By Gabe Stein | Saturday May 05th 2007, 9:56 pm
Just thought you should know. And remember what I was saying earlier about the bats coming around? Let’s track the folks I highlighted in the first post today…
Tulo - 1 for 5 with 2 K’s (yikes) and 3 left on (eek!), but one run scored. Not a great night, but he contributed all the same.
Willy T - 1 for 4 with a run and one K, and 2 for 2 on the basepaths. Again, a run scored, and again, not an ideal night but not an unproductive night either.
The Big Guys - Helton has his typical 2 for 3 (should’ve been 3 for 3, that was a trap) night with an RBI, 2 walks, and 2 runs, and Holliday lights it up with 3 RBIs of his own including a 2-run homer.
Brad Hawpe, who’s been looking better all the time since being benched in favor of Baker a while ago, also contributed 3 RBIs. And there’s your production, and a nice road series win. Nine runs is good enough to even survive two thirds of an inning with Tom Martin, who will be let go as soon as Ramon Ramirez returns if there is any justice in this world.
Finally, how about that Denny Bautista? His stuff in the last two games has been ridiculous, and it’s pretty clear now why he’s still in the majors - his stuff is FILTHY, with a capital…everything. With any luck, he’ll find some consistency and give Hurdle another option besides LaTroy to fill in the gap between the fifth and seventh innings, when Ramon takes over.
Dan Lucero (wow, the guy’s just reading my mind right now, he whipped out ‘FILTHY’ for his article too) has a good post on bullpen reorganization over at MVN.
By Gabe Stein | Saturday May 05th 2007, 1:03 pm
Every once in a while I like to be an optomist about the Rockies, however masochistic that may be. Before I get going, are the Rockies terrible right now? Yeah, they’re awful. But the one encouraging sign is that the bats, which cost them more than a few games earlier this year, are starting to come around. Eventually, they’re going to start producing a lot more runs and winning ballgames. Will it save the season? Almost certainly not. But will it make following the Rockies more enjoyable? Yeah.
So here’s the list:
Troy Tulowitski
Had a .193 average on April 20. 15 days later he’s batting .250 and his OBP and power totals are rising rapidly. Moving his speed to the #2 spot is looking like one of Hurdle’s only good decisions so far this year. I predicted Tulo’s recovery before the first game of the Braves series on “Refresh Your Inner Fan,” but I don’t think it ever aired on TV. I dunno though, if someone saw some kid talking about how Tulo was gonna do better, let me know.
Willy T
We all know how horribly he started. Now batting .302 with a .375 OBP…that’s almost good leadoff numbers, and by far the best the Rockies have seen since Juan Pierre left. The slugging numbers aren’t much to be proud of, but we didn’t exactly grab him for his opposite-field power. MTRD refuses to acknowledge it, but Willy T is finally producing, and it’s beginning to help the team. Last night’s go-ahead run wouldn’t have been scored if someone else had been on the basepaths. I know Dan Lucero agrees with me.
The Big Guys
Matt Holliday looks to be finally coming into his own as the star we know he’s going to be, and well, Helton’s OPS is 1.038. This for guy who’s notorious for slow starts. Garrett Atkins seems to be levelling out after a fairly poor start to the season, and Hawpe is performing a little worse than expected.
So when you look at it, the offense seems to be slowly awakening. The numbers at the top of the order have to scare teams, and eventually that’s going to turn into wins. A lot of wins? Probably not given our pitching, but it’s too early for me to completely give up on improvement from last year’s performance.
Further reading on the subject from Dan Lucero
