Estevez enjoys hitting triple digits

DENVER — Carlos Estevez’s best way to describe what it’s like to throw 100 mph — something he has done 33 times season — involves fully extending his right arm, with a wide grin and wide-open eyes looking at the tips of his long fingers.

“It’s just when you see it, when you throw out in front and the ball takes off,” Estevez said. “Sometimes you know when you throw it. But sometimes you don’t even notice … then you see the ball come out.”

In a snarky social media world — heck, even in the days when folks wrote letters and stamped them — some folks are breaking speed records with zingers. Estevez has struggled recently, with 10 runs and 11 hits in five innings over his last seven appearances. The evening that Estevez made his attempt to explain the unexplainable, he gave up three ninth-inning runs to the Rangers at Coors Field in a blown save that led the Rockies to move Adam Ottavino into the closer role. Estevez gets it.

And Estevez, 23, a rookie who has 11 saves and has the makings of a successful back-end reliever once he finds the answers to his struggles, also brings a refreshing trait for some with such rare talent — humility.

In the visiting clubhouse in Arlington a couple days after the spectacularly blown save, Estevez took one hour and 27 minutes to fire up his iPad and watch “Fastball,” a documentary by Jonathan Hock that was narrated by Kevin Costner, which premiered at the start of the season. The film brought to life the story of the intriguing pitch, and chronicled the stories of the speediest practitioners. Pitchers who live only on black-and-white film, like Walter Johnson and Bob Feller; modern Hall of Famers such as Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson; and even little-chronicled hard-throwing Minors legends such as Steve Dalkowski caught …

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