MLB: Colorado Rockies, Mid-Season---Good, Bad, What?
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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.
MLB: IT’s not news that two MLB teams holding poor season records within their respective divisions can meet and provide an exciting three-game series. Nor is it news that a team with the second worst record in baseball can still have a bright side and experience glimmers of hope that they will be regarded as a professional sports organization worthy of respect and an audience. On Friday, July 13, the NL-West last place Colorado Rockies and the last place NL-East Philadelphia Phillies were the game of baseball peppered with excitement as a young and less experienced Rockies starter, LHP Christian Friedrich, battled the Phillies seasoned and award-winning starter, LHP Cliff Lee, with the Rockies taking the Phillies down, 6-2, the team’s first post-All Star win.
In that first versus Phillies game, the Rockies put its first run on the board in the second inning, and the Phillies followed with a run of their own in a later inning. Friedrich held the game at 1-1 until relieved, and flashing ahead across innings were moments that popular author John Grisham has embellished past belief in a recent best seller, Calico Joe, that of a rookie making his first major league appearance, super hits at every at-bat. That was new Rockies infielder Josh Rutledge, up from Double-A Tulsa where he was averaging .306 with 35 RBI’s, 27 doubles and 13 home runs, suddenly proud owner in the majors of a game that the Rockies may have just squeezed through were it not for his hits per two at-bats and a deep sacrifice fly, result: RBI’s keeping the Rockies ahead of the Phillies.
And in games two and three of the versus Philadelphia series, which the Rockies lost 8-2 and 5-1, it wasn’t competition from Snoozeville. Innings that weren’t filled with lots of base-running carried the suspense of near strike-outs and then yer out, fella! So, who stood out among the Rockies during the vs. Philadelphia
The Rockies Fowler has had six multi-hit games of seven in recent days, and he leads both the American and National Leagues this year in number of triples attained, “nine,” with Gonzalez and the Rockies Tyler Colvin following close with five triples apiece. In fact, the Rockies are leading the NL in triples for the year, with 34. Gonzalez was chosen as an All Star this year, and is number three in the NL for having the most extra base hits, 43 as of Sunday. Gonzalez is also third on the list of NL players achieving the most base-positions for the year, 191, also as of Sunday. As to the Rockies Rosario, he’s a leading MLB rookie regarding total home runs for the season, thus far---15.
Okay, the Rockies haven’t been a .500 team since the last day of April, when for that month the team went 11 wins/11 losses; and, by the end of May the Rockies were 10-18 for the month, and at the end of June, 9-18, and by July 12, 4-7, all not good! Nor is it good that throughout this season the team has experienced only one significant winning streak, five wins straight from May 28 through June 1, meanwhile having suffered through five straight losses in May, followed by six straight losses in the same month.
Yet there’s a strange upside within the composition of the Rockies 2012 wins that point to a capability for high competitiveness. Of the nine games that the Rockies finished with 10 or more runs, in seven of them the Rockies have had twice the number of runs that were accrued by the opposing clubs, for example, the Rockies 17-8 victory over the San Francisco Giants, April 11, the exceptions being an 11-7 win against the Texas Rangers, on June 23, and a win against the Washington Nationals, 11-10, on June 28. It should be noted that in addition to these high numbered wins, most of them were against division leading teams that are still high above .500, for instance, the Rockies beating the Rangers and the Nationals, teams that could be the 2012 World Series contenders, this set of Rockies achievements not something that really bad ballclubs ever accomplish.
Without any doubt, then, “inconsistency” has been the overall drag for the Rockies , mostly from what’s been said on TV, in newspapers and on this page repeatedly, “a weak starter rotation and a line-up without enough power for offsetting the worst of the pitching staff’s vulnerabilities.” The Rockies 2012 pitching saga has included starters reaching failure mode before a fourth inning, among the sadder happenings the 49 year-old Jamie Moyer’s starting record plummeting. Add, RHP Jeremy Guthrie’s ability to start well experiencing a severe nosedive, with the entire pitching staff ERA above 5.0, lessened by the team’s lately improved relievers.
Also, the Rockies Disabled List has been a horror show, not only including power-hitter and outstanding infielder, Todd Helton, but also the award-winning hitter/shortstop,Troy Tulowitzki, plus star LHP Jorge De La Rosa and eight others have been on the 15-day DL roster. Add these days up and they reach 161, just short of the number of games that are played within the MLB year, which is an incredible loss of manpower for any organization, nearly the loss of a significant player per game between April and October. Now add that “15 DL days” is a mere label, that many on the list could be out for five or more weeks, as in the six weeks that Troy Tulowitzki will probably be gone from baseball; and, De La Rosa may not see the mound again until 2013. Ugh! From injuries, a team could see enough lost manpower-work days to fill an entire calendar year. That’s an enormous absence of game-changing talent and skill-sets, causing analysts to wonder if there’s something missing during baseball’s training days, and/or within a team’s ongoing effort to achieve game-ready well-being for all of its team members.
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