Rox Weekend Recap (As the great philosopher Meatloaf once said: Two outta three ain't bad)

It may not be pretty and it sure as hell isn't fun to watch, but the Rockies have slowly begun to turn their lost season around. A 5-3 win over the Pale Hosers from Chicago today gave them another series win, their fourth in a row, and some much needed confidence going into a 7 game homestand. The Rox have now won 8 of 11 and are on the precipice of respectability in the National League. Hell, they're only 8.5 games back of the D-Bags if that's any indication how impossibly pathetic the NL West is. Until they are mathematically eliminated (it was going to be around mid-July, but now it's looking more like late August), these guys are going to gut it out until the bitter end.

1) Only the Rockies can slug 4 home runs in 1 game and lose then come back the next night and not record a single RBI and win. That's not something you see every day. In Friday's ballgame in which they lost 5-4, they tallied 5 hits including those 4 solo homers (2 from Ian K, 1 from Willy T, and another from Bradley H.) I'm still not sure how it's possible to do that and still lose, but leave it to the Rockies to find new ways to come up short. Saturday's game featured something different than dingers......sheer unadulterated boredom which aided the agonizing way the Rockies couldn't come up with the big hit (or even a couple little ones here and there.) As a team the boys in purple went 1-15 with runners in scoring position with both runs scoring on errors by the White Sox. 1-15? To give you a clue as to how stupid that statistic is, the much maligned Willy Taveras stole 5 bases including third base 3 times...and never scored. Not once. Not even kinda. More to come. This also marked the second time in Rockies history that they won a game without tallying an RBI. The other time? That would be Wednesday's win against the Giants. In Sunday's victory the Rox responded to their own inept selves by scoring 2 runs in the first 3 batters of the game with Scott Podsednik of .234 batting average fame leading the clutch hitting charge by notching 2 rbi singles on the day. That's the beautiful thing about baseball, I guess. You never know what the hell's going to happen on any given Sunday.

2) Willy Taveras has all of a sudden turned into Willy Mays Hays. After Hurdle forced him to do 20 pushups every time he hit a ball in the air, Willy realized that he wasn't a power hitter and started doing what got him to the Major Leagues: putting the frickin' ball on the ground and running as fast as he can. In the White Sox series, Speedy Taveras hit at a .363 clip (4-11) while stealing 6 bases and scoring 2 runs (an award-worthy achievement with this team's clutch hitting.) It's no secret that Willy can run, but getting on base has been a sore spot (.294 OBP.) He was all but benched in favor of Spilly when he started to turn it on. This guy was the 2005 Rookie of the Year runner up to Ryan Howard and scored a 36 game hitting streak in 2006. He's got the skillz, it's all a matter of if he can pay the billz...or at least keep the center field seat warm until Dexter Fowler arrives in LoDo.

3) Lost in a weekend's worth of wacky events was the Rockies' solid starting pitching. In a fortuitous trend, our starters have begun to pitch like they belong in the big leagues. Francis in Friday's game pitched very well until he tired in the 7th inning and Herges came in to clear the bases of all those smelly White Sox runners. Aaron Cook threw up another ho-hum quality start that we've grown so accustomed to this season and earned his 10th win becoming only the 3rd pitcher in Rockies history to post double digit victories before the All-Star break and just the 2nd pitcher in the National League with 10+ wins next to Brandon Webb's 11. He's making a serious case to start the All-Star game though it will never happen unless he wins his final 3 starts before the break. The real pitching star of the weekend, however, was Jorge of the Rose who became the first ever man to actually catch lightning in a bottle as he racked up 8 strikeouts in his 5 innings of work while allowing only 1 hit. This coming from the guy who served as the Phillies' batting practice pitcher in his last start (the forgettable 20-5 drubbing back in May.) At the very least he should have earned himself another start because not even Glendon Rusch could top those numbers.

This is a big 7 game homestand for the Rox as they try to creep their way back into the thick of things in the NL West. Do I think the Rockies have a legitimate shot at the division? Stranger things have happened, I suppose.