NEW YORK — The Rockies hope Jon Gray can pitch them into the playoffs someday, and that he can take the mound in October and dominate the best competition baseball has to offer.
For this year, dominating a first-place team for six innings in August will have to do.
It will more than do for the Rockies, and on a night when one ugly inning from the bullpen sent them to a 4-2 loss to the New York Mets, the six brilliant innings from their prized prospect more than made up for it. For a team selling hope for the future, Monday was a good night, no matter what the scoreboard said at the end.
“That was fun to watch,” Carlos Gonzalez said, on another night when he was fun to watch too.
Gonzalez is often the Rockies’ story these days, and his opposite-field home run in the fourth inning Monday was another impressive sight. It was his fifth home run in the last five games and his 26th of the season, but for one day the Rockies’ main focus was elsewhere.
Gray is a 23-year-old former first-round draft choice with a fastball that lights up radar guns at 97, 98 mph, but in his big-league debut last week against the Seattle Mariners he struggled with his command and needed 77 pitches to make it through just four innings.
His second big-league start came Monday, and he was nothing like that. He attacked the Mets right away, sailed through four innings with just 35 pitches, and got through six innings having allowed just one hit — Travis d’Arnaud’s solo home run in the second.
“He looked in total control,” said Rockies manager Walt Weiss.
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This time, Gray made it through six innings with a pitch count of 75. Under different circumstances, he would have stayed in the game for the seventh, but the Rockies are being ultra-cautious with him.
“I understand the point of it,” Gray said.
He talked about the “aggression” in his fastball Monday, and contrasted it with his debut, when he said he had “no finish on his pitches.”
He looked plenty comfortable on the mound Monday, and besides the two walks, he went to a three-ball count on only one other batter. He did well against a lineup that the Mets added to at the July 31 deadline, with Yoenis Cespedes, Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe arriving in trades.
“It’s a big stage,” Weiss said. “A big stage for him. His second big-league start, in New York, against a first-place team.
“I think he passed the test.”
The Mets have shown what strong young pitching can do, riding past the Washington Nationals and into first place in the National League East behind Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, the pitchers the Rockies will face in the final three games of this series.
The Rockies will hope they someday can do the same, with pitchers such as Gray and perhaps Jeff Hoffman (acquired in the Troy Tulowitzki trade) leading the way.
For now, they just try to make the most of a season long since gone bad. They enjoyed the weekend in Washington, and their two wins in three games came before large and enthusiastic crowds.
And they enjoyed what they saw from Gray on Monday, even if this game ended up as just another loss in a 47-63 season.
