Colorado Rockies - NLCS Champions

The Rockies Win the Pennant , the Rockies Win the Pennant. One of the all time great calls in MLB history...of course it was the Giants but I have always inserted "Rockies" for the heck of it.

To be honest, I never thought I'd see the Rockies in the World Series. I mean I'm positive but I've been tracking the Roxs stats over their history and although their offensive could always get them there it was the pitching part I thought we'd never be able to manage. Of course if we could get to the playoffs with Kevin Ritz perhaps I should have been more confident. Okay so getting to the playoffs would have been possible but then getting through two rounds to me was the difficult part. Throughout our short history we have finished last or next to last in ERA. Pitching wins in the playoffs so how would we survive two rounds of playoffs without a decent starting pitching corps. Look at this year's pitching staff...only two regular starters made it to the post season. Cook, Lopez, and Hirsch all got hurt and we had to fill in with Jimenez, Morales, Dessens, and Redman (last two yikes!). So basically even if we had the Blake Street Bombers we would still need some pitching.

With the "humidor", baseball began to be played right but what pitcher in their right mind would ever come to Colorado to have a career. The Roxs certainly weren't going to pay them so it boiled down to homegrown success. The last 3 years has shown incredible growth in this area with a solid corps of talent. But as they succeeded would they stay (i.e. bet Jennings is hating life right about now....ha). Then look at the NL West. Three Mid-Level salary teams with two big dogs in LA and SF. Even if we could compete the other teams could always land that one needed arm down the stretch. Finally look at the Diamondbacks. This is a team that was succeeding and yet they were rebuilding as well and as I see it were about a year behind the Roxs this year and yet they won the division. So here is the Roxs, slowly building (3rd year after the Gen R beginnings) and yet the D-backs were racing ahead with their rookie crop. 2004 D-backs won 51, 2005 won 77, 2006 won 67, and this year 90. 2004 Roxs won 68, 2005 won 67, 2006 won 76, and this year 90. This is of course (the Roxs) was preceded by 9 years of finishing last or next to last with one winning season. In that span Arizona won the world series.

In rebuilding, Arizona did go out and get pitching and some veterans to fill in the line up. The average age of the team is 28.1 while the Roxs is 27.9. The big fear then for the Roxs is so what if we have young home grown talent, what happens if teams in our own division have better home grown talent and are willing (and have a lot better opportunity of attracting pitching) to spend money on free agent pitching to make up any deficiencies? So anyway that was my concern...and what did this one playoff series show? Our talent was better this time around. Hopefully the rest of the division took notice...and hopefully the D-backs and Roxs are the Red Sox and Yankees of the AL East...year to year dominance with a good rivalry. So how did the series play out:

ARI		COL
.254	AVG	.222
.312	OBP	.316
36	HITS	30
8	RUNS	18
0	SB	2
2	HR	3
28	K	39
8	WALKS	18
3.00	ERA	1.89

So there is the tale of the tape. The big thing that stand is out is both teams had close OBP but obviously we were able to plate the runners while Arizona could not. 18 versus 8 walks is huge. We had 52 (3 from errors and 1 HBP) base runners (plated .346) and they had 50 (2 from errors and 4 HBP) ((plated .160). We turned 6 double plays and they only turned 2. We left 32 men in scoring position, they left 31. Finally the Roxs batted .235 with runners in scoring position and D-backs were .222. The telling statistic is that of the 18 walks given to the Roxs 6 of them scored and of the 8 walks we gave none scored. Also can Helton and Tulo please show up in the next round? See WPA for the NLCS.

Play of the series was Taveras catch in Game 2. I really think this was the defining moment, the momentum swing, the ultimate reason for the series finishing in 4 games. Got to hand it to Hurdle...he messed with the mojo bringing Taveras in but it ultimately paid dividends.