Rox Weekend Recap 4/20/08 (The Morning After the Madness)

For the Rockies since 2000, Minute Maid (Enron) Park has seemed more like Jurassic Park to the Blake Street Bombers. When you first get there, you’re overwhelmed by the majesty and excitement of this new experience, but soon you’re knee deep in Triceratops shit, being hunted by Velociraptors, and listening to Jeff Goldblum ramble on about chaos theory. Going into this weekend’s 3 game series in Houston, the Rockies carried the burden of a 6-20 overall record to go along with countless heartbreaking walk-off defeats (2 coming last year during T-Rex’s Fall-of-the-House-of-the-Usher-esque implosion.) With their 22 inning epic in the rearview mirror, the Rox weren’t expected to do much when they arrived in Houston at 9 am on Friday morning. Everybody had a right to be exhausted and if they would’ve just thrown on their unis and sleepwalked their way through the initial game of this series, no one would’ve blamed them. Instead they made a statement that will hopefully carry through the rest of the season as they ended up taking 2 of 3 from the punchless ‘Stros.

1) Friday’s 11-5 victory was an alarming surprise to the baseball world. The Rockies actually were the opening story on Sportscenter on Friday for probably the first time ever (I actually did check outside for plagues of locusts and rivers of virgin blood, but all I saw were two drunk guys pissing on my neighbor’s car.) The Padres, the losers of the historically long affair, were shut out in Arizona while the Rockies offense got their second, third, and fourth winds with their second string lineup. The Pebbles (Rockies bench players? Just trying it out) accounted for 11 runs on 12 hits including a 6 run first inning where they showed no ill effects of weariness in knocking Astros starter Chris Sampson out after only 2/3 of an inning. Though Franklin Morales did his best to make it interesting in the bottom half of the opening inning by immediately giving back four runs, he settled down and kept the Astros at bay while lasting 5 innings without giving up another. 113 pitches in those 5 innings however is a troubling stat that will have to improve if he hopes to remain in the rotation.

2) Friday’s game gave us a glimpse at the Tulo we remember so fondly from last season when he enjoyed the greatest season ever by an NL Rookie shortstop. He followed his game winning double in the 22^nd inning on Friday morning with another 2 hits, racking up 3 RBIs in the process. Saturday’s game was a step back but on Sunday he knocked in an RBI with a go ahead single in the 7^th. His average is army crawling towards the Mendoza line but he’s putting together more quality at bats than he was even a week ago.

3) Brian Fuentes’ Minute Maid monsters surfaced again on Sunday as he coughed up the 1 run lead the Rox had mustered in the 8^th inning. Former Rocko Kaz HazMat-sui, apparently completely recovered from his surgery to repair an anal fissure, yes, an anal fissure, rocked a 2 run single off the wall to give the Astros a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Fuentes did pitch a scoreless 8^th in Saturday’s ballgame and until today hadn’t allowed a run in 9 appearances. He’s worked four times in the last five games and should hopefully have the day off tomorrow.

4) I’ve been saying our bullpen has been incredible thus far this season and now I have the statistics to back up my ramblings. Our bullpen has a 2.86 ERA in the season’s first 18 games, the best in the bigs. 5 of our relievers have ERAs under 3.00 leaving only closer Manny Corpas and backup lefty Micah Bowie as the runts of the Rockies’ bullpen litter. If we get any consistency from our starting staff, we’ll be one of the elite teams in the National League. Our offense is starting to rumble and it’s only a matter of time before they’re consistently putting up 5 or 6 runs a game.

5) Ubaldo gave another inconsistent performance on Sunday. Through the first 3 innings, he’d thrown 28 pitches, 23 for strikes and looked unhittable. In the 5^th, the wheels fell off the schnitzel cart. He got two quick outs, then couldn’t hit asphalt if he fell out of a Volkswagon. He walked three in the inning and gave up a bloop single that led to a run before getting out of a bases loaded jam. He ended up surviving for 5 2/3 innings, but in the end, you can just add another uneven line to his career stat sheet. 5 walks and 6 strikeouts won’t cut it for a whole season.

Our 9 game road trip through Arizona, San Diego, and Houston finished with a 5-4 record, a quality road swing for a team whose best season road record is 39-42 (accomplished last season.) The Phillies from Philly come to Coors for a two game set. Mark Redman looks to keep his early season success going as the visitors will definitely be looking to enact some revenge on the Rocks for that embarrassing postseason sweep last year. Pseudo-MVP Jimmy Rollins won’t be making the trip however as the added weight of his conscience from knowing he wasn’t the true MVP in 2007 finally caught up with his balky ankles. Let’s git-r-duuuuuuuuuun.