{"id":57847,"date":"2023-03-29T20:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T00:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=57847"},"modified":"2023-03-29T16:52:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T20:52:11","slug":"rockies-opening-day-starters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2023\/03\/29\/rockies-opening-day-starters\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockies Opening Day: German M\u00e1rquez vs. Blake Snell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2023 season for the Colorado Rockies<\/a> starts with an opening weekend series on the road against the San Diego Padres<\/a>. The last season’s fifth-place finishers in the NL West face a team who finished a series away from the World Series. Colorado went 68-94 overall with a 27-54 road record. The Rockies batted a team average .254 while slugging .397 at the plate. <\/span>The Opening Day matchup is a tone-setter with two pitchers looking to regain their peak performance after less-than-ideal 2022 seasons. The first pitch gets underway at 2:10 p.m. MDT.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rockies Opening Day Starter: Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

German M\u00e1rquez had arguably the worst year of his career in 2022, posting a 94 ERA+ and 4.95 ERA. While Coors Field does no favors, his near 5.00 ERA is far from the best years of his career. His\u00a0<\/span>Baseball Savant page\u00a0<\/span><\/a>was worse in every conceivable way from 2021 to 2022, but he has a saving grace.\u00a0<\/span>In 17 spring innings, he dominated with a 0.53 ERA and 20 strikeouts to just two walks. Now, it’s no secret that Coors Fieldwill artificially inflate his numbers, but starting on the road will save his confidence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In theory, looking forward to making a payday after this contract season is all the motivation M\u00e1rquez needs to find his All-Star form, which, at best, has the potential to finish top-15 in Cy Young voting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Padres Opening Day Starter: Blake Snell<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Having fallen off the radar after being pulled in game six of the 2020 World Series, Snell quietly posted a 3.38 ERA in 2022. It has been four full seasons since his Cy Young-winning campaign, but his pure talent still shows itself occasionally.\u00a0<\/span>Having an entire offseason around a stacked rotation, including Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, Snell should have confidence from a good staff around him and World Series aspirations for the team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The lefty will have a few problems with a Rockies lineup bound for a sub-.500 season, but he may see a pitch count restriction with it still being early in the season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Final Thoughts on the Game<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Different teams, different expectations. However, both teams start at the same time as the first pitch is set for 2:10 p.m. MDT Thursday, March 30. Rockies Opening Day is always a time of optimism for fans, as new faces on the team are excited to watch for the club’s future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: \u00a9 Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n

Players mentioned:<\/p>\n

Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, Blake Snell<\/a>, Yu Darvish<\/a>, Joe Musgrove<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2023 season for the Colorado Rockies starts with an opening weekend series on the road against the San Diego Padres. The last season’s fifth-place finishers in the NL West face a team who finished a series away from the World Series. Colorado went 68-94 overall with a 27-54 road record. The Rockies batted a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4425,"featured_media":57852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2,1071,30],"tags":[1122,3867,1860,69,94,84],"class_list":["post-57847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rockies","category-featured","category-mlb","category-padres","tag-blake-snell","tag-german-marquez","tag-joe-musgrove","tag-mlb","tag-nl-west","tag-yu-darvish"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}