...and 5 to grow on!

Well, I already outlined the 5 main reasons the Colorado Rockies sucked in 2008, I would be remiss if I didn't come up with a tidy little list of a few things the Rockies actually did well this year. No, really, there were 5 things. I promise you there will be no repeats.......probably.

1) Tulo's 2nd Half
- Tulo's 1st half was at the top of the Things-That-Sucked-List, so it's only fitting that Tulo's second half be at the top of this one. Tulo's second half basically begins when he returned from the disabled list for second time (after getting into a bar brawl with one of his bats and losing...badly) on July 21. At the time he was hitting .166 with 3 home runs and 15 rbis. Not quite MVP worthy if you ask me. In that July 21 game against the Dodgers, Tulo announced his prescence with authority with a 5-5 game, raising his average 34 points in only one game. From that point on, Tulo had himself a hell of a season hitting .335 the rest of the way and picking up his power pace a bit by clubbing 6 homers and knocking in 32 runs. His final stat line of .263, 8, 46 nears David Eckstein territory for uselessness (unless you count "being a gamer" as usefulness) compared to his monster 2007 numbers (.299, 24, 97), but to see how abysmal Tulo was at the beginning of the season, dealing with his injuries (some self inflicted), and bouncing back to have a second half that we came to expect in the short time we've known Tulo was a huge relief to Rockies fans and front office alike. Now that he knows how to handle adversity for the first time in his career, he's going to be better for it when 2009 rolls around.

2) The emergence of the Young Guns
- Yeah, that's right, I'm talking about Chris Iannetta, Ian Stewart, and Ubaldo Jimenez (What? You thought I meant Charlie Sheen, Emilio, and Kiefer? Pssshhh). Those three guys were big question marks coming into the 2008 season. Chris was the Opening Day starter last year, but ineffectiveness and lofty expectations ultimately led to his demotion to the Springs for a brief period to get his confidence back. Though he showed some pop at the end of last season in his return, he was still stuck behind Yorvit "Mr. "Clutch"" (yeah, quotations in quotations) Torrealba in the depth chart. Everyone here at Frost Brewed Baseball realized early on in the year that Iannetta was ready to be a productive member of the ballclub when he was outhitting Torrealba in half the at bats. Once Hurdle finally realized it too, Iannetta took off. He finished the year 5th in home runs among catchers (18), 8th in RBIs (65), 2nd in on base percentage (.390), and didn't commit an error the entire season behind the plate. The upper echelon of catchers in the big leagues (Mauer, McCann, Martin) might have a new member.

King Stew had always had pounds of potential but had never turned that promise into production at the Major League level. Some in the organization were wondering whether or not he would ever be the player they thought he'd be. Those worries were allieved this year as soon as Ian saw consistent at bats when Helton went down for the season. Garrett moved to first to make way for Stew Daddy and Stewart responded with power and defense. A late season slide masked the outstanding season this kid had in the 2nd half. His final numbers of (.259, 10, 41) don't show just how impressive Stewart was this year. On top of his highlight reel defense, Stew slugged huge home runs and hit lefties at a ridiculous .370 clip. He should be a cornerstone of our infield for years to come (and will probably necessitate the need to move Atkins to another team.)

No one knew what to expect from Ubaldo this year. He'd had success near the end of the season and in the playoffs, but he was still only 24. When he started out 1-7, the critics were ready to write off Jimenez as a flash in the pan. A million dollar arm and a 5 cent head to quote Bull Durham. Then the calendar turned to July and all of a sudden Jimenez was nearly flawless. His fastball was hard and biting, his slider made hitters flail helplessly, and his command was spotless. He went 5-1 in the month with a 1.74 ERA and cemented his spot at number 2 in our rotation. Though his August was a bit of a setback, he finished the season strong with a 2.90 ERA in the month of September ending the season with a hard-fought 12-12 record and 3.99 ERA. Though it was a bit up and down, this kid is going to be fun to watch for years to come with that 100 mph heat.

3) Cookie's career year
- For a while Aaron Cook's season looked destined to be the best in the entire history of the Rockies franchise. He had 16 wins by the time they calendar turned to September, one short of the Rockies record, but a high volume of innings pitched eventually caught up to the red-headed right hander and he was forced to miss a few starts down the stretch. The ones he did start however, Cook looked like a shell of the pitcher we'd seen at the start of the year. Nevertheless, Cook had one of the finest years of any pitcher in the history of the ballclub. Signed to a contract extension in the offseason, he was one of the only players that the front office invested in that actually earned his paycheck in 2008. He finished the year at 16-9 with a 3.96 ERA but those numbers don't tell the story of how dominant Cook was for the majority of the season. He played the roll of stopper early on in the year rolling off 6 straight wins, most of them after Rockies losses. He was even the second Rockies starting pitcher to be selected to the National League All Star Team (the other being everybody's favorite $121 million man, Mike Hampton in 2001), and responded by throwing 3 shutout innings in said All Star game (including a magic act after the AL loaded the bases with nobody out thanks to Dan "My Fielding Is" Uggla's 2 consecutive errors.) Though his performance was historic, he ultimately paid the price by not responding well after the break and having to sit out with lower back pain. Cook finally pitched like the ace he was supposed to be and we'll look for that sinker to dominate next season as well.

4) T Rex's Total Domination
- Though he came into the season as the set up man due to Manny Corpas' unreal 2nd half last season, Brian Fuentes had the kind of year that guys can go their whole careers without having. Thrust back into the closer's role after Corpas had his Fuentes-esque meltdown to start the year, Brian responded by saving 30 games, his 4th consecutive season with at least 20. At one point, he saved 17 consecutive games including a stretch between August 15-September 17 where in 13 innings, he gave up 3 hits, walked 2, and struck out 24. He was so unbelievably unhittable that he made Rockies fans forget his, ahem, "hiccup" on last year's disastrous 1-9 road trip at the end of June. Most everyone agrees that it's a foregone conclusion that Fuentes will be a goner this offseason, that he will command too big of a contract for the penny-pinching Rockies to afford. Plus, they say they already have a bona-fide Major League closer in Manny Corpas. Or are they only saying that because they're set to pay Manny $5.5 million this year and don't want to be paying that kind of money to a set up man? In my opinion, we need Fuentes. He's the franchise's all time leader in saves and has the makeup and stuff to still dominate the 9th inning for years to come. He's much more important to me than Atkins, who is easily expendable and a good piece of trade bait if we can land a quality starting pitcher. He's replaceable. Fuentes is not and it will be a shame if the Rockies front office doesn't at least make a decent attempt to re-sign T-Rex.

5)..................
- I got this. I know there has to be a 5th positive from this season. Hawpe had a pretty sweet year and finally started to hit lefties (.282 average, 6 hrs.) Barmes proved himself to be a quality option at second base (at least until EY, Jr or Corey Wimberley are ready to make an impact.) Taylor Buchholz was nearly unhittable in the setup role (6-6, 2.17 ERA), and Jason Grilli stepped up to provide some solid innings late in the game. There, there's a few things that went well. Livan Hernandez won't be on the team next year! That's another one. That's all I have right now. Be grateful I found 4.

Coming up, the worst 5 games of 2008.

Rox Recap 9/9/08 (Balk-Off)

This one stung. There's not really any reason to sugarcoat it, rationalize it, make excuses for it, or even try to remember it. This one stung. Not in the sense that the Rockies are still in the playoff race (they're not), but in the sense that in a game that we had absolutely no business winning (see Errors: 3 and Hits: 6) we had to lose the game on what can most kindly be described as a mental lapse. A balk.

1) Most of the time, balks are insignificant and a majority of the time, invisible to everyone's eye but the umpire calling it. It can just be a flinch of the pitching hand, a muscle spasm, or a nervous twitch. You cannot, even accidentally, begin your throwing motion to the plate and stop it suddenly. Left handers get the majority of balk calls on their pickoff throws to first. As a former left handed pitcher I can safely say that left handers are incorrectly charged with balks on pickoff throws to first about 75% of the time. Right handers will tell you that every left handed move to first is a balk and I say nay, kind sir, I challenge you to a duel of fisticuffs. We're just more adapted to playing the game of baseball than you righties and when you realized this, you made every position on the field easier for a right hander just so you could keep up with us southpaws. But damn.........I digress. What I'm trying to say is, Buchholz' balk to allow the winning run to score was simply a brain fart. He's been our most reliable reliever the entire season and for something like this to happen to him was just unfortunate. I don't blame him, per se, because these kinds of things do tend to happen in the annals of baseball history, but for it to happen in that situation on a team where at least the players think they still have a shot at the playoffs knowing they basically have to duplicate their improbable run of last season.......that just stings.

2) Cook seems to have run smack into a brick wall in his attempt to become the Rockies all time single season winningest pitcher. He's still 16-9 but in his last 8 starts, his record is 2-3 with an ERA of 6.58 and opponents are hitting a Tony Gwynn-ian .353 against him. Call it what you will, fatigue, mechanics, mental toughness, nerves (remember he wasn't a part of our magical run of last season as he was on the disabled list and didn't pitch until Game 4 of the World Series), but the bottom line is Cookie is just not getting the job done. His adrenaline was evident in the first inning of today's ballgame as he allowed 3 runs on 4 hits. Sinkerballers need to keep a very even keel throughout the course of a ballgame to be effective. If they try to throw their sinker too hard, it's going to flatten out and become a very hittable pitch. That's what happened to Cook in the first inning today. Once he got out of the mess he created, he did pitch a decent ballgame only giving up 1 run through the next 5 innings, but it wasn't enough on a night where the Rockies couldn't quite come up with an answer for the magnificent, the fantabulous, the "fireballer" Jorge Campillo.

3) Chris Iannetta is having one of the best seasons by a catcher in all of baseball this year. Don't just take my word for it though, look at the numbers. He hit his 15th home run of the season tonight good for 3rd in the National League behind Brian McCann (the gold standard for two-way catchers in the Major Leagues) and Geovany Soto (the probable National League Rookie of the Year.) He's second in the Major Leagues for catchers with a .397 on base percentage behind the Twins' Joe Mauer (one of the purest hitters in all the game, not just for the guys behind the plate), and his OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) of .900 leads all catchers. And he's done it with about 200 less plate appearances than any of those other guys. Nobody knows it outside of the Mountain Time Zone, but Chris Iannetta is the real deal and the Rockies have finally found their catcher of the future.

I don't really know what else to say.

Don't play Willy Taveras.

Play Dexter Fowler.

Rox Recap 5/25/08 (An Army of the Dead that Bruce Campbell Would Kill To Lead)

Just when you thought it was safe to root for the Rockies, they throw you another curveball. This wasn't your run of the mill yakker, this was a Taylor Buchholz snapdragon. Along with the recent placing of our starting right fielder and our hottest hitter on the disabled list, our Triple Crown leader (batting average, home runs, and rbi) has sat out the last two games with a stiff neck (is that really an injury?), and our starting centerfielder has recently skinned his knee and his mommy won’t let him play with the other boys until it heals. On top of that entire mess, now we have to deal with Big Daddy, Matt Holliday, arguably the best hitter in all of baseball sitting out for at least a couple weeks with a strained hamstring suffered in yesterday’s ballgame. If you follow the Colorado Springs Sky Sox religiously (and if you do, um, congrats) you would be very familiar with the lineup Skip Hurdle picked out of a hat today. Here was our starting 9:

CF Scott Podsednik
2B Johnny Herrera
1B Todd Helton
LF Ryan Spilborghs
RF Seth Smith
3B Ian Stewart
C Yorvit Torrealba
SS Omar Quintanilla
P Aaron Cook

Compare that to our Opening Day lineup and you’ll see what we’re dealing with:

CF Willy Taveras (bum knee)
SS Troy Tulowitzki (torn groin…that hurts even to type)
1B Todd Helton (having Vietnam flashbacks of the Big Head Todd and the Toddlers days)
LF Matt Holliday (strained hammy)
3B Garrett Atkins (stiff neck…seriously, take a Motrin or something)
RF Brad Hawpe (strained hammy…calisthenics anyone?)
C Yorvit Torrealba (and Iannetta isn’t playing…why?)
2B Jayson Nix (didn’t understand that offense was a part of the game)
P Jeff Francis (if I knew why he’s been so terrible, I’d be on the Rox bankroll)

I know we’re not the only team to deal with injuries and no one’s going to feel sorry for us, but this is getting pretty ridiculous. The good news is though, we took 2 of 3 from the NY Mets and finished the homestand with a winning record of 5-4 thanks to a hella performance from Cookie and an prodigious blast from rookie Seth Smith.

1) What can you say about Cookie that hasn’t been said about Will Smith? He always comes to the rescue, he always gives you his all, and he always makes it look good…at least this year. With Carlos Beltran’s 9^th inning groundout (and a ridiculous stop by Johnny Herrera who’s quickly becoming a walking Web-Gem) Big Red finished off his 7^th career complete game and his first since last July 25^th when he needed only 75 pitches to dispatch the Fathers. He worked ahead in the count all day using his bread and butter sinker to induce 16 ground ball outs while striking out 3 and walking only 1. With a 7-3 record and a 2.82 ERA, Cookie is cruising towards an All-Star berth where he won’t even need a pity pick from Skip Hurdle, the National League All-Star manager (Would he still be the manager if he gets fired before the All-Star break? Just a thought.) He’s our ace and he sure pitched like it today in a game we needed.

2) Congrats to last year’s postseason hero Seth Smith who blasted his first career home run into the Rox’ bullpen in right center field. Up until his heroics in the 4^th, the Rox hadn’t mustered anything off Mets starter John Maine. In fact, they hadn’t even squared up a ball and had struck out 6 times in 3 innings. Todd walked, Spilly reached on an error by Jose Reyes, and then came Smith who took a 2-2 fastball on the inside corner and turned it into a souvenir. Those 3 runs were all Cook would need as he finished off the Metties in economical fashion.

The Rox now embark on a tough 3 team, 10 day, 10 game, 3 time zone road trip that will take them to Philly, Chi-Town, and finishing up with three games against Los Los Angeles Doyers. With our AAA lineup, it’s going to be hard to keep up with the smash mouth (All Star) offenses of the Phillies and Cubs, but this homestand was a step in the right direction, even if it didn’t seem that way. I don’t know if we have to perform some kind of ritual to keep the injury bug off our backs but we’re running out of healthy bodies. Can Dinger swing a bat?

Rox Recap 5/14/08 (What the Hell's Goin On Out There?)

My apologies to everyone who has sat at their computer screens, refreshing their browser window, anxiously awaiting the moment that I post a new blog. I’m graduating from Kenyon College on Saturday and this whole week is dedicated to the school throwing the seniors a bunch of keggers in celebration of their impending release into the real world, so forgive me for not being in the right frame of mind for a blog post. Anyhoo, what was I supposed to be talking about? The Rockies? The 15-24 Rockies? The team whose ace is winless and sports a 6.27 ERA? The team who can’t seem to manage to make any kind of sustained run of success? The team who only seems to win when Aaron Cook toes the rubber? Right, those Rockies. I give Aaron Cook about 25 more projected starts on the season if he stays healthy. If the Rockies win all of those games, our final record would stand at a cool 40-122, making us literally the worst team in baseball history. Do I think that would happen? Heck no. The bullpen would blow at least a few of Cookie’s starts and finally the madness would catch up to Cookie and he would demand to be traded, knowing that he already had the Cy Young Award in his pocket with those 31 wins. Does this sound like I’m rambling? Maybe, but it’s hard to write about a subject you’re so passionate about when all it gives you is frustration and a heaping helping of mental instability. I’m going to do my best to just focus on the positives in this post, hoping that the good vibes will rub off on our boys in purple, but I’m livin’ on the edge when it comes to my optimism.

1) Is anybody hotter than Garrett Atkins right now? Maybe Jessica Alba, but that might be about it. He’s the Triple Crown front runner on the Rox right now with a .335 average, 7 home runs, and 26 rbi’s. He’s also leading in hits, doubles, and total bases. If it weren’t for Jerry, I don’t even want to think how much worse off we’d be. He absolutely obliterated a home run to left center off Randy Johnson last night, the ball traveling well over 450 feet. What else does he have to do to try and get the Rox out of this funk? I’m not sure if he could pitch all that well, but it couldn’t be worse than the abominable performances we’ve thrown out there this year. Maybe we could make an exception and bat Garrett 8 times throughout the lineup with an occasional at bat from Matt or Todd.

2) Manny Corpas pitched an entire inning without giving up a hit or a run, so you know, that’s cool I guess.

3) 5 players had multi hit games including the diminutive but deadly Jon Herrera who’s banging down Skip Hurdle’s door for more playing time. He’s got a .400 on base percentage in 8 games so far and has been sterling defensively. He should get more of a chance though Grimes-y is still hitting .337 and Quintanilla is keeping it real too.

Is Aaron Cook pitching yet? No? Fantastic.

Rox Recap 4/29/08 (Karma is Alive and Well and Living in San Francisco)

To say that Tuesday night’s Rockies game was a bit strange would be like saying Andrew Dice Clay's brand of stand up comedy was only kind of misogynistic (but completely unfunny.) Catchers were playing third base, third basemen were playing second base, half our roster just went on the DL I believe (forgive me if I’m exaggerating) but it’s hard to figure out what to make of it. I’ll take a W any way I can though at this point. I’m actually going out on a limb here and saying that I was the reason we won last night. The entire year my desktop background on my computer was a picture of Tulo from re-Opening Day after he scored the go ahead run of a 2-1 victory. Tulo hasn’t exactly had the best run of success thus far, but the picture was so perfect, I was hesitant to change it. Finally, after our 4-0 drubbing on Monday, enough was enough and I changed it to a picture of everybody’s favorite deity, John Elway holding up the Vince Lombardi trophy after our Super Bowl XXXII victory. I change it, we win. Coincidence?

1) Ok, let’s get the roster confusion out of the way first. Franklin Morales was sent down to AAA to get his fastball command and mechanics in order. Long reliever and rotation candidate Kip Wells was sent back to Denver with what could be a serious hand injury. Mark Redman was moved to the bullpen to add about 15-20 mph on his fastball. Slick fielding, light hitting infielder Omar Quintanilla was called up to replace Morales’ roster spot and he will be inserted almost immediately into the starting lineup as Jeff Baker burst a blood vessel in his finger during warm-ups and couldn’t play and Troy Tulowitzki suffered a groin injury (is there any more painful?) in the first inning and had to come out. That meant Skip Hurdle had to shuffle some cards around and he went all in by moving Garrett Atkins to second base, Clint Barmes to shortstop, and his most genius move, putting backup catcher (should be starting, Clint. Read Frost Brewed Baseball more) Christ Iannetta at third. I was going to make an Abbott and Costello joke about Who’s on first but Troy Renck of the Denver Post beat me to the punch. Neither Atkins nor Iannetta had played a pitch at either of these positions but they wound up making some nifty albeit spectacular plays respectively as they showcased their virile versatility. With the myriad of players soon to be on the DL or at the very least incapacitated for a few days, we could see a roster turnover akin to the Todd and the Toddlers days. Ian Stewart could be on the fast track to the Mile High City, so could veteran starter Josh Towers or soon to be rookie pitching sensation Greg Reynolds. Stewart especially has been tearing it up in AAA carrying a .281 average with 6 hrs and 21 RBIs in 23 games.

2) So what does Iannetta do with his surprise start at a premium position? Oh nothing, just go 2-2 with a walk, a double, 2 runs, and a blast off the Napoleonic Tim Lincecum to dead center field that would have been out of any park except Yellowstone. He also scored the winning run on a Lincecum balk, a true sign that Elway himself was sick of the Rockies losing. Chris needs more at bats to prove that this is the real Chris Iannetta, not the shadow of his true self we saw last year.

3) Aaron Cook did it again, folks. We finally have what we’ve been waiting for with him for the last 5 seasons. Though he gave up 10 hits in 7 innings of work, he only allowed 2 runs (0 earned thanks to Todd’s inexplicable drop of an easy throw by Tulo in the first) and didn’t allow a run past said first inning. He also struck out 3 and lowered his ERA to a team best 2.41. If our other 4 starters pitched half as well as Cookie so far, we’d be the talk of the NL.

Baseball is a funny game. It always has a way of evening itself out. You hit 3 rocket shots right at someone and go hitless, the next day you hit a couple Texas Leaguers and a dying quail and you’re 3-3. If this game was baseball’s way of evening things out for the Rockies, we could be in for a very interesting season. Ubaldo starts today to keep his spot in the rotation, but after last night, we might not have enough arms to replace him should he struggle. Is Roger Clemens available? We could use a little of his country twang. What, too soon?

Rox Recap 4/24/08 (It's Been Awhile...)

The Rockies bullpen loves to make history. Last year closer Brian Fuentes became the first reliever in the modern era to blow four consecutive save opportunities, taking the losses in each of the four games. With their embarrassing ‘splosion this week blowing four straight games in which the Rox held leads in the 8^th inning or later, they became only the second team in the last 100 years to accomplish that dubious honor. Forgive the Rockies if they don’t make a DVD of those highlights. What would they call it? 21 Days Later?

1) The club will look a bit different at least for the next few weeks. Manny Corpas is out as closer after blowing 3 straight save opportunities and only going 4 of 8 on the year. His 7.50 ERA wasn’t helping his case either. Brian Fuentes is back. Staind never sounded so beautiful…as if that was even possible. T Rex looked hella good in his first opportunity against the Cubbies, taking the heart of their order down 1-2-3 with 2 k’s including a knee-buckling 3 pitch, 3 slider strikeout of the hottest Japanese sensation since the art of Japanimation, Kosuke Fukudome. (By the way, is there a man with a more obscene name in the big leagues? Fuk-u-do-me. That’s just inappropriate.) Rex is back where he always wanted to be and yesterday he looked to be pitching with a purpose. I don’t care who gets it done just as long as someone does because as I’ve said before, there is nothing more demoralizing to a team than thinking you have a game won only to lose it late. Then multiply that by 4. Since I can’t do math, I’ll leave that to you guys, but I can hypothesize that the solution isn’t awesome.

2) What more can you say about Cookie so far this year? He’s 3-1 with a 2.91 ERA and all 3 of his wins have come after Rockies losses. We’re paying him big bucks to do exactly what he’s been doing, being efficient with his pitches, pitching deep into ballgames, and throwing ground ball after ground ball. He also contributed 2 hits to help his cause as he’s been the best pitcher on the Rockies’ staff by far this season. He’s got the stuff to sustain a roll like this for a while longer with that heavy sinker and his newfound cut fastball.

3) Chris Iannetta hit his first home run of the year yesterday, a high fly ball that reached the glove of the fans in the first row, or as they’d call it in Philadelphia, an upper deck blast. More importantly though, it broke a 1 all tie and swelled the hearts of Frost Brewed Baseball contributors everywhere, ok, just Eric and me, but it was still nice to see.

The Rox head to the West Coast once again to take on the Los Angeles Dodgers (pronounced “los Los An-yay-lace Doy-ers). After his last start, Clint Hurdle took Ubaldo Jimenez aside and told him that they actually do play a full 9 innings in every Major League game as he was under the impression that anything after 6 was considered extra innings. Also, his arrogant trick of walking a bunch of guys just to prove he can get out of trouble wasn’t flying with the skipper. Starship Troopers is awesome and everyone should stop reading this and go watch it right now.

Rox Recap 4/7/08

I was determined to not write the same Rox recap I’d been writing for the last week. I wanted to be positive and spur my Rockies onto their much-anticipated second victory of this short season. Unfortunately for the first 7 and a half innings last night, I was prepared to copy and paste lines of lament from my last articles as the Rockies swallowed yet another serving of cold crusty defeat. Then Big Daddy did it again.

1) Though 3 of Matt’s 4 at bats last night were weak at best and frustrating at worst, you can’t argue with the results of his 8th inning 2 run tattooing which put the Rocks up for good. Matt, let’s be honest here, looked overanxious to hit anything Tom Glavine rainbowed (that’s a verb, right?) to the plate last night. His 4th inning at bat epitomized the entire Rockies team for the first week of the season. Todd Helton had just worked a leadoff walk off Glavine who still showed he has the stuff to straight up dominate young teams who fail to be patient at the plate and let the ball travel, therefore using the opposite field instead of trying to pull everything. Holliday strolled to the batter’s box determined to single-handedly interrupt the Rockies’ hitting hibernation. He took a mighty hack at a 76 mph changeup from Glavine that dove down near the dirt on the outside corner and tapped the ball meekly back to Glavine who calmly turned a fired the hardest ball he would throw all night to second to nab Helton. He also flew out softly to center field with two on in the 6th inning, but like I said, if Matt can do nothing the whole year except hit clutch bombs in the late innings, I’m going to run out of things to complain about. You can’t argue with the results of a win, no matter how agonizing they may be.

2) What more can you say about Aaron Cook’s performance on the mound last night? This is the pitcher we signed to a $30 million contract in the offseason. 7 innings, 1 run, 2 hits, 15 ground ball outs on only 73 pitches. That might have been the best Cook has ever looked and I was at Coors last year for his 88 pitch complete game victory over the Padres. The Braves had absolutely no answer for anything he threw up there. Sinkers, cutters, changeups, fastballs, everything was working for Big Red as he ate up more bats than a party at the Osbourne’s. Unfortunately for Cookie, the Rox bats Jason Jennings-ed him and supplied him with a grand total of 0 runs so he couldn’t be credited with the win. Cook still has yet to win a game in April in his entire career but if he keeps pitching like he did last night, it’s only a matter of time before we can muster up even a couple runs of support.

3) The game took a grand total of 2 hours and 5 minutes, the shortest game on record in Coors Field history. Glavine and Cook both looked to be in the prime of their careers: Glavine tossing rosin bags to the outside corner and Cookie cutting bats like bandsaws. Rarely do you see two pitchers so incredibly on point during a game with neither one of them factoring into the decision, but such is baseball.

4) Tulo finally looks like the Three-lo of old at short as he was the beneficiary of the majority of Cook’s ground-ball prowess. He made several running plays in the hole and also coming in on the ball and his throws to Todd were spot on. It looks like that initial bout of stone hands was just a fleeting problem. No one deserves a Gold Glove more than Tulo, especially after “MVP” Jimmy Rollins somehow robbed him last year.

And finally, look at this potent quotable from the Rox resident skipper Clint Hurdle on the play of rookie second baseman Jayson Nix:
“It is the proverbial dog on the pond. Above water he is cool, calm, collected. Below water, he is a paddling son of a gun.”
No wonder he became the media darling and favorite interview during the postseason run last year. But seriously, where does he get his material?

As always, Go Broncos.