Is it too early to say ‘I told you so?’
Maybe…and I definitely didn’t tell anyone ’so’ about Denny Bautista. But about a month ago, I talked about how the Rockies’ hitting was slowly starting to improve, and how improvements would carry the team to at least a slightly better record.. 16 wins and only 14 losses later, the Rockies are a team again. Granted, not a very good one yet - but they seem to have found a small amount of consistency that has put them within reach of .500, which is where most expectations had them at the beginning of the year.
The question on everyone’s mind now (besides Woody Paige, who hates being right and is watching last night’s “Touch ‘Em All” segment for the sixth time right now) is, can the Rockies do it? That is, can they overachieve and drag themselves above .500 and, surprisingly enough, into contention?
The promising signs are that the Rockies won 6 straight and their second home series without the expected production from Todd Helton and Matt Holliday, who both had decent games but saw averages drop considerably during the streak. The Rox also managed to win around Garret Atkins’ struggles and Clint Hurdle’s blind insistence on keeping him in the lineup until, coincidentally enough, the three losses proceeding the streak. Atkins is now heating up again, and Helton and Holliday will both pull themselves out of their small skids, which will make this lineup truly dangerous - as evidenced by yesterday’s 10-9 comeback victory.
This is what everyone hoped the Rockies would be able to do at the beginning of the season - score runs with ease. You don’t expect or ask any team to win a ballgame when their staff allows nine runs - but the good teams manage to do it a handfull of times anyways. Hopefully the Rockies can take the momentum from Sunday’s emotional, exhausting, and uplifting performance and re-make themselves into a team that competes that way every night. Perhaps that willingness to scratch away at any lead and make the other team beat you every night, rather than giving up when you’re down six runs, is the character, the something, the magic stuff, the identity, to use a word that gets thrown around a lot, that the Rockies have been missing.
We can trace all of this back to a chilly Denver night in May when Clint Hurdle walked to the mound to replace Jeff Francis, who had taken a shutout into the 8th on less than 80 pitches. After the game (and being booed off the field), Clint apologized and admitted he made a mistake - not for the first time, but maybe the only time the fans, the media, and the players were all listening with interest. Even if Hurdle isn’t really accountable for his actions, even if he and Dan O’Dowd are guaranteed two more mediocre years with this franchise, The Night He Blew it could be the night the team woke up, and started taking accountability for their own play, rather than blaiming failure on the small market, low attendance, miniscule payroll, bad luck, or random acts of the baseball G-ds. Look who’s smiling down on, or at least, not setting the baseball devil on them, now.
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