It's been a lost season for the Colorado Rockies. In the midst of it, though, Carlos Gonzalez has found himself.
After launching a two-run blast in Monday's 4-2 loss to the New York Mets, CarGo now has 26 home runs on the season to go along with a .281/.337/.548 slash line.
And Gonzalez has been even hotter since the All-Star break, pacing the Senior Circuit with 13 home runs and an eye-popping 1.322 OPS.
That's quite the turnaround for a guy who hit .238 and played in just 70 games in an injury-plagued 2014 campaign and was hitting under .200 as recently as May 17.
Then again, Gonzalez is just 29 years old, in the prime of his career. And suddenly he's swinging it like the guy who made the All-Star team in 2012 and 2013 and finished third in National League MVP voting in 2010.
He's also flashing the slick leather and howitzer arm that won him three Gold Gloves. In a victory over the Washington Nationals on Sunday, Gonzalez did it all, blasting a pair of dingers off of Nats ace Max Scherzer and making a strong throw from right field to nail a runner at the plate.
"I take pride in both, but I like throwing guys out," Gonzalez said of his stout two-way performance, per Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. "I like making plays defensively."
Lately, Gonzalez has been making all the plays. Too bad it's for a Rockies squad that now sits at 47-63, dead last in the NL West.
Gonzalez recently watched teammate Troy Tulowitzki fly off to the Toronto Blue Jays in a deadline deal. If he wishes he'd gone to a contender as well, he's not tipping his hand.
"Offensively and defensively, I still think this is a good club," he told Saunders. "I want the guys to know that. If we get some good pitching, we can win. So I like our future."
Getting pitching is always the trick for Colorado. Speaking of which, the Mile High effect must be taken into account when parsing the stats of a player who dons the purple and black.
Gonzalez, however, has hit as many home runs on the road this year and owns a more-than-respectable .838 OPS away from the hitter-happy confines of Coors Field.
Here's the bottom line: A guy who until recently was regarded as one of MLB's premier up-and-coming talents is healthy and performing up to his capabilities.
Which begs the question: Will Gonzalez remain with the Rockies for the long haul?
He's currently signed through 2017 and is owed $37 million after this season. That's a reasonable price tag for a Gold Glove corner outfielder with 40-home run pop entering his age-30 season.
Certainly if CarGo stays off of the disabled list and hits like this the rest of the way, he could fetch a nice haul in a trade over the winter or at the deadline next year.
That's not idle speculation. The Rockies put Gonzalez on the block in July, with an unnamed rival general manager telling CBS Sports' Jon Heyman that "they expect to move him."
They didn't, but Gonzalez has only upped his value since then, and the Rockies haven't gotten any better. They're staring down the barrel of a rebuild, and shipping out stars for bushels of prospects is how that painful process works.
Over at Purple Row, Matt Gross summed up the melange of emotions:
This is what Rockies baseball has become in many aspects. Cheer for your old favorites not because you might get to watch them play meaningful baseball for Colorado at the top of their game at some point in the future again. Cheer for your old favorites because their time in this uniform is running out and a good performance means a higher trade value.
That's talk for another day, though. CarGo is staying put at least for the remainder of 2015, and we get to watch him do vintage CarGo things. That's good news for everybody—except the unfortunate pitchers he faces.
All statistics current as of Aug. 10 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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