Rochelle Squire of Davenport, Iowa, stays warm at Wrigley Field before Monday's game between the Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs.
Colorado Rockies hitting coach Don Baylor stepped outside his Chicago hotel Tuesday afternoon, felt the chill and was grateful there was no game scheduled.
It was bad enough losing 4-0 on Monday to the Chicago Cubs with the wind chill at 31 degrees at Wrigley Field, but it felt even colder Tuesday.
“It was brutal out there,” Baylor says. “You wish you could bring that warm weather and palm trees with you from spring training, but you can’t. It’s great for the pitchers. That’s why you see them dominate early with all of the no-hitters.”
The Rockies nearly were no-hit Monday, with Garrett Atkins producing their lone hit. There have been 29 no-hitters since 1993, with 15 in April and September – baseball’s coldest two months.
“Hey, I don’t feel sorry for them,” Cubs starter Ryan Dempster said. “I enjoy throwing inside fastballs this time of year because I know hitters don’t want to swing there. If they get jammed, it’s going to hurt.”
Says Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter: “When you get jammed in cold weather, it feels like your hand just broke and you’re picking up the pieces. It’s like bass fishing. The fish are lethargic, and so are you.”
April has produced the lowest batting average, .262, of any month this decade, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Elias notes there are five active players with at least 5,000 at-bats whose April averages are at least 29 points lower than for the rest of the season. The list bottoms out with Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Adam LaRoche (.183 batting average and .337 slugging percentage in April compared with .290 and .523 the rest of the season).
“The cold weather is tough; nobody wants to hit in it,” Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez says. “I did that all of those years in Cleveland and Boston. This is so much better.”