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From Jonah Keri:
12. COLORADO ROCKIES
Sunday's bullpen meltdown tempered the enthusiasm a bit. But just a bit.
The Rockies are 13-5, coming off a streak in which they won each of their first eight home games. A year ago, these same Rockies lost 98 games and allowed 890 runs, a product of playing at altitude but also of a horrific pitching staff that triggered such desperation that the team actually tried a four-man rotation for a good chunk of the season. There can be plenty of good reasons to go with four starters, whether it's having four great arms you want out there as often as possible, believing that a fresh bullpen's a better option to carry you through the final three or four innings of every game, or simply lacking a viable fifth starter. The 2012 Rockies did in fact lack a viable fifth starter. Problem was, they didn't have a viable second, third, or fourth starter either; the most productive member of the rotation, Jeff Francis, made 24 starts and posted a 5.58 ERA (albeit with a playable 4.27 FIP).
That alone is why it was so easy to underestimate the Rockies this year. When disaster strikes the way it did last year, it's tough to sort through the rubble and make sense of it all. In this case, it was a run of bad injury luck that dwarfed any bad spell the franchise had seen in its two decades of existence. Jhoulys Chacin made 14 starts all year. Juan Nicasio made 11. Jorge de la Rosa made three. No one would confuse that trio for Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. But when the alternatives are 49-year-olds and washout former first-round picks, you've got no shot at a respectable season. Considering that the injuries spread to the lineup and cost Carlos Gonzalez 27 games, Michael Cuddyer 61, and Troy Tulowitzki 115, the Rockies did well just to avoid losing 100.
We know very little after three weeks, other than that the Rockies have played the awful Padres and Brewers nine times (winning eight) and frozen the Mets out of town with three straight wins in Iditarod-caliber weather. But that doesn't mean this can't be a competitive team for the rest of the year. Tulowitzki, Gonzalez, and Dexter Fowler are crushing the ball. The rotation, so beat up last year, has been much improved this year, with scrap-heap find Jon Garland joining Chacin and de la Rosa in putting up zeros. As long as everyone stays healthy, there's .500 potential here. And once you have .500 potential, you never know what can happen with a few breaks.
Then you see Chacin (and his 1.46 ERA) hit the DL with a lower back strain, see the schedule flip over to include the Braves, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Rays, Yankees, and Cardinals in a row, and wonder if we've already seen the high point of the Rockies' season
12. COLORADO ROCKIES
Sunday's bullpen meltdown tempered the enthusiasm a bit. But just a bit.
The Rockies are 13-5, coming off a streak in which they won each of their first eight home games. A year ago, these same Rockies lost 98 games and allowed 890 runs, a product of playing at altitude but also of a horrific pitching staff that triggered such desperation that the team actually tried a four-man rotation for a good chunk of the season. There can be plenty of good reasons to go with four starters, whether it's having four great arms you want out there as often as possible, believing that a fresh bullpen's a better option to carry you through the final three or four innings of every game, or simply lacking a viable fifth starter. The 2012 Rockies did in fact lack a viable fifth starter. Problem was, they didn't have a viable second, third, or fourth starter either; the most productive member of the rotation, Jeff Francis, made 24 starts and posted a 5.58 ERA (albeit with a playable 4.27 FIP).
That alone is why it was so easy to underestimate the Rockies this year. When disaster strikes the way it did last year, it's tough to sort through the rubble and make sense of it all. In this case, it was a run of bad injury luck that dwarfed any bad spell the franchise had seen in its two decades of existence. Jhoulys Chacin made 14 starts all year. Juan Nicasio made 11. Jorge de la Rosa made three. No one would confuse that trio for Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. But when the alternatives are 49-year-olds and washout former first-round picks, you've got no shot at a respectable season. Considering that the injuries spread to the lineup and cost Carlos Gonzalez 27 games, Michael Cuddyer 61, and Troy Tulowitzki 115, the Rockies did well just to avoid losing 100.
We know very little after three weeks, other than that the Rockies have played the awful Padres and Brewers nine times (winning eight) and frozen the Mets out of town with three straight wins in Iditarod-caliber weather. But that doesn't mean this can't be a competitive team for the rest of the year. Tulowitzki, Gonzalez, and Dexter Fowler are crushing the ball. The rotation, so beat up last year, has been much improved this year, with scrap-heap find Jon Garland joining Chacin and de la Rosa in putting up zeros. As long as everyone stays healthy, there's .500 potential here. And once you have .500 potential, you never know what can happen with a few breaks.
Then you see Chacin (and his 1.46 ERA) hit the DL with a lower back strain, see the schedule flip over to include the Braves, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Rays, Yankees, and Cardinals in a row, and wonder if we've already seen the high point of the Rockies' season
