The Colorado Rockies, who won just 43 games last season, beat the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers 4-3 on Saturday night at Coors Field. That’s baseball for you, but Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing had interesting comments about the loss in his postgame media session.
Rushing, now in his second major-league season after being viewed as one of the top prospects in baseball, told the media that he thought it was “a little fishy” that the Rockies had so many first-pitch swings and were connecting frequently vs the Dodgers’ pitchers.
Dalton Rushing said it was ‘a little fishy’ how the #Rockies hitters were swinging at the first pitch and connecting. Rushing found it very odd.
“I think they had a good game plan as an opposing team, and maybe I pitched into their game plan. As far as calling pitches, I’m not… pic.twitter.com/ftqnzlRC92
— Fredo Cervantes (@FredoCervantes) April 19, 2026
“I just, I think it’s odd some of those hitters that do what they do,” Rushing said. “They go up there, and they were only on the first pitch that was thrown. So, it’s a little fishy.”
For one, the idea of the Los Angeles Dodgers going to excuses and accusatory comments for not beating the Colorado Rockies is funny in itself.
But there’s also data to suggest that it’s not particularly surprising that the Rockies would swing at a lot of first pitches in a game, because they swing at a lot of first pitches in general in just about every game.
According to Baseball Savant, the Rockies swing at the first pitch 38.4 percent of the time, tops in Major League Baseball. Their swing percentage in general is 50.8, behind only the Toronto Blue Jays. And their walk percentage is 7.9, the fifth-lowest mark in the majors. This is a hyperaggressive offense that likes to swing the bat a lot, probably too much so.
The Rockies also scored only four runs with seven hits and no home runs in the game at extremely hitter-friendly Coors Field, so it’s not like they were tearing the cover off the ball.
In all likelihood, this was just an aggressive offense swinging early in the count rather than cheating or knowing what pitch was coming.
Ahead of Sunday’s series finale in Denver, Roberts told the media that he didn’t see anything “fishy” about what happened, and he blamed the execution of Dodgers pitchers.
Dave Robert’s just addressed this in pregame media with us:
“I saw some bad breaking balls. I don’t think there was anything fishy there. I think there were some bad pitches” https://t.co/pmk2kwAMjM
— Christian Saez🎙 (@DNVRSaez) April 19, 2026
“I saw some bad breaking balls,” Roberts said. “I don’t think there was anything fishy there. I think there were some bad pitches.”
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.