MLB:  Colorado Rockies, Down Again // NBA Finals: Miami Heat vs. Oklahoma City Thunder.

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

MLB:  A Los Angeles Angels triple threat that included right fielder, Torri Hunter, first baseman, Albert Pujols, and RHP, C.J. Wilson, clobbered the Colorado Rockies on Friday last---a 7-2 loss. Obvious and favoring the L.A. team was a line-up that hammered away with RBI’s in almost perfect balance with C.J. Wilson’s avalanche of strike-outs. A Rockies previous loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks was worse, a 10-0 debacle. Then the Rockies lost on Saturday, again to the L.A. Angels, 11-5, and on Sunday to the Angels, 10-8.  Knocked down by Arizona without any hits for nine innings, then swept across three outings by the Angels, broomed! well, the Rockies have returned to leaving baseball fields with fewer runs than achieved by opposing ball clubs.  

During the three-game series vs. the Angels, the Rockies put up 15 runs against L.A.’s 28. Not that the Rockies couldn’t sweep another team across 27 innings with an accumulation of 15 runs; it’s that against Arizona and the L.A. Angels, the Rockies starting hurlers hadn’t produced enough “outs” prior to allowing “the hits that have purchased the Colorado pitching staff an ERA above 6.0,” one of the worst staff ERA’s in  the National League.

A reason for Colorado’s frequent losses is more visible now: a starter rotation unable to hold opposing teams back, allowing runs from too many walks, singles, extra-base hits, sacrifice flies resulting in RBI’s, home runs---“a hefty spectrum of that which loses baseball games.” Add that even with some superb hitters, the Rockies line-up has lacked the on-base percentage + RBI consistency needed when the man on the mound is having another bad day.

So---too often missing from the Rockies is hurler/hitter connectivity that is mutually-supportive, where the one can offset the other with their skills and power.

Of course, risks had to be taken. How else could Rockies manager Jim Tracy and pitching coach, Bob Apodaca, learn what their new starters could do without testing them, letting them go to the edge, having them rotate as if of an experienced staff. Analysts have had the impression that in several Rockies losses, Tracy and Apodaca refrained from taking starters out of a game when the earliest signals of deterioration showed, waiting instead for the walks and the hits to occur.

Other analysts have suggested that roster manipulations have continued to produce new Rockies teams, that is, players afield adjusting to new positions, not accustomed to working together when in those positions. Shifting a lead-off batter suddenly to a different position in a line-up reconfigures the role of escalated power in baseball, not always to advantage. Frequent shifts like this can win games now and then, yet can turn teams into a constant “work in progress,” never a formulated and experienced ball club from players having worked together often enough in the same offense and defense positions, a possible outcome being more losses than wins.

The Rockies five game winning streak in May has been blotted out by the team’s recent five straight losses. The Rockies are now 24/35, still below .500 and still in fourth place of the NL-West. Tonight begins another inter-league series, Rockies vs. the Oakland A’s across three games, a team that is in last place of its division (26/35). Afterward, the Rockies will be on the road for three games each vs. the Detroit Tigers, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Texas Rangers. Of the three opposing teams, only the Rangers are consistently high-caliber, holding first place in the American League-West. The Tigers are at 28/32, and the Phillies are also ahead of the Rockies, 29/33. In the NL, the Rockies are third from the bottom, above the San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs, each with 20 wins and 40 and 41 losses respectively. Back from the road, the Rockies will be challenged by the Padres. To be noted here is that of its 15 upcoming games, 12 will be against either par- or sub-par teams, an opportunity for the Rockies to achieve a slow climb upward with more wins than losses, providing that individual starter adjustments maintain, and that the Rockies line-up anchors well to hitting-mode.

NBA:    The Miami Heat/Oklahoma City Thunder NBA Finals will be more than a contest deciding which of the two teams can win four of the planned seven games. It will also compete the NBA’s two best basketball players of the year, Miami’s LeBron James against Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant, deciding whether the more experienced and hardened athlete (James) can best an equally talented but less experienced, possibly less canny athlete (Durant).

Also competed will be the joint-venturing of the Heat's James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh trio vs. the Thunder's Durant and Russell Westbrook duo. Too, a big metro- franchise that has been to the NBA Finals before (Miami) will compete against a small market franchise (Oklahoma City), a team that hasn’t been to the NBA Finals.

Moreover, a team that relies primarily upon star power tactics (Miami’s big trio, led by James) will play against a franchise that shares star power tactics with successive plays that are mostly teamwork-dependent (Oklahoma City), lending more data for solving the question as to whether a team must have “a super star” in order to win a championship.

Our take is that hardened and explosive defense on both sides will take the series to seven games, the last game being won by whoever has the leading edge in that final quarter, the Heat’s James, Wade and Bosh trio, or James alone, as in last week’s Eastern Conference win vs. the Boston Celtics, or the Thunder’s Durant/Westbrook show.

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