made just three starts before landing on the injured list with a forearm strain, though an MRI revealed no structural damage and he was back with the club after a brief absence. However, in his first outing off the IL, he walked off the field after 3 2/3 innings in obvious distress. The update after the game was that the damage was to his triceps and not his elbow, which seemed encouraging. But when he was put back on the IL a couple days later, he expressed worry that Tommy John surgery would eventually be required, which now seems to have come to fruition.
A club losing their best pitcher is bad news at any time, but it’s especially rough for a Colorado club that’s out to a 9-20 start this year. Few observers were predicting them to contend this year and they seem to be progressing about as expected. The absence of Márquez will not only decrease their chances of getting back into the playoff race but also deprive the club of arguably their best summer trade candidate.
Back in 2019, the Rockies and Márquez agreed to a $43MM contract extension that runs through 2023, though there’s a $16MM club option for 2024 with a $2.5MM buyout. The Rockies are notoriously reticent to move their players even when it makes logical sense to do so, but they would have likely at least considered a Márquez trade this summer, given the challenges they would have faced in turning a struggling team into a contender during his window of control.
Given the standard 14 to 18 months of recovery required after TJS, Márquez will be out of action for the remainder of this season and at least the first half of 2024 as well. That makes it likely that the Rockies will take the $2.5MM buyout instead of the $16MM option next year, which will send Márquez to the open market, though the two sides could also work out another extension if they so wish. In the event that he does wind up a free agent this winter, he’ll be looking to market himself at a time when he’s still recovering and won’t be available immediately.
For now, the Rockies will have to turn their attention to getting through this year. Márquez is already on the injured list, alongside starters like Antonio Senzatela, Noah Davis and Ryan Rolison. Senzatela has been on the IL all season after suffering a torn ACL last year but he seems to be nearing a return. Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post relays that the righty is in the clubhouse and is likely to be activated and start a game this weekend.
He’ll join Kyle Freeland, Austin Gomber and Ryan Feltner in the rotation, which will still leave the club shorthanded. Connor Seabold tossed 67 pitches in a long relief outing on Saturday and could perhaps take a turn. Peter Lambert is on the 40-man roster but hasn’t thrown more than three innings in any of his minor league starts so far this year.
Perhaps Davis could return sooner rather than later, as he tells Saunders that he would encouraged by his tests and doesn’t think it’s a major injury. But there’s still no firm timeline and he won’t be eligible to be reinstated for a couple of weeks even if the issue is minor.
Haven’t seen the Germáns take a hit like this since ’45. Here’s to a full recovery, Herr Marquez.
Rocky IV
Seriously hoping this is a joke.
Rocky got us revenge for Pearl Harbor.
Ivan Drago was Russian, dude!
He’s actually Swedish ^_^
I always saw him going to the Cards last few years…if the Rockies management would’ve woken up. Gorman O’Neill et al in Coors could have happened.
TJS racking up victims like Predator today.
It’ll be like the COVID vax soon. You need to get one to make the majors.
It’s unbelievable how many TJ surgeries there are anymore! I guess pitchers in the years before 2000 either pitched with the injury, or they didn’t happen as often, seems to increase every year
Well aren’t kids/teenagers throwing ridiculous amounts of innings in the last several years?
Well, I think they generally recommended against throwing thousands of power sliders if you weren’t a relief pitcher. I suppose it’s an arms race now (lol) with huge numbers of hitters suddenly “needing” add medication while pitchers with surgically enhanced arms pound them with breaking pitches.
It’s a cat and mouse game for so many young pitchers. If the torture their arm in their youth with breaking balls so they can be better in HS/Travel Ball in hopes of getting into better college programs. They keep it up because the competition is fierce and it just compacts years of arm/shoulder/elbow mistreatment. Not to mention baseball on a large scale has a huge talent pool so from youth to MLB we are seeing pitchers throwing harder. In order to keep up young pitchers try overthrowing and trying to get better results in order to be competitive, often at the expense of mechanics.
That’s just the nature of hyper competitive sports. You do what you have to in order to be competitive and pay the consequences later.
Yea, I was a 6 foot star pitcher by 13 and by 15 my arm was dead. My dad later apologized to me for letting little league coaches start me twice a week 🙁
Everyone’s throwing harder than ever, and kids are throwing a bunch of breaking balls. People are basically maxing out their mechanics – a bit like running your car at redline all the time. It’ll go, until it doesn’t
Rockies are negotiating another extension with Marquez as we speak.
Really rough news for Marquez. I can’t see the Rockies doing anything but exercising the buy out at this point. Marquez has faded as his K rate has dropped and his BB rate has trended up.
Basically a league average pitcher coming back from TJ mid next year at the earliest. I’d imagine he might get an offseason deal similar to what the Twins gave to Michael Pineda.
Man that sucks, it must be real hard to be a Rockies fan these days.
Not really. I love my team whether they win 90 or 60 or anything in between. Some years are less fun than others, but you can always look for the bright side. The only other choice is to be mad all the time and why would you want a hobby that does nothing but make you mad? If I ever get there, and I hope I never will, I will just find something else to do with my time.
Like rooting for the Dodgers? ^_^
Hiflew –
As well as you should be.
Without Marquez for the remainder of 2023, the Rockies are in jeopardy of finishing the season with a losing record.
Things are looking pretty rockie now.
100 for sure, losses that is.
100 for sure, losses that is..
I don’t think so. I think between 65-75 wins is more likely. The team is bad, but there are still some good players going.
They’re on pace for 54 wins
On pace stats are about the most useless pieces of information ever created.
That honor belongs to pitcher wins and losses.
At the current clip, 54-108, boss.
Maybe they’ll get hot.
They could have traded Marquez for a pretty decent haul a few years ago because of his affordable contract and solid results despite pitching at Coors, and now they could wind up completely empty-handed. The Rockies are so poorly run, it never ceases to amaze me.
I don’t think any other team is more disconnected with reality. Other teams are bad, but they generally know they’re bad. The Rockies seem to overestimate their abilities by 20 wins a season, never learn, and don’t have a plan.
They really do live in their own world. The decision to extend Daniel Bard instead of trading him at last year’s deadline despite him being 37 years old and the team being about a bajillion games out of the playoff race with no legitimate reason to think that this year would be significantly different remains one of the most baffling decisions I have ever seen an MLB front office make. He was found money that they could have turned into a decent prospect or two that could have potentially helped in a few years when their outlook might be a bit rosier, but they somehow concluded that buying out his age 38 and 39 seasons was the better move. Just baffling.
Yeah, if they want to turn into yet another player supplier for the big markets. I love the fact that they don’t do that.
No one is saying that the Rockies need to act like the Rays because they obviously don’t. They routinely run pretty large payrolls, but they allocate that money horrendously, and because of that, they put themselves into situations where they have no plausible path to playoff contention. One way to climb out of a hole you dug yourself into is to turn pieces with a lot of present value into pieces with future value while you wait for dead money to come off the books and younger, cheaper (and hopefully better) players to arrive. Marquez was just such a piece, a quality player who was unlikely to pitch for a legitimate WS contender during his contract but who could have netted the franchise multiple prospects with real upside to help usher in brighter days down the line.
My Orioles made such a move when they traded our best pitcher and borderline ace, Erik Bedard, to Seattle in 2009 despite him have multiple years of control remaining. It absolutely sucked at the time, but the team had no real hope of contending at that time and it brought back Adam Jones and Chris Tillman, who ended up being core pieces of the 2012-2017 teams that made the playoffs 3 times, including an LCS appearance, and led the AL in wins during that stretch. That run probably doesn’t happen if we had just held onto Bedard until he walked in free agency after the 2011 season.
The problem with that theory is that the Bedard deal was one of the few where key pieces were actually brought back for an ace.
The Rockies Ubaldo Jimenez was dealt for Drew Pomeranz (who couldn’t pitch in Coors) and 3 other prospects that didn’t pan out. That trade set the Rox back an additional few years and they didn’t make it back to the playoffs for another 6 years.
The Tulowitzki deal was arguably worse. They got back Jeff Hoffman (who couldn’t pitch in Coors) and got stuck with Jose Reyes’s deal.
Everyone applauds the Rays for going against the grain with their decisions, but somehow the Rockies are idiots for trying different ways of doing things.
Bruh Ubaldo only had two and a half years left on his contract when he was traded. Would take some absolutely ninja logic to explain how trading him was the reason the Rockies didn’t make it back to the playoffs for another six years. He certainly wouldn’t have made a difference during his remaining contract years. The closest the Rockies came to a Wild Card spot during those years was 16 games.
Tulo had one more good year in the majors post trade and the Rockies were 12 games back of the Wild Card that year.
It’s clear that the Rockies way isn’t working.
@hiflew – Well of course, everyone applauds the Rays because their going against the grain actually makes sense, and it works. The Rockies don’t make any sense, and it’s not working. The Rays are executing good strategies – the Rockies aren’t.
“Doing different things”, when those different things are aimless and silly, shouldn’t get praise just for being different.
They’re kind of already doing that. Story? Gray? Arenado? Possibly Marquez this coming offseason? Etc. Wouldn’t it make more sense to get something for those dudes?
deGrom is next.
I really hope the “max effort for 4-5 innings” model for starters dies very soon.
Unless pitchers start performing better third time through the order, then it probably won’t.
Or the league runs out of shoulders and elbows to disintegrate