The Rockies have placed left-hander José Quintana on the 15-day injured list with a sprained pitching elbow, per a team announcement. They recalled lefty Welinton Herrera from Triple-A Albuqerque in a corresponding move.
Quintana’s IL placement comes on the heels of a short and disastrous start in Arizona on Sunday. In what turned into a 9-1 loss, Quintana yielded six earned runs over 1 1/3 innings. He will now miss at least two weeks, but elbow injuries often lead to much longer absences. The 37-year-old Quintana has been on the IL seven times during his career, including once this season for a hamstring strain, but an elbow problem had never shelved him until this issue cropped up.
Since debuting with the White Sox in 2012, Quintana has put together a terrific resume as a member of nine different clubs. He owns a lifetime 3.79 ERA over 392 appearances and 366 starts, and he earned an All-Star nod with the White Sox back in 2016.
The nomadic Quintana signed with the pitching-needy Rockies on a one-year, $6MM agreement last February, but he has struggled to a 5.27 ERA over nine starts and 41 innings. While his 9.4% walk rate is exactly league average, Quintana ranks second to last in strikeout percentage (11.0) among pitchers who have thrown at least 40 frames. He has also posted a lackluster 34.3% ground-ball rate, which is easily a career low. It would be incorrect to attribute Quintana’s woes to hitter-friendly Coors Field, as his road ERA (6.75) is far worse than the 4.03 mark he has logged at home. In fairness to Quintana, a lot of the damage came at the hands of the Diamondbacks on Sunday.
At 20-34, the Rockies are tied with the Angels for the worst record in the majors. Their 4.98 ERA, the second-highest figure in the league, has been an obvious culprit. They have now seen three starting options – Quintana, Ryan Feltner and Chase Dollander – go down with injuries in the past month. Feltner put up a bloated 6.30 ERA in five starts and 20 innings before right ulnar nerve inflammation shelved him in late April, whereas Dollander has been a legitimate bright spot. While Dollander has worked behind an opener and only made three starts in 10 appearances, the hard-throwing 24-year-old notched a 3.89 ERA in 44 frames before an elbow sprain forced him to the IL on May 15.
Quintana had been penciled in to make his next start Saturday against the Giants. The shorthanded Rockies will now need to find someone to join Tomoyuki Sugano, Michael Lorenzen, Kyle Freeland and Tanner Gordon in their rotation.
Herrera, who is in line for his major league debut, has worked exclusively in relief since the Rockies signed him out of the Dominican Republic in January 2021. To protect themselves from losing Herrera in the Rule 5 Draft last winter, the Rockies added him to their 40-man roster. The 22-year-old has gotten his first taste of Triple-A action this season and registered a 5.16 ERA with high strikeout (31.8), walk (13.1) and ground-ball (50.9) percentages. MLB.com ranks Herrera as the 14th-best prospect in the Rockies’ system, noting he could turn into a “high-leverage reliever” in the bigs if his slider emerges as a strong complement to a fastball capable of reaching 99 mph.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images.
