After the Rockies’ impressive four game winning streak in which they showed flashes of last September and nearly reached the level of play most critics assumed they would in 2008, the boys in purple took a bit of a step back in the final game of the 3 game set with the Brew Crew (dubbed Beerfest in my book.) Looking to sweep a team for the first time since the 3rd week in April the Rockies fell flat on a blustery Sunday at Coors Field.
1) Jeff Francis had an uneven performance at best in laboring through 6 innings of work and throwing a whopping 112 pitches in said innings. He walked four and struck out four keeping the Brewers hitters off balance with his effectively wild use of his change and curve. I was at this game yesterday and it sure didn’t look like Jeff was feeling funky fresh, but you look at his line and he technically threw a quality start at the Beermakers (6 innings, 3 runs or less). After stumbling out of the gate giving up 3 runs in the first two innings, Francis and a trio of relievers kept the Brewers off the board the rest of the way. It’s not their fault the Rockies’ bats reverted back to their not-so-fine form of early in the year.
2) The Rockies had more chances to take the lead in this game than Nic Cage has tour de force performances in his films (see The Rock). Francis helped his own cause with an RBI single in the 2nd, Iannetta continued his torrid hitting with an RBI single in the 6th, but then the Rockies bats cryogenically froze up with runners in scoring position, leaving everyone in the stadium hoping they haven’t started a familiar trend. With the bases loaded and 1 out in the 7th and Todd and Garrett coming up, Todd struck out looking on a questionable curveball and Garrett grounded out weakly to short. Then with Brad Hawpe on 3rd and 1 out in the 8th inning, he inexplicably tried to dash home on a ground ball back to the pitcher by Omar Quintanilla and was caught in a rundown between 3rd and home. I’m not sure what Brad was thinking. Was there two outs? Would the ball get by the pitcher Salomon Torres? Is my wife really making me go see that Sex and the City movie? And so on. Whatever he was thinking, he was wrong and murdered the momentum the Rockies had going, leaving us in an unfortunately familiar position: on the losing end of a baseball game.
We start a 3 game set at home against the Giants on Tuesday with Cookie looking for his 9th win of the season. The important thing is that we won a series and in order to get back to mediocrity, we’re going to have to keep doing exactly that.
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