NL rookie of the month in May.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cEven a thing like rookie of the month is just outside noise,\u201d Rumfield said. \u201cIt has nothing to do with how I am going to prepare for the game tomorrow or the next day or the day after. It\u2019s nice to be recognized for something, but also, you need to know what it took to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over his last 11 games, Rumfield is hitting .357 (15 for 42) with 10 extra-base hits \u2014 four doubles, one triple, and five homers. For the season, he\u2019s hitting .299 with runners in scoring position.<\/p>\n
He was taught in the Yankees\u2019 minor league system that the ability to produce runs is paramount. He learned a hard lesson at Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre, under assistant hitting coach Trevor Amicone, now a coach with the Twins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grounded into a double play on a first pitch (against) a relief pitcher,\u201d recalled Rumfield, whom the Rockies acquired in a January trade. \u201cI remember the hitting coach sat me down the next day. He basically laid it out and said, \u2018That can\u2019t happen. If you are going to be one of the guys that hits in the middle of the order, and if you ground into a double play, your team has no chance.\u2019 It\u2019s just things like that, and situations, and being on that sort of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Colorado had just one hit through the first seven innings, and starter Michael Lorenzen struggled to put Pirates hitters away, even though he felt that his stuff was solid. The right-hander gave up four runs on seven hits over 5 1\/3 innings. Nick Gonzales mashed a two-run, 431-foot homer to left-center in the fourth.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Mike was good, I thought it was another building block for him,\u201d Schaeffer said. \u201cI thought he pitched very well and got ahead in counts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lorenzen, who has a 7.11 ERA, has definitely pitched better of late, throwing at least five innings in each of his last three starts, while posting a 3.52 ERA with 17 strikeouts. But he was not happy with his performance on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just let too many guys off the hook, and that was frustrating,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of the hits were two strikes, and there were a lot of two-strike pitches in play because I couldn\u2019t execute a 1-2 or 0-2 pitch that was anywhere near the zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things that is going to keep me up at night because, like I said, I let a lot of guys off the hook. If I could have just executed on pitch to a lot of those guys, we\u2019re in a much better spot as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitching probables<\/p>\n
Monday: Red Sox LHP Jake Bennett (1-3, 4.79 ERA) at Rockies RHP Ryan Feltner (2-2, 5.05), 6:40 p.m.
Tuesday: Red Sox RHP Sonny Gray (8-1, 3.12) at Rockies LHP Sean Sullivan (0-1, 10.29), 6:40 p.m.
Wednesday: Red Sox LHP Ranger Suarez (3-3, 2.93) at Rockies LHP Kyle Freeland (1-7, 7.36), 1:10 p.m.
Thursday: Off day<\/p>\n
TV: Rockies.TV
Radio: KOA 850 AM\/94.1 FM<\/p>\n
Want more Rockies news? Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TJ Rumfield and the Rockies were not having a good Sunday.\u00a0 The first baseman was 0 for 3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,167,52,1009,1040,1041,49841,1022,853,1042,4,1027,505,10,776,64,4297,1945,185,78580,9130],"class_list":["post-732198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-coors-field","tag-denver","tag-front-range","tag-jake-bennett","tag-kyle-freeland","tag-latest-headlines","tag-lower-downtown","tag-mlb","tag-more-rockies-news","tag-national-league","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-ryan-feltner","tag-sports","tag-tj-rumfield","tag-warren-schaeffer"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116791034751034209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}