'I've let our team down': Lawrence emotional after rough 9th

DENVER -- Justin Lawrence was fighting back tears.

“The reality of the situation is I’ve let our team down the past three weeks, almost a month now,” said the Rockies’ late-inning reliever after a 7-5 loss to the Blue Jays at Coors Field on Sunday.

“It’s frustrating,” Lawrence said, his voice cracking. “Because I’m not just going out there and doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.”

The result for Lawrence has been all too familiar lately, and not in a good way.

With the game tied at 5 in the ninth inning, the 28-year-old right-hander was summoned from the bullpen to preserve that score and give the Rockies a chance for a walk-off win.

Santiago Espinal opened the frame with a single to left field. Lawrence then induced a broken-bat groundout by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that moved pinch-runner Mason McCoy to second. Next, Lawrence struck out Davis Schneider looking.

Lawrence was an out away from escaping unscathed one day after enduring a nightmarish ninth inning that went like this:

Walk, triple, lineout, strikeout, wild pitch, walk, walk, hit-by-pitch.

Tyler Kinley relieved Lawrence and got the final out of the game, which the Rockies held on to win, 8-7, on Saturday.

So, Sunday’s ninth inning was big for Lawrence. He needed to bounce back.

He didn’t.

After earning that pair of outs, Lawrence walked Spencer Horwitz and gave up back-to-back RBI singles to Whit Merrifield and Ernie Clement. That was the difference in the contest.

As he walked off the mound under a steady rain and to a chorus of boos, Lawrence wasn’t thinking of himself.

“Our lineup, man, they fight every inning,” he said. “It seems like something exciting happens on offense or defense with this group of guys. When my name’s called, I wanna go out there and get the job done.”

For much of the season, Lawrence did get the job done. In fact, he became one of the most effective relievers in baseball. His signature pitch, the sweeping slider, was the centerpiece of a repertoire that produced a 1.99 ERA and a .180 opponents’ batting average through his first 18 appearances.

Lawrence had his hiccups sprinkled in with dominance, but even as late as Aug. 14, his ERA was 2.76 and opponents were hitting .188 against him.

Then things began falling apart. Over his past seven appearances, Lawrence has posted an ERA of 18.00.

Lawrence has pitched a career-high 64 2/3 innings this season, but he doesn’t think fatigue is an issue. What he and his manager, Bud Black, see is that opponents are taking the advice of the T-shirt Lawrence has been fond of wearing from time to time -- hitters are watching for sweepers.

“They’re making [Lawrence] get in the strike zone,” Black said. “ … They know he’s one of our back-end guys, so they pay a lot of attention to those guys. Because usually when those guys are in the game, the game’s on the line.”

Lawrence’s sweeper is one of the best pitches in the game. When “the sweeper be sweepin’,” as they say, it’s almost unhittable. Lately, though, Black thinks Lawrence has been “a little high-energy,” causing him to “come out of his delivery.” In other words, Lawrence might be pressing.

Given the emotion he showed after Sunday’s loss, it’s not hard to see why that might be the case.

“I just wanna go out there and get the job done,” Lawrence said. “Because every single time somebody’s coming up to me like, ‘You got this. You’re a dog. You’re our guy.’

“And I know I am, and I know I can be. I just haven’t been. … I know I’ve got guys in my corner, and I just wanna do my part.”

The Rockies are in a phase of trying to evaluate what they have in several young players who, if they reach their potential, may become stars. Much of that evaluation involves statistics and on-field performance.

But what Lawrence showed on Sunday, this raw emotion born of a desire to come through for his teammates and his club, speaks to a quality that can’t be measured with numbers.

“Obviously we’re in a valley right now,” Lawrence said. “I think the hardest part is knowing just how well this young core of guys is playing. … It’s so close. It’s really, really close.”

With his anguish over what happened on Sunday, and what’s been happening the past few weeks, Lawrence may be even closer than he thinks.